Born, in County Kilkenny, 12 March 1685. To Kilkenny School, 17 July 1696. To Trinity College, Dublin, 21 Mar. 1700; Scholar, 1702; B.A., 1704; M.A., 1707; Fellowship, 9 June 1707; Tutor of College, 1707–24; Sub-lecturer, 1710; Junior Dean, 1710 and 1711; Junior Greek Lecturer, 1712; Divinity Lecturer and Senior Greek Lecturer, 1721; B.D. and D.D., 14 Nov. 1721; Hebrew Lecturer and Senior Proctor, 1722. Visit to England, 1713. Contrib. to “The Guardian,” Mar. and Aug. 1713. Chaplain to Lord Peterborough on embassy to King of Sicily, Nov. 1713 to summer of 1714. In London, 1715–16. Abroad 1716–20 (as travelling tutor, Nov. 1716–18). To London, 1720. To Ireland, as chaplain to Lord-Lieutenant, 1721. Legacy left him by Hester Vanhomrigh, 1723. Dean of Derry, May, 1724. In London with project for Missionary College in America, 1724–28. Charter for College obtained, June 1725. Married Anne Forster, 1 Aug. 1728. To America, 4 Sept. 1728. Remained there till 1731. Scheme failed, owing to impossibility of obtaining promised grant from English Govt. In London, 1732–34. Consecrated Bishop of Cloyne, 19 May 1734. At Cloyne, 1734–52. Retired and went to England, Aug. 1752. Lived in Oxford, 1752–53; died there, 14 Jan. 1753; buried at Ch. Ch. Works: “Arithmetica absque Algebra aut Euclide demonstrata,” 1707; “Mathematica” (anon.), 1707; “Essay towards a new theory of Vision,” 1709 (2nd edn. same year); “Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” 1710; “Passive Obedience,” 1712 (2nd edn. same year); “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous,” 1713; “De Motu,” 1721; “Essay towards preventing the Ruin of Great Britain” (anon.), 1721; “Proposal for the better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations” (anon.), 1725; “Sermon before Soc. for Propagation of Gospel,” 1732; “Alciphron” (anon.), 1732 (2nd edn. same year); “Theory of Vision … vindicated and explained” (anon.), 1733; “The Analyst” (anon.), 1734; “A Defence of Free-thinking in Mathematics” (anon.), 1735; “Reasons for not replying to Mr. Walton’s Full Answer, etc.” (anon.), 1735; “The Querist,” 1735–37; “A Discourse addressed to Magistrates” (anon.), 1736; “A Chain of Philosophical Reflections … concerning the virtues of Tar-Water, etc.,” 1744 (2nd and 3rd edns. same year; 4th, 1746; 5th, 1748; all of these under the title of “Siris”); “Letter to Thomas Prior” [on the virtues of tar-water] (anon.), 1744; “Letter to the Roman Catholics of the Diocese of Cloyne,” 1745; Second Letter to Thomas Prior, 1746 (the first and second letters together, as appx. to Prior’s “Authentick Narrative,” 1746); “Two Letters, the one to T. Prior … the other to Dr. Hales” [on the virtues of tar-water], 1747; “A word to the Wise” (anon.), 1749; “Maxims concerning Patriotism,” 1750; “Further Thoughts on Tar-Water,” in “Bentley’s Miscellany,” 1752; “A Miscellany containing several tracts on various subjects,” 1752. Posthumous: Letter (written 1741) to Sir J. James on the Roman Catholic Controversy, 1850. Collected Works: in 2 vols., ed. by J. Stock, 1784; in 2 vols., ed. by G. N. Wright, 1843; complete edn., with life by Prof. Fraser, 1871.
Personal
I went to court to-day, on purpose to present Mr. Berkeley, one of your Fellows of Dublin College, to Lord Berkeley of Stratton. That Mr. Berkeley is a very ingenious man, and great philosopher; and I have mentioned him to all the ministers, and have given them some of his writings, and I will favour him as much as I can. This I think I am bound to, in honour and conscience, to use all my little credit toward helping forward men of worth in the world.
Yesterday arrived here Dean Berkeley, of Londonderry, in a pretty large ship. He is a gentleman of middle stature, of an agreeable, pleasant, and erect aspect. He was ushered into the town with a great number of gentlemen, to whom he behaved himself after a very complaisant manner. ’Tis said he proposes to tarry here with his family about three months.
Whereas the Revnd Dean Berkeley has lately produced a valuable collection of books, and sent them to Harvard College, voted yt ye thanks of ye Corporation be returned by ye President to ye Dean for the above donation, procured and sent by him, and yt he be desired to make proper acknowledgements, on behalf of ye Corporation, to those gentlemen who have contributed to so literal a benefaction.
| Manners with Candour are to Benson giv’n, | |
| To Berkeley, ev’ry Virtue under Heav’n. |
The newspapers say the Bishop of Cloyne, is dead; there is (if so) a great man gone. His country people are much disobliged at his settling his son at Oxford, and think that an university that trained him up was worthy of his son.
In this respect I would with pleasure do justice to the memory of a very great though singular sort of man, Dr. Berkeley, known as a philosopher, and intended founder of a University in the Bermudas, or Summer Islands. An inclination to carry me out on that expedition, as one of the young professors on his new foundation, having brought us often together, I scarce remember to have conversed with him on that art, liberal or mechanic, of which he knew not more than the ordinary practitioners. With the widest views, he descended into a minute detail, and begrudged neither pains nor expense for the means of information. He travelled through a great part of Sicily on foot; clambered over the mountains and crept into the caverns to investigate its natural history, and discover the causes of its volcanoes; and I have known him sit for hours in forgeries and founderies to inspect their successive operations. I enter not into his peculiarities, either religious or personal; but admire the extensive genius of the man, and think it a loss to the Western World that his noble and exalted plan of an American University was not carried into execution. Many such spirits in our country would quickly make learning wear another face.
[Newport] Three miles from the town, is an indifferent wooden house, built by Dean Berkeley, when he was in these parts: the situation is low, but commands a fine view of the ocean, and of some wild rugged rocks that are on the left hand of it. They relate here several stories of the Dean’s wild and chimerical notions, which, as they are characteristic of that extraordinary man, deserve to be taken notice of: one, in particular, I must beg the reader’s indulgence to allow me to repeat to him. The Dean had formed the plan of building a town upon the rocks which I have just now taken notice of, and of cutting a road through a sandy beach which lies a little below it, in order that ships might come up and be sheltered in bad weather. He was so full of this project, as one day to say to one Smibert, a designer, whom he had brought over with him from Europe, on the latter’s asking some ludicrous question concerning the future importance of the place:—“Truly you have very little foresight, for, in fifty years time, every foot of land in this place will be as valuable as the land in Cheapside.” The Dean’s house, notwithstanding his prediction, is at present nothing better than a farm-house, and his library is converted into the dairy.
