(1.) _The Works of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of Cloyne._
Collected and Edited, with Prefaces and Annotations, by ALEXANDER
CAMPBELL FRASER, M.A., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the
University of Edinburgh. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1871.
(2.) _Life and Letters of George Berkeley, D.D., formerly Bishop of
Cloyne, and an Account of his Philosophy; with many writings of Bishop
Berkeley hitherto unpublished._ By ALEXANDER CAMPBELL FRASER, M.A.,
Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh.
Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1871.
The English people have not treated their great philosophers well. They
have profited by them, made use of their results, and embodied in
political, social, and religious life the principles which men like
Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume have laboriously thought out
and sent forth to enrich the common stock of human knowledge; but they
have not sufficiently honoured their intellectual guides. They have not
striven to obtain a clear and consistent conception of the whole of each
great man's life, nor have they cared to estimate the full sweep of his
influence upon the thought of his fellows. They have been content to sum
up the result of life labours in the meagre formula, Hobbes, who was the
father of Locke, who was the father of Berkeley, who was the father of
Hume. They have measured the ingathering influence of the lake by the
amount of water carried into it by the stream coming from the lake
above, its outgoing action by the amount of water which the river bears
away to the lake beneath. The thousand rills which trickle down from the
hills and neighbouring highlands are forgotten, the constant unseen
action of air and heat and light bearing away the myriad waterdrops to
store them in the clouds of the firmament, ready to hear when the corn
and the vine call to the earth, and the earth calleth to the heavens,
and to answer in life-bringing showers, is left unremembered. Until
Cambridge gave us Bacon's Works, edited by Messrs. Ellis and Spedding,
England had not one good annotated edition of her great philosophers.
Oxford has now given us Berkeley. We have only hope to trust to for
Locke and Hume, the greatest and most powerful of all. And English
philosophy pays the penalty of the neglect in the one-sidedness,
superficiality, and inadequateness which have to some extent
characterized it. It is with great pleasure, therefore, that we welcome
this beautiful, complete, and carefully-edited edition of the works of
Bishop Berkeley, and thank the authorities of the Clarendon Press for
what we hope is only the first fruits of a series of our great
philosophers.
There is wisdom in the selection. Bishop Berkeley, of all English
thinkers, is most easily misunderstood when detached portions of his
writings are studied by themselves apart from their relation to the
whole, and when his philosophy is criticised by those who have no
knowledge of his life. How many of those who know and have discussed
Berkeley's theory of vision, his nominalism, and his sensationalism, are
aware that the theory of vision was only the first step in the
exposition of a comprehensive theory of causality,--that his nominalism
was only the denial of the conceptualist doctrine of universals, was
suppressed in his latest writings, as if he had felt it to have been too
sweeping, and was supplanted by a doctrine of realism almost akin to
Plato's,--and that his sensationalism, inherited from Locke and
bequeathed to Hume, was only one moment in a Platonic idealism, which he
had learnt in his youth from More and Norris, in his old age from
Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists, and which he left to be developed by
Kant. The truth is, that in Berkeley we have the meeting-place of two
distinct streams of thought, both of which had already received distinct
but inadequate expression in England. He inherits the intellectual
wealth of the Cambridge Platonists, as well as the clearer, though less
profound results of Hobbes and Locke. He has been misunderstood and
misrepresented because his double position, inadequately expressed, and
not uniformly maintained, has been unknown to so many of his readers,
Berkeley, the disciple of Locke, the Nominalist, the amiable,
unconscious sceptic, is familiar to most students of philosophy.
Berkeley, the Platonist, the Realist, the idealist combatant of
scepticism, who found in Miss Forster the mystic and the disciple of
Fénélon and Madame Guyon the lady 'whose humour and turn of mind pleased
him beyond anything that he knew in her whole sex,' is not so well
known.
The great value which this edition of Berkeley's philosophical writings
will have is that it presents us with the whole of his philosophy, and
by some pregnant annotations enables us to trace the unity of the
principle which binds them into a more or less consistent whole.
Professor Fraser, in preparing this edition, has kept the following
objects chiefly in view:--
'(1.) To revise the text of the works formerly published,
and to present them in a satisfactory arrangement.
'(2.) To help the reader to reach Berkeley's own point of
view in each work, by means of bibliographical and
analytical prefaces, and occasional annotations or brief
dissertations, in which the author might be compared with
himself, and studied in his relations to the circumstances
in which he wrote.
'(3.) To collect and publish any hitherto unpublished
writings of Berkeley which might illustrate his opinions or
character.
'(4.) To offer a comprehensive conception of his implied
philosophy as a whole.'
