Dialogues is printed, though not yet published, and that your opinion has
gained ground among the learned; that Mr. Addison has come over to your
view; and that what at first seemed shocking is become so familiar that
others envy you the discovery, and make it their own.” In his reply in
June, Berkeley mentions that “a clergyman in Wiltshire has lately
published a treatise wherein he advances something published three years
ago in my _Principles of Human Knowledge_.” The clergyman was Arthur
Collier, author of the _Clavis Universalis_, or demonstration of the
impossibility of an external world(6).
Berkeley’s _Three Dialogues_ were published in June. In the middle of that
same month he was in Oxford, “a most delightful place,” where he spent two
months, “witnessed the Act and grand performances at the theatre, and a
great concourse from London and the country, amongst whom were several
foreigners.” The Drury Lane Company had gone down to Oxford, and _Cato_
was on the stage for several nights. The Percival correspondence now first
discloses this prolonged visit to Oxford in the summer of 1713, that ideal
home from whence, forty years after, he departed on a more mysterious
journey than any on this planet. In a letter from thence to Percival, he
had claimed Arbuthnot as one of the converts to the “new Principle.”
Percival replied that Swift demurred to this, on which Berkeley rejoins:
“As to what you say of Dr. Arbuthnot not being of my opinion, it is true
there has been some difference between us concerning some notions relating
to the necessity of the laws of nature; but this does not touch the main
points of the non-existence of what philosophers call material substance;
against which he acknowledges he can assert nothing.” One would gladly
have got more than this from Berkeley, about what touched his favourite
conception of the “arbitrariness” of law in nature, as distinguished from
the “necessity” which some modern physicists are ready vaguely to take for
granted.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
The scene now changes. On October 15 Berkeley suddenly writes from London:
“I am on the eve of going to Sicily, as chaplain to Lord Peterborough, who
is Ambassador Extraordinary on the coronation of the new king.” He had
been recommended by Swift to the Ambassador, one of the most extraordinary
characters then in Europe, who a few years before had astonished the world
in the war of the Succession in Spain, and afterwards by his genius as a
diplomatist: in Holland, nearly a quarter of a century before, he had
formed an intimate friendship with John Locke. Ten months in France and
Italy in the suite of Lord Peterborough brought the young Irish
metaphysician, who had lately been introduced to the wits of London and
the dons of Oxford, into a new world. It was to him the beginning of a
career of wandering and social activity, which lasted, with little
interruption, for nearly twenty years, during which metaphysics and
authorship were in the background. On November 25 we find him in Paris,
writing letters to Percival and Prior. “From London to Calais”, he tells
Prior, “I came in company of a Flamand, a Spaniard, a Frenchman, and three
English servants of my Lord. The three gentlemen, being of three different
nations, obliged me to speak the French language (which is now familiar),
and gave me the opportunity of seeing much of the world in little
compass.... On November 1 (O.S.) I embarked in the stage-coach, with a
company that were all perfect strangers to me. There were two Scotch, and
one English gentleman. One of the former happened to be the author of the
_Voyage to St. Kilda_ and the _Account of the Western Isles_(7). We were
good company on the road; and that day se’ennight came to Paris. I have
since been taken up in viewing churches, convents, palaces, colleges, &c.,
which are very numerous and magnificent in this town. The splendour and
riches of these things surpasses belief; but it were endless to descend to
particulars. I was present at a disputation in the Sorbonne, which indeed
had much of the French fire in it. I saw the Irish and the English
Colleges. In the latter I saw, enclosed in a coffin, the body of the late
King James.... To-morrow I intend to visit Father Malebranche, and
discourse him on certain points.”
