Markham, the head master of Winchester, and afterwards archbishop of York. It is as follows: Gravissimo præsuli Seu ingenii et eruditionis laudem, Si amans patriæ, Obiit annum agens Septuagesimum tertium : L. H. P. There is, it is observable, an error of ten years in the statement of his age. Having been born in March, 1684, he died in January, 1753, which gives nearly 69 years of age at his death. The moral character of Berkeley, if not sufficiently indicated in the foregoing memoir, is universally known to all who take any interest in literary history. He is described as 66 a handsome man, with a countenance full of meaning and benignity; remarkable for great strength of limbs; and, till his sedentary life impaired it, of a very robust constitution." It remains to offer some account of his principal writings, which must always fix his place high among that class who have taken to themselves the title of philosophers. The estimate of Berkeley, as a metaphysical writer, is attended with those difficulties which must needs belong to questions which have no real data, and on which human opinion and subtlety can be exercised without limit. To see his intellectual character rightly, and to form some estimate of the tendencies so strongly and curiously displayed in his most eminent compositions, it may be useful to keep in view the peculiarities already pointed out in this memoir; his disposition to reject the conventions and received notions of society, and to turn, with fearless, but not always prudent or fortunate independence, to seek new methods and inferences for himself. This tendency, common, we are inclined to suspect, to a large class of reasoners, is pre-eminently characteristic of Berkeley. With the keenest perception of logical fallacy, he was, in some measure, the slave, rather than the master, of a boundless ingenuity in the invention of reasons: all that could be said for or against any opinion which it was his will, or which he considered it fit and right to maintain, and contest, seems to have been before him. But, far less sagacious in selecting than in maintaining, it depended on the previous truth or fallacy of his proposition whether his reasoning was to be just or the contrary. To the result, his understanding appears comparatively indifferent; in the selection of data, not scrupulous; but, in the chain of intermediate reasoning, he is perhaps unmatched. The subtlety, the invention, and intellectual daring, which rendered him a formidable opponent to all other sophists, were always ready to betray himself into error. Upon the whole, he affords a remarkable instance of the danger of maintaining truth by those weapons which have usually been employed in the propagation of error-a range of subtlety and specious invention which are not fit to be employed upon realities that, so far as human apprehension can go, are too gross and palpable for such nice and insubstantial instruments. Of these remarks, Berkeley's philosophical writings offer the very aptest examples. We shall begin with some notice of his celebrated immaterial theory; but for this, (according to our view of the question,) a brief digression is required. The origin of the entire class of reasoners among which Berkeley is to be numbered, may, perhaps, be referred to the conception of a pure intellectual science, by which mind and its laws might be reduced to a system reasoned out from assumed definitions, as in geometry. This at least will, for the present, serve our purpose, as it is involved, as a primary assumption, in the whole theories of Berkeley, Hume, &c.; and is a very main consideration often essential to the tracing of their errors and fallacies. Mr Locke, who, in point of fact, is the great antagonist of all metaphysical assumptions, and who, in his attempts to reason from observation alone, fell into some errors of method, which were in a measure incidental to such a (then) daring innovation; justly estimating the importance of unambiguous language as an instrument of communication, failed to notice and guard against the error which was then, and is still, liable to result from the use of definitions, in an inquiry upon a subject so little known as that upon which he was engaged. To define the fundamental assumption on which a theory is to be constructed, as in pure geometry, is an essential law of right reason; but in the a posteriori road to the analysis of existing facts, it is a most preposterous inversion of the only available process: this must begin by the observation of actual phenomena, which are the only admissible principles. In metaphysical science, the definition must be the end not the beginning; and it is to be observed, by the way, that all the vague and inconclusive writing of this entire class of writers since Locke, has arisen from their anxiety upon the subject of a precise nomenclature. To the distinct notice of such an error, there was in fact nothing to lead Mr Locke-he did not himself fall into it, but he did not guard against it, and his followers were misled by an imagined precedent. It had, till his time, been the universal custom to define for the purpose of theory-he defined, but it was only for clearness; and the consequence has unhappily been confusion. But, in Mr Locke's reasonings