design of which was plainly to demonstrate the immateriality of the external world, the incorporeal nature of the soul, and the immediate providence of a Deity, in opposition to sceptics and deists. Berkeley now became intimate with Addison, Arbuthnot, Swift, Pope, Steele, and the rest of that gifted circle, by whom he seems to have been sincerely beloved. He accompanied the brilliant and eccentric Earl of Peterborough, as chaplain and secretary, on his embassy to Sicily, and afterwards for four years travelled on the Continent as tutor to a son of the Bishop of Clogher. While abroad we find him writing to Pope: As merchants, antiquaries, men of pleasure, &c. have all different views in travelling, I know not whether it might not be worth a poet's while to travel, in order to store his mind with strong images of nature. Green fields and groves, flowery meadows, and purling streams, are nowhere in such perfection as in England; but if you would know lightsome days, warm suns, and blue skies, you must come to Italy; and to enable a man to describe rocks and precipices, it is absolutely necessary that he pass the Alps.' A story was long current that while at Paris Berkeley visited Malebranche, then in ill-health; and a dispute as to Berkeley's theory of the external world so excited the French philosopher that a violent access of his ailment carried him off in a few days! In reality Berkeley was still in England when Malebranche died. On his return he published a Latin tract, De Motu. In an Essay towards preventing the Ruin of Great Britain (1721) Berkeley says he would regard the collapse of the South Sea scheme as a blessing if it should make all honest men of one party, put religion and virtue in countenance, and ‘turn our thought from cozenage and stock-jobbing to industry and frugal methods of life;' denounces that fearful prevalence of bribery and perjury; makes proposals for new taxes (on bachelors, &c.) and for improving many manufactures; calls for the interposition of the legislature against the ruinous folly of masquerades and for the reformation of the drama; recommends the enaction of comprehensive sumptuary laws, and for the suppression of the more aggressive forms of freethinking. 'I am not,' he says, 'for placing an invidious power in the hands of the clergy or complying with the narrowness of any mistaken zealots who should incline to persecute Dissenters. But whatever conduct common sense as well as Christian charity obligeth us to use towards those who differ from us in some points of religion, yet the public safety requireth that the avowed contemners of all religion should be severely chastised. And perhaps it may be no easy matter to assign a good reason why blasphemy against God should not be inquired into and punished with the same rigour as treason against the king.'

Through Pope he was recommended to the Duke of Grafton, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who

made him his chaplain and secured for him the deanery of Derry. The benevolent philosopher had long been cherishing a scheme for converting the savage Americans to Christianity, by a college to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda.' In this college he most 'exhorbitantly proposed,' as Swift commented, a whole hundred pounds a year for himself, forty pounds for a fellow and ten for a student.' No anticipated difficulties could daunt him; coadjutors were obtained, a royal charter was granted, and Sir Robert Walpole promised £20,000 from Government. In January 1729 Berkeley and his friends landed at Newport in Rhode Island; in August the saintly missionary (who had no scruple about holding negro slaves) removed inland, having bought a farm and built a house. But when Walpole declined to advance the sum promised, the project was at an end Berkeley returned to Europe, and was in London in February 1732. Next month appeared the largest and most finished of his works, Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher, a religious presentation of nature giving pleasant pictures of American scenery and life, conveyed in a series of dialogues, which in scope and charm have often been compared with Plato's. Berkeley became a favourite with Queen Caroline, and, in 1734, was appointed to the bishopric of Cloyne. Lord Chesterfield afterwards offered him the see of Clogher, which was double the value of that of Cloyne; but he declined the preferment. Some useful tracts on schemes for ameliorating Irish social conditions were published by the Bishop. One of them was The Querist (1735-37), containing many acute suggestions; that called Siris (1744), a chain of philosophical reflections on the medicinal virtues of water in which pine-tar has been stirred, cost him, he said, more thought than any of the rest of his works. The resin of the tar is compared with the creative spirit present in nature; the thought has a neoplatonic flavour. His last literary labour was a tract, Further Thoughts on Tar-water (1752). The best way of making this panacea, he thinks, is 'in a stone jug or earthen vessel, throughout well glazed,' and by no means in a metallic vessel. By increasing the proportion of tar to the water and by stirring it longer, tar-water may be made strong enough for a spoonful to impregnate a glass, a thing very useful on the road.' 'Tar-water must be drank warm in agues, small-pox, measles, and fevers, in cholic and disorders of the bowels, in gout also and rheumatism; in most other ailments cold or warm at the choice of the patient. In fevers the patient cannot begin too soon or drink too much.' He records a case of an old woman cured in a fortnight of combined ague, colic, and jaundice by drinking three pints of warm tarwater every day.