He was idolised in England before he set off for America. He used to go to St. James’s two days a-week to dispute with Dr. Samuel Clarke before Queen Caroline, then Princess of Wales, and had a magnificent gold medal presented to him by George the Second; but he complained of the drudgery of taking part in these useless disputes.
Berkeley, afterwards the celebrated Bishop of Cloyne, owed to Swift those introductions which placed him in the way of promotion.
Malebranche, it will give you pleasure to hear, was murdered. The man who murdered him is well known: it was Bishop Berkeley. The story is familiar, though hitherto not put in a proper light. Berkeley, when a young man, went to Paris, and called on Père Malebranche. He found him in his cell cooking. Cooks have ever been a genus irritabile; authors still more so: Malebranche was both: a dispute arose; the old father, warm already, became warmer; culinary and metaphysical irritations united to derange his liver: he took to his bed, and died. Such is the common version of the story: “So the whole ear of Denmark is abused.” The fact is that the matter was hushed up, out of consideration for Berkeley, who (as Pope justly observes) had “every virtue under heaven:” else it was well known that Berkeley, feeling himself nettled by the waspishness of the old Frenchman, squared at him; a turn-up was the consequence: Malebranche was floored in the first round; the conceit was wholly taken out of him; and he would perhaps have given in; but Berkeley’s blood was now up, and he insisted on the old Frenchman’s retracting his doctrine of Occasional Causes. The vanity of the man was too great for this; and he fell a sacrifice to the impetuosity of Irish youth, combined with his own absurd obstinacy.
Ancient learning, exact science, polished society, modern literature, and the fine arts, contributed to adorn and enrich the mind of this accomplished man. All his contemporaries agreed with the satirist in ascribing
| “To Berkeley every virtue under heaven.” |
There are few men of whom England has better reason to be proud than of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. To extraordinary merits as a writer and thinker, he united the most exquisite purity and generosity of character; and it is still a moot-point whether he was greater in head or heart.
It may be said of Berkeley, without exaggeration, that, in point of virtue and benevolence, no one of the sons of men has exceeded him. Whether we consider his public or his private life, we pause in admiration of efforts uncommonly exalted, disinterested, and pure.
Whenever a letter of Bishop Berkeley’s appears, it shows him always the pure, the gentle, and the virtuous, the gentleman and the divine, the most beautiful character of that generation, the moral footprints of whose life are to this day visible on American soil.
No prominent man of that day enjoyed so many permanent and eligible friendships. Satire, then so much in vogue, was melted into kindness, and criticism softened to eulogy, when his name occurred in verse, letter, or conversation. Swift could not sympathize with his dreams, yet he earnestly advocated his cause. Addison laid aside his constitutional reserve to promote Berkeley’s wishes. Pope made an exception in his favor, and suffered encomium to remain on his musical page unbalanced by censure. “I take you,” says one of his letters, inviting the dean to Twickenham, “to be almost the only friend I have that is above the little vanities of the town.” Atterbury declared, after an interview with him: “So much understanding, so much innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of any but angels, until I saw this gentleman.” It is related by Lord Bathurst, that, on one occasion, when several members of the Scriblerius Club met at his house to dine, it was agreed to rally Berkeley, who was also invited, upon his American scheme. The latter heard the merry banter with the utmost good-nature, and then asked permission to reply; and, as his noble host afterwards declared, “displayed his plan with such an astonishing and animating fiery eloquence and enthusiasm, that they were struck dumb, and, after some pause, rose all up together, with earnestness, exclaiming, ‘Let us set out immediately!’” When he determined to make Oxford his abode, he tendered the resignation of the bishopric of Cloyne; but the king refused to accept it, declaring that he “should live where he pleased and die a bishop.” “He is,” writes Warburton, “a great man, and the only visionary I ever knew that was.”
Bishop Berkeley was not only a philosopher, he was a man. His being was not starved upon the meagre fare of speculation, but nourished by all the generous currents of existence. A life full of active service to his kind, full of the warm impulses of a spontaneous, frank, open-hearted Irish nature—a sensibility so keen as to lead him even to Quixotisms and oddities of kindness—give such a warm background to his philosophy as no other great thinker within our recollection can equal. A man who is ready, at an age when men are supposed to consider their own comfort, to sacrifice himself in one of the least comfortable of missions—a man moved in later years to pause in his philosophy in order to promulgate tar-water—grand specific for all the physical ills of humanity—one who feared neither poverty nor neglect nor derision for what seemed to him at the moment the best he could do for his fellow creatures,—is such a man as is rarely met with in the sphere of philosophy. No mental system has called forth such contemptuous criticism, rude laughter, and foolish condemnation—none has been denounced as so visionary and unreal; yet Berkeley is the one philosopher of modern times who brings the race within the warmest circle of human sympathies, and casts a certain interest and glow of light from his own nature upon metaphysics themselves.
The man who stands out as one of the noblest and purest figures of his time: that Berkeley from whom the jealousy of Pope did not withhold a single one of all “the virtues under heaven;” nor the cynicism of Swift, the dignity of “one of the first men of the kingdom for learning and virtue;” the man whom the pious Atterbury could compare to nothing less than an angel; and whose personal influence and eloquence filled the Scriblerus Club and the House of Commons with enthusiasm for the evangelization of the North American Indians; and even led Sir Robert Walpole to assent to the appropriation of public money to a scheme which was neither business nor bribery.
Yale College is fortunate in the possession of a portrait of Berkeley, painted in this country by Smibert, an English artist, who accompanied Berkeley to this country. The Berkeley Divinity School honors him in its name. The seat of the University of California, at the extreme limit of that westward course of empire to which Berkeley’s eyes were turned, is, owing to the happy suggestion of the present President of the Johns Hopkins University, most appropriately named Berkeley, and the portrait of the philosopher adorns its walls. There will be academic shrines to his memory in this country as long as our land shall endure.
The greatest of the sons of Ireland who came to us in those days was George Berkeley, and he, like Penn, reposed hopes for humanity on America. Versed in ancient learning, exact science, and modern literature, disciplined by travel and reflection, adverse factions agreed in ascribing to him “every virtue under heaven.” Cherished by those who were the pride of English letters and society, favored with unsolicited dignities and revenues, he required for his happiness, not fortune or preferment, but a real progress in knowledge. The material tendencies of the age in which he lived were hateful to his purity of sentiment; and having a mind kindred with Plato and the Alexandrine philosophers, with Barclay and Malebranche, he held that the external world was wholly subordinate to intelligence; that true existence can be predicted of spirits alone.
