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4. ONLINE PRIMARY TEXTS
Some of Berkeley's writings are available on the internet. There are several online copies of the "Treatise" but a dearth of the 'grey' literature, such as his notebooks and correspondence, and the recondite material in "Siris". The online material is, of course, derived from the printed material, so a brief explanatory note on the editions of Berkeley's works is in order
4.0 Editions of Berkeley
In printed form, biographers of Berkeley and compilers of Berkeley's writings include the following:
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Joseph Stock: published Berkeley's biography (1776) and collected works in 2 volumes (1784), which included the biography as an appendix; publisher John Exshaw, Dublin. This was the first published collection of Berkeley's writings, which had previously been available only as separate books.
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Rev. G. N. Wright: collected works in 2 volumes; published by Thomas Tegg, London (1843). Available on CD-ROM from Intelex Corporation (see below).
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Alexander Campbell Fraser (1819-1914): published a commentary (1879), and Berkeley's collected works in 4 volumes (1871, revised 1901), and biography (1908); publisher Clarendon Press, Oxford. Fraser's edition of the collected works was the first to include Berkeley's notebooks, which Fraser entitled The Commonplace Book (later retitled Philosophical Commentary by Luce & Jessop). Fraser was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh (1894-1896).
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George Sampson: published Berkeley's collected works (1897/8) in three volumes, with a biographical introduction by The Rt. Hon A. J. Balfour, M.P. Issued as part of Bohn's Philosophical Library, and expressly intended as an inexpensive alternative to Fraser's edition. It included the first modern reprint of The Querist and several minor pieces, such as Sampson's own English translation from Latin of De Motu. The works are arranged in the order of their first appearance, the texts containing Berkeley's final revisions with earlier readings indicated in the notes.
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Arthur Aston Luce (1882-1977): published a commentary (1945), and Berkeley's biography (1949) and the collected works in 9 volumes with T.E. Jessop (Volume 1 by Luce, 1948; volumes 2 & 3 by Jessop, 1949/50; other volumes up to 1957); publisher Nelson, London.
By the EU rule that a work passes out of copyright seventy years after the authors death, Fraser's edition is eligible for free transcription into electronic form. Needless to say, earlier editions will also be out of copyright, but they are correspondingly hard to get hold of because they are out of print. Fraser's complete works of Berkeley (1901) and biography (1908) are still in print, although they are very expensive. It was, however, Sampson's edition of the Treatise and the Dialogues (1897/8) that the Virginia Tech's ERIS project put into electronic form, and those texts seem to have formed the basis of the various copies available on the web. (I have been unable to find any information about Eris, except that she was also the Greek goddess of strife. The Eris electronic books were formerly available on Virginia Tech's gopher site, but VT say they have now been moved to Project Gutenberg, although Gutenberg deny all knowledge of this.) David Wilkins at Trinity College, Dublin, has also prepared HTML copies of The Analyst and other mathematical works by Berkeley from the Sampson publication.
4.1 A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Part I (1710)
Subtitled:
Wherein the chief causes of error and difficulty in the sciences, with the grounds of scepticism, atheism, and irreligion, are inquir'd into.
Published:
J. Pepyat, Dublin (1710), revised and published with Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous by J. Tonson, London (1734).
Berkeley lost the manuscript for Part II of the Treatise whilst travelling in Europe, so only Part I was ever published. We can, however, get some idea of what Part II would have covered, from his notebooks, which contain many entries on God and spirits which never made their way into Part I. The online texts of the Treatise listed below all seem to be taken from Sampson's edition of 1897/8.
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www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Berkeley/HumanKnowledge/
Prepared by Dr David R. Wilkins, lecturer in mathematics in the School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin. Based on an electronic text at Virginia Tech (the Eris Project). It has been italicised to match the text of an 1897 edition of the works of George Berkeley, edited by George Sampson. As far as I am aware, this is the only online text of the Treatise that has hypertext tags for the paragraphs, so that you can make hypertext links directly into the text.
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www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/Philosophy/Berkeley/tcphk/
Tze-wan Kwan and Chong-fuk Lau of the Chinese University of Hong Kong have taken an electronic copy of the Treatise, and incorporated it into a search engine. You can type in any character string, and it will give you list of all the lines where that line occurs in the Treatise, quoting the text of the line on which it occurs, and giving a hypertext link to that position in the Treatise. This is done with some package called Glimpse 3.0. Kwan and Lau say that "The e-text version of Berkeley's Treatise has been around in the public domain for quite a while", but they do not attribute it: I assume it is the Virginia Tech transcription of George Sampson's edition. It's a useful tool, although nowadays you can do the same thing with a standard text-editing tool.
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www.library.adelaide.edu.au/etext/b/b51tr/
Prepared by Steve Thomas, the University of Adelaide Library's Senior Systems Analyst, for the Library's Electronic Texts Collection, in April 1998. The Electronic Texts Collection is a pilot project of The University of Adelaide Library. All of the works are in the public domain.
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www.utm.edu/research/iep/text/berkeley/berkprin.htm
Prepared by James Fieser, 1996, for the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Based on the electronic text at Virginia Tech.
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www.ilt.columbia.edu/academic/digitexts/berkeley/knowledge/knowledge.txt
In plain text, not HTML, so far, at the University of Columbia's Institute for Learning Technologies (ILT). An identical copy is maintained by J. Carl Mickelsen at the University of Idaho.
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www.orst.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/berkeley/principles_contents.html
This copy is at the Oregon State University, and has a search program (which was not, however, operational as of February 2000).