Failing health (spite of tar-water) and bereavement led Berkeley, in 1752, to resolve to resign

his bishopric and settle in Oxford; and there next year he died. His dislike to the pursuits and troubles of ambition are thus expounded by him to a friend in 1747: 'In a letter from England, which I told you came a week ago, it was said that several of our Irish bishops were earnestly contending for the primacy. Pray, who are they? I thought Bishop Stone was only talked of at present. I ask this question merely out of curiosity, and not from any interest, I assure you. I am no man's rival or competitor in this matter. I am not in love with feasts, and crowds, and visits, and late hours, and strange faces, and a hurry of affairs often insignificant. For my own private satisfaction, I had rather be master of my time than wear a diadem. I repeat these things to you, that I may not seem to have declined all steps to the primacy out of singularity, of pride, or stupidity, but from solid motives. As for the argument from the opportunity of doing good, I observe that duty obliges men in high station not to decline occasions of doing good; but duty doth not oblige men to solicit such high stations.' The Bishop was a poet as well as a mathematician and philosopher. When inspired with his transatlantic mission, he enshrined in verse-somewhat tame for the inspiration-his apocalyptic vision of a transcendently glorious American world-empire, reviving the golden age on a vaster scale. The first line of the concluding verse has long since been quoted into a proverb.

Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and
Learning in America.

The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime
Barren of every glorious theme,

In distant lands now waits a better time,
Producing subjects worthy fame :

In happy climes where from the genial sun
And virgin earth such scenes ensue,
The force of art by nature seems outdone,
And fancied beauties by the true :

In happy climes, the seat of innocence,

Where nature guides and virtue rules,
Where men shall not impose for truth and sense
The pedantry of courts and schools:

There shall be sung another golden age,
The rise of empire and of arts,
The good and great inspiring epic rage,
The wisest heads and noblest hearts.

Not such as Europe breeds in her decay;
Such as she bred when fresh and young,
When heavenly flame did animate her clay,
By future poets shall be sung.

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.

Berkeley's Theory of Vision, long considered a philosophical romance, is now a part of scientific

optics. His doctrine of the immateriality of the outer world, which he insisted on regarding as the simplest, most obvious, and only logical way of interpreting our perceptions-that what is perceived is the perceptions, not a dead, inert world of matter lying behind them and (needlessly) inferred from them-puzzled his contemporaries, and has been consistently rejected by all 'common-sense' philosophers and laymen, though the dependence of matter on mind (not my mind but some mind) is a familiar element in idealist systems. Probably his chiefest aim was, by means of his immaterialism, to turn the tables on materialists, and confute those who taught that there is neither soul nor God by proving that we know only our own souls and can logically prove only the existence of other souls, including the Creative Spirit. He applied to the analysis and dissolution of the assumed outer material world the principles of Locke's psychology ; hardly foreseeing that Hume would afterwards, with greater audacity, apply the same principles to soul as such, and analyse it too, by cognate methods, into fleeting successions of sensations and feelings. Berkeley's philosophy is nowhere completely set forth in the form of a systematic treatise; but amongst English writers on abstruse philosophical problems he stands alone for lucidity and charm of exposition, for felicity of illustration, and for the union of gentle but humorous fancy with keen wit and trenchant logic. His style is clear and unaffected, with the easy grace of the polished philosopher; and his descriptions of external nature at times remind one of Izaak Walton. The following extracts, from the opening of the first and end of the last of the three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, show how skilfully he could manage this device for popularising abstract argument:

The Point in Dispute.