Though it be true, therefore, that—philosophy apart—Berkeley effected little; though he did not write enough to rank in the first class among men of letters, nor perform enough to be counted a successful man of action; though he was neither a great social power, nor a great missionary, nor a great ecclesiastic, it is also true that scarce any man of his generation touched contemporary life at so many points. In reading his not very voluminous works we find ourselves not only in the thick of every great controversy—theological, mathematical, and philosophical—which raged in England during the first half of the eighteenth century, but we get glimpses of life in the most diverse conditions: in the seclusion of Trinity College, Dublin, in the best literary and fashionable society in London, among the prosperous colonists of Rhode Island, among the very far from prosperous peasants and squireens of Cork. And all this in the company of a man endowed with the subtlest of intellects, lit up with a humour the most delicate and urbane.
University of Bermuda
It is now about ten months since I have determined to spend the residue of my days in Bermuda, where I trust in Providence I may be the mean instrument of doing great good to mankind…. The reformation of manners among the English in our Western plantations, and the propagation of the Gospel among the American savages, are two points of high moment. The natural way of doing this is by founding a college or seminary in some convenient part of the West Indies, where the English youth of our plantations may be educated in such sort as to supply their churches with pastors of good morals and good learning—a thing (God knows) much wanted. In the same seminary a number of young American savages may also be educated till they have taken the degree of Master of Arts. And being by that time well instructed in the Christian religion, practical mathematics, and other liberal arts and sciences, and early imbued with public-spirited principles and inclinations, they may become the fittest instruments for spreading religion, morals, and civil life among their countrymen, who can entertain no suspicion or jealousy of men of their own blood and language, as they might do of English missionaries, who can never be well qualified for that work.
He is an absolute philosopher with regard to money, titles, and power, and for three years past has been struck with a notion of founding an university at Bermudas, by a charter from the Crown. He has seduced several of the hopefullest young clergymen and others here, many of them well provided for, and all of them in the fairest way of preferment; but in England his conquests are greater, and I doubt will spread very far this winter. He showed me a little tract which he designs to publish, and there your Excellency will see his whole scheme of a life academico-philosophical of a college founded for Indian scholars and missionaries, where he most exorbitantly proposeth a whole hundred pound a-year for himself, forty pounds for a fellow, and ten for a student. His heart will break if his deanery be not taken from him and left to your Excellency’s disposal. I discourage him by the coldness of courts and ministers, who will interpret all this as impossible and a vision, but nothing will do. And therefore I do humbly entreat your Excellency either to use such persuasions as will keep one of the first men in this kingdom for learning and virtue quiet at home, or assist him by your credit to compass his romantic design, which, however, is very noble and generous, and directly proper for a great person of your excellent education to encourage.
But in the meantime no news or bad news came from England. The money from which the endowment of the Bermuda College was to have come was otherwise appropriated; and Sir Robert Walpole, on being finally appealed to, made answer, that of course the money would be paid as soon as suited the public convenience, but, as a friend, he counselled Dean Berkeley to return home and not to wait that far-off contingency. Thus the whole chivalric scheme broke down. Berkeley had wasted four years in the blank existence of the little New England town, had “expended much of his private property,” and spent infinite exertions and hopes in vain. A long period before his actual setting-out had been swallowed up in negotiations to obtain this futile charter and unpaid grant. He gave up, on the whole, some seven years of the flower and prime of his life to the scheme thus cruelly and treacherously rendered abortive. It is so that England treats the generous movements and attempted self-devotion of her sons. Had it been a factory or a plantation, there might have been some hope for Berkeley; but a college with only ideal advantages, mere possibilities of influence and evangelisation,—what was that to Walpole, or to the slumbrous prosaic nation over which he ruled?
With a character like that of Berkeley, and a scheme so calculated to strike the imagination and the finer sentiments of men, it is natural that there should be little but reprobation for the unimaginative and unsympathetic minister by whom Berkeley’s project was crushed. But a word of justice remains to be spoken, even here, on the side of the prosaic practical sense by which the business of the world is carried on. The truth is, that Berkeley’s project never commended itself to the practical tact of men. From the first announcement of it in Swift’s letters to Lord Carteret down to the callous mockery of Walpole’s advice, the project is treated very generally as a visionary’s dream, which is not to be laughed down simply out of respect for the visionary’s character, and for the purity of the motives out of which his dream arose. Even Blackwell of Aberdeen, and the other scholars who at first proposed to act under Berkeley in his new university, all drew back at the last, and left their principal to go out as a lonely pioneer. Berkeley’s scheme in fact, ignored one essential condition of success: it was altogether unnecessary, for the work he planned had long been carried on by men better fitted to cope with all its requirements than the best selection of scholars from the universities of the Old World. The Puritan settlers of New England had, soon after their arrival, recognised the importance of the work which Berkeley’s biographers sometimes give him the credit of having been the first to conceive. Harvard College was started nearly a century before Berkeley left England, and even Yale dates back to his boyhood. It seems strange that, before entering on his romantic task, he either did not find out, or did not appreciate, the nature of the work which these institutions were already performing in the field that was to be cultivated by his own labours.
The scheme seems now so impracticable that we may well wonder how any single person, let alone the representatives of a whole nation, could be found to support it. In order that religion and learning might flourish in America, the seeds of them were to be cast in some rocky islets severed from America by nearly six hundred miles of stormy ocean. In order that the inhabitants of the mainland of the West Indian colonies might equally benefit by the new university, it was to be placed in such a position that neither could conveniently reach it.
Berkeley’s American visit was, in its plan, its execution, and its fruit, much more than it seemed to the public eye, either at that time or since; and while it was a thing that could have been projected only by an idealist and a moral enthusiast—such as Berkeley was—it must be pronounced, even on cool survey, a mission of chivalric benevolence certainly, but also of profound and even creative sagacity. In its boldness and its generosity it was dictated by an apostolic disinterestedness and courage to which, of course, that age was unaccustomed, and which places it in the light of an almost comic incongruity with the spirit of the time in which it occurred. In the history of our colonial period it forms a romantic chapter. But, in order to understand it, we need first to understand Berkeley himself, as well as his attitude toward the period he lived in.
A New Theory of Vision, 1709
Two clergymen have perused your book—Clarke and Whiston. Not having myself any acquaintance with these gentlemen, I can only report at second hand they think you a fair arguer and a clear writer, but they say your first principles you lay down are false. They look upon you as an extraordinary genius, but say they wish you had employed your thoughts less upon metaphysics, ranking you with Father Malebranche, Norris, and another whose name I have forgot—all of whom they think extraordinary men, but of a particular turn, and their labours of little use to mankind on account of their abstruseness. This may arise from these gentlemen not caring to think after a new manner, which would oblige them to begin their studies anew, or else it may be the strength of prejudice.
