The Cloyne life was a very retired one, and Berkeley was almost as much, if not more out of the world there than he had been at Newport. His intercourse with old friends was mostly by letter. Secker, the Bishop of Bristol, and Benson, Bishop of Gloucester, are still the most valued correspondents among the friends of his later life. Gibson, Bishop of London, writes in dignified style about public events, and about the analyst controversy. Prior, his old school and college companion, is still his most useful friend, eager and ready as ever to take up and defend any one of his theories or fancies. Dean Gervais writes and receives beautiful letters about Cloyne and foreign politics. These were stirring times abroad. Frederick the Great was in Silesia, and even a student recluse cannot help thinking that 'We live in an age of revolutions so sudden and surprising in all parts of Europe, that I question whether the like has been ever known before.' Protestant clergymen were very much afraid of France governed by old Cardinal Fleury, but the excitement did not last long, and only reawakened when the next post-bag arrived. The letters from Cloyne give us beautiful glimpses into Berkeley's home-life. There are musical parties, and country visits, village charities, and small attempts at the introduction of manufactures, and his student life in his diocese was not entirely that of a recluse. Even at this period of his life, Berkeley's sympathies were active enough to lead him to undertake a somewhat long and tedious study of the causes of Irish distress and poverty, and more particularly of the famine and epidemic of 1741-2. The results of his investigations were published in the 'Querist' and in 'Siris.'
The 'Querist' was originally published in three parts. It consists of a series of queries concerning the state of Ireland and the remedies suggested. It is a remarkable book, and very little known; still more remarkable when we consider that it was written in 1735 by a bishop of the Irish Church Establishment. The central thought is expressed in the pregnant query, 'Whether a scheme for the welfare of the Irish nation should not take in the whole inhabitants; and whether it be not a vain attempt to project the flourishing of our Protestant gentry, exclusive of the bulk of the natives?'—and the introduction of manufactures, a national bank, the admission of Roman Catholics into Trinity College, Dublin, without compelling them to attend chapel or divinity lectures, and the election of Roman Catholics as justices of the peace, are some of the means of realizing such a scheme. Berkeley's belief in the healing powers of tar-water is better known, and his efforts to get it recognised as a panacea scarcely require mention. They occupied no small part of his last years in Cloyne.
During these last years we hear occasionally of an 'Oxford Scheme,' and there are traces in Berkeley's correspondence of efforts made to give up his bishopric for the sake of some minor preferment not requiring residence. The education of his sons and his own imaginative desire for a 'life academico-philosophical' seem to have been the motives. In August, 1752, he left Cloyne, and was not destined to see it again. The journey was more than his weakened body could bear. 'He was so much reduced by suffering that he had to be carried from his landing on the English shore, in a horse litter to Oxford.' He did not linger long in the beautiful University city in the enjoyment of a life to which he had so often looked forward, and during the months of his residence was almost withdrawn from society by disease and suffering. He was not altogether idle, however.
'In October, 1752, "A Miscellany containing several Tracts on various Subjects, by the Bishop of Cloyne," was published simultaneously in London and Dublin. With one exception, the Miscellany was a reprint of works previously published. But the old ardour was not extinguished. It contains also, "Further Thoughts on Tar-water," written probably during his last months at Cloyne; and prefixed to the Miscellany is a copy of Latin verses addressed to him by an English prelate on that absorbing enthusiasm of his old age.
'A third edition of "Alciphron," of which I have given a minute account elsewhere, was also published at this time. It is chiefly remarkable for its omission of those sections in the Seventh Dialogue which contain a defence of what has been called his Nominalism.'
The end was drawing near, and came almost unexpectedly. Professor Fraser tells us that
'The autumn and winter of 1752 wore passing away, as we may fancy, in that enjoyment of academic repose which was possible in weakness of body more or less disturbed by acute suffering. We are here left to fancy. One actual scene has alone been preserved. On the evening of Sunday, the 14th of January, 1753, Berkeley was resting on a couch, in his house in Holywell-street, surrounded by his family. His wife had been reading aloud to the little family party the lesson in the Burial Service, taken from the fifteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians, and he had been making remarks upon that sublime passage. His daughter soon after went to offer him some tea. She found him, as it seemed, asleep, but his body was already cold; for it was the last sleep—the mystery of death; and the world of the senses had suddenly ceased to be a medium of intercourse between his spirit and those who remained. "Although all possible means," we are told, "were used, not the least symptom of life ever afterwards appeared."'
And so one of the greatest and of the purest thinkers that England has ever seen passed away to his rest.
The philosophy of Berkeley is not so much a theory of matter as a philosophy of causality; and the great service which Professor Fraser has done to the history of philosophy is that he has so far made it clear that the one important contribution which Berkeley has brought to the stock of knowledge, the one doctrine of his which has been most fruitful, and most pregnant with results to after-philosophy, is his explanation of the word cause, and the place which he assigns to causality. Berkeley's polemic against abstract ideas, his theories of vision, and his discussions about the nature of ideas, are all subsidiary to this one great doctrine of the meaning and place of causality. It does occur to us that Professor Fraser, while keeping this clearly before him in his admirable elucidations, by prefaces and notes, has somewhat obscured it by dwelling at such length on the points of similarity between Berkeley and Reid and Hamilton. These Scottish philosophers struggled after a theory of matter from the beginning to the end; the reality of the external world, as if anybody ever questioned it, was their alpha and omega. They could think and write of scarcely anything else. But Berkeley's philosophy was a great deal deeper and wider. It was free from what we may perhaps call the provincialism of the Scottish school, which clung with tenacity to what was after all a very small strip in the wide dominion of philosophy, and could never free itself from the narrowness which such exclusiveness was sure to beget. His philosophical writings, containing new and striking thoughts, some of them only now bearing fruit, upon the great metaphysical problems of universals, substance, causality, and the organism of the universe, cannot without danger of misconception be compared at length with a system which thinks itself competent to classify all metaphysical systems according as they contain some one or other theory of perception. We repeat, then, Berkeley's philosophy is by no means merely a theory of matter or a doctrine of sense-perception—it is a philosophy of causality—of substance and causality if you will, but of substance as subordinate to causality.
We are quite aware that these views regarding Berkeley's philosophy have not met with general acceptance. The great proportion of Berkeley's critics, roughly speaking, may be set in two classes: those who believe that his theory is utter scepticism, which the first breath of common sense dissipates, and those who believe the Bishop's opinions to be harmless, because quite unimportant. Dr. Johnson kicks a stone, and Berkeley's theory is disproved. Dr. Reid runs his head against a lamp-post, and with the same important philosophical result.