Philonous. Good morrow, Hylas: I did not expect to find you abroad so early.

Hylas. It is indeed something unusual; but my thoughts were so taken up with a subject I was discoursing of last night, that finding I could not sleep, I resolved to rise and take a turn in the garden.

Fhil. It happened well, to let you see what innocent and agreeable pleasures you lose every morning. Can there be a pleasanter time of the day or a more delightful season of the year? That purple sky, those wild but sweet notes of birds, the fragrant bloom upon the trees and flowers, the gentle influence of the rising sun, these and a thousand nameless beauties of nature inspire the soul with secret transports; its faculties too being at this time fresh and lively, are fit for these meditations, which the solitude of a garden and tranquillity of the morning naturally dispose us to. But I am afraid I interrupt your thoughts for you seemed very intent on something.

Hyl. It is true I was, and shall be obliged to you if you will permit me to go on in the same vein; not that I would by any means deprive myself of your company, for my thoughts always flow more easily in conversation

with a friend than when I am alone: but my request is, that you would suffer me to impart my reflections to

you.

Phil. With all my heart, it is what I should have requested myself if you had not prevented me.

Hyl. I was considering the odd fate of those men who have in all ages, through an affectation of being distinguished from the vulgar, or some unaccountable turn of thought, pretended either to believe nothing at all, or to believe the most extravagant things in the world. This however might be borne, if their paradoxes and scepticism did not draw after them some consequences of general disadvantage to mankind. But the mischief

lieth here; that when men of less leisure see them who are supposed to have spent their whole time in the pursuits of knowledge professing an entire ignorance of all things, or advancing such notions as are repugnant to plain and commonly received principles, they will be tempted to entertain suspicions concerning the most important truths, which they had hitherto held sacred and unquestionable.

Phil. I entirely agree with you, as to the ill tendency of the affected doubts of some philosophers, and fantastical conceits of others. I am even so far gone of late in this way of thinking, that I have quitted several of the sublime notions I had got in their schools for vulgar opinions. And I give it you on my word, since this revolt from metaphysical notions to the plain dictates of nature and common sense, I find my understanding strangely enlightened, so that I can now easily comprehend a great many things which before were all mystery and riddle.

Hyl. I am glad to find there was nothing in the accounts I heard of you.

Phil. Pray, what were those?

Hyl. You were represented in last night's conversation as one who maintained the most extravagant opinion that ever entered into the mind of man, to wit that there is no such thing as material substance in the world.

Phil. That there is no such thing as what philosophers call material substance, I am seriously persuaded: but if I were made to see anything absurd or sceptical in this, I should then have the same reason to renounce this that I imagine I have now to reject the contrary opinion.

Hyl. What! can anything be more fantastical, more repugnant to common sense, or a more manifest piece of scepticism, than to believe there is no such thing as matter?

Phil. Softly, good Hylas. What if it should prove that you, who hold there is, are, by virtue of that opinion, a greater sceptic, and maintain more paradoxes and repugnances to common sense, than I who believe no such thing?

Hyl. You may as soon persuade me, the part is greater than the whole, as that in order to avoid absurdity and scepticism I should ever be obliged to give up my opinion in this point.

Phil. Well then, are you content to admit that opinion for true, which upon examination shall appear most agreeable to common sense, and remote from scepticism?

Hyl. With all my heart. Since you are for raising disputes about the plainest things in nature, I am content for once to hear what you have to say.

Berkeley's Theory summed up.

