The Special Collections Department of the University Libraries of Notre Dame has acquired the philosophical library of Arthur Aston Luce (1882-1977). Luce was a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and, in 1921, soon after his return to academic life following his army duties in World War I, he was appointed Donnellan Lecturer. His first major research topic was the French thinker Henri Bergson, but in the early 1930s he began studying the works of George Berkeley (1685-1753), by whom he was captivated for the rest of his life. In addition to writing other books and articles about Berkeley's thought, Luce wrote the definitive biography of Berkeley, re-edited his Commonplace Book, and, with T. E. Jessop, co-edited the standard edition of Berkeley's works. The greater part of this collection, therefore, consists of works by or about Berkeley and his contemporaries.
George Berkeley had also attended Trinity College and had become a Fellow of the College in 1707. In 1724 he became the Dean of Derry, but spent much of the next eight years trying to found a college in the Bermudas (a project which never materialized), and in 1733 he became the Bishop of Cloyne. Berkeley's underlying philosophical principle was that no object could exist without a mind to conceive it. He reasoned that since ideas of sense are not due to our own activity, they must, therefore, be produced by an external, that is divine, will. His influence and importance can be gauged by the fact that so many later philosophers devoted so much time and energy trying to unravel the difficulties of his theories.
Among the works in this collection are a number of early editions of Berkeley's books, which are very difficult to find, including first editions of The Theory of Vision, or Visual Language: Shewing the Immediate Presence and Providence of a Deity, Vindicated and Explained (London: Printed for J. Tonson, 1733), A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (Dublin: Printed by Aaron Rhames for Jeremy Pepyat, 1710) and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonus (London: Printed by G. James for Henry Clements, 1713) which is regarded as a major literary work of art.
Included also in this collection are some personal working copies used by A. A. Luce, many of which are annotated, including: Luce's and Jessop's edition of The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne (London: Nelson, 1948-1957), which in addition to the annotation has some relevant letters loosely inserted, Luce's The Life of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne (London: Nelson, 1949) and Life and Letters of George Berkeley, D.D., Formerly Bishop of Cloyne by Alexander Campbell Fraser (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1871), which Luce extensively annotated and corrected during the writing of his own biography of Berkeley. Some of the other authors represented in the collection by early editions of works are Henri Bergson, David Hume, Francis Bacon, Daniel Defoe, Rene Descartes, John Duns Scotus, G. W. Leibniz, John Locke, Nicolas Malebranche and Jonathan Swift.
Much of the information in this article was obtained from biographies of Luce and Berkeley supplied by Figgis Rare Books, Ltd., which may be consulted in the Department of Special Collections, Room 102, Hesburgh Library.