252 CHAPTER XIII. Bishop Berkeley, another friend of Butler, dies.-Anecdote of his thirst after knowledge.-His Theory of Vision.-Principles of Human Knowledge.-Arbuthnot's remark.-His Minute Philosopher.-Siris.-Interview with Malebranche. -His zeal for the spread of the Gospel.-Sails to the Bermudas. Disappointed of government grant for his College. Returns home.-Walpole's remark to bishop of London. Bolingbroke of Berkeley. Contrast between them. Berkeley made bishop of Cloyne.-His attachment to his diocese. - Health declines. Removes to Oxford, and dies there. His philosophical theory.-Butler and Berkeley compared. THE tomb had not long closed over the remains of Butler and Benson, when another eminent prelate, Bishop Berkeley, died, with whom Secker, in common with his two departed friends, had long lived upon terms of cordial intimacy. This extraordinary man was educated at Kilkenny, at a school on the Ormond foundation, and sat on the form which Swift had not long left. He entered at Trinity College, Dublin, on the 21st March, 1700, obtained a scholarship in 1702, and was admitted a fellow in 1707. Amongst some anecdotes of him at this period, of somewhat doubtful authority, it has been said, in illustration of his thirst after knowledge, that having witnessed a public execution, the contemplative stu dent felt an irresistible desire to experience the sensation of strangulation; and that, having arranged his measures for the experiment, he was left so long suspended by his assistant, as to have been nearly" sent to report the result of his physiological researches in the world of spirits*." An example of similar scientific daring terminated fatally to the younger Berthollet, a distinguished chymist, who enclosed himself in an atmosphere of carbonic acid, in order to ascertain the effects it would produce upon his system. For some time he continued to register his sensations, which appear to have been of the narcotic order, at length came a pause, and a word illegibly written, -the pen then fell from the hand that held it, and he was no more! In 1709, Bishop Berkeley published his Theory of Vision, in which he successfully pointed out the distinction between the impressions which arise from the outward senses, and the conclusions at which we habitually arrive from our inward sensations. He argued, that if the faculty of sight were suddenly obtained by a person who was born blind, he would be able to distinguish neither the form, magnitude, position, nor distance, of the objects he looked upon. He would only, he asserted, be conscious of new modifications in his own mind, until he could unite the sense of touch to that of sight, and thereby establish a positive * Vide Berkeley, Dublin University Magazine. communication with that which was external to himself. This theory, which had long been regarded as a visionary dream, was at length confirmed, by the celebrated case of the young man who obtained his sight after having been born blind, as recorded in Cheselden's Anatomy. The following year issued from the press his work entitled Principles of Human Knowledge ; in which he laboured to prove the non-existence of matter; and sought to show, that the qualities usually attributed to matter only exist in the mind, and are merely the result of our sensations. "When I deny sensible things an existence out of the mind," says Berkeley, "I do not mean my mind in particular, but all minds. Now it is plain they have an existence exterior to my mind, since I find them by experience to be independent of it. There is, therefore, some other mind wherein they exist during the intervals between the times of my perceiving them; as likewise they did before my birth, and would also after my annihilation. And as the same is true with regard to all other finite created spirits, it necessarily follows there is an omnipotent eternal Mind, which knows and comprehends all things, and exhibits them to our view in such a manner, and according to such rules, as he himself hath ordained, and which are by us termed 'the laws of nature.' Dr. Arbuthnot, who attended him during a violent attack of fever, playfully alluded to his theory of ideas, when, speaking of his recovery to Swift, he remarked, "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 on him so strong, that it was very hard to destroy it by introducing a contrary one." Besides his various metaphysical and other works, Bishop Berkeley printed Three Sermons on passive obedience,-wrote several papers in the Guardian against the prevailing errors of infidelity, and in 1732, published his Minute Philosopher. This work, which was a vindication of Christianity against Atheism and Fatalism, was composed during his residence in America, and exceedingly pleased the queen, into whose hands it was placed by Dr. Sherlock. Having suffered severely from nervous colic, and deriving great benefit from the use of tar-water, his benevolent disposition prompted him to publish, under the name of Siris, a chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries concerning the virtues of Tar-Water. Upon this production he employed unusual care and labour, and enriched it with much learned research and profound speculation. The apparent incongruity between its title and contents did not escape the notice of some of the literary censors of the day; which led Dr. Wharton to remark,—“ Many a vulgar critic has sneered at Berkeley's Siris, for beginning at tar-water, and ending with the Trinity; incapable of observing the great art with which the transitions in that book are finely made, where each paragraph depends upon and arises out of the preceding, and gradually and interceptibly leads on the reader from common objects to more remote, from matter to spirit,-from earth to heaven." While travelling in France, with the son of his college tutor, the bishop of Clogher, the interview took place between Berkeley and the French metaphysician Malebranche, which terminated so fatally to the latter. The scene is thus related, in an able and elaborate article upon Berkeley, in the Dublin University Magazine, for April 1836:-"It was during his passage through Paris, in the prosecution of his present tour, that he had that conference with the sagacious, yet visionary philosopher of France, to which we have more than once alluded. To express ourselves in the technical notation of their respective systems, Malebranche had the pleasure of beholding the idea of Berkeley in the Divinity, and Berkeley was presented by the Divinity with the idea of Malebranche. With notions so exalted beyond common conceptions, so alien to experimental investigation, and withal so closely resembling each other, we may reasonably expect a discussion as refined, as perplexing, and as vexatious, as any in the whole annals of metaphysical colloquy. Malebranche would naturally look the idealism of his younger companion upon |