Phil. With all my heart: retain the word matter, and apply it to the objects of sense, if you please, provided you do not attribute to them any subsistence distinct from their being perceived. I shall never quarrel with you for an expression. Matter, or material substance, are terms introduced by philosophers; and as used by them, imply a sort of independency, or a subsistence distinct from being perceived by a mind: but are never used by common people; or if ever, it is to signify the immediate objects of sense. One would think therefore, so long as the names of all particular things, with the terms sensible, substance, body, stuff, and the like, are retained, the word matter should be never missed in common talk. And in philosophical discourses it seems the best way to leave it quite out; since there is not perhaps any one thing that hath more favoured and strengthened the depraved bent of the mind toward atheism, than the use of that general confused term.

Hyl. Well but, Philonous, since I am content to give up the notion of an unthinking substance exterior to the mind, I think you ought not to deny me the privilege of using the word matter as I please, and annexing it to a collection of sensible qualities subsisting only in the mind. I freely own there is no other substance, in a strict sense, than spirit. But I have been so long accustomed to the term matter, that I know not how to part with it. To say, there is no matter in the world, is still shocking to me. Whereas to say, there is no matter, if by that term be meant an unthinking substance existing without the mind; but if by matter is meant some sensible thing, whose existence consists in being perceived, then there is matter: this distinction gives it quite another turn: and men will come into your notions with small difficulty, when they are proposed in that manner. For after all, the controversy about matter, in the strict acceptation of it, lies altogether between you and the philosophers, whose principles, I acknowledge, are not near so natural or so agreeable to the common sense of mankind and holy scripture as yours. There is nothing we either desire or shun, but as it makes or is apprehended to make some part of our happiness or misery. But what hath happiness or misery, joy or grief, pleasure or pain, to do with absolute existence, or with unknown entities, abstracted from all relation to us? It is evident, things regard us only as they are pleasing or displeasing: and they can please or displease only so far forth as they are perceived. Further therefore we are not concerned; and thus far you leave things as you found them. Yet still there is something new in this doctrine. It is plain, I do not now think with the philosophers, nor yet altogether with the vulgar. I would know how the case stands in that respect: precisely what you have added to or altered in my former notions.

Phil. I do not pretend to be a setter-up of new notions. My endeavours tend only to unite and place in a clearer light that truth which was before shared between the vulgar and the philosophers: the former being of opinion, that those things they immediately perceive are the real things: and the latter, that the things immediately perceived are ideas which exist only in the mind. Which two notions put together do in effect constitute the substance of what I advance.

Hyl. I have been a long time distrusting my senses; methought I saw things by a dim light, and through

false glasses. Now the glasses are removed, and a new light breaks in upon my understanding. I am clearly convinced that I see things in their native forms; and am no longer in pain about their unknown natures or absolute existence. This is the state I find myself in at present: though indeed the course that brought me to it I do not yet thoroughly comprehend. You set out upon the same principles that Academics, Cartesians, and the like sects usually do: and for a long time it looked as if you were advancing their philosophical scepticism; but in the end your conclusions are directly opposite to theirs.

Phil. You see, Hylas, the water of yonder fountain, how it is forced upwards in a round column to a certain height; at which it breaks and falls back into the bason from whence it rose: its ascent, as well as descent, proceeding from the same uniform law or principle of gravitation. Just so, the same principles which at first view lead to scepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.

The standard edition of Berkeley is that of Professor Campbell Fraser, with a Life and dissertations (4 vols. 1871; new ed. 1902). Professor Fraser also published a small monograph on Berkeley (1881) and Selections from Berkeley (5th ed. 1900). Mr A. J. Balfour wrote a biographical introduction to the edition of the works by G. Sampson (3 vols. 1897-99).

