George Berkeley(I2 March I685-14 january 1753)

john HollandPrinceton University

SELECTED BOOKS: An Essay towards a New Theoryof Vision (Dublin: Printed by A. Rhames for].Pepyat, 1709);

A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowl-edge . . . (Dublin: Printed by A. Rhames for].Pepyat, 1710);

Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous . . . (Lon-don: Printed by G. _]ames for Hy. Clements,17133

De Motu . . . (London: _]. Tonson, 1721);An Essay towards Preventing the Ruine of Great Britain

(London: Sold by J. Roberts, 1721);A Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in our

Foreign Plantations, andfor Converting the Sav-age Americans to Christianity (London: Printedby H. Woodfull, 1724);

Alciphron; or the Minute Philosopher, 2 volumes (Lon-don: Printed for]. Tonson, 1732); 1 volume(New Haven: Printed by Sydney for IncreaseCooke, 1803);

A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society of thePropagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts at theirAnniversary Meeting in the Parish Church of St.Mary-le-Bow on Friday, February I8, I 731 (Lon-don: Printed by j. Downing, 1732);

The Theory of Vision, or Visual Language. . . (London:Printed for J. Tonson, 1733);

The Analyst; or, a Discourse Addressed to an IndelMathematician . . . (London: Printed forTonson, 1734);

A Defence ofFree—Thinking in Mathematics . . ._(Dublin:Printed by M. Rhames for R. Cunne, 1735;London: Printed for J. Tonson, 1735);

Siris: A Chain of Philosophical Reexsand InquiriesConcerning the Virtues of Tar-Water, and DiversOther Subjects Cmmected Together and A rising Onefrom Another (Dublin: Printed by M. Rhamesfor R. Gunne, 1744; London: Printed for C.Hitch 8: C. Davis, 1744);

A Word to the Wise: Or, an Exhortation to the RomanCatholic Clergy ofIreland (Dublin: Printed by G.Faulkner, 1749; Boston: Printed by S. Knee-land, 1750);

A Miscellany Containing Several Tracts on Various Sub-jects (Dublin: G. Faulkner, 1752; L.ondon:

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Print.ed for1752).

Collection: The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop ofCloyne, edited by A. A. Luce and T. E._]essop, 9volumes (London: Nelson, 1948-1957).

Bishop Berkeley is undoubtedly more impor-tant to the history of philosophy than to Americanliterary and cultural history. Nevertheless, hisinterest in America and his influence on Americanthought are noteworthy. He lived for nearly threeyears in Newport, Rhode Island, where he wrote hisatt.ack on skepticism, Alciphron (1732). A benefactorof American education, he made signicantcon-tributions to the libraries of Yale and Harvard, andhe influenced the founders ofthe institutions whicheventually became Columbia University and theUniversity of Pennsylvania. His popular “Verses bythe author on the prospect of Planting Arts andLearning in America," which he wrote in [716 whileworking on plans for a college in Bermuda andincluded in A Miscellany (1752), provided readerswith a vision of the westward movement of civiliza-tion in which America supplants a decadent Europeas the seat ofculture. Finally, his philosophical sys-tem had a modest influence upon eighteenth-century American thinkers.

Bornnear Kilkenny, Ireland, in 1685, GeorgeBerkeley, the son of William Berkeley was sent,eleven years later, to Kilkenny College and, in 1700at the age of fifteen, to Trinity College, Dublin. In1707 he received a Master of Arts degree and be-came a fellow of the college, a position he retaineduntil 1724, when he was appointed dean of Derry.He published his first book, An Essay towards a NewTheory of Vision, in 1709 and expounded his epis-temologlcal theories in his next two works,A Treatiseconcerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710)and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous(1'?’13). It is upon these two works that his modernreputation rests.