He published this metaphysic notion, that matter was not a real thing; nay, that the common opinion of its reality was groundless, if not ridiculous. He was pleased to send Dr. Clarke and myself, each of us, a book. After we had both perused it, I went to Dr. Clarke, and discoursed with him about it to this effect: that I, being not a metaphysician, was not able to answer Mr. Berkeley’s subtile premises, though I did not at all believe his absurd conclusion. I therefore desired that he, who was deep in such subtilities, but did not appear to believe Mr. Berkeley’s conclusions, would answer him: which task he declined.
The first attempt that ever was made to distinguish the immediate and natural objects of sight, from the conclusions we have been accustomed from infancy to draw from them; a distinction from which the nature of vision hath received great light, and by which many phænomena in optics, before looked upon as unaccountable, have been clearly and distinctly resolved.
The doctrine concerning the original and derivative functions of the sense of sight, which, from the name of its author, is known as Berkeley’s “Theory of Vision,” has remained, almost from its first promulgation, one of the least disputed doctrines in the most disputed and most disputable of all sciences, the Science of Man. This is the more remarkable, as no doctrine in mental philosophy is more at variance with first appearances, more contradictory to the natural prejudices of mankind. Yet this apparent paradox was no sooner published, than it took its place, almost without contestation, among established opinions; the warfare which has since distracted the world of metaphysics, has swept past this insulated position without disturbing it; and while so many of the other conclusions of the analytical school of mental philosophy, the school of Hobbes and Locke, have been repudiated with violence by the antagonist school, that of Common Sense or innate principles, this one doctrine has been recognised and upheld by the leading thinkers of both schools alike. Adam Smith, Reid, Stewart, and Whewell (not to go beyond our own island) have made the doctrine as much their own, and have taken as much pains to enforce and illustrate it, as Hartley, Brown, or James Mill.
Berkeley’s “Essay towards a New Theory of Vision” is the chronological and also a logical introduction to his metaphysical philosophy. It is virtually an inquiry into the nature and origin of our conception of Extension in Space, that distinctive characteristic of the material world. The “Essay” was the first fruits of Berkeley’s philosophical studies at Dublin. It was also the first elaborate attempt to demonstrate that our apparently immediate visual perceptions of space, and of bodies existing in it apart from our organism, are actually suggestions induced by the constant association of visible ideas, and of certain organic sensations which accompany vision, with objects presented in our tactual experience. Various circumstances contribute to make this “Essay” more perplexing to the reader than any of Berkeley’s other works.
The Principles of Human Knowledge, 1710
It was only by degrees that this scheme of Berkeley’s philosophy attracted the attention due to so original and ingenious a mode of conceiving the Universe. A fragment of metaphysics, by a young and almost unknown author, published at a distance from the centre of English intellectual life, was apt to be overlooked. In connection with the “Essay on Vision,” however, it drew enough of regard to carry its author with éclat on his first visit to London, three years after the publication of the “Principles.” He then published the immortal “Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous,” in which the absurdity of Absolute Matter is illustrated, and the doctrine defended against objections, in a manner meant to recommend to popular acceptance what, on the first statement, seemed an unpopular paradox.
Which rank among the most exquisite examples of English style, as well as among the subtlest of metaphysical writings; and the final conclusion of which is summed up in a passage remarkable alike for literary beauty and for calm audacity of statement.
The treatise, “Of the Principles of Human Knowledge,” is probably the most entertaining metaphysical work in the English language, and many men who turn away disgusted from ordinary presentations of philosophical doctrines, have read it with amusement if not with satisfaction.
Hylas and Philonous, 1713
The characteristic of his intellect was extraordinary subtlety rather than solid judgment. He had, perhaps, too warm an imagination to arrive at sound and sober conclusions…. His style has always been esteemed admirable; simple, felicitous, and sweetly melodious. The dialogues are sustained with great skill.
In this work Berkeley first displayed his wonderful skill as a manipulator of the English language, which had never been employed for the discussion of philosophical ideas with anything like so much grace and refinement.
A book marked by that consummate beauty of style for which he is distinguished.
Alciphron, Or the Minute Philosopher, 1732
The style and manner of this work are built on the model of Plato, and may be justly deemed one of the most happy imitations of the Grecian philosopher, of which our language can boast. There was in Berkeley, indeed, much of the sublimity, the imagination, and enthusiasm, which characterize the genius of Plato.
Now, ——, I want you, and pray you to read Berkeley’s “Minute Philosopher;” I want you to learn that the religious belief which Wordsworth and I hold, and which—I am sure you know in my case, and will not doubt in his—no earthly considerations would make us profess if we did not hold it, is as reasonable as it is desirable; is in its historical grounds as demonstrable as anything can be which rests upon human evidence; and is, in its life and spirit, the only divine philosophy, the perfection of wisdom; in which, and in which alone, the understanding and the heart can rest.
Berkeley’s “Minute Philosopher” is the least admirable performance of that admirable writer. The most characteristic part is the attempt to erect a proof of theology upon his own peculiar metaphysical theory. The remainder consists for the most part of familiar commonplaces, expressed in a style of exquisite grace and lucidity, but not implying any great originality.
In this noble composition the author combats, through his own method, the different types of infidelity current at the time. Berkeley’s conception of the nature of religion was more spiritual than that which was prevalent in his day.
The elegance and easiness of the style, and the freshness and beauty of the descriptions of natural scenery by which the tedium of the controversy is relieved, render this not only a readable, but a fascinating book; but Berkeley falls into the usual error of men who write on controversial subjects in the dialogistic form. He makes his adversaries state their case much more weakly than they would really have done; the giants he raises, only to knock down, are weak-kneed giants. Certainly the same may be said of Tindal, the chief of the Deists; but faults on one side do not justify similar faults on the other.
“Alciphron” was, and is likely to be, the most generally enjoyed of Berkeley’s volumes. It is simply and variously entertaining with merits that far out-balance its defects. It has to be remembered that “Alciphron” is not directed against the specific doctrines of Deists or Atheists, so much as against the general influence of such writers on people unwilling to think for themselves, yet willing because of their more doubtful lives to deny the existence of God. Deep and close argument throughout would have helped his special object but little; and those who condemn the work as shallow seem to forget this. The “Analogy” of Butler and the “Alciphron” of Berkeley are as different in special aim as any two works on one subject can possibly be; and to expect the same result from each is strangely perverse and unreasonable. Were its philosophical value even less, it would still be eagerly read, for in an age of delicate and symmetrical prose, it stands distinguished by its delicacy and its symmetry.
Gaudentio di Lucca, 1737
“Gaudentio di Lucca” is generally, and I believe, on good grounds, supposed to be the work of the celebrated Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, one of the most profound philosophers and virtuous visionaries of his age…. The style of this work is extremely pure, and some of the incidents, especially that of the Grand Vizier’s daughter, who was afterwards sultana, exceedingly well managed. The portrait of the English Freethinker, towards the end of the work, is skillfully drawn and the absurdity of the arguments of Hobbes very humorously displayed.
