An edition of the _Principles_ appeared in London in 1776, twenty-three years after Berkeley's death, with a running commentary of _Remarks_ by the anonymous editor, on the pages opposite the text, in which, according to the editor, Berkeley's doctrines are "carefully examined, and shewn to be repugnant to fact, and his principles to be incompatible with the constitution of human nature and the reason and fitness of things." In this volume the _Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_ are appended to the _Principles_, and a "Philosophical Discourse concerning the nature of Human Being" is prefixed to the whole, "being a defence of Mr. Locke's principles, and some remarks on Dr. Beattie's _Essay on Truth_," by the author of the _Remarks on Berkeley's Principles_. The acuteness of the _Remarks_ is not in proportion to their bulk and diffuseness: many popular misconceptions of Berkeley are served up, without appreciation of the impotence of matter, and of natural causation as only passive sense-symbolism, which is at the root of the theory of the material world against which the _Remarks_ are directed.
The Kantian and post-Kantian Idealism that is characteristic of the nineteenth century has recalled attention to Berkeley, who had produced his spiritual philosophy under the prevailing conditions of English thought in the preceding age, when Idealism in any form was uncongenial. In 1869 the book of _Principles_ was translated into German, with annotations, by Ueberweg, professor of philosophy at Königsberg, the university of Kant. The Clarendon Press edition of the Collected Works of Berkeley followed in 1871. In 1874 an edition of the _Principles_, by Dr. Kranth, Professor of Philosophy in the university of Pennsylvania, appeared in America, with annotations drawn largely from the Clarendon Press edition and Ueberweg. In 1878 Dr. Collyns Simon republished the _Principles_, with discussions based upon the text, followed by an appendix of remarks on Kant and Hume in their relation to Berkeley.
The book of _Principles_, as we have it, must be taken as a systematic fragment of an incompletely developed philosophy. Many years after its appearance, the author thus describes the conditions:--"It was published when I was very young, and without doubt hath many defects. For though the notions should be true (as I verily think they are), yet it is difficult to express them clearly and consistently, language being framed for common use and received prejudices. I do not therefore pretend that my books can teach truth. All I hope for is that they may be an occasion to inquisitive men of discovering truth(467)." Again:--"I had no inclination to trouble the world with large volumes. What I have done was rather with the view of giving hints to thinking men, who have leisure and curiosity to go to the bottom of things, and pursue them in their own minds. Two or three times reading these small tracts (_Essay on Vision_, _Principles_, _Dialogues_, _De Motu_), and making what is read the occasion of thinking, would, I believe, render the whole familiar and easy to the mind, and take off that shocking appearance which hath often been observed to attend speculative truths(468)." The incitements to further and deeper thought thus proposed have met with a more sympathetic response in this generation than in the lifetime of Berkeley.