V.
“Berkeley.—Ancient learning, exact science, polished society, modern literature, and the fine arts, contributed to adorn and enrich the mind of this accomplished man. All his contemporaries agreed with the satirist in ascribing
“‘To Berkeley every virtue under heaven!’
“Adverse factions and hostile wits concurred only in loving, admiring, and contributing to advance him. The severe sense of Swift endured his visions; the modest Addison endeavoured to reconcile Clarke to his ambitious speculations. His character converted the satire of Pope into fervid praise. Even the fastidious and turbulent Atterbury said, after an interview with him, ‘So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of any but angels, till I saw this gentleman.’[98] ‘Lord Bathurst told me,’ says Warton, ‘that the members of the Scribblers’ Club being met at his house at dinner, they agreed to rally Berkeley, who was also his guest, on his scheme at Bermudas. Berkeley, having listened to the many lively things they had to say, begged to be heard in his turn, and displayed his plan with such an astonishing and animating force of eloquence and enthusiasm that they were struck dumb, and, after some pause, rose all up together, with earnestness exclaiming, “Let us set out with him immediately!”’[99] It was when thus beloved and celebrated that he conceived, at the age of forty-five, the design of devoting his life to reclaim and convert the natives of North America; and he employed as much influence and solicitation as common men do for their most prized objects, in obtaining leave to resign his dignities and revenues, to quit his accomplished and affectionate friends, and to bury himself in what must have seemed an intellectual desert. After four years’ residence at Newport, in Rhode Island, he was compelled, by the refusal of government to furnish him with funds for his college, to forego his work of heroic, or rather godlike benevolence, though not without some consoling forethought of the fortune of a country where he had sojourned:
“‘Westward the course of empire takes its way:
The first four acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day,
Time’s noblest offspring is its last.’
“Thus disappointed in his ambition of keeping a school for savage children, at a salary of a hundred pounds a year, he was received on his return with open arms by the philosophical Queen, at whose metaphysical parties he made one, with Sherlock, who, as well as Smallridge, was his supporter, and with Hoadley, who, following Clarke, was his antagonist. By her influence he was made Bishop of Cloyne. It is one of his greatest merits, that though of English extraction, he was a true Irishman, and the first eminent Protestant, after the unhappy contest at the Revolution, who avowed his love for all his countrymen;[100] and contributed, by a truly Christian address to the Roman Catholics of his diocese, to their perfect quiet during the rebellion of 1745. From the writings of his advanced years, when he chose a medical tract[101] to be the vehicle of philosophical reflections, though it cannot be said that he relinquished his early opinions, it is at least apparent that his mind had received a new bent, and was habitually turned from reasoning towards contemplation. His immaterialism, indeed, modestly appears, but only to purify and elevate our thoughts, and to fix them on mind, the paramount and primeval principle of all things. ‘Perhaps,’ says he, ‘the truths about innate ideas may be, that there are properly no ideas on passive objects in the mind but what are derived from sense, but that there are also, besides these, her own acts and operations—such are notions;’ a statement which seems once more to admit general conceptions, and which might have served, as well as the parallel passage of Leibnitz, as the basis of modern philosophy in Germany. From these compositions of his old age, he then appears to have recurred with fondness to Plato, and the later Platonists: writers from whose mere reasonings an intellect so acute could hardly hope for an argumentative satisfaction of all its difficulties, and whom he probably either studied as a means of inuring his mind to objects beyond the visible diurnal sphere, and of attaching it, through frequent meditation, to that perfect and transcendent goodness, to which his moral feelings always pointed, and which they incessantly strove to grasp. His mind, enlarging as it rose, at length receives every theist, however imperfect his belief, to a communion in its philosophic piety. ‘Truth,’ he beautifully concludes, ‘is the cry of all, but the game of few. Certainly, where it is the chief passion, it does not give way to vulgar cares, nor is it contented with a little ardour in the early time of life; active perhaps to pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would make a real progress in knowledge, must dedicate his age as well as youth, the latter growth as well as first fruits, at the altar of truth.’ So did Berkeley, and such were almost his latest words.
“His general principles of ethics may be shortly stated by himself: ‘As God is a being of infinite goodness, His end is the good of His creatures. The general well-being of all men of all nations, of all ages of the world, is that which He designs should be procured by the concurring actions of each individual.’ Having stated that this end can be pursued only in one of two ways—either by computing the consequences of each action, or by obeying the rules which generally tend to happiness; and having shown the first to be impossible, he rightly infers, ‘That the end to which God requires the concurrence of human actions, must be carried on by the observation of certain determinate and universal rules, or moral precepts, which in their own nature have a necessary tendency to promote the well-being of mankind, taking in all nations and ages, from the beginning to the end of the world.’[102] A romance, of which a journey to an Utopia in the centre of Africa forms the chief part, called, ‘The adventures of Signor Gaudentio di Lucca,’ has been commonly ascribed to him; probably on no other ground than its union of pleasing invention with benevolence and elegance.”[103]