This well-known fiction, which has long been erroneously ascribed to Bishop Berkeley, was in fact the work of Simon Berington, a Catholic priest. The statement in the Gent. Mag. which assigns to him the authorship of this work, is confirmed by the traditions of his family in Herefordshire, as I have ascertained from authentic information.
Berkeley’s Bermuda enterprise, his former connection with Italy, his fondness for Plato, some vague resemblance in the ingenuity of the fancy, and the amiable spirit of “Gaudentio di Lucca,” may have given rise to the supposition that he was the author. There is not sufficient ground in the qualities of the work, in the absence of any definite testimony, to justify this conjecture.
Siris, 1744–47
Though we are so backward in some sorts of intelligence, we are perfectly acquainted with the virtues of tar-water; some have been cured as they think, and some made sick by it; and I do think it is a defect in the good bishop’s recommendation of it, that he makes it a Catholicon; but I daresay he is confident he believes it such.
It is impossible to write a letter now without tincturing the ink with tar-water. This is the common topic of discourse, both among the rich and poor, high and low; and the Bishop of Cloyne has made it as fashionable as going to Vauxhall or Ranelagh…. However, the faculty in general, and the whole posse of apothecaries are very angry both with the author and the book, which makes many people suspect it is a good thing.
We are now mad about tar-water, on the publication of a book that I will send you, written by Dr. Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. The book contains every subject from tar-water to the Trinity; however, all the women read and understand it no more than they would if it were intelligible. A man came into an apothecary’s shop the other day, “Do you sell tar-water?” “Tar-water!” replied the apothecary, “why I sell nothing else!”
Was an enthusiast in many affairs of life, not confined to religion and the education of youth. He invaded another of the learned professions, Medicine…. He published a book called “Siris,… or Tar-Water.”… He ought to have checked this officious genius (unless in his own profession-way he had acquired this nostrum by inspiration) from intruding into the affairs of a distinct profession.
From a pedestal so low and abject, so culinary, as Tar Water, the method of preparing it, and its medicinal effects, the dissertation ascends, like Jacob’s ladder, by just gradations, into the Heaven of Heavens and the thrones of the Trinity.
Whenever his feelings were enlisted in behalf of a theory or an enterprise, he derived an argument or a charm from the most distant associations. One of the last of his favorite ideas was a faith in the curative qualities of tar-water, which had proved useful in a malady under which he suffered. His treatise on the subject deserves no mean rank among the curiosities of literature. The research, ingenuity, and scholarship, elicited by his ardent plea for this specific, evince a patient and elaborate contemplation seldom manifest in the discussion of the most comprehensive questions. He analyzes the different balsams, from the balm of Gilead to amber; he quotes Leo Africanus to describe the process of making tar on Mount Atlas, and compares it with that used in New England; he cites Herodotus and Pliny, Theophrastus and Plato, Boerhaave and Evelyn; he surveys the whole domain of vegetable physiology, points out the relation of volatile salts to the economy of the blood, and discusses natural history, the science of medicine, chemistry, and the laws of life, space, light, and the soul itself,—all with ostensible reference to the virtues of tar-water. He enumerates every conceivable disease as a legitimate subject of its efficacy; and, while thus prolix and irrelevant, fuses the whole with good sense, fine rhetoric, and graceful zeal.
On the whole, the scanty speculative literature of these islands in the last century contains no other work nearly so remarkable; although curiously it has been much overlooked even by those curious in the history and bibliography of British philosophy. Every time we open its pages we find fresh seeds of thought. There is the unexpectedness of genius in its whole movement. It breathes the spirit of Plato and the Neoplatonists, in the least Platonic generation of English history since the revival of letters, and it draws this Platonic spirit from a thing of sense so commonplace as Tar. It connects tar with the highest thoughts in metaphysics and theology, by links which involve some of the most subtle botanical, chemical, physiological, optical, and mechanical speculations of its time.
“Siris” is one of the most extraordinary books ever written; certainly the most amazing work in the literature of British philosophy…. “Siris” is among the greatest of Berkeley’s works; yet it is not to be numbered with the more closely reasoned works of his earlier years. It is rather the unstudied murmurings of a cultured and persuasive philosopher who in the evening of his life has fallen a-musing. One would as soon turn to Sir Thomas Browne for exact science as to “Siris;” but who seeks in “Siris” delicate food for meditation will not seek in vain. The actual value of its speculation may not be great; yet the whole range of Berkeley’s works contains nothing more completely characteristic of its author; more subtle and suggestive in matter and more harmonious and splendid in style.
General
| And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin. |
Doctor Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, a very worthy, ingenious, and learned man, has written a book to prove that there is no such thing as Matter, and that nothing exists but in idea: that you and I only fancy ourselves eating, drinking, and sleeping; you at Leipsig, and I at London: that we think we have flesh and blood, legs, arms, &c., but that we are only spirit. His arguments are, strictly speaking, unanswerable; but yet I am so far from being convinced by them, that I am determined to go on to eat and drink, and walk and ride, in order to keep that matter, which I so mistakenly imagine my body at present to consist of, in as good plight as possible.
And indeed most of the writings of that very ingenious author form the best lessons of skepticism which are to be found among the ancient or modern philosophers, Bayle not excepted.
After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley’s ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is simply ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, “I refute it thus.” This was a stout exemplification of the first truths of Père Bouffier, or the original principles of Reid and of Beattie; without admitting which we can no more argue in metaphysicks, than we can argue in mathematicks without axioms. To me it is not conceivable how Berkeley can be answered by pure reasoning; but I know that the nice and difficult task was to have been undertaken by one of the most luminous minds of the present age (Edmund Burke), had not politicks “turned him from calm philosophy aside.” What an admirable display of subtilty, united with brilliance, might his contending with Berkeley have afforded us!
It has often given me great pain to see Bishop Berkeley, a most pious and learned man, overturn the main foundations of all religion and all knowledge, by the most extravagant scepticism concerning the real existence of matter, in some of his writings; and then fancy, that in others he could, by any force of argument, establish the evidences of Christianity, which are a perpetual appeal to the truth of our senses, and grounded on a supposition, that they cannot deceive us in those things which are the proper and natural objects of them, within their due limits. Can one wonder, that the sceptics should lay hold of the former in answer to the latter? And can any more useful service be done to Christianity, than to shew the fallacy of such whimsies as would make the body of Christ, which his disciples saw and felt, no body at all? and the proof of his resurrection, from the testimony of their senses, a mere delusive idea?
The substance, or at least the foundation, of Berkeley’s argument against the existence of matter, may be found in Locke’s essay, and in the “Principia” of Descartes. And if this be conclusive, it proves that to be false which every man must necessarily believe every moment of his life to be true, and that to be true which no man since the foundation of the world was ever capable of believing for a single moment.