no error was thus incurred; because, in fact, he did not make any use of the definition thus laid down, but proceeded to exercise his sagacity upon phenomena alone. He was soon followed by a succession of genuine metaphysicians, who, for the most part, misunderstood his language so far as it had direct meaning, and adopted his error as a foundation for their researches. His definition of a simple idea, false in terms, was not so in the intent of Mr Locke. While he availed himself of it no further than it was true, they seized upon it in its verbal sense, in which it was a most extravagant assumption, and followed it out with a fidelity irrespective of facts, which, as it were, stared them in the face. Mr Locke has, we should observe, been subsequently mistaken by both critics and students, who were far from falling into the errors of Berkeley and Hume. Of these all have agreed that his definition is erroneous; but many have committed the oversight of insisting that he meant the error it contains, because the same error frequently appears involved in his language; while some, very justly, if they went but a little further-have observed that this language is frequently inconsistent. But such was the result of having an unguarded definition, and a loose language, while not a single stage of his reasoning ever depended on either, but upon a very close observation of the intellectual phenomena. It was only that he might be understood that he defined; but, not designing any system constructed out of his use of words, he neglected to perceive to what consequences his definitions exposed him. And to those who are under the impression that he meant more than is here assigned, we must suggest that, although he obviously endeavours to use the same words in the same sense, yet he never, in any one instance, attempts to theorize upon this definition. From this definition, indeed, the consequences are so plain, that it must have led him very much into Berkeley's view. How then is it-it may be asked— that Locke has fallen into an error seemingly so gross? We think it obviously thus: the elementary phenomena of the mind are, so far as we know them, more simple than any thing or fact by which they can be explained they can be referred to no genus, and cannot be defined. The attempt involves some assumption for which there can be no warrant, and therefore involves some theory which is unlikely to be true, and impossible to prove. But Locke actually did not intend a logical definition-he fell into such, inadvertently, in the attempt to give a meaning. This was the process of his mind. As this book is to be about ideas, I must begin by telling what I mean by an idea; for, though it is a word which every person of common sense understands very well, yet the philosophers, whose extreme penetration is too great to understand anything, may, as they have done, object or assign some scholastic sense, conformable with old theories. By an idea, I mean no more than the thought which passes through the mind when thinking, whatever it may be; that is to say, the object of the mind in thinking. This unhappy periphrasis for the word thought was liable to an obvious construction, by simply turning an idiom of speech into scientific precision. Had Locke said, "the act of the mind when thinking, or the state, or process," this error would have been escaped, though other fallacies might have been devised by human ingenuity. But it was easy to see that this object of the mind must be something distinct from the mind itself, and it was easy to prove it to be distinct from any external thing. But let us now turn to the consequences deduced by Berkeley from this fruitful error. If a simple idea is the object perceived by the mind, and if it can be shown that it has no ascertainable relation to the external thing of which it is the supposed representative, it becomes plain that there is no certain evidence of the real existence of the thing of which such uncertain representations are thus presented to the mind. In this point the entire of Berkeley's argument will be found. Among the various fallacies which are comprised in it, besides that which we have noticed at length, there are others also worth observation. Were we to grant the unwarrantable definition, the argument, at most, but goes prove what should in common sense have been seen at the outset, that the actual existence of external things cannot be demonstrated from the mere fact of our perceptions. Of this Berkeley had a full sense; and, consequently, his conclusion is afterwards stated by himself to be, not that the external world does not exist, but that we have no direct perception of its existence, and that this existence is in the mind of God, in which we perceive it, that is to say, that those ideas which are the actual objects of the mind in thinking, are ideas in the mind of God. to Now, it is curious with what narrow precision Berkeley has, in the course of this argument, excluded on every side every portion of fact which did not suit his reasoning. For, granting the idea to be a distinct object, still, those very variations of appearance, and that want of unchanging coincidence between the idea and the thing, from which he disproves the evidence which the senses are