In an argument aimed at rationalists andskeptics and designed to strengthen the forces ofreligion, Berkeley attacked the conceptsjohn Lockehad developed in An Essay Concerning Human Un-

DLB 31 George Berkeley

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George Berkeley, portrait by Van der Bank. The scene in the background reproduces the symbolic frontispiece in Alciphron(Bibliothéque Natitmale)

ders‘(anding (1690). Locke had argued that althoughsense experience provides the basis of all knowl-edge, one does not gain a direct perception of ob-jects. Rather, the senses transmit to the mind ideas,which are not the physical objects themselves butwhich represent them. Instead of perceiving ob-jects, the mind perceives ideas ofob_jects, and whilesome of these representations duplicate the origi-nals exactly, many others do not. Locke explainedthis assertion by distinguishing between the pri-mary and secondary qualities of objects. Theprimary qualities are absolute and inherentproperties-———size, shape, weight, place, and move-ment. Secondary characteristics, on the other hand,are not innate. Qualities such as color, sound, andheat are effects which an object’s primary proper-ties produce in beings possessing sense organs.Ideas o." the primary properties thus resemble theobjects themselves exactly; ideas of secondary qual-ities exist only relative to the observer.

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Berkeley argued that Locke’s theory was, infact, skeptical; if one does not perceive materialsubstances directly, then one can have no certaintythat one’s ideas actually resemble these objects. Hethen proceeded to declare invalid Locke's distinc-tion between primary and secondary qualities. First,he argued, primary properties cannot be separatedfrom the secondary: “Extension, figure, and mo-tion, abstracted from all other qualities, are incon-ceivable.” Further, primary properties can beshown t.o bejust as dependent upon the observer assecondary ones. When judging motion, one mustapply relative terms, such asfast or slow, to it. Shape,another primary quality, depends upon the positionof the observer. For these reasons, it becomes im-possible, Berkeley argued, to make a distinctionbetween inherent and merely perceived qualities.

He then discussed the reasons that all suchqualities can exist only in connection with the mind.The “absolute existence of unthinking things with-

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out any relation to their being perceived . . . seemsperfectly unintelligible. Their esse is percipi.” Inother words, shape can only refer to somethingwhich can be touched or seen, sound to somethingheard, and color to something seen. Such qualitiescannot exist apart from a perceiver. Berkeley triedto prove this contention further by asking thereader to think of something which exists com-pletely unperceived. It is impossible to do so, hesays, because, Hylas nally concedes, “As I wasthinking of a tree in a solitary place, where no onewas present to see it, methought that was to conceivea tree as existing unperceived or unthought of, notconsidering that I myselfconceived it all the while."

Berkeley, however, would have resisted beingclassed as a purely subjective idealist. He had, afterall, attacked Locke because he believed that his pre-decessor’s epistemology left man in a state of almostcomplete uncertainty. Further, he stated repeatedlythat the purpose of his own system was tojustify thecommonsense belief that we can have direct knowl-edge of the external world. Sensory qualities exist inrelation to a perceiver. If they were not perceived atall, then they would have no existence. Fortunately,God's constant observation of the world ensures theexistence of such objects. Describing Berkeley'sideas, T. E. jessop has written, “Sensory fact is onlyevidenced by our perceiving; it is constituted byGod’s.” The existence of God guarantees the truthof what one sees and ensures that objects will notcease to exist when one stops perceiving them.Berkeley's epistemological system thus ends as astatement of faith in revealed religion.

In 1713 Berkeley visited England for the firsttime. While in London he became associated withjoseph Addison, Richard Steele, and AlexanderPope, and was presented at court byjonathan Swift.From October 1713 to August 1714, and then againfrom 1716 to 1720, he toured the Continent.

In 1721, his An Essay towards Preventing theRaine of Great Britain was published. Here he casti-gated his contemporaries for relinquishing theirreligious values and succumbing to the lures ofgreed and skepticism. “Other nations have beenwicked," Berkeley opined. “But we are the first whohave been wicked upon principle.” The signs of thiscondition are plentiful: “Vice and villainy have bydegrees grown reputable among us; our infidelshave passed for fine gentlemen, and our venaltraitors for men of sense, who knew the world. Wehave made a jest of public spirit, and cancelled allrespect for whatever our laws and religion reputesacred. The old English modesty is quite worn off,and instead of blushing for our crimes we are

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ashamed only of piety and virtue.” Because of thesefailings, Berkeley ominously warned his readers“We have long been preparing for some greatcatastrophe" which may not lie far in the future, for"the final period of our State approaches."

Yet if Europe has been corrupted. there ishope that America will become the bearer of civili-zation. He expressed this beliefin a poem which hecirculated among friends in 1726 but did not pub-lish until 1752, “Verses by the Author on the pros-pect of Planting Arts and.Learning in America.”The civilization which is dying out in decadentEurope will eventually be reborn in full glory in '

America:

The Muse, disgusted at an age and clinicBarren of every glorious theme.