Of the intellectual powers of the Bishop, it may be observed, that, though strong and acute in no common degree, they were frequently mingled with too much enthusiasm and imagination for the purposes of strict philosophical ratiocination. His knowledge, however, was of great compass, and extended to all the useful arts and occupations of life; of which, it has been said, that there was scarcely one, liberal or mechanic, of which he knew not more than the ordinary practitioners.
A man uniformly so amiable as to be ranked among the first of human beings; a writer sometimes so absurd that it has been doubted whether it was possible he could be serious in the principles he laid down. His actions manifested the warmest zeal for the interests of Christianity, while some of his writings seemed intended to assist the cause of infidelity. Yet the respect which all who knew Dr. Berkeley have felt for his excellent character, has rescued him in some measure from this imputation, and he will deservedly be handed down to posterity as an able champion of religion, although with a love of paradox, and somewhat of the pride of philosophy, which his better sense could restrain.
Possessing a mind which, however inferior to that of Locke in depth of reflection and in soundness of judgment, was fully its equal in logical acuteness and invention, and in learning, fancy, and taste far its superior. Berkeley was singularly fitted to promote that reunion of Philosophy and of the Fine Arts which is so essential to the prosperity of both…. With these intellectual and moral endowments, admired and blazoned as they were by the most distinguished wits of his age, it is not surprising that Berkeley should have given a popularity and fashion to metaphysical pursuits which they had never before acquired in England.
| When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, | |
| And prov’d it—’twas no matter what he said: | |
| They say his system ’tis in vain to batter, | |
| Too subtle for the airiest human head. | |
| And yet who can believe it? I would shatter | |
| Gladly all matters down to stone or lead, | |
| Or adamant, to find the world a spirit, | |
| And wear my head, denying that I wear it. |
Berkeley can only be confuted, or answered, by one sentence. So it is with Spinoza. His premiss granted, the deduction is a chain of adamant.
Berkeley, the strongest, the honestest thinker among our English metaphysicians—Berkeley, who loved truth with his whole heart and soul, and who, in pursuing it, was as humble as he was courageous—Berkeley, who, though he reasoned from narrow premises, and therefore never discovered the whole breadth and universality of the principles which he sought after, yet was able, such was the spirituality of his intellect, even out of that narrow system, which conducted every one else who reasoned from it to materialism, to bring the other and far more important side of truth—Berkeley, whose understanding, indeed, missed the “circumference,” but who found the “centre” in his heart.
Among all philosophers, ancient or modern, we are acquainted with none who presents fewer vulnerable points than Bishop Berkeley. His language, it is true, has sometimes the appearance of paradox; but there is nothing paradoxical in his thoughts, and time has proved the adamantine solidity of his principles. With less sophistry than the simplest, and with more subtlety than the acutest of his contemporaries, the very perfection of his powers prevented him from being appreciated by the age in which he lived. The philosophy of that period was just sufficiently tinctured with common sense to pass current with the vulgar, while the common sense of the period was just sufficiently coloured by philosophy to find acceptance among the learned. But Berkeley, ingenious beyond the ingenuities of philosophy, and unsophisticated beyond the artlessness of common sense, saw that there was no sincerity in the terms of this partial and unstable compromise; that the popular opinions, which gave currency and credence to the theories of the day, were not the unadulterated convictions of the natural understanding; and that the theories of the day, which professed to give enlightenment to the popular opinions, were not the genuine offspring of the speculative reason. In endeavouring to construct a system in which this spurious coalition should be exposed, and in which our natural convictions and our speculative conclusions should be more firmly and enduringly reconciled, he necessarily offended both parties, even when he appeared to be giving way to the opposite prejudices of each. He overstepped the predilections both of the learned and the unlearned. His extreme subtlety was a stumbling-block in the path of the philosophers; and his extreme simplicity was more than the advocates of common sense were inclined to bargain for…. The peculiar endowment by which Berkeley was distinguished, far beyond his predecessors and contemporaries, and far beyond almost every philosopher who has succeeded him, was the eye he had for facts, and the singular pertinacity with which he refused to be dislodged from his hold upon them.
Although the several treatises of the author in defence of Christianity,—in support of the diffusion of knowledge,—on discovering new means for the alleviation of human suffering,—and on promoting the study of metaphysics and mathematics, have obtained the applause of the learned, yet their association with his new and difficult theory in pneumatology militated so far against their reception with the public in general, that one perfect edition only of his works has hitherto ever appeared. This was a circumstance much to be regretted, since no other writer, of the literary age in which he flourished, has left more able, original, or useful advice, in religion, philosophy, and politics.
If, then, Berkeley is more rigorous in his analysis of facts, and more ingenious and plausible in his hypothesis, than his antagonists suppose, shall we pronounce his Idealism satisfactory and true? Hume said of it, that it admitted of no answer, but produced no conviction. And we have met with no final refutation of it. Yet, inasmuch as it is the irresistible belief of mankind that objects are not dependent either upon our perception of them, or upon the perception of any other mind, for their existence—that objects exist per se, and would continue to exist if all minds were annihilated—Berkeley’s theory never can produce conviction. Reid, therefore, was right in standing by this universal and irresistible belief. He was egregiously wrong, however, in supposing that he answered Berkeley by an appeal to this irresistible belief. It does not follow that a belief which is irresistible must be true. This maxim, so loudly proclaimed by the Scotch school, is refuted by several well-known facts in philosophy. Thus—to take the most striking example—the belief that the sun revolved round the earth, was for many centuries irresistible, and false. Why may not Berkeley have been a metaphysical Copernicus, who, by rigorous demonstration, proved the belief of mankind in the existence of matter to be irresistible and false? Reid has no answer to give. He can merely say, “I side with the vulgar;” but he might have given the same answer to Copernicus. Many illustrious men (Bacon among them) ridiculed the Copernican theory; but all the dogmatism, ridicule, and common sense in the world could not affect that theory. Why, we repeat, may not Berkeley have been a metaphysical Copernicus? To prove that he was not, you must prove his reasoning defective; to prove this, you must show wherein his error lies, and not wherein his theory is at variance with your belief…. One great result of Berkeley’s labors was the lesson he taught of the vanity of ontological speculations. He paved the way to that skepticism which, gulf-like, yawns as the terminal road of all consistent Metaphysics.