These objects have been so well realized that we are enabled for the
first time to survey Berkeley's character and opinions as a whole, to
see how his life and philosophy act and react on each other, to view his
great principles dimly shaping themselves in his earliest speculation
recorded in his student common-place book, and to see how his latest and
deepest thoughts are but the more adequate expression of his early
musings. Professor Fraser's summary of Berkeley's philosophy, given in
the fourth volume, will do much to destroy and render impossible the
one-sided criticism to which the opinions of the philosopher have been
so long subjected. He has shown that Berkeley's philosophy is not the
dried-up intellectual cistern of a solitary thinker of the last
century--is not a barren 'subjective idealism' which a breath of 'common
sense' can 'for ever render impossible,' but is a living fountain from
which our greatest modern English thinkers have not disdained to draw;
and he might have shown that it is instinct with the germs of those
philosophical principles which under the name of the _Ideal-Realismus_,
are leavening modern German thought. We venture to predict that
hereafter every historian and critic of philosophy will have to
reconsider the commonplace verdict which, first pronounced by Dr. Thomas
Reid in this country, by Kant in Germany, and by Cousin in France, has
been repeated wearisomely by their successors. At the same time, we
would not homologate every statement which Professor Fraser has made
about the philosophy of his author. We are inclined to think that he has
not sufficiently recognised the historical position of Bishop Berkeley.
He has too much regarded him as occupying a unique place in the history
of speculation, and neglected some of those facts of English philosophy
which serve to explain Berkeley's position and principles. No thinker,
and especially no great thinker, can occupy a position historically
inexplicable. He is the exponent of the thoughts and feelings of his
time, the interpreter of their present meaning, and the unconscious
prophet of their future development. And Berkeley was no exception to
this rule. It is just because he lived in an age in which two different
streams met, and because he alone of the thinkers then living combined
them, that he is to be reckoned among the few great English thinkers;
and it is because the two tendencies then at work and conflicting with
each other contained the undeveloped germs of the living principles now
combining that Berkeley's philosophy is not to be thrown aside as a
useless relic of the past, but to be studied as the inadequate
expression of much that is deepest and truest in the present English and
German philosophy.[219] 'England's Antiphon' against the sensational
psychology, sceptical metaphysics, and utilitarian ethics, which form
the bulk of her contributions to the general stock of philosophy, has
usually found expression in her poetry and religion rather than in her
philosophy; but there have always been thinkers who have refused to
accept the common creed, and to suffer themselves to glide down the
stream of popular opinion. Their protest has seldom been loud-voiced.
They have generally lived solitary, unheeded lives; but their presence,
like a scent unseen, has had its impalpable, invisible influence.
English mysticism is a fact, though unrecorded in the pages of the
history of her philosophers; and English mysticism was never stronger
than in the generation preceding Berkeley. The Cambridge Platonists had
but lately passed away. Four or five translations of Jacob Böhmen had
showed the popular studies, Norris of Bemerton was so well known that
his philosophy could be ridiculed in an elaborate parody, and Tom Brown,
'of facetious memory,' could tickle a not too fastidious public with a
caricature of his Platonic love. The influence of Malebranche was felt
upon English philosophy. Fénélon and Madame Guyon had their English
disciples, and the gross immorality of the times of the earlier Georges
had its opposite in the refined mysticism which appears in many of the
religious and philosophical writers of the period. By education,
training, studies and temperament, Berkeley was fitted to combine this
mystical philosophy with the ruder and more practical sensationalism of
Locke. He did so; and because he did so, he begins the second period of
modern philosophy. However we regard Berkeley--whether as a man, as a
Christian philanthropist, or as a metaphysician--we find the same
unconscious combination of practical sagacity and of refined enthusiasm,
a keen eye for fact, and a deep mind for theory, along with a continual
incapacity to combine adequately or express fully, either by action or
speech, the double tendency which is the secret of his power. We feel as
if Berkeley were always struggling with a great thought which he did not
wholly see, and could not adequately express. The young student of
Trinity College is labouring to record in his commonplace book a
principle which will prove to be the universal solvent, and set right
everything that is wrong. The young philosopher has elaborated the
principles of human knowledge which are to banish scepticism,
re-establish theology, philosophy, and the physical sciences on new and
lasting foundations. The missionary has a scheme for transplanting the
virtues, arts, and sciences to a new continent, since an extravagant
nobility and a reckless and dishonest passion for speculation have
impoverished and demoralized the chief countries in Europe. The
philanthropic bishop finds that a national bank will redeem his country
from all her troubles, and that tar-water is a panacea for every ill the
flesh is heir to. Everywhere we find the practical man and the idealist.
Everywhere we find the same keen eye for facts not quite comprehensive
enough; the same wealth of ideas which, nevertheless, wants the
intellectual momentum needed to carry out a great philosophical
conception; the same prophetic vision of principles and facts which are
afterwards to become plain, accompanied by the inability to clear the
way for their present manifestation.