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

In happy climes where from the genial sunAnd 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 man shall not impose for truth and senseThe 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 ame did animate her clay,By future poets shall be sung.

This vision of decline and renascence reaches itshighest point in the final stanza, in which Berkeleysecs history as a vast drama, the finalact of whichwill be an American golden age:

Westward the course of empire takes its way;The four first acts already past,

A fth shall close the drama with the day;Time's noblest offspring is the last.

Unwilling simply to watch the spectacle take itscourse, Berkeley desired to help it along. In 1722 beconceived a plan for founding a college in Bermudain order to further the cause of knowledge in theNew World. The college would train “pastors of

DLB 31 George Berkeley

good morals and good learning,” he declared in aletter to his friend Sirjohn Percival. Such a collegewould teach not only English immigrants but also “anumber of young American savages,” who wouldthen “become the fittest missionaries for spreadingreligion, morality, and civil life among their coun-trymen.” He expanded upon these ideas in a pam-phlet published in 1724, A Proposal for the BetterSupplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations, andfor Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity.Here he argued that Bermuda was a better locationfor the college than any spot on the American con-tinent because conditions were, he had been in-formed, unfavorable on the mainland. The atmo-sphere on the continent was one of irreligion andmoral corruption, he wrote, and Harvard and Yalecould make lit.tle headway against this spirit. Ber-muda, on the other hand, was inhabited by honestand uncorrupted settlers, blessed with the finestclimate in the New World, and far safer than thecontinent from bands of marauding Indians.

In the next year, 1725, the British governmentgranted Berkeley a charter to establish St. Paul'sCollege on Bermuda and to serve as its presidentduring the first eighteen months ofits existence. Hethen began the job of raising the money requiredfor his venture, a task which became increasinglydifficult as evidence that he had overrated the ad-vantages of Bermuda mounted. By 1728 the ven-ture had made so little progress that Berkeley at-tempted to push his project forward by traveling toAmerica himself. In September 1728, several weeksafter his marriage to Anne Forster of Dublin, hesailed not to Bermuda but to Newport, Rhode Is-land, where he spent the next thirty-three monthsof his life.

While he was in Newport, his plan fellthrough, but he became, in numerous instances, abenefactor to budding American institutions. Hedonated to Trinity Church in Newport the firstorgan to reach New England. This gift, however,pales when compared with his extensive gifts to Yaleand Harvard. He donated 880 volumes——-on sub-jects as varied as agriculture, history, philosophy,and religion—-to Yale's library. In 1742, ten yearsafter this gift, the collection was estimated to ac-count for one-third of all books at Yale. To themore-established Harvard, Berkeley sent about 125volumes, most of which consisted of Latin classics.Berkelc-y’s beneficence to these institutions did notstop with the donation of books. When he had be-come certain that he would be unable to establish St.Paul’s College, he gave to Yale, for the token sum offive shillings, his home in Newport and the ninety-

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six acres of farmland, woodland, meadow, and or-chard which surrounded it. The income derivedfrom this land was to be used to support outstand-ing students.

His sojourn in America also gave him the op-portunity to make, in the person of Samueljohnson, an Anglican tutor at Yale, one of the fewcontemporary converts to his philosophical system.Johnson, at the time, was searching for aphilosophical system to take the place of the Puritantheories in which he had ceased to believe; there-fore, he began an extensive correspondence withthe older man in which he tested Berkeley's thoughtagainst other systems then prominent. In one seriesof letters, for example, they discussed the relativemerits of immaterialism and deism. Referring toBerkeley’s argument that God must exist in order toguarantee the continued presence of objects,Johnson wondered what this conception impliedabout God's nature. God must constantly act to keepthe world in existence, “to stand by it and influenceand direct all its motions.” The God of the deists, onthe other hand, is like a watchmaker who, in creat-ing the world, endows it with the ability to run, fromthen on, of its own accord, without his constantintervention. Does not,johnson wondered, the Godof the deists seem more powerful than Berl<eley’s ifsupreme being? Berkeley answered this query firstby exposing the faulty metaphor upon which deismoperated. When a watchmaker completes one of hisclocks, he relies upon forces over which he has nocontrol, such as gravity, to enable the machine tocontinue working. The “artificer is not the adequatecause of the clock; so that the analogy would not bejust to suppose a clock is in respect to its artist whatthe world is in respect of its creator.” Berkeley con-cluded his reply by asserting that the notion thatGod acts upon the world should in no way im-poverish our view of the deity. “For aught I can see,it is no disparagement to the perfection of God tosay that all things necessarily depend on Him . . .and that all nature would shrink to nothing, if notupheld and preserved in being by the same forcethat first created it.” Such exchanges would eventu-ally contribute much to Johnson's formulations inEtementa Phitosophica (1752).