Joseph Butler (1692-1752), one of the greatest of English divines and moralists, was born at Wantage in Berkshire, the youngest of the eight children of a retired draper. With a view to the Presbyterian ministry, he attended a Dissenting academy at Gloucester, afterwards at Tewkesbury, where the future Archbishop Secker was his schoolfellow. About the age of twenty-two he joined the Church of England, and entered Oriel College, Oxford. Having taken orders in 1718, he was appointed preacher at the Rolls Chapel, where he preached those remarkable sermons which he published in 1726. The first three, On Human Nature, constitute one of the most important contributions ever made to moral science. He became prebendary of Salisbury (1721), and rector of Haughton-le-Skerne near Darlington . (1722); in 1725 he was presented to the 'golden rectory' of Stanhope, also in Durham. Here he resided in great retirement till 1733, busy on his Analogy. Secker wished to see him promoted to some more important position, and mentioned his name to Queen Caroline. The queen thought he had been dead. 'No, madam,' said Archbishop Blackburne (the jolly old Archbishop of York' who, according to Horace Walpole, 'had all the manners of a man of quality though he had been a buccaneer and was a clergyman'), 'he is not dead, but he is buried.' In 1733 Butler became chaplain to his friend Lord Chancellor Talbot, and in 1736 a prebendary of Rochester and clerk of the closet to Queen Caroline. In 1736 he published the Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, which, in the words of Chalmers, made him the 'Bacon of theology.' In 1738 he was made Bishop of Bristol, in 1740 Dean of St Paul's; in 1747 he declined the primacy; and in 1750 he was translated to the see of Durham.

Butler takes high rank amongst English moralists, and has had the very greatest influence on English ethical thinking. It is sometimes said that the sum total of his teaching is the insisting on the authority and supremacy of conscience. He developed Shaftesbury's moral sense into a higher and more authoritative conscience, he learnt from Aristotle and the Stoics, and he wrote against Mandeville and Hobbes, contending that the social impulses in man are no less natural than the appetites and self-regarding desires-that virtue is more consonant with human nature than vice. He not merely emphasises, as vigorously as Kant does, the indefeasibleness of the moral law, but shows ingenuity in constructing an argumentum ad hominem specially applicable to those who

(From an Engraving after a Picture in the possession of the
Bishop of Durham.)

deny his main thesis. This method of the argumentum ad hominem is especially characteristic of his great treatise, the Analogy. The keynote of the Analogy is to show that all the objections to revealed religion are equally applicable to the whole constitution of nature, and that the general analogy between the principles of divine government, as revealed in the Scriptures, and those manifested in the course of nature, warrants the conclusion that they have one Author. The argument is valid against the deists, but it lacks completeness as a defence of Christianity. Even then it seemed hardly enough to pose the deists; unfriendly critics thought the true method of defending Christianity was so to exhibit its excellences as to make objectors eager to embrace it. Pitt is reported to have said that it raised more doubts than it solved. Bagehot not unfairly said that we might expect revelation to explain the

difficulties to be found in the religious interpretation of nature, and not to add others of its own. Matthew Arnold and Mr Leslie Stephen are amongst those who find Butler's argument unsatisfying. Mr Gladstone was one of Butler's most enthusiastic defenders, and seemed even to argue that the Analogy is of as great apologetic value now as it was in Butler's own time.

But for materialists, positivists, thorough-going agnostics, Butler's arguments are irrelevant : unless you posit the existence of God, and the truth and binding force of 'natural religion,' the Analogy has no fulcrum to work from. In Butler's time the deists were the most conspicuous, the only considerable opponents of revealed religion; and most of them accepted the truths of natural religion as heartily as Butler did. Kant and Darwin had not as yet overthrown teleology, and the kind of evidences of religion then demanded were very different from what would now be required. The moral arguments in the Sermons of Butler are less antiquated than those of the Analogy. It was with deists more or less pronounced, and people liable to be influenced by their arguments, that Butler had to do; and it is by the cogency of his argument as addressed to them that he must be judged. Butler's great influence, and the place his Sermons and the Analogy secured in the Church and at the universities, owe little to the superficial graces of style. He was a severely logical writer, often dry, sometimes cumbrous, generally vigorous, clear, and effective, at times attaining the force of aphorism ; but even in the Sermons there is no declamation and little direct appeal to the feelings.