Professor Fraser has given us a beautiful picture of young Berkeley and
his surroundings in Trinity College, Dublin. Born at Dysart Castle, in
the beautiful valley of the Nore, and educated at the famous Kilkenny
School, the Eton of Ireland, Berkeley came up to Trinity College in the
spring of 1700, and at once found himself near a whirl of intellectual
life, into which he threw himself with ardour. The influence of the
discoveries of Newton, Boyle, and Hooke, and the speculations of
Descartes, Locke, and Malebranche, was beginning to show itself in the
University, and was gradually displacing the old scholasticism; and the
bright, clever lad looked with eagerness towards all the new lights
which were beginning to shine upon him. An amusing story is told of his
fondness for experiment, and his dreamy disregard of consequences. He
had gone to see an execution, and returned pensive and melancholy, but
strangely inquisitive about the sensations experienced by the
unfortunate criminal in the crisis of his fate. He took counsel with an
intimate college friend, Conterini, the uncle of Oliver Goldsmith, and
'it was agreed between them that he should himself try the
experiment, and be relieved by his friend on a signal
arranged, after which Conterini, in his turn, was to repeat
the experiment. Berkeley was accordingly tied up to the
ceiling, and the chair removed from under his feet. Losing
consciousness, his companion waited in vain for the signal.
The enthusiastic inquirer might have been hung in good
earnest,--and as soon as he was relieved he fell motionless
upon the floor. On recovering himself his first words
were--"Bless my heart, Conterini, you have rumpled my
band."'
We need not wonder that this incident caused Berkeley to be looked upon
as an eccentric by his fellow-students, nor that he had to bear the
usual annoyances which befall those who get the name. With all his
eccentricity, however, he seems to have been the centre of a company of
friends, who thought him a prodigy of learning and amiability; and his
college career was very successful.
'He was made a Scholar in 1702. In the spring of 1704 (the
year Locke died) he became Bachelor of Arts. He took his
Master's degree in the spring of 1707. After the customary
arduous examination of that University, conducted in
presence of nobility, gentry, and high officials, he passed
with unprecedented applause, and was admitted to a
Fellowship, June 9, 1707, "the only reward of learning that
kingdom has to bestow," as one of his biographers curtly
says.'
It is his commonplace book, however, and the other records of his
college life, now first published, that show us how the young student
employed himself, and what were his favourite studies and opinions. In
these early days one sees that he learned mostly by negation. Locke is
_not_ right in this particular, Malebranche is wrong in that, More is
not to be trusted in a third,--are the most usual entries in the young
student's journal. It is curious to look at those imperfect jottings and
see as through a window into the eager young soul, sharpening and
training itself by living contact with the thoughts of the great
thinkers who then ruled the intellectual world, and preparing itself to
take rank among them at some future day. Mathematics, metaphysics,
optics, physics, and natural theology were all studied. Locke was his
great teacher, then Malebranche, then the English Platonists; Barrow,
Boyle, Newton, and Molyneux taught him physics and mathematics. He is
always independent, perhaps too fond of independence, perhaps scarcely
aware that as much is learned from what we find ourselves compelled to
deny, as from what we are obliged to affirm. There seems to have been a
great deal of intellectual life in the University, when Thomas Prior and
Samuel Madden--the two founders of the Royal Irish Society--were
fellow-students of Berkeley, when King was translated to the see of
Dublin, and Bishop Browne was Provost of Trinity. Berkeley and his young
friends formed themselves into a society for the purpose of discussing
the problems which life and the new philosophy were presenting to them.
We are not told who the members of this society were, but we can guess,
from jottings in the commonplace book, that the subjects of discussion
were mainly suggested by portions of Locke's essays, and we can fancy
the young metaphysicians disputing with great eagerness, ardour, and
confusion, all manner of soluble and insoluble questions. It is more
than probable that out of the chaos of the thoughts and opinions which
must have formed the intellectual outcome of such a society, there
gradually arose clearly and more clearly before Berkeley the
intellectual insight into the wants and difficulties of modern
metaphysics, pure and applied, which at last realized itself in the
'Essay towards a New Theory of Vision,' and in the 'Principles of Human
Knowledge.' At all events we know that these two works, on which
Berkeley's fame as a metaphysician has rested, were written and
published not many years after the date of the founding of the College
Society; and that many of the questions discussed are to be found among
the list of subjects which Professor Fraser thinks were there debated.
Both works everywhere show traces of the reading and thinking which the
commonplace book reveals, and the results of the two are the expression
of the double tendency to the inductive philosophy and to mysticism,
which, we have said, is the distinguishing feature in Berkeley's life
and philosophy. 'The Theory of Vision' is Malebranche's seeing all
things in God, but on a rational and experimental basis. We see God in
all things, and we see all things by means of his continual contrivance.