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www.cybercom.net/~rbjones/rbjpub/philos/classics/berkeley/index.htm
Roger Bishop Jones has prepared this copy (1994).
4.2 Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713)
Subtitled:
The design of which is plainly to demonstrate the reality and perfection of humane knowledge, the incorporeal nature of the soul, and the immediate providence of a deity; in opposition to sceptics and atheists. Also, to open a method for rendering the sciences more easy, useful, and compendious.
Published:
Henry Clements, London (1713), revised and published with the Treatise in 2 volumes by J. Tonson, London (1734).
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www.utm.edu/research/iep/text/berkeley/berkdial.htm
Prepared by James Fieser, 1996, for the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. Based on an electronic text at Virginia Tech. The text is based on the 1910 Harvard Classics edition of Berkeley's Three Dialogues, pagination following T.E. Jessop's 1949 edition of Three Dialogues, in The Works of George Berkeley, Vol. 2. (An identical copy is maintained by Carl Mickelson at the University of Idaho.)
4.3 The Analyst, Or a Discourse Addressed to an Infidel Mathematician (1734)
Subtitled:
Wherein it is examined whether the object, principles, and inferences of the modern analysis are more distinctly conceived, or more evidently deduced, than religious mysteries and points of faith.
Published:
J. Tonson, London (1734).
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www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Berkeley/Analyst/
Prepared by David R. Wilkins, of the School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin. The text is based on the 1898 edition of the works of George Berkeley, edited by George Sampson, but incorporates a small number of changes. This is an excellent text, including a hypertext table of contents, a hypertext anchor for each section, and equations loaded as small graphics files.
4.4 A Defence of Free-Thinking in Mathematics (1735)
Subtitled:
In answer to a pamphlet of Philalethes Cantabrigiensis, intituled, Geometry no friend to infidelity, or a defence of Sir Isaac Newton, and the British Mathematicians. Also, an appendix concerning Mr Walton's Vindication of the Principle of fluxions against objections contained in the Analyst. Wherein it is attempted to put this controversy in such light as that every reader maybe able to judge thereof. By the author of the Minute Philosopher.
Published:
R. Gunne, Dublin (1735).
4.5 Reasons for not replying to Mr. Walton's Full Answer (1735)
Published:
R.Gunne, Dublin (1735).
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www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/HistMath/People/Berkeley/Reasons/
Prepared by David R. Wilkins, lecturer in mathematics at the School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin. The text is based on the 1898 edition of the works of George Berkeley, edited by George Sampson. Has a hypertext anchor on each section. This work is a sequel to "The Analyst" and "A Defence of Free-Thinking in Mathematics", by Berkeley. It is a response to "Catechism of the Author of the Minute Philosopher fully considered", by J. Walton.
4.6 The Querist (1735-1737)
Subtitled:
Containing several queries, proposed to the consideration of the public.
Published:
Part I: G. Risk, G. Ewing, & W. Smith, Dublin (1735), & Part II (1736); Part III: Jos. Leathley, Dublin (1737). Revised edition, Parts I-III: George Faulkner, Dublin (1737).
4.7 Correspondence with Johnson
Letters from Samuel Johnson to George Berkeley (10th September 1729 and 5th February 1730), and from Berkeley to Johnson (25th November 1729 and 24th March 1730).
4.9 New Theory of Vision
4.10 Past Masters Series
www.nlx.com/titles/titlberk.htm
Intelex Corporation offer a CD-ROM entitled "The Works of George Berkeley", a database containing all texts of Berkeley from the 9-volume edition of Arthur Aston Luce and T.E. Jessop. It does not include variants, or the introductions or notes by Jessop and Luce. At US$125 for the CD-ROM for individual use, this seems remarkably good value.
www.nlx.com/titles/titllbh.htm
Intelex Corporation also offer a CD-ROM entitled "Locke-Berkeley-Hume", comprising many of the works of John Locke and David Hume, plus: four of Berkeley's works:
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An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision (including diagrams as graphics images)
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Treatise on The Principles of Human Knowledge
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Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous
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Alciphron
These texts are taken from the edition by the Rev. G. N. Wright edition. His edition "is closer in orthography and punctuation to Berkeley than the Jessop and Luce texts (the standard edition)." They have, however, deleted all of Wright's footnotes except for variant readings. The only major deviation from Wright's edition concerns Alciphron. Wright published the 1st edition of this text, even though Berkeley himself had published 2nd and 3rd editions of it in his lifetime. Intelex state:
Because the Third Edition (the last published in Berkeley's lifetime) contained substantial additions and alterations, we checked all of Jessop's (1950) variant readings against the 1752 Third Edition, and altered the text to agree with Berkeley's Third Edition. What resulted was an edition much closer to Berkeley than that of Jessop, since Jessop took far greater liberties with punctuation than did Wright. In the area we checked, i.e. all Third Edition alterations relative to the First Edition, we noted over 150 discrepancies between Berkeley's Third Edition, and Jessop's representation of it. Jessop made at least one error in speaker assignment in the dialogue, as well as three minor word errors in the sections we checked (i.e. the Third Edition changes).
A bargain at US$105 for the CD-ROM for individual users.
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This is a short site set up by the museum in Rhode Island where Berkeley lived for a while. The museum is situated in the so-called White House which Berkeley built while he was waiting to set up his proposed college in Bermuda. While there, he created a library and encouraged a philosophical discussion group. This web site also contains details of the International Berkeley Society, which held a conference in Rhode Island in 1999.