While living in Newport, Berkeley attackedthe forces of skepticism not only in his letters butalso in a series of philosophical dialogues, Atciphron;or the Minute Philosopher. His targets here are An-thony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftsbury, who,in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times(1711) had laughed at religious orthodoxy andexalted the powers of nature, and Bernard Man-

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deville, whose Fable of the Bees (l'7l4) had arguedthat people are egoistic rather than altruistic, andthat vices should be indulged because t.hey lead to anation's economic prosperity. These opinions arerepresented in Berkeley’s dialogue by two free-thinkers, Lysicles and Alciphron, and refuted byEuphranor, a farmer, and Crito, a village parson. Inthe face of Alciphron’s glorification of nature asagainst “articial”religion and government, Eu-phranor is able to show that these two are universal,and therefore “natural to man, notwithstandingthey admit of sundry forms and different degreesof perfection.” Then, arguing against Mandcville,Euphranor and Crito demonstrate that vice andfreethinking, rather than contributing to t_hc publicgood, do in fact destroy a society; “a corruption ofprinciples works its ruin more slowly” than openrebellion, “perhaps, but more surely.” In the finaldialogue, Alciphron argues that grace is “but anempty name,” and Crito breaks through a series ofabstractions which have shrouded the concept byarguing that grace is God's active demonstration ofhis love for man. Grace, like faith, is “not an indo-lent perception, but an operative persuasion ofmind” which one can easily grasp when one ceasesto look at it as a dead abstraction. When Alciphronwas published, it immediately drew fire from Man-tleville, who complained that in Lysicles and Alci-phron, such “Undauntedness in assaulting, andAlacrity in yielding . . . never met in the same Indi-viduals before." On the other hand, the book founda place on the shelves of many, includingJonathanEdwards, who valued defenses of religion.

By March I731 Berkeley had realized that hewould never receive the money to establish the col-lege in Bermuda and, in September of that year, heand his wife left Newport and sailed for Britain. Hewas appointed bishop of Cloyne in 1734 and ful-filled his duties there for the next eighteen years. In1744, he published what was, for contemporaryreaders, his most popular book, Siris: A Chain ofPhilosophical Reexionsand Inquiries Concerning theVirtues of Tar-Water, and Divers Other Subjects Con-nected Together and Arising Onefrom Another, in whichhe extolls tar water as a cure for virtually all ill-nesses. This subject was to obsess him for the rest ofhis life.

In I749, Berkeley briefly put aside this newpreoccupation in order to advise Johnson about theproject of founding King's College (later ColumbiaUniversity), an institution designed to serve as afocal point for Anglicans in America. Having takento heart the failure of his design for Bermuda, hesuggested that, rather than “applying to England

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for Charters or Statutes (which might cause greattrouble expense and delay),” Johnson and his col-leagues should simply go ahead with their plans and“do the business quietly.” The faculties should bemade up of people from New England for “I amvery apprehensive none can be got in Old England(who are willing to go) worth sending.” Berkeleysuggested further that available funds should bespent not upon buildings but upon faculty, for the“chief concern must be to set out in good method,and introduce from the very first, a good taste intoSociety." The curriculum should concentrate uponthe classics and upon inculcating a concern for mo-rality. Prizes “may prove useful encouragement tothe students” and degree requirements should bebased upon the systems of Ox ford and Cambridgein order to “pave the way for admitting theirgraduates ad eundem in the British universities."When Johnson answered Berkeley's letter, he indi-cated that these suggestions had been forwarded toPhiladelphia, where Benjamin Franklin and otherswere also planning to establish a college. This cor-respondence constituted Berkeley's nal attempt tofurther the cause of education in the colonies. Hedied four years later, in Oxford.