The outcome of the 'Principles of Human Knowledge' is, in the main, the
attempt to explain clearly, fully, and in accordance with Baconian
principles, the mystical thought of Norris, that God is the immediate
author of our sensations, and that we therefore participate in Him when
we see, feel, or desire, and the doctrine of providence on which Dr.
More delighted to expatiate.
In 1713, we find Berkeley at the court of Queen Anne, in company with
Swift. He had come over from Dublin chiefly for the purpose of gaining
attention for his metaphysical system. He had endeavoured, while in
Dublin, to interest English philosophers in his new principle, but the
attempt was not very successful. He now tried by personal intercourse
and more popular exposition, in his Essays in the 'Guardian' and in his
Dialogues, to gain adherents to those opinions from which he expected so
much; and in this he was pretty successful. Swift, writing to Lord
Carteret from Dublin some years after, says that 'he (Berkeley) was a
Fellow of the University here: and going to England very young about
thirteen years ago, he became founder of a sect called the
_Immaterialists_, by the force of a very curious book upon that subject.
Dr. Smalridge and many other eminent persons were his proselytes.' We
have very pleasant glimpses of the young Irish metaphysician among the
wits of Queen Anne's court. Then, as afterwards, his amiability and
enthusiasm disarmed enmity and gained friends among all factions. He was
intimate with Steele and Addison, as well as the companion of Swift and
Pope. Swift procured for him the appointment of secretary to Lord
Peterborough, and in that capacity, and afterwards as tutor to Mr. St.
George Ashe, he spent some years abroad. On his return,
'he found London and all England in the agitation and
misery consequent upon the failure of the South Sea Scheme.
This occasioned one of his most characteristic productions
as an author. He now addressed himself for the first time
publicly to questions of social economy. If I am not
mistaken, the deep impression which the English catastrophe
of 1720 made upon him was connected with the project of
social idealism which, as we shall see, filled and
determined his life in its middle period.'
He was shocked at the tone of social morality and his imaginative
enthusiasm perhaps helped to make him fancy the plague more
wide-spreading and more incurable than it really was. His thoughts found
vent in his 'Essay toward Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain,' and he
then probably first began to meditate on the romantic scheme of
missionary enterprise which filled so much of his life.
His second stay in London brought him the beginning of many of the
friendships which lasted through life. He had met in Italy, Benson,
afterwards Bishop of Gloucester, and now became intimate with Secker,
successively Bishop of Bristol, Bishop of Oxford, and Archbishop of
Canterbury, Rundle, Bishop of Derry, Clarke, and Butler,--all of whom
helped him in his attempt to realise the great plan now beginning to
take shape in his mind. He had returned to Ireland as Chaplain to the
Lord Lieutenant, and had been nominated, in rapid succession, Divinity
Lecturer, Senior Greek Lecturer in Trinity College, then Dean of
Dromore, then Hebrew Lecturer and Senior Proctor in Trinity College,
then Rector of Ardtrea and Arboe, and lastly Dean of Derry; but no
sooner had he fairly obtained the church preferment which his position
and talents had merited, than he was eager to resign it--'his heart is
ready to break if his deanery be not taken from him.' He wished to
resign present preferment and future prospects, and to dedicate his
life, means, and energies to instruct the youth of America, as the
President of an ideally perfect University in the Isles of Bermuda. The
old world had grown very evil, and Berkeley wished to make a new one. He
had mysticism enough to imagine a new Atlantis, and the practical turn
for experimenting which made him eager to attempt to realize it. His
thoughts were not content with the patient waiting of the mystical
mediæval piety which inspires the beautiful 'Hora Novissima' of Bernard,
they must take shape in action. His enthusiasm rises to poetic height,
and finds utterance in a few glowing verses prophetic of the dominion
which is to come and increase on the other side of the ocean by the
diffusion of education, the sciences, and the preaching of the Word:
'Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The four first Acts already past.
A fifth shall close the Drama with the day:
Time's noblest offspring is the last.'
After much anxious waiting and painful pleading at court and with
Parliament, Berkeley at last obtained a charter for his college, and
was promised an endowment of £20,000:--
'The Charter authorized the erection of a college in the
Bermudas to be called the College of St. Paul, and to be
governed by a President and nine Fellows who were to form
the Corporation. Berkeley was named the first President,
and his three Dublin associates the first Fellows. They
were all allowed to retain their preferments at home for
eighteen months after their arrival in the islands. Other
six Fellows were to be appointed by them within three
years, and the surviving members of the Corporation were to
have power to elect all the future vacancies. The Bishop of
London was named as Visitor, and the Secretary of State for
the Colonies was appointed Chancellor. The College was
declared to be for the instruction of students in
literature and theology, with a view to the promotion of
Christian civilization alike in the English and in the
heathen parts of America.'
