No More Learning

The idealism of Berkeley followed
directly from his fundamental positions ; the leaders of the deists
professed themselves his disciples, though they arrived at con-
clusions different from his ; the work of the moralists was less
fully determined by his speculations, though his ethical views were,
perhaps, seldom far from their minds. In the present chapter,
this division of problems will be followed ; it will treat, in
suecession, of the metaphysicians, the deists and the moralists.
Most writers, indeed, did not limit their interests to a single
problem; and their place here will have to be determined by
a view of the permanent importance of their work in different
departments. Strict chronological order, also, to some extent,
will be sacrificed. In this way, consideration of the writings of
Samuel Clarke, for instance--although he was a prominent
figure in the whole philosophical movement, and one of the
earliest to attain éminence will be postponed till the last section
of the chapter.


## p. 280 (#304) ############################################

280 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
I. METAPHYSICIANS.
George Berkeley was born at Dysert castle, county Kilkenny,
Ireland, on 12 March 1685, and educated at Kilkenny school and
Trinity college, Dublin, which he entered in 1700 and where he re-
mained, first as a scholar, afterwards as fellow and tutor, till January
1713. These early years are the most remarkable in Berkeley's
literary career. He published, anonymously, two mathematical
tracts in 1707; his Essay towards a new theory of vision appeared
in 1709, his Principles of Human Knowledge, part I, in 1710; and
when, in 1713, he got leave of absence from his college and set out
for London, it was 'to print his new book '-Three Dialogues
between Hylas and Philonous—as well as 'to make acquaintance
with men of merit. ' These three books reveal the new thought
which inspired his life ; and the evidence of his Common place
Book (discovered and published by Campbell Fraser in 1871)
shows that he was barely twenty years of age when this new
thought took hold of him. Berkeley was absent from Ireland for
eight years, spending his time in London, France and Italy
(where, on a second visit, he resided four years). During this
period, he did little literary work; he made some progress, indeed,
with the second part of his Principles, but the MS was lost in his
travels, and the work was never resumed; his Latin treatise De
motu was written as he was on his way home in 1720, and published
in 1721; he collected materials for a natural history of Sicily, but
this MS also was lost; a journal written in Italy, however, and
many letters remain to show his appreciation of the beauties of
nature and art. His return to England gave a new direction to
his energy
The country was in the period of collapse which
follows a speculative mania ; and Berkeley saw the true cause
of the national disaster in the decline of religion, the decay of
public spirit and the prevalent corruption of manners. One
hundred and forty years later, Mark Pattison described the
period as an age whose poetry was without romance, whose
philosophy was without insight, and whose public men
without character? ' A similar judgment forms the burden of
Berkeley's Essay towards preventing the ruin of Great Britain,
published anonymously in 1721. He returned to Ireland and to
Trinity college later in the same year, and was presented to the
deanery of Dromore. The office attracted him because it would
give him leisure for reflection and for philanthropic work; but
1 Essays and Reviews, 1860, p. 254.
were


## p. 281 (#305) ############################################

Berkeley in America 281
a legal question arose as to the right of presentation, and his
hopes received a check. Berkeley is one of the most perfect
a
characters among men of letters; but his perfection was not
colourless. He threw himself with energy into the defence of
his rights, and at least had the satisfaction of a protracted
lawsuit. While the case was still pending, in 1724, he was
appointed to a much more valuable preferment~the deanery of
Derry. “It is said to be worth £1500 a year,' he wrote, 'but I
do not consider it with a view to enriching myself. I shall be
perfectly contented if it facilitates and recommends my scheme
of Bermuda' This scheme seems to have taken hold of Berkeley's
mind about two years previously; to it he devoted his fortune
and ten years of his life. His plan was to found a college in the
Bermudas, with the twofold object of the reformation of manners
among the English in our western plantations, and the propagation
of the gospel among the American savages. ' Berkeley spent four
years in London in endeavouring to extract a charter and grant
of money from a reluctant government and subscriptions from
an unbelieving generation; he had to frequent the court and
dispute twice a week with Samuel Clarke before queen Caroline,
then princess of Wales ; he listened to the banter of the wits
of the Scriblerus club, and then replied with such eloquence
and enthusiasm that they'rose all up together, with earnestness
exclaiming, “Let us set out with him immediately”'; he canvassed
every member of parliament with such effect that, in the Commons,
there were only two opponents of the vote; even Walpole sub-
scribed to the scheme, though he secretly determined that the
government grant of money should never be paid. Bermuda
became the fashion, and Berkeley was idolised. But he grudged
the waste of time, and, at last with only a promise from Walpole
that the grant would be paid-he set sail from Greenwich in
September 1728, with his newly-married wife. In January 1729,
he landed at Newport, Rhode island. There he remained for
nearly three years, waiting vainly for the government to fulfil
its promises. This it never did ; he never reached Bermuda, and
his college was never founded; but he left his impress upon the
early efforts of American philosophy ; his interpretation of the
material world modified the thinking of Jonathan Edwards, the
metaphysician and theologian of New England ; and the memory
of his visit has been treasured by the American mind. The new
world also affected Berkeley's imagination and led to a set of
Verses on the prospect of planting arts and learning in America.