Berkeley’s works were read and debated inAmerica through much of the remainder of thecentury. “Verses by the Author on the prospect ofPlanting Arts and Learning in America” becamepopular during the 17505 and 17605, a time inwhich concern about America’s cultural role wasgrowing. His poem served as a definitive expressionofideas about the westward movement of culture, aconcept which had become widespread. Travelingthrough the mid-Atlantic colonies in 1759, AndrewBurnaby, for example, noted that “an idea strangeas it is visionary, has entered into the minds of thegenerality of mankind, that empire is travellingwestward; and everyone is looking forward witheager and impatient expectation to that destinedmoment. . .

Berkeley’s philosophical ideas did not fare aswell, however; after a brief period in which theyfound a champion in Sam11elJohns0n, they quicklyfell into disrepute. Johnson's textbook ElementaPhilosophica, which Benjamin Franklin published inI752, was dedicated “To the Right Reverend Fatherin God, George, Lord Bishop of Cloyne, in Ire-land,” and bore the following acknowledgment ofits relation to the Irish philosopher: “Tho’ I wouldnot be too much attached to any one author orsystem; yet whoever is versed in the writings ofBishop Berkeley, will be sensible that I am in aparticular manner beholden to that excellent

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philosophy for several thoughts that occur in thefollowing tract. And I cannot but recommend it toany one that would think with exactness on thesesubjects, to peruse all the works of that great andgood gentleman. . . ." Like Berkeley and Locke,Johnson used the term ideas to refer to the “im-mediate objects of sense.” Ideas “must derive to usfrom an Almighty, intelligent active cause, exhibit-ing them to us, impressing our minds with them, orproducing them in us”; thus everything which manperceived had “an immediate dependence upon theDeity." As in Berkeley’s system, only God's percep-tion of all objects guarantees that they will not, whennot observed by other beings, drop out ofexistence.One “must infer the necessary existence of an eter-nal mind" in order to understand why unseen ob-jects continue to exist. Indeed, God is “the continualPreserver of all His creatures and consequently . . .the moment he should cease to will the continuanceof their existence, they must unavoidably cease anddrop into nothing."

Other colonial thinkers of the mid-eighteenthcentury rejected Be-rkeley’s system unambiguously.After Cadwallader Colden read De Mom at thesuggestion of Samuel Johnson, he wrote Johnsonthat “I think that the Doctor has made the greatestcollection in this and his other performances, ofindistinct and indigested conceptions from thewritings of both the ancients and the modernstthat Iever met with in any man's performances.”

The commonsense philosophy of ThomasReid eventually displaced Berkeley’s immaterialismin most colleges. Disciples ofphilosopher portrayed Berkeley as a fool who, inattempting to deliver (Ihristianity from the assaultofthe skeptics, had actually paved the way for DavidIlume’s much more lhoroughgoing skepticism.John Witherspoon, a Scottish minister who becamepresident of the College of New Jersey in 1768,

the Scottish -

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strove mightily, and in the end, successfully, to ex-tirpate what was left of Berkeley’s inuence.Hesucceeded eventually in demonstrating to the disci-ples of immaterialism that, as he put it in one of thelectures collected in his posthumous Works (1800),Berkeley’s system was simply “a wild and ridiculousattempt to unsettle the common sense ofmetaphysical reasoning.” By the end of theeighteenth century, serious defenders of Berke-leyan epistemology had virtually disappeared fromthe American intellectual scene.

Bibliography :T. E. Jessop,A Bibliography ofGeorge Berkeley, revised

and enlarged edition (The Hague: Mart.inusNijhoff, 1973).

Biography:A. A. Luce, The Life of George Berkeley, Bishop of

Cloyne (London 8c New York: Nelson, 1949).

References:D. M. Armstrong, Berkeley’s Theory of Vision

(Parkville: Melbourne University Press, 1960);Joseph J. Ellis,/lfter the Revolution (New York: Nor-

ton, 1979);Edwin S. Gaustad, George Berkeley in America (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1979);R. H. Popkin, “Berkeley’s Influence on American

Philosophy,” Hermathena, 82 (November1953): 128-141;

John Wild, George Berkeley (Cambridge: HarvardUniversity Press, 1936).

Papers:Berkeley's manuscripts are in the British Library,Trinity College, Dublin, and the National Library ofIreland.