As Berkeley is the immediate successor of Locke, and as he was educated by collision with the _Essay __ on Human Understanding_, perhaps Locke ought to have had more prominence in the editorial portion of this book. Limitation of space partly accounts for the omission; and I venture instead to refer the reader to the Prolegomena and notes in my edition of Locke’s _Essay_, which was published by the Clarendon Press in 1894. I may add that an expansion of thoughts which run through the Life and many of the annotations, in this edition of Berkeley, may be found in my _Philosophy of Theism_(1). ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ The reader need not come to Berkeley in the expectation of finding in his Works an all-comprehensive speculative system like Spinoza’s, or a reasoned articulation of the universe of reality such as Hegel is supposed to offer. But no one in the succession of great English philosophers has, I think, proposed in a way more apt to invite reflexion, the final alternative between Unreason, on the one hand, and Moral Reason expressed in Universal Divine Providence, on the other hand, as the root of the unbeginning and endless evolution in which we find ourselves involved; as well as the further question, Whether this tremendous practical alternative _can_ be settled by any means that are within the reach of man? His Philosophical Works, taken collectively, may encourage those who see in a reasonable _via media_ between Omniscience and Nescience the true path of progress, under man’s inevitable venture of reasonable Faith. One is therefore not without hope that a fresh impulse may be given to philosophy and religious thought by this reappearance of George Berkeley, under the auspices of the University of Oxford, at the beginning of the twentieth century. His readers will at any rate find themselves in the company of one of the most attractive personalities of English philosophy, who is also among the foremost of those thinkers who are masters in English literature—Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes, George Berkeley and David Hume. A. Campbell Fraser. GORTON, HAWTHORNDEN, MIDLOTHIAN, _March, 1901_. GEORGE BERKELEY, BY THE EDITOR I. Early Life (1685-1721).