The only metaphysical writer of the time, besides Locke and Hume, who has maintained a very high name in philosophical history. He forms a solitary—it might seem a singular—exception to what has been said of the prosaic and unmetaphysical character of this moralizing age. The two peculiar metaphysical notions which are connected with Berkeley’s name, and which, though he did not originate, he propounded with a novelty and distinctness equal to originality, have always ranked as being on the extreme verge of rational speculation, if not actually within the region of unfruitful paradox and metaphysical romance. These two memorable speculations, as propounded by Berkeley in the “Alciphron,” come before us not as a Utopian dream, or an ingenious play of reason, but interwoven in a polemic against the prevailing unbelief. They are made to bend to a most practical purpose, and are Berkeley’s contributions to the Deistical controversy. The character of the man, too, was more in harmony with the plain utilitarian spirit of his time than with his own refining intellect. He was not a closet-thinker, like his master Malebranche, but a man of the world and of society, inquisitive and well informed in many branches of practical science. Practical schemes, social and philanthropic, occupied his mind more than abstract thinking. In pushing the received metaphysical creed to its paradoxical consequences, as much as in prescribing “tar-water,” he was thinking only of an immediate “benefit to mankind.” He seems to have thought nothing of his argument until he had brought it to bear on the practical questions of the day.
The most subtle metaphysician who has ever written in English.
As to Berkeley, it is of the less consequence, because I was early lent a good three-volume edition of his works by a noble friend, who was formerly a pupil of mine, and who, after about twenty-five years, reclaimed the loan not very long ago; so that I had leisure to become sufficiently impregnated with Berkeley’s teaching, for one who has never aspired to be himself a teacher of Philosophy. In fact, when I was rather young, namely, in 1832, I allowed Coleridge (at Highgate) to see that I was at that time a regular Berkeleyan; and he was pleased to say—for our several interviews, of that year and the following, of which some were long, were not all monologues on his part—he allowed me to make a remark now and then, and actually modified his discourse to meet it: “Oh, sir, you will grow out of that!” In some respects that prophecy has been since fulfilled; but out of love and reverence for the great and good Bishop, I trust that I shall never grow.
The greatest modern master of the Socratic dialogue.
His claim to the name of metaphysician transcends those of most of his countrymen. He, first of his nation, dealt face to face with ideas as distinguished from scholastic fancies and common notions, and thus gave them their place in the order of mind; and this to exhaustive issues, as his English predecessors in thought had failed to do. His idealism is the purest which the British Isles have produced.
The whole of Berkeley’s doctrine on the nature of the Material Substance and of the External Universe is contained in the single proposition, that “Matter is a Phenomenon,” i. e. that its Esse is Percipi. This discovery respecting the essential constitution of the Material Substance, first made by Berkeley and never afterwards abandoned by deep-thinking men, is now, under some one expression or another part and parcel of every metaphysical system and of the convictions of every metaphysician, whether he happens to be aware that it is Berkeley’s doctrine or not. Indeed many, we may even say most, of those who hold the doctrine in foreign countries, are not aware that it is so. The hardest work of the Berkeleian advocate is often to make people aware that what they hold is Berkeley’s doctrine. The tenet itself never presented any real difficulty to the metaphysician except as the disturber of something preconceived, and it is entirely a mistake which leads one or two writers to fancy that the doctrine, after it was once promulgated, was ever a neglected one. Such is never the fate of what is true. The ablest metaphysicians held the doctrine even before it was recognized as a discovery of science. Does it not seem frivolous to say that they abandoned it after they discovered it to be a scientific fact?
Berkeley has suffered more than perhaps any other great modern philosopher from misunderstanding. He lived through the most prosaic and least metaphysical age since the revival of letters: he was himself the greatest metaphysician in his own age. When reflection returned to the springs of thought and feeling, his philosophical language had in some measure lost the meaning which he intended, and no adequate attempt has since been made to recover his point of view, or to recognise the intellectual influence which, partly originating in him, has since been silently modifying all the deeper thought of the time in physics and in metaphysical philosophy. Is an unknowing and unknown something called Matter, or is Intelligence the supreme reality; and are men the transient results of material organization, or are they immortal beings? This is Berkeley’s implied question. His answer to it, although, in his own works, it has not been thought out by him into its primary principles, or sufficiently guarded in some parts, nevertheless marks the beginning of the second great period in modern thought, that in which we are living. The answer was virtually reversed in Hume, whose exclusive phenomenalism, reproduced in the Positivism of the nineteenth century, led to the Scotch conservative psychology, and to the great German speculation which Kant inaugurated. It is as a spiritual philosopher, having warm and true sympathy in all human life, that Bishop Berkeley must be looked at, and not at all as a professional ecclesiastic. His writings and his life centre in speculative philosophy. But they radiate from it in various practical and fruitful directions; for his inclination was to what is concrete, at first in a more polemical, but afterwards in a meditative spirit. In their form, his works are numerous and occasional, not individually bulky or systematic.
He believed in truth, and sought it in independent thought, not in tradition. He had no narrow or dogmatic creed, and no ecclesiastical spirit, but sought good and truth everywhere, and recognized them wherever he found them. The key to his philosophy is to be found in an instinctive revolt against the abstractions of scholastic tradition.
It may surprise those who have imbibed the popular prejudice against Berkeley as a paradoxical visionary, to hear him described as an advocate of common sense. But in truth, as his editor has observed, Berkeley has suffered more perhaps than any other great modern philosopher from misunderstanding.
Of what is called “the philosophy of Berkeley,” it is enough to say here, that, in a phase and a mode of statement suited to his own time and to the shape in which materialism found acceptance, it was an adequate antagonistic presentment of the claims of a high and pure spiritualism. The absurd popular apprehension of his philosophy found expression in the facile assertion that Berkeley denied the existence of the material world, and referred our idea of it to a simple illusion of the senses. So far was he from such an absurdity as this, that he maintained that he was proving the actual existence of the material world by a new and positive method, when he affirmed that we must primarily and equally allow for the fidelity and reality of those intellectual and spiritual faculties of our own, by which we take cognizance of it and apprehend it.
If the facilities afforded by Professor Fraser’s labours induce those who are interested in philosophy or in the history of philosophy to study Berkeley’s speculations as they issued from his own mind, we think it will be recognised that of all who, from the earliest times, have applied the powers of their minds to metaphysical inquiries, he is the one of greatest philosophic genius: though among these are included Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Hartley, and Hume; Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Kant. For, greatly as all these have helped the progress of philosophy, and important as are the contributions of several of them to its positive truths, of no one of them can it be said as of Berkeley, that we owe to him three first-rate philosophical discoveries, each sufficient to have constituted a revolution in psychology, and which by their combination have determined the whole course of subsequent philosophical speculation; discoveries, too, which were not, like the achievements of many other distinguished thinkers, merely refutations of error, and removal of obstacles to sound thinking, but were this and much more also, being all of them entitled to a permanent place among positive truths. These discoveries are—1. The doctrine of the acquired perceptions of sight…. 2. The non-existence of abstract ideas…. 3. The true nature and meaning of the externality which we attribute to the objects of our senses.
