PREFATORY NOTE.

Siris (repà, a chain) appeared when Berkeley was about sixty, and contains the metaphysics of his later life. Rising from certain supposed medicinal virtues of tar-water, we are here invited to follow the ascending links of a chain, which connects these and all other qualities of sensible things with one another, in and through supreme and pervading Causal Intelligence. In Siris too we are brought into connexion with the metaphysics of antiquity: on this historical basis Berkeley here revels in his favourite thought of the whole world of transitory sense-phenomena sustaining its intelligently ordered combinations and sequences in necessary dependence on active Mind.

English metaphysical literature in the eighteenth century contains no work more curiously abundant in seeds of thought than Siris. Its immediate practical and benevolent purpose was to confirm the conjecture that tar yields a 'water of health' for the relief of diseases, from which the whole animal creation might draw fresh supplies of the vital essence. It is a series of aphorisms, connected by quaint and subtle associations, the thoughts of ancient and medieval philosophers being interwoven, and the whole forming a study in medical science and in metaphysical philosophy. The work breathes the spirit of Plato and the Neoplatonists, and that in the least Platonic generation in England since the rise of modern philosophy, while it draws this Platonic spirit with the unexpectedness of genius from a thing of sense so commonplace as tar.

More than half of the 368 sections which compose Siris are occupied with physical facts and conjectures. The others are adapted to deepen our thought of the dependence of the universe of experience upon Mind, and to enlighten as well as satisfy the philosophical desire for ultimate rational unity. The Selections which follow comprehend the most important of the metaphysical aphorisms. They may be studied apart from Berkeley's medicinal hypothesis about tar-water, and read simply as meditations upon the material world viewed under its constitutive relations to Supreme Intelligence. The conception of passive Nature pervaded by spiritual power is expressed in Siris in many ways, and then defended and further unfolded by help of the ancient sages.

Thus in this curious work medicine passes into metaphysics. Doubt regarding the author's hypothesis as to the medicinal virtues of tar-water need not disturb our enjoyment of its philosophical speculations about the rational concatenation of the universe. The medical aphorisms may misinterpret the meaning that is latent in tar; this need not hinder us from learning through Siris to see, in an unsubstantial and impotent material world, the constant manifestation of Divine power. The metaphysical aphorisms may be used as aids to reflection upon the interpretability of nature-space and time-free-will and necessity-matter and form—the soul or essence of things-the absolute personality and ineffable mystery of God.

When we compare Siris with the Principles we find important differences between Berkeley's philosophy when he was sixty and when he was twenty-five. The universals of Reason here overshadow the perishable phenomena of Sense and its Suggestions. Sensible things are looked at as adumbrations of a reality above and beyond Nature, which philosophy helps us to find. The objects of perception are here called phenomena, instead of 'ideas' or 'sensations;' while Ideas (not in Locke's meaning, and in Berkeley's early

meaning of the term idea, but in Plato's) are recognised in the ultimate explanation of things.

An increase of intellectual tolerance and of eclecticism appear in Siris, with less disposition to insist upon the dependence of the sensible world on sentient mind as a final settlement of all difficulties. That esse is percipi, in the sensuous reference of the latter term, is felt more to be the beginning than the completion of a philosophical solution of metaphysical problems. Recluse meditation, with a wider study of the meditation of the past, have given Berkeley a more mystical conception of the universe, and a feeling that it is neither so easily nor so perfectly intelligible under his old formula as it seemed in his ardent and less considerate youth. His awe of its mysteriousness is increased, and also his readiness to allow different ages and countries, each in its own philosophical form, to recognise Reason rather than the phenomena of Sense as the fixed element in existence,with irreducible data too in the incomplete explanation thus offered. He now welcomes an acknowledgment of God in any intellectual form of faith that consists with this supremacy of Reason in the universe. His last work in philosophy more than any of his former ones breathes and helps to educate the philosophic spirit, which, as it begins in wonder and the sense of mystery, is found at the end to issue in the same, deepened and enlightened by reflexion. Some of its concluding sentences express, with exquisite literary grace, his own spiritual growth in later life. We find him intellectually broader, more modest, and more liberal; more ready to accept with reverence the 'broken' philosophy to which deep and patient insight, with its sense of mystery, seems at last to conduct us all; more aware that in this mortal state, under the present limitations of sense, we must be satisfied to make the best of any openings which occur; yet not without hopethere being 'no subject so obscure but we may discern some glimpse of truth by long poring on it,' if we cultivate love.

for truth, the cry of all,' while it is really the game of a few.'

A philosophical analysis of human knowledge naturally begins with Sense and ends with causality and the constitution of Reason. Reason is latent in any knowledge, even through the senses, of the external world; the phenomena of the external world find their ultimate explanation in the reason which gives them intelligibility. Perception involves the contrast between the conscious spirit and the unconscious world, with the unfathomable mysteries of Space and Time which both disclose; Reason involves the ultimate meaning of what in Sense is phenomenally revealed in antithesis, under the mysterious conditions of co-existence and succession. Here are the three great objects of meditative thought-Self-in contrast to the world of Nature-both mutually related in and through God. The antithesis of Self and the phenomena present in Sense is prominent in Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge; the ultimate unity in Reason is prominent in Siris.

A. C. F.

EXTRACTS FROM

SIRIS:

A CHAIN OF PHILOSOPHICAL REFLEXIONS.

FOR Introduction to the following piece, I assure the reader that nothing could, in my present situation, have induced me to be at the pains of writing it, but a firm belief that it would prove a valuable present to the public. What entertainment soever the reasoning or notional part may afford the Mind, I will venture to say, the other part seemeth so surely calculated to do good to the Body that both must be gainers. For, if the lute be not well tuned, the musician fails of his harmony. And, in our present state, the operations of the mind so far depend on the right tone or good condition of its instrument, that anything which greatly contributes to preserve or recover the health of the Body is well worth the attention of the Mind1. These considerations have moved me to communicate to the public the salutary virtues of Tar-water; to which I thought myself indispensably obliged by the duty every man owes to mankind. And, as effects are linked with their causes, my thoughts on this low but useful theme led to farther inquiries, and those on to others, remote perhaps and speculative, but I hope not altogether useless or unentertaining 2.

1 Berkeley in all this recognises more than in his early writings that we are embodied spirits, although his philosophy has become less empirical. He recognises the established interdependence in us of organic and conscious life, but always with the reserve that reason is at last the cause of organisation, not organisation the cause of reason.

2 What relates to Tar-water and its supposed medicinal effects may be studied in Siris (Works, vol. II.) by those fond of experimenting on the connexion of our organism with animal and mental health.