He sailed from Gravesend with his newly-married wife and a little
company of retainers and friends, and arrived in the Narragansett
waters, on the western side of Rhode Island, at the beautiful harbour of
Newport. Berkeley had meant to call at Rhode Island on his way to the
Bermudas to get information, procure anything needful for the fulfilment
of his great scheme, purchase land as an investment for his college, and
perhaps gain the good-will and interest of friendly New Englanders. He
was not destined to get nearer the Bermudas. The visit, which was
originally meant to be a short one, lengthened out from month to month,
until at last Berkeley began to like the place so well that he
confidentially says to Prior in one of his letters:--'The truth is, if
the king's bounty were paid in, and the charter could be removed hither,
I should like it better than Bermuda.' And Newport would have made a
very good centre for his scheme of educational and evangelical
operations. It was the capital of the State of Rhode Island, and was a
rich centre of foreign and domestic trade. The State had been colonized
by Roger Williams in 1636, and had a constitution which asserted the
right of religious freedom while that was still unknown in every other
State in America. Its society was accordingly very unlike that met with
almost anywhere else. Quakers, Moravians, Jews, Episcopalians,
Congregationalists, Independents, and Baptists of every sect, all lived
together, holding their own beliefs, and tolerating those of their
neighbours. The town population was chiefly mercantile, while that of
the interior of the island, and that along the Narragansett shore, was
pastoral. The inhabitants were famed for their hospitality, and the
society was intelligent and well-informed. Great care was taken of the
education of the children, and the libraries and pictures which still
remain testify to the good taste and culture of the gentlemen of the
island:--
'The Rhode Island aristocracy of Berkeley's time maintained
the character of the old English country gentlemen from
whom they were descended. A state of society supported by
slavery produced festivity. Tradition records the genial
life of those days in the colony. Excursions to Hartford to
luxuriate on bloated salmon were annual indulgences in May.
Pace races on the beach for silver tankards were the social
indulgences of summer. When autumn arrived, there were
harvest-home festivities. Large numbers of both sexes
gathered on those occasions--gentlemen in their scarlet
coats and swords, with lace ruffles over their hands, silk
stockings, and shoes ornamented with silver buckles, and
ladies dressed in brocade, with high-heeled shoes and high
head-dresses. These festivities would sometimes continue
for days, and they were shared by the slaves as well as
their masters. Christmas was the great festival of the
year; twelve days were then given to hospitalities. The
wedding, too, was a great gala in the olden time. And the
fox chase, with hounds and horns, as well as fishing and
fowling, were favourite sports in Narragansett.'
While in Newport, Berkeley mingled in the society of the town, and
frequently preached in the pulpit of Mr. Honeyman, a missionary of the
Church of England. He visited the Narragansett country, and is said to
have made some distant excursions to see the condition of the native
Indian tribes. A few months after his arrival he bought a farm and built
a commodious house, which he called Whitehall. The house is still
standing, and is known in the neighbourhood as Bishop Berkeley's house.
Few situations could be more adapted to the tastes of a student as fond
of nature as of books. It was here that 'Alciphron,' the most elaborate,
and, in the lifetime of the author, the most popular, of all Berkeley's
writings, was written. Tradition points to a natural alcove in the
rocks, commanding a view of the beach and the ocean, as the spot where
the beautiful dialogues were composed.
'"Alciphron" is redolent of the fragrance of nature in
Rhode Island and of the invigorating breezes of its ocean
shore. Smith of Philadelphia, in his preface to the London
edition of Johnson of Stratford's philosophical works, says
that one day when visiting him Johnson took up the book,
and reading some of Berkeley's rural descriptions, told him
that they were copied from the charming landscapes in that
delightful island, which lay before him at the time he was
writing.'
While living this retired life at Whitehall and troubled with anxieties
at the delays which prevented him from seeing the actual realization of
his great scheme, Berkeley found time to mingle in the intellectual
society which Newport afforded, and took the lead in forming a
philosophical association for the discussion of speculative questions.
One of the objects of this association was to collect books, and it
originated the Redwood Library, which still exists in Newport, a memento
of the short but interesting stay of Bishop Berkeley.