supposed to give of such things, are so far from correctly leading to such a conclusion, that they are absolutely the very best proof that can be found of the reality of external phenomena. They are the demonstrable and calculable results of the properties of external phenomena-distance, motion, magnitude, &c.; insomuch, that a much better argument can be constructed from the same considerations for, than against, the direct evidence of our perceptions. We do not mean to affirm that this would amount to a demonstration; but it would certainly destroy the force of any opposite inference from the same premises. And, what is equally curious, were those variations and differences wanting, the fact would lead with far more conclusiveness to Berkeley's theory. Could we perceive no differences of degree in operations and processes, it is evident that we could not perceive them at all: it would imply a contradiction in terms. If we could see a house at the distance of a mile, and at twenty yards, so as to give precisely the same image, we should have demonstration against the evidence of sight. As for our perception of ideas in the mind of the Supreme Being, it seems to contain a strange oversight. It is indeed evident to what an extent Berkeley, and all the reasoners of his class, have reasoned exclusively on certain words and definitions, so as entirely to shut out all the ordinary conditions inseparably connected with all knowledge. If this proposition were simply to be confined to a certain limited class of ideas, which are those evidently contemplated by Berkeley, it would be difficult to deal with his assertion. But what is true of a simple idea, is universally true of every idea on the very same ground; and, consequently, the whole farrago of human folly, sin, error, and contradiction, must be the substance of the divine thoughts-even the doubts of his existence must be among the heterogeneous mass. When he affirms or attempts to prove that things can have no real existence distinct from their being perceived, it is quite plain that his asserting that he does not deny their real existence, amounts to nothing; for such is not the meaning of real existence. The argu ments by which he reduces things to ideas absolutely destroy their real existence, in any sense but that of a fleeting succession of contradictory thoughts. Το pursue this question farther is beyond our limits, and the design of this work. Berkeley was accused of overlooking the statements of the Scripture with respect to the creation—the consideration which stopped Malebranche. But, indeed, it is easy to see how Berkeley could dispose of such an objection. It would be no long step to transfer Scripture to the mind from which it came; yet the answer, too, is ready-Scripture is not merely a train of ideas, but of affirmations and negations about an external state of things, and these must be true or false. We must now pass to another Essay of less importance, did it not curiously illustrate all the same dispositions of the mind,-the zeal that would maintain truth by any power of sophistry, or even at the sacrifice of reason itself. As arguments drawn from the properties of matter had been used in support of atheism, he thought it a sufficient reason for the denial of the existence of matter; so, as an eminent mathematician had thought it reasonable to assail Christianity on the ground of its mysteries, Berkeley made an attack on an important branch of mathematics on the same ground. There is, indeed, in the very conception, a singular oversight in Berkeley's Analyst. To answer the alleged intention of his argument, it should run thus,-You affirm that Christianity is untrue, because it consists of certain mysteries; I will show you that there are similar mysteries in mathematics, which is true nevertheless. Now, if this argument should be conducted by showing the fallacy of these mathematical mysteries, it simply rejects them as false mathematics, or, at best, leaves the objection of the deist untouched; for, to complete the analogy in which the answer consists, the mysteries of Christianity should also be given up. If, however, Berkeley had shown that such contradictions, or such inconclusive reasonings as he points out in the fluxionary calculus are such but apparently, and by reason of the fact that the secret of the intellectual process had not been found out, he would then have precisely done what he proposed; for, the mysteries of divine truth are nothing more in this respect than facts, of which but part is known, and which are not within the limits of human knowledge. When we first chanced to look at the Analyst, we were under the impression that such was actually the design of Berkeley, and that his controversial tone and allegations of sophistry were but the trick of reasoning to set the point in its broadest light. But, in fact, he is bitterly and angrily sincere, and seems altogether to lose sight of his purpose in the heat of controversy. The argument, however, exhibits both the acuteness of his reason, and—may we venture to say it?-the unsoundness of his judgment. To grant his conclusion and take the question in its most difficult aspect; a certain process, one of the steps of which is a false assumption, leads, by some process not |