To me it appears that idealism has retrograded, not advanced, since Berkeley; and that if we want to study the system at its best, we must go back to the fountain-head of it. For his system there is a great deal to be said; for systems derived from it very much less.
The last touch that finishes does not always turn out of hand for, but often out of hand from, use; and it is just possible that this perfect edition of the works of Berkeley appears precisely at the moment that the work of Berkeley ceases to function anywhere—orbis terrarum anywhere. The course of Berkeleianism has been this. It functioned historically according to power, in its own day, upon a few; but was soon almost entirely neglected. The revival of poetry in England gradually restored in every larger heart the feeling of religion, and, where this feeling could not at the same time reconcile itself with all the elements of positive religion, Berkeleianism was felt to supply an intellectual want. Such want, though with considerable modification of form, it may be said, to some extent, still to supply. But, side by side with it, as equal companion of the nurture, this want must now be content to accept its own opposite; for the entire matter with which Messrs. Mill and Bain seek to indoctrinate their readers at present is to to be found in the earliest writings of Berkeley, and especially in his very first, the “New Theory of Vision.”
One of the most subtle and original English metaphysicians…. Berkeley’s new conception marks a distinct stage of progress in human thought. His true place in the history of speculation may be seen from the simple observation that the difficulties or obscurities in his scheme are really the points on which later philosophy has turned. He once for all lifted the problem of metaphysics to a higher level, and, in conjunction with his great successor, Hume, determined the form into which later metaphysical questions have been thrown.
Acutest of English metaphysicians and most graceful of philosophic writers.
Berkeley had no hesitation in preferring a sensationalist theory of knowing to a materialistic theory of being: indeed, the former recommended itself to him mainly as a weapon against the latter…. Berkeley, no doubt, thought that if he could rid the world of material substance, he would thus establish the absolute reality of spirit. He did not observe that the weapon he had so hastily taken up was double-edged, and that in rejecting Locke’s materialistic ontology, he was rejecting all ontology whatever and reducing reality to a series of feelings, which by this reduction were emptied of all intelligible meaning.
The above sentences from Edwards, avowing Idealism, were written nine or ten years before Berkeley came to America. Moreover, Edwards was not the man to conceal his intellectual obligations; and the name of Berkeley nowhere occurs, as far as I can discover, in all the ten volumes of Edwards’s printed writings. It seems more probable that the peculiar opinions which Edwards held in common with Berkeley, were reached by him through an independent process of reasoning and somewhat in the same way that they were reached by Berkeley, who, as Professor Fraser says, “proceeded in his intellectual work on the basis of postulates which he partly borrowed from Locke, and partly assumed in antagonism to him.”
Berkeleian Idealism is of all speculative theories concerning the external world the one which, perhaps, most quickly and easily commends itself to the philosophic enquirer. The greater number of persons who dabble in such subjects have been idealists at one period of their lives if they have not remained so; and many more, who would not call themselves idealists, are nevertheless of opinion that though the existence of matter is a thing to be believed in, it is not a thing which it is possible to prove. The causes of this popularity are, no doubt, in part, the extreme simplicity of the reasoning on which the theory rests, in part its extreme plausibility, in part, perhaps, the nature of the result which is commonly thought to be speculatively interesting without being practically inconvenient. For it has to be observed, that the true idealist is not necessarily of opinion that his system properly understood, in any way contradicts common sense. It destroys, no doubt, a belief in substance; but then substance is a metaphysical phantom conjured up by a vain philosophy: the Matter of ordinary life it supposes itself to leave untouched.
The truest, acutest philosopher that Great Britain has ever known.
Whether Berkeley’s doctrine be true or false, it is certain that he has an important place in the development of English thought, and that his opinions have reappeared in different forms, embodied in the systems of men who are ordinarily thought to be entirely opposed to the philosophy which he defended. Some who have begun with materialism have ended by reproducing the doctrines contained in the “Principles of Human Knowledge,” and the University of Edinburgh, which at one time learned philosophy from Berkeley’s most able opponent, is now favored with the teaching of Berkeley’s most sympathetic expounder.
The absolute spiritualism of Berkeley is a unitary, homogeneous system, unquestionably superior to the hybrid philosophies of Descartes and Wolff. Nay, it is, in my opinion, the only metaphysic that may be successfully opposed to materialism, for it alone takes into consideration the partial truth of its objections. It overcomes the dualism of substances, and thus satisfies the most fundamental demand of the philosophical spirit,—the demand for unity. In this respect it has all the advantages of radical materialism without being hampered by its difficulties. It greatly resembles the system of Leibniz, but excels it in clearness, consistency, boldness, and decision. Leibniz’s opinions on matter, space, and time are undecided, conciliatory, and even obscure. Berkeley shows no sign of hesitation. An earnest and profoundly honest thinker, he tells us, in a straightforward manner, that the existence of matter is an illusion; that time is nothing, abstracted from the succession of ideas in our minds; that space cannot exist without the mind; that minds alone exist; and that these perceive ideas either by themselves or through the action of the all-powerful Spirit on which they depend…. He is both a thorough-going theologian and a philosopher; his interests are both scientific and religious, and he attacks materialism not only as a theoretical error but as the source of the most serious heresies.
One of the sanest and noblest of English philosophers…. Pope’s age produced a few great masters of style, and among them Berkeley holds an undisputed place. He succeeded, too, in the most difficult department of intellectual labour, since to express abstruse thought in language as beautiful as it is clear is the rarest of gifts.
In his enthusiasm and in his eloquence he kept alive the torch that had been handed on to him from the theologians of another day; in his lucid clearness he added a new element, in which he was akin to the more scientific thought of his own age; and in the richness of his imagination, in the perfection of his philosophic style, he attains to that uniqueness which is the chief attribute of genius.
In all philosophical writing there is a certain antinomy. By so much as it is popular, figurative, literary, imaginative, it seems to lack philosophical precision; by so much as it is technical, austere, unliterary, and what has been called “jargonish,” it loses humanity and general appeal. If the golden mean was ever hit between these extremes it seems to have been hit in the style of Berkeley. Take the most popular expositions of it as in “Alciphron” and “Siris,” the less popular as in the “Theory of Visions,” or “Hylas and Philonous,” compare them together, note their excellencies, and if any can be detected allow for their defects, and such a philosophical medium as nowhere else exists will, I believe, be found. A crystalline clearness, a golden eloquence, a supreme urbanity, a mixture of fancy and logic which is nowhere else discernible except in Plato, an allowance for sentiment and unction which exists side by side with a readiness to play the game of sheer rough-and-tumble argument at any moment and with any adversary; a preciseness of phrase which is never dull or dry; a felicity of ornament and illustration which never condescends to the merely popular or trivial, and is never used to cloak controversial feebleness; an incapacity of petulance, and an omnipresence of good breeding—these are the characteristics of the style of Berkeley.