One American friend, however, is more closely related to Berkeley than
any other, and must not be passed over without special mention. This was
Dr. Samuel Johnson, the Episcopalian minister of Stratford. He had known
the 'Principles of Human Knowledge' before Berkeley's arrival in
America, and had become a convert to the metaphysical opinions there set
forth. He was one of the first to welcome Berkeley when he landed in
Rhode Island, and the friendship and correspondence which then began
only ceased with the death of the Bishop. His name, too, possesses
special interest to all students of Berkeley's philosophy, and he must
be held in honour as one of the earliest and one of the greatest
metaphysicians which America has produced. Although his works have been
forgotten--obscured, perhaps, by the theological and metaphysical fame
of his great pupil, Jonathan Edwards--they still deserve attention. We
should like to see a new edition of his 'Elementa Philosophica;' and
believe that, if re-published and known, it would be a valuable
contribution to American philosophy. This work possesses a special
interest for the student of Berkeley. It was written by a professed
disciple, was the result of the study of Berkeley's writings, of
conversations and correspondence with him on the philosophical subjects
it discusses. It was dedicated to the Bishop, and may almost be looked
upon as a new and more complete edition of the 'Principles of Human
Knowledge.' It treats of the pure intellect and its notions, and of the
intuitive intellectual light; and so, to some extent, supplies the place
of the second part of that work which was never written, and connects
the philosophy of Berkeley's earlier days with the Platonic mysticism of
his old age. Johnson's 'Elementa Philosophica' can never be separated
from Berkeley's 'Principles of Human Knowledge;' and had the two been
always studied together, the continual misapprehension of the Bishop's
philosophical system, which has characterized most histories of
philosophy, could scarcely have arisen. The philosophical letters to
Johnson are also full of interest, and show other sides of Berkeley's
system than that most prominent in the 'Principles of Human Knowledge;'
and Johnson himself seems to have had no small influence in developing
what, in some respects, may be called the idealist,[220] and in others
the mystical moment in Berkeley's speculation.
While thus employed in philosophical correspondence and composition, and
in social and intellectual intercourse with his friends in and near
Newport, Berkeley was harassed with doubts and anxieties about the
success of his great scheme. He had embarked in the faith that Sir R.
Walpole would fulfil his promise, and that the £20,000 endowment which
had been voted by Parliament would be soon handed over to him for his
college. But the long months spent in waiting lengthened out to years,
and the prospect grew duller and duller, until at length even Berkeley
began to despair. Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London, who had been appointed
by the charter the Visitor of the new University, did all he could to
forward the scheme; and when he found that the ministerial delays were
only meant to cover the non-fulfilment of their bargain, he at last got
a conclusive answer from Walpole: 'If you put this question to me as a
minister,' said he, 'I must and can assure you that the money shall most
undoubtedly be paid as soon as suits with public convenience; but if you
ask me, as a friend, whether Dean Berkeley should continue in America
expecting the payment of £20,000, I advise him by all means to return
home to Europe, and give up his present expectations.'
The ten best years of Berkeley's life were given to this scheme of
missionary enterprise, and now it ended in what seemed to be utter
failure. We have only to read his enthusiastic letters to his friend
Prior to see how hopefully he had looked forward to the future, and to
realize how crushing the blow must have been which now fell upon him. He
bore himself bravely enough, however, outwardly, and his own account of
the miscarriage given in 'Alciphron' does not reveal very much
depression:--
'I flattered myself, _Theages_, that before this time I
might have been able to have sent you an agreeable account
of the success of the affair which brought me into this
remote corner of the country. But, instead of this, I
should now give you the detail of its miscarriage, if I did
not rather choose to entertain you with some amusing
incidents, which have helped to make me easy under a
circumstance I could neither obviate nor foresee. Events
are not in our power; but it always is, to make a good use
even of the very worst. And I must needs own, the course
and event of this affair gave opportunity for reflections
that make me some amends for a great loss of time, pains,
and expense. A life of action, which takes its issue from
the counsels, passions, and views of other men, if it doth
not draw a man to imitate, will at least teach him to
observe. And a mind at liberty to reflect on its own
observations, if it produce nothing useful in the world,
seldom fails of entertainment to itself. For several months
past I have enjoyed such liberty and leisure in this
distant retreat, far beyond the verge of that great
whirlpool of business, faction, and pleasure which is
called the world. And a retreat in itself agreeable, after
a long scene of trouble and disquiet, was made much more so
by the conversation and good qualities of my host
Euphranor, who unites in his own person the philosopher and
the farmer, two characters not so inconsistent in nature as
by custom they seem to be.'