## p. 282 (#306) ############################################

282 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
6
One of his lines—Westward the course of empire takes its way
-has come to be looked upon as prophetic; but his idea was
not geographical ; it was that better times would follow better
morals, where nature guides and virtue rules. '
Berkeley remained in London for more than two years after his
return to England; and a new period of authorship began, during
which he joined in the controversies of the age. In Alciphron, or
the Minute Philosopher (1732), written in the seclusion of his home
in Rhode island, he applied his general principles in defence of
religion against the free-thinkers. In 1733 appeared his Theory of
Vision, or Visual Language Vindicated and Explained ; and, in
the following year, he published The Analyst, in which he criticised
the positions of the new mathematics which, in his view, were
connected with a materialistic conception of the world. This bold
attempt to carry the war into the enemy's country called forth
many pamphlets on the other side. In the same year, Berkeley
returned to Ireland as bishop of Cloyne ; and, henceforth, his
literary work was divided between questions of social reform
and religious reflection. The reform is represented by The
Querist (1735), a work full of penetrating remarks ; both subjects
are combined in Siris: a Chain of Philosophical Reflexions
(1744), which begins by expounding the medicinal virtues of
tar-water, and ends in an exposition of idealism in which the
Lockean strain has given place to the Platonic. A Miscellany
containing several tracts was published in October 1752. Two
months earlier he had left Cloyne, that he might spend the
remainder of his days at Oxford ; and there he died on 14
January 1753.
When Berkeley launched his idealism upon an unsympathetic
world, he had read Descartes and Malebranche and been attracted
by the philosophy of Plato; he was also acquainted with the
works of the mathematicians and natural philosophers, and sus-
pected a trend to materialism in their theories ; but his thought
had been formed under the influence of Locke, whose Essay
found earlier recognition from the academic authorities at
Dublin than from those of English universities. At the time
when Berkeley entered Trinity college and for ten years after-
wards, the provost was Peter Browne, afterwards bishop of Cork,
a student and critic of the Essay. He had already attracted
attention by an Answer to Toland (1697). His more original
works followed after a long interval—The Procedure, extent and
limits of human understanding, in 1728, and the work called, for