The Abbé D’Aubigné, as he informs Percival, was to introduce him to
Malebranche, then the chief philosopher of France, whose Vision of the
world in God had some affinity with Berkeley’s own thought. Unfortunately
we have no record of the intended interview with the French idealist, who
fourteen years before had been visited by Addison, also on his way to
Italy, when Malebranche expressed great regard for the English nation, and
admiration for Newton; but he shook his head when Hobbes was mentioned,
whom he ventured to disparage as a “poor silly creature.” Malebranche died
nearly two years after Berkeley’s proposed interview; and according to a
story countenanced by Dugald Stewart, Berkeley was the “occasional cause”
of his death. He found the venerable Father, we are told, in a cell,
cooking, in a pipkin, a medicine for a disorder with which he was
troubled. The conversation naturally turned on Berkeley’s system, of which
Malebranche had received some knowledge from a translation. The issue of
the debate proved tragical to poor Malebranche. In the heat of disputation
he raised his voice so high, and gave way so freely to the natural
impetuosity of a man of genius and a Frenchman, that he brought on a
violent increase of his disorder, which carried him off a few days
after(8). This romantic tale is, I suspect, mythical. The Percival
correspondence shews that Berkeley was living in London in October, 1715,
the month in which Malebranche died, and I find no trace of a short sudden
visit to Paris at that time.
After a month spent in Paris, another fortnight carried Berkeley and two
travelling companions to Italy through Savoy. They crossed Mont Cenis on
New Year’s Day in 1714—“one of the most difficult and formidable parts of
the Alps which is ever passed over by mortal man,” as he tells Prior in a
letter from Turin. “We were carried in open chairs by men used to scale
these rocks and precipices, which at this season are more slippery and
dangerous than at other times, and at the best are high, craggy, and steep
enough to cause the heart of the most valiant man to melt within him.” At
the end of other six weeks we find him at Leghorn, where he spent three
months, “while my lord was in Sicily.” He “prefers England or Ireland to
Italy: the only advantage is in point of air.” From Leghorn he writes in
May a complimentary letter to Pope, on the occasion of the _Rape of the
Lock_: “Style, painting, judgment, spirit, I had already admired in your
other writings; but in this I am charmed with the magic of your invention,
with all those images, allusions, and inexplicable beauties which you
raise so surprisingly, and at the same time so naturally, out of a
trifle.... I remember to have heard you mention some half-formed design of
coming to Italy. What might we not expect from a muse that sings so well
in the bleak climate of England, if she felt the same warm sun and
breathed the same air with Virgil and Horace.” In July we find Berkeley in
Paris on his way back to England. He had “parted from Lord Peterborough at
Genoa, where my lord took post for Turin, and thence designed passing over
the Alps, and so through Savoy, on his way to England.” In August they are
in London, where the aspect of English politics was changed by the death
of the Queen in that month. He seems to have had a fever soon after his
return. In October, Arbuthnot, in one of his chatty letters to Swift,
writes thus: “Poor philosopher Berkeley has now the _idea_ of health,
which was very hard to produce in him, for he had an _idea_ of a strange
fever upon him, so strange that it was very hard to destroy it by
introducing a contrary one.”
Our record of the two following years is a long blank, first broken by a
letter to Percival in July, 1715, dated at London. Whether he spent any
time at Fulham with Lord Peterborough after their return from Italy does
not appear, nor whether he visited Ireland in those years, which is not
likely. We have no glimpses of brilliant London society as in the
preceding year. Steele was now in Parliament. Swift had returned to
Dublin, and Addison was the Irish chief secretary. But Pope was still at
Binfield, among the glades of Windsor, and Berkeley congratulated him
after receiving the first volume of his _Homer_. Of his own literary
pursuits we hear nothing. Perhaps the Second Part of the _Principles_,
which was lost afterwards in his travels, engaged him. In the end of July
he wrote to Lord Percival(9) from Flaxley(10) on the Severn; and in
August, September, October, and November he wrote from London, chiefly
interested in reports about “the rebels in Scotland,” and “the forces
under Lord Mar, which no doubt will languish and disperse in a little
time. The Bishop of Bristol assured me the other day that the Court expect
that the Duke of Orleans would, in case of need, supply them with forces
against the Pretender.” Our next glimpse of him is in May, 1716, when he
writes to Lord Percival that he is “like soon to go to Ireland, the Prince
of Wales having recommended him to the Lords Justices for the living of
St. Paul’s in Dublin.” This opening was soon closed, and the visit to
Ireland was abandoned. A groundless suspicion of Jacobitism was not
overcome by the interest of Caroline, Princess of Wales. In June, 1716,
Charles Dering wrote from Dublin, that “the Lords Justices have made a
strong representation against him.” He had to look elsewhere for the
immediate future.