But Berkeley felt that his life-work was done. He felt himself to be a
broken man, so far as action was concerned. The practical-working
experimental side of his nature falls into the shade; and the calm
mystical enthusiasm which spends itself in study and in reverie, and can
turn from the vexations and disturbances and wrongs of the real world to
find repose and quietude in the contemplation of the world of ideal
perfection visioned in the dreams of genius, grows stronger and
stronger. He returned to England in the end of 1731, and soon found
himself among old acquaintances. Church preferment awaited him. He was
nominated to the rich deanery of Down, and when the nomination was from
accidental circumstances cancelled, was soon afterwards nominated and
consecrated Bishop of Cloyne. But he did not mingle much in society, nor
take a very active part in the business of life. He more and more
preferred to live in quiet seclusion. A wealthier bishopric was within
his reach, but he contented himself with Cloyne. The offer of the
Primacy of Ireland failed to draw him from his retirement. A growing
feebleness, a love for quietness, and increasing and constant
ill-health, all show how heavily the great disappointment of his life
pressed upon him. He was not fifty when he was made Bishop of Cloyne,
but all that he did afterwards bears the stamp of old age.
The American enterprise, however, was not such a failure as it seemed to
Berkeley. His one great practical enterprise bears a curious analogy to
his philosophical system. His life-work and his life-thought are
strangely parallel. In both there is the combination of shrewd,
practical judgment, with almost visionary enthusiasm. Both were thought
by his contemporaries to be more suitable for a dream-life than for
waking reality. Both fail in completeness of development and adequacy of
expression; and yet both contain in them germs of life to be long
afterwards developed. Berkeley's American scheme did not entirely break
down at his return to England. The farm of Whitehall, which he had
bought near Newport, he bequeathed to Yale College for the purpose of
encouraging Greek and Latin scholarship, and the list of Berkeleian
scholars--a list containing more than two hundred names, among them some
of the most eminent in America--shows how far the designs of the founder
were thus unexpectedly fulfilled:--
'"It is a fact of no slight significance," the writer
remarks, "taken in connection with the original purpose of
Berkeley, that of this list nearly one hundred are marked
as ministers of the Gospel, foremost among whom is
President Wheelock, who founded an Indian school, the germ
of Dartmouth College; while hundreds more, not here
enumerated, have been recipients of this bounty, in the
shape of smaller premiums, among whom may be named David
Brainerd, the 'Apostle to the Indians.'"'
Berkeley's gifts to Yale College did not cease with the bequest of his
farm. He so interested some of his Bermuda subscribers in the American
College that, with their aid, he was able to send over from England a
large donation of books to its library. Harvard College, as well as
Yale, received gifts of books, and, to the end of his life, Berkeley's
constant references in his letters to Johnson, and his continual
kindnesses and recommendations of young American students who from time
to time came over to England, showed the deep interest which he took in
the cause of religion and education in the Western hemisphere.
The Cloyne life was a very retired one, and Berkeley was almost as much,
if not more out of the world there than he had been at Newport. His
intercourse with old friends was mostly by letter. Secker, the Bishop of
Bristol, and Benson, Bishop of Gloucester, are still the most valued
correspondents among the friends of his later life. Gibson, Bishop of
London, writes in dignified style about public events, and about the
analyst controversy. Prior, his old school and college companion, is
still his most useful friend, eager and ready as ever to take up and
defend any one of his theories or fancies. Dean Gervais writes and
receives beautiful letters about Cloyne and foreign politics. These were
stirring times abroad. Frederick the Great was in Silesia, and even a
student recluse cannot help thinking that 'We live in an age of
revolutions so sudden and surprising in all parts of Europe, that I
question whether the like has been ever known before.' Protestant
clergymen were very much afraid of France governed by old Cardinal
Fleury, but the excitement did not last long, and only reawakened when
the next post-bag arrived. The letters from Cloyne give us beautiful
glimpses into Berkeley's home-life. There are musical parties, and
country visits, village charities, and small attempts at the
introduction of manufactures, and his student life in his diocese was
not entirely that of a recluse. Even at this period of his life,
Berkeley's sympathies were active enough to lead him to undertake a
somewhat long and tedious study of the causes of Irish distress and
poverty, and more particularly of the famine and epidemic of 1741-2. The
results of his investigations were published in the 'Querist' and in
'Siris.'
The 'Querist' was originally published in three parts. It consists of a
series of queries concerning the state of Ireland and the remedies
suggested. It is a remarkable book, and very little known; still more
remarkable when we consider that it was written in 1735 by a bishop of
the Irish Church Establishment. The central thought is expressed in the
pregnant query, 'Whether a scheme for the welfare of the Irish nation
should not take in the whole inhabitants; and whether it be not a vain
attempt to project the flourishing of our Protestant gentry, exclusive
of the bulk of the natives?'--and the introduction of manufactures, a
national bank, the admission of Roman Catholics into Trinity College,
Dublin, without compelling them to attend chapel or divinity lectures,
and the election of Roman Catholics as justices of the peace, are some
of the means of realizing such a scheme. Berkeley's belief in the
healing powers of tar-water is better known, and his efforts to get it
recognised as a panacea scarcely require mention. They occupied no small
part of his last years in Cloyne.