Probability in Religion.

It has been thought by some persons that if the evidence of revelation appears doubtful, this itself turns into a positive argument against it; because it cannot be supposed that if it were true, it would be left to subsist upon doubtful evidence. And the objection against revelation from its not being universal, is often insisted upon as of great weight.

Now the weakness of these opinions may be shown by observing the suppositions on which they are founded, which are really such as these—that it cannot be thought God would have bestowed any favour at all upon us, unless in the degree which we think he might, and which we imagine would be most to our particular advantage; and also that it cannot be thought he would bestow a favour upon any, unless he bestowed the same upon all -suppositions which we find contradicted not by a few instances in God's natural government of the world, but by the general analogy of nature together.

Persons who speak of the evidence of religion as doubtful, and of this supposed doubtfulness as a positive argument against it, should be put upon considering what that evidence indeed is which they act upon with regard to their temporal interests; for it is not only extremely difficult, but in many cases absolutely impossible, to balance pleasure and pain, satisfaction and uneasiness, so as to be able to say on which side the overplus is. There are the like difficultie, and impossibilities in making the due allowances for a change of temper

and taste, for satiety, disgusts, ill health-any of which render men incapable of enjoying, after they have obtained, what they most eagerly desired. Numberless, too, are the accidents, besides that one of untimely death, which may even probably disappoint the bestconcerted schemes, and strong objections are often seen to lie against them, not to be removed or answered, but which seem overbalanced by reasons on the other side, so as that the certain difficulties and dangers of the pursuit are by every one thought justly disregarded, upon account of the appearing greater advantages in case of success, though there be but little probability of it. Lastly, every one observes our liableness, if we be not upon our guard, to be deceived by the falsehood of men, and the false appearances of things; and this danger must be greatly increased if there be a strong bias within, supposed from indulged passion, to favour the deceit. Hence arises that great uncertainty and doubtfulness of proof, wherein our temporal interest really consists— what are the most probable means of attaining it, and whether those means will eventually be successful. And numberless instances there are in the daily course of life, in which all men think it reasonable to engage in pursuits, though the probability is greatly against succeeding, and to make such provision for themselves as it is supposable they may have occasion for, though the plain acknowledged probability is, that they never shall. Then those who think the objection against revelation, from its light not being universal, to be of weight, should observe that the Author of Nature, in numberless instances, bestows that upon some which he does not upon others, who seem equally to stand in need of it. Indeed he appears to bestow all his gifts with the most promiscuous variety among creatures of the same species-health and strength, capacities of prudence and of knowledge, means of improvement, riches, and all external advantages. And as there are not any two men found of exactly like shape and features, so it is probable there are not any two of an exactly like constitution, temper, and situation, with regard to the goods and evils of life. Yet notwithstanding these uncertainties and varieties, God does exercise a natural government over the world, and there is such a thing as a prudent and imprudent institution of life, with regard to our health and our affairs, under that his natural government. (From the Analogy, Part ii. Chap. vi.)

See the splendid edition of Butler's Works by Mr Gladstone (2 vols. 1896), his Subsidiary Studies on him (1896), Lives by Bartlett (1839), Collins (1881), and Spooner (1902), and Lightfoot's Leaders in the Northern Church (1890) and Mr Leslie Stephen's History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876). The editions of the Sermons and of the Analogy are innumerable.

John Leland (1691–1766), born at Wigan and educated at Dublin, became a Presbyterian minister in Ireland. He wrote industriously against Tindal, Morgan, and other deists, but is remembered specially from the often-quoted l'iew of the Principal Deistical Writers (1754-56).

William Warburton (1698–1779), Bishop of Gloucester, had a bold and original way of thinking, indomitable self-will and arrogance, ponderous learning, and a gift of copious utterance; he was eager to astonish and arrest the attention of mankind; but his writings, after passing like a splendid meteor across the horizon of his own age,