We find him at Turin in November, 1716, with a fresh leave of absence for
two years from his College. It seems that Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, had
engaged him as travelling tutor to his son, a means not then uncommon for
enabling young authors of moderate fortune to see new countries and mix
with society. Addison had visited Italy in this way sixteen years before,
and Adam Smith long afterwards travelled with the young Duke of Buccleuch.
With young Ashe, Berkeley crossed Mont Cenis a second time. They reached
Rome at the beginning of 1717. His _Journal in Italy_ in that year, and
occasional letters to Percival, Pope, and Arbuthnot, shew ardent interest
in nature and art. With the widest views, “this very great though singular
sort of man 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 forges and foundries to
inspect their successive operations(11).” If the _Journal_ had been
transformed by his own hand into a book, his letter to Pope from Inarime
shews that the book might have rivalled Addison’s _Remarks on Parts of
Italy_ in grace of style and large human interest.
In the summer of 1720 we find the travellers at Florence, afterwards for
some time at Lyons, and in London at the beginning of the next year. On
the way home his metaphysical inspiration was revived. The “Cause of
Motion” had been proposed by the French Academy as the subject of a prize
dissertation. The subject gave an opportunity for further unfolding his
early thought. In the _Principles_ and the _Dialogues_ he had argued for
the necessary dependence of matter, for its concrete substantial reality,
upon living percipient mind. He would now shew its powerlessness as it is
presented to us in sense. The material world, chiefly under the category
of substance, inspired the _Principles_. The material world, under the
category of cause or power, inspired the _De Motu_. This Latin Essay sums
up the distinctive thought of Berkeley, as it appears in the authorship of
his early life. _Moles evolvit et agitat mentes_ might be taken as the
formula of the materialism which he sought to dissolve. _Mens percipit et
agitat molem significantem, cujus esse est percipi_ expresses what
Berkeley would substitute for the materialistic formula.
The end of the summer of 1721 found Berkeley still in London. England was
in the social agitation and misery consequent upon the failure of the
South Sea Company, a gigantic commercial speculation connected with
British trade in America. A new inspiration took possession of him. He
thought he saw in this catastrophe signs of a decline in public morals
worse than that which followed the Restoration. “Political corruption”,
“decay of religion,” “growth of atheism,” were descriptive words used by
the thoughtful. Berkeley’s eager imagination was apt to exaggerate the
evil. He became inspired by social idealism, and found vent for his
fervour in _An Essay towards preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_, which,
as well as the _De Motu_, made its appearance in 1721. This _Essay_ is a
significant factor in his career. It was the Cassandra wail of a sorrowful
and indignant prophet, prepared to shake the dust from his feet, and to
transfer his eye of hope to other regions, in which a nearer approach to
Utopia might be realised. The true personality of the individual is
unrealisable in selfish isolation. His favourite _non sibi, sed toti
mundo_ was henceforward more than ever the ruling maxim of his life.
II. Middle Life (1722-34).
In October, 1721, Berkeley was in Dublin. The register of the College
shews that “on November 14, 1721, Mr. Berkeley had the grace of the House
for the Degree of Bachelor and Doctor of Divinity.” There is no ground for
the report that he returned to Ireland at this time as Chaplain to the
Duke of Grafton, the Lord Lieutenant(12). But preferment in the Church
seemed within his reach. “I had no sooner set foot on shore,” he wrote to
Percival in that October, “than I heard that the Deanery of Dromore was
vacant.” Percival used his influence with the Lord Lieutenant, and in
February, 1722, Berkeley’s patent was “passing the Seals for the Deanery
of Dromore.” But the Bishop of Dromore claimed the patronage, and this led
to a protracted and ineffectual lawsuit, which took Berkeley to London in
the following winter, “to see friends and inform himself of points of
law,” and he tells that “on the way he was nearly drowned in crossing to
Holyhead(13).”
Berkeley’s interest in church preferment was not personal. He saw in it
only means to an end. In March, 1723, he surprised Lord Percival by
announcing, in a letter from London, a project which it seems for some
time had occupied his thoughts. “It is now about ten months,” he says,
“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. Whatever happens, go I am resolved, if I live. Half a dozen of
the most ingenious and agreeable men in our College are with me in this
project, and since I came hither I have got together about a dozen
Englishmen of quality, who intend to retire to those islands.” He then
explains the project, opening a vision of Christian civilisation radiating
from those fair islands of the West, whose idyllic bliss poets had sung,
diffused over the New World, with its magnificent possibilities in the
future history of mankind.
I find no further record of the origin of this bright vision. As it had
become a practical determination “ten months” before March, 1723, one is
carried back to the first months after his return to Dublin and to the
_Essay_ that was called forth by the South Sea catastrophe. One may
conjecture that despair of England and the Old World—“such as Europe
breeds in her decay”—led him to look westward for the hopeful future of
mankind, moved, perhaps, by the connexion of the catastrophe with America.
His active imagination pictured a better Republic than Plato’s, and a
grander Utopia than More’s, emanating from a College in the isles of which
Waller had sung.
In the meantime a curious fortune unexpectedly favoured him. Swift’s
unhappy Vanessa, associated with Bury Street in 1713, had settled on her
property at Marley Abbey near Dublin; and Swift had privately married
Stella, as she confessed to Vanessa, who thereafter revoked the bequest of
her fortune to Swift, and left it to be divided between Berkeley and
Marshal, afterwards an Irish judge. Vanessa died in May, 1723. A few days
after Berkeley wrote thus to Lord Percival: “Here is something that will
surprise your lordship as it doth me. Mrs. Hester Vanhomrigh, a lady to
whom I was a perfect stranger, having never in the whole course of my life
exchanged a word with her, died on Sunday. Yesterday her Will was opened,
by which it appears that I am constituted executor, the advantage whereof
is computed by those who understand her affairs to be worth £3000.... My
Bermuda scheme is now stronger in my mind than ever; this providential
event having made many things easy which were otherwise before.” Lord
Percival in reply concludes that he would “persist more than ever in that
noble scheme, which may in some time exalt your name beyond that of St.
Xavier and the most famous missionaries abroad.” But he warns him that,
“without the protection of Government,” he would encounter insurmountable
difficulties. The Vanessa legacy, and the obstructions in the way of the
Deanery of Dromore, were the subjects of a tedious correspondence with his
friend and business factotum, “Tom Prior,” in 1724 and the three following
years. In the end, the debts of Vanessa absorbed most of the legacy. And
as to the Deanery of Dromore, he tells Percival, on September 19, 1723: “I
despair of seeing it end to my advantage. The truth is, my fixed purpose
of going to Bermuda sets me above soliciting anything with earnestness in
this part of the world. It can be of no use to me, but as it may enable me
the better to prosecute that design; and it must be owned that the present
possession of something in the Church would make my application for an
establishment in those islands more considered.”
Nevertheless, he got a Deanery at last. In May, 1724, he informs Lord
Percival from Trinity College: “Yesterday I received my patent for the
best Deanery in the kingdom, that of Derry. It is said to be worth £1500
per annum. But as I do not consider it with an eye to enriching myself, so
I shall be perfectly contented if it facilitates and recommends my scheme
of Bermuda, which I am in hopes will meet with a better reception if it
comes from one possessed of so great a Deanery.” In September he is on his
way, not to Derry, but to London, “to raise funds and obtain a Charter for
the Bermuda College from George the First,” fortified by a remarkable
letter from Swift to Lord Carteret, the new Lord Lieutenant, who was then
in Bath(14). As Swift predicted in this letter, Berkeley’s conquests
spread far and fast in England, where he organised his resources during
the four following years. Nothing shews more signally the magic of his
personality than the story of his life in London in those years of
negotiation and endeavour. The proposal met with a response wonderful in a
generation represented by Walpole. The subscriptions soon reached five
thousand pounds, and Walpole was among the subscribers. The Scriblerus
Club, meeting at Lord Bathurst’s, agreed to rally Berkeley, who was among
them, on his Bermuda scheme. He asked to be heard in defence, and
presented the case with such force of enthusiasm that the company “were
struck dumb, and after a pause simultaneously rose and asked leave to
accompany him.” Bermuda for a time inspired London.
Berkeley was not satisfied with this. He remembered what Lord Percival had
said about failure without help from Government. Accordingly he obtained a
Charter from George the First early in 1726, and after canvassing the
House of Commons, secured a grant of £20,000, with only two dissentient
votes, in May of that year. This was the beginning of his difficulties.
Payment was indefinitely delayed, and he was kept negotiating; besides,
with the help of Prior, he was unravelling legal perplexities in which the
Vanessa legacy was involved. It was in these years that he was seen at the
receptions of Caroline at Leicester Fields, when she was Princess of
Wales, and afterwards at St. James’s or at Kensington, when she became
Queen in 1727; not, he says, because he loved Courts, but because he loved
America. Clarke was still rector of St. James’s, and Butler had not yet
migrated to his parsonage at Stanhope; so their society was open to him.
The Queen liked to listen to a philosophical discussion. Ten years before,
as Princess of Wales, she had been a royal go-between in the famous
correspondence between Clarke and Leibniz. And now, Berkeley being in
London, he too was asked to her weekly reunions, when she loved to hear
Clarke arguing with Berkeley, or Berkeley arguing with Hoadley. Also in
1726 Voltaire made his lengthened visit to England, a familiar figure in
the circle of Pope’s friends, attracted to the philosophy of Locke and
Newton; and Voltaire mentions that he met “the discoverer of the true
theory of vision” during his stay in London.
From the summer of 1727 until the spring of 1728 there is no extant
correspondence either with Percival or “Tom Prior” to throw light on his
movements. In February, 1728, he was still in London, but he “hoped to set
out for Dublin in March, and to America in May.” There is a mystery about
this visit to Dublin. “I propose to set out for Dublin about a month
hence,” he writes to “dear Tom,” “but of this you must not give the least
intimation to anybody. It is of all things my earnest desire (and for very
good reasons) not to have it known that I am in Dublin. Speak not,
therefore, one syllable of it to any mortal whatsoever. When I formerly
desired you to take a place for me near the town, you gave out that you
were looking for a retired lodging for a friend of yours; upon which
everybody surmised me to be the person. I must beg you not to act in the
like manner now, but to take for me an entire house in your own name, and
as for yourself; for, all things considered, I am determined upon a whole
house, with no mortal in it but a maid of your own putting, who is to look
on herself as your servant. Let there be two bed-chambers: one for you,
another for me; and, as you like, you may ever and anon lie there. I would
have the house, with necessary furniture, taken by the month (or
otherwise, as you can), for I propose staying not beyond that time; and
yet perhaps I may. Take it as soon as possible.... Let me entreat you to
say nothing of this to anybody, but to do the thing directly.... I would
of all things ... have a proper place in a retired situation, where I may
have access to fields and sweet air provided against the moment I arrive.
I am inclined to think one may be better concealed in the outermost skirt
of the suburbs, than in the country or within the town.... A house quite
detached in the country I should have no objection to, provided you judge
that I shall not be liable to discovery in it. The place called Bermuda I
am utterly against. Dear Tom, do this matter cleanly and cleverly, without
waiting for further advice.... To the person from whom you hire it (whom
alone I would have you speak of it to) it will not seem strange you should
at this time of the year be desirous, for your own convenience or health,
to have a place in a free and open air.” This mysterious letter was
written in April. From April till September Berkeley again disappears.
There is in all this a curious secretiveness of which one has repeated
examples in his life. Whether he went to Dublin in that spring, or why he
wanted to go, does not appear.