During these last years we hear occasionally of an 'Oxford Scheme,' and
there are traces in Berkeley's correspondence of efforts made to give up
his bishopric for the sake of some minor preferment not requiring
residence. The education of his sons and his own imaginative desire for
a 'life academico-philosophical' seem to have been the motives. In
August, 1752, he left Cloyne, and was not destined to see it again. The
journey was more than his weakened body could bear. 'He was so much
reduced by suffering that he had to be carried from his landing on the
English shore, in a horse litter to Oxford.' He did not linger long in
the beautiful University city in the enjoyment of a life to which he had
so often looked forward, and during the months of his residence was
almost withdrawn from society by disease and suffering. He was not
altogether idle, however.
'In October, 1752, "A Miscellany containing several Tracts
on various Subjects, by the Bishop of Cloyne," was
published simultaneously in London and Dublin. With one
exception, the Miscellany was a reprint of works previously
published. But the old ardour was not extinguished. It
contains also, "Further Thoughts on Tar-water," written
probably during his last months at Cloyne; and prefixed to
the Miscellany is a copy of Latin verses addressed to him
by an English prelate on that absorbing enthusiasm of his
old age.
'A third edition of "Alciphron," of which I have given a
minute account elsewhere, was also published at this time.
It is chiefly remarkable for its omission of those sections
in the Seventh Dialogue which contain a defence of what has
been called his Nominalism.'
The end was drawing near, and came almost unexpectedly. Professor Fraser
tells us that
'The autumn and winter of 1752 wore passing away, as we may
fancy, in that enjoyment of academic repose which was
possible in weakness of body more or less disturbed by
acute suffering. We are here left to fancy. One actual
scene has alone been preserved. On the evening of Sunday,
the 14th of January, 1753, Berkeley was resting on a couch,
in his house in Holywell-street, surrounded by his family.
His wife had been reading aloud to the little family party
the lesson in the Burial Service, taken from the fifteenth
chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, and he had
been making remarks upon that sublime passage. His daughter
soon after went to offer him some tea. She found him, as it
seemed, asleep, but his body was already cold; for it was
the last sleep--the mystery of death; and the world of the
senses had suddenly ceased to be a medium of intercourse
between his spirit and those who remained. "Although all
possible means," we are told, "were used, not the least
symptom of life ever afterwards appeared."'
And so one of the greatest and of the purest thinkers that England has
ever seen passed away to his rest.
The philosophy of Berkeley is not so much a theory of matter as a
philosophy of causality; and the great service which Professor Fraser
has done to the history of philosophy is that he has so far made it
clear that the one important contribution which Berkeley has brought to
the stock of knowledge, the one doctrine of his which has been most
fruitful, and most pregnant with results to after-philosophy, is his
explanation of the word cause, and the place which he assigns to
causality. Berkeley's polemic against abstract ideas, his theories of
vision, and his discussions about the nature of ideas, are all
subsidiary to this one great doctrine of the meaning and place of
causality. It does occur to us that Professor Fraser, while keeping this
clearly before him in his admirable elucidations, by prefaces and notes,
has somewhat obscured it by dwelling at such length on the points of
similarity between Berkeley and Reid and Hamilton. These Scottish
philosophers struggled after a theory of matter from the beginning to
the end; the reality of the external world, as if anybody ever
questioned it, was their alpha and omega. They could think and write of
scarcely anything else. But Berkeley's philosophy was a great deal
deeper and wider. It was free from what we may perhaps call the
provincialism of the Scottish school, which clung with tenacity to what
was after all a very small strip in the wide dominion of philosophy, and
could never free itself from the narrowness which such exclusiveness was
sure to beget. His philosophical writings, containing new and striking
thoughts, some of them only now bearing fruit, upon the great
metaphysical problems of universals, substance, causality, and the
organism of the universe, cannot without danger of misconception be
compared at length with a system which thinks itself competent to
classify all metaphysical systems according as they contain some one or
other theory of perception. We repeat, then, Berkeley's philosophy is by
no means merely a theory of matter or a doctrine of sense-perception--it
is a philosophy of causality--of substance and causality if you will,
but of substance as subordinate to causality.
We are quite aware that these views regarding Berkeley's philosophy have
not met with general acceptance. The great proportion of Berkeley's
critics, roughly speaking, may be set in two classes: those who believe
that his theory is utter scepticism, which the first breath of common
sense dissipates, and those who believe the Bishop's opinions to be
harmless, because quite unimportant. Dr. Johnson kicks a stone, and
Berkeley's theory is disproved. Dr. Reid runs his head against a
lamp-post, and with the same important philosophical result.
'Coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin.'