## p. 283 (#307) ############################################

283
>
A New Theory of Vision
short, Divine Analogy, in 1733. These two books are connected
with Berkeley's later work, for the theory of our knowledge of God
propounded in the former is criticised in one of the dialogues of
Alciphron, and the criticisms are replied to in Browne’s Divine
Analogy. Browne could not accept Locke's account of knowledge
by means of ideas, when it came to be applied to mind. Mind and
body, he held, are not known in the same way. We have, indeed,
ideas of our mental operations as these are connected with the
body; but minds or spirits—whether divine or human-can be
known only by analogy. This view, Berkeley, in later life, attacked;
but it points to a difficulty in his own theory also—a difficulty
which he came to see, without fully resolving it. There is, how-
ever, no sufficient evidence for saying that Browne had any
direct influence upon Berkeley's early speculation.
Berkeley's theory emerges full-grown, if not fully armed. Even
in his Common-place Book, there is no hesitation in the references
to my doctrine,' 'the immaterial hypothesis. ' Only persons exist:
'all other things are not so much existences as manners of the
existence of persons. ' He knows that'a mighty sect of men will
oppose me,' that he will be called young, an upstart, a pretender,
vain; but his confidence is not shaken : 'Newton begs his prin-
ciples; I demonstrate mine. ' He did not, at first, reveal the whole
truth to the world. An Essay towards a new theory of vision
deals with one point only—the relation between the objects of
sight and those of touch. Molyneux had once set the problem
to Locke, whether a man born blind, if he recovered his sight,
would be able by sight alone to distinguish from one another a
cube and a sphere, with which he had been previously acquainted
by touch. Molyneux answered his own question in the negative,
and Locke expressed agreement with his solution and admiration
for the insight which it showed. Berkeley was of one mind with
them about the answer to the query, but for a more fundamental
If extension be an idea common to sight and touch (as
Locke held), then visible squareness must be the same as, or
have something in common with, tangible squareness. In virtue
of this, the man born blind, so soon as he is made to see,
should be able to distinguish between a visible square and a
visible circle and to identify this distinction with the distinction
between the square and the circle already known by touch.
If he is unable to do so, it is because there is nothing in
common between the visible object and the tangible. And this
is Berkeley's view.
reason,


## p. 284 (#308) ############################################

284 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
The objects of sight and touch make, if I may so say, two sets of ideas
which are widely different from each other. 'A man born blind,' he says,
'being made to see, would at first have no idea of distance by sight: the sun
and stars, the remotest objects as well as the nearer, would all seem to be in
his eye, or rather in his mind. '
A great part of the Essay is devoted to an explanation of the
apparent immediateness with which the distance of an object is
seen. But the essence of the whole consists in two propositions-
that the objects (or ideas) of sight have nothing in common with
the objects of touch, and that the connection of sight and touch
is 'arbitrary' and learned by experience only. The connection
is arbitrary; but it is regular and constant. What we see suggests
to us what we may expect to touch and handle. The whole
visible world—as was further enforced in his Theory of Vision
or Visual Language-consists of a set of signs which, like a
language, have for their purpose to convey a meaning ; though
they neither resemble nor cause that meaning, nor have any
necessary connection with it. In using sight to guide our move-
ments, we interpret the language of God.
Some of the details of Berkeley's Essay need revision in the
light of modern study of the senses. But this does not obscure its
merit as one of the most brilliant pieces of psychological analysis
in the English language. A more serious objection to it is that
the author pushes too far his war against abstractions. It is true,
as he urges, that sight and touch have no common element that
can be separated from both and become an independent pre-
sentation. Against 'abstract ideas' of this sort, his polemic was
fully justified. But the different senses are not disconnected
either in genesis or in function, and reflection may discover
certain lines of similarity among their processes. Berkeley
decides too quickly that the connection is arbitrary, because of
the striking difference in their contents, and because one cannot
be called cause and another effect; and he argues too easily from
this arbitrary connection to divine volition. He never gave the
same close attention to the conceptual factor in knowledge as
he gave to sense and imagination, and in his early work the
conceptual factor is almost entirely ignored.
The Essay did not disclose all that was in Berkeley's mind.
It kept to its topic, the relation of the objects of sight to those
of touch, and it did not question the views commonly held about the
latter. The full revelation came, a year afterwards, in A Treatise
concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. This small
volume, more talked about than read at the time it took twenty-


## p. 285 (#309) ############################################

Berkeley's Idealism
285
four years to reach a second edition is one of the works which
have had a critical influence upon the course of European thought.
Its importance, in this respect, ranks it with Locke's Essay
and Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. The fresh step which
Berkeley took was short and simple and easy; when taken, it
shows us the whole world from a new point of view. Locke had
said that all the objects of knowledge are ideas, and he had thus
much difficulty-as, indeed, Descartes had had before him-in
defending the reality of the things which he supposed to be
represented by the ideas. Berkeley solves the difficulty by
denying the distinction. The ideas are the things. 'It is indeed
an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, moun-
tains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence,
natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the
understanding. But the opinion needs only to be called in
question to show the contradiction it involves; for these objects
are the things we perceive by sense, and we perceive nothing
but our own ideas. With magnificent confidence, he passes at
once to the assertion:
Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need
only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz.
that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those
bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any sub-
sistence without a mind; that their being is to be perceived or known.
As regards material things, therefore, a single phrase expresses
Berkeley's thought : 'their esse is percipi. Theirs is a passive,
‘
dependent existence. Active, independent existence can belong
to minds or persons only. From this position he never wavered,
though there is a good deal of difference between his earlier and
his later views. He saw that, as the existence of ideas consists
in being perceived, so mind must be regarded as perceiving.
'Existence. . . is percipi or percipere’ is one of his earliest state-
ments; and, as men may sleep or be rendered unconscious, he is
willing, at first, to accept the consequence that 'men die or are in
a state of annihilation oft in a day. But this solution seemed too
dangerous and was soon relinquished, and thus he held it ‘a plain
consequence that the soul always thinks. As there is no material
substance, so, also, there can be no material cause. Material
things, being our ideas and altogether passive, are related to one
another not as cause and effect but only as sign and thing
signified. We learn to understand their grouping, and thus one
idea suggests others, the like of which have followed it in previous
6


## p. 286 (#310) ############################################

286 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
experience; while further experience confirms the anticipation.
What we call laws of nature, therefore, are simply a statement
of the orderly sequences in which the ideas of the senses occur in
our minds. The material substance to which philosophers refer
these ideas as their cause is, he labours to prove, an unmeaning
and self-contradictory abstraction. Certain ideas—those which
we call ideas of imagination—are constructed by the individual
mind; but the ideas of sense, or sensible things, though they exist
only in the mind, are not caused by my mind or by any other
finite mind. There must, therefore, be 'an omnipresent 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 are by us termed the laws of nature. '
Berkeley's works, for the most part, are of the nature of
introductions, vindications, and polemics. He explained his new
principle and defended it and applied it to current controversies
with wonderful resource of argument and beauty of language, and
with the power that came from intense conviction. In Hylas and
in Alciphron, he used the dialogue form, with a skill never excelled
a
in English philosophical literature, to bring out the difficulties in
his view and to set forth their triumphant solution. But he did
not work out his spiritual interpretation of reality into a system.
He would answer an objection without following out the bearing
of his answer upon other portions of his philosophy. He began,
like Locke, by asserting that all the objects of our knowledge are
ideas; and he divided ideas into three classes : those of sense,
those of mental operations and those of memory or imagination.
To which class, then (we may ask), do knowledge of self, of other
finite spirits, of God and of the laws of nature belong? The
question does not seem to have occurred to Berkeley when, with
all the ardour of a discoverer; he wrote his Principles. But he
raises it in Hylas, and says that, in reflection, we have an
immediate knowledge of self as an active being and, by inference
therefrom, of other finite spirits and of God. This knowledge,
as well as our knowledge of laws of nature, is not through ideas,
and he calls it notion. We have, therefore, not merely ideas of
sensible things and of mental operations and of remembered or
imagined objects, but, also, notions of spirits and of laws. The
terminology was used again when he came to issue the second
edition of the Principles ; but he did not see that it required
a modification of the first sentence of that work which declares
that all the objects of human knowledge are ideas. How idea


## p. 287 (#311) ############################################

Arthur Collier
287
and notion are related to one another in knowledge, we cannot
gather from him. But this is clear : that ideas are inert and
fleeting, and that it is through notion that we become acquainted
with the permanent active forces of the real universe.
Berkeley stood at a parting of the ways in thought, though he
was hardly conscious of their divergence. On the one hand, his
principles that all knowledge is of ideas, and that all ideas are
of one or other of the three kinds enumerated by him, lead to
a view which excludes from knowledge not only material substance,
but mind, also, and the reign of law in nature. At times, especially
in his Common-place Book, he seems on the brink of drawing this
conclusion, and thus of anticipating Hume. Afterwards, he sees
it only as something to be guarded against. He could not think
of the idea as, so to speak, self-supporting. It exists only in so
far as it is 'in the mind': mind is the true reality, the only
agency; ideas exist only in minds, finite or infinite; and the
laws of nature are the order in which ideas are produced in us
by the infinite Mind. Spiritual agency, spiritual reality, is thus
his fundamental thought; and, in Siris, the last of his philosophical
works, this thought emerges from the midst of reflections on
empirical medicine and old-fashioned physiology. No longer
dominated by the Lockean heritage of the sensitive origin of
knowledge, his idealism is assimilated to the Platonic; the work is
full of comments on Neoplatonic writers, ancient and modern;
and there is an absence of the simplicity and clearness of his
earlier writings; systematic development of his theory is still
absent; but there is hardly a page without remarks of pregnant
insight, and he is everywhere loyal to the vision of truth with
which his career opened.
In 1713, three years after the appearance of Berkeley's
Principles, Arthur Collier, rector of Langford Magna, near
Salisbury, published a work entitled Clavis Universalis and
professing to be 'a demonstration of the non-existence or im-
possibility of an external world. ' Collier was born in 1680, and,
like Berkeley, seems to have formed his conclusions at an early
age: for he says that it was 'after a ten years' pause and delibera-
tion' that he decided to put his arguments before the reader. His
results are almost identical with Berkeley's; but he arrived at
them in a different way. He seems to have been uninfluenced
by Locke; Descartes, Malebranche and Norris were his favourite
authors; and there was enough, in their writings, to raise the
а


## p. 288 (#312) ############################################

288 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
question. Collier writes in a straightforward and simple style ;
he has none of Berkeley's imagination or eloquence; he does not
contend that he has the plain man on his side, nor does he apply
his results to current controversy. But he has no less confidence
than Berkeley had in the truth of his views; and his arguments
are clearly put. Often, they resemble Berkeley's; though greater
.
use is made of traditional metaphysical discussions. Among these,
the most notable is the argument from the antinomies of philo-
sophical thought. The external world, conceived as independent
of mind, has been held infinite in extent, and also it has been held
to be finite; and equally good and conclusive reasons can be
given for either alternative. Similarly, it is 'both finitely and
infinitely divisible. ' But a thing cannot have two contradictory
predicates. External matter, therefore, does not exist.
II. DEISTS.
The first half of the eighteenth century was the period of the
deistical controversy in English theology. The writers commonly
classed together as deists are Charles Blount, John Toland,
Anthony Collins, Matthew Tindal, Thomas Woolston, Thomas
Morgan, Thomas Chubb, Peter Annet and Henry Dodwell the
younger. Among deists are also reckoned Bolingbroke and
the third earl of Shaftesbury, who differed from the rest in
paying little attention to the details of theological controversy,
and differed from one another in their philosophical interest and
importance.
The works of Charles Blount belong to the last quarter of the
seventeenth century. He accepted the 'five points' of Lord
Herbert of Cherbury? This marked him as a deist, and he did
not reject the name. In his Anima Mundi (1679), he defended
the system of natural religion, and, at the same time, emphasized
the comparative merits of the heathen religions. His Great is
Diana of the Ephesians (1680) is an attack on priestcraft. In
the same year, he published an English translation of The two first
books of Philostratus, concerning the Life of Apollonius Tyaneus.
On each chapter of this followed 'illustrations' by the translator,
in which it was easy to find an attack on the Christian miracles
and on the doctrine of the divinity of Christ. Faith,' he says,
is 'like a piece of blank paper whereon you may write as well one
miracle as another'; whereas, his own Christianity was founded
i See vol. iv, p. 294, ante.


## p. 289 (#313) ############################################

Rational Theology
289
exclusively on reason. Blount committed suicide in 1693, because
he was prevented from marrying his deceased wife's sister. Two
years afterwards, his Miscellaneous Works (including The Oracles
of Reason) were published by his disciple Charles Gildon. Gildon
defended both the doctrine and the suicide of his master ; but,
not long after, was himself converted to the orthodox belief by
reading Charles Leslie's Short and Easy Method with the Deists
(1698).
So far as Blount was concerned, the controversy might have
ended here. For, despite his learning and ability, he was some-
thing of a free-lance; he could not match himself with his
opponents in Christian theology or in biblical learning ; his
criticism and his own doctrines revealed an outside point of view.
There were, however, many sympathisers with his general attitude
among wits, and perhaps, also, among scholars : Leslie's reply Fur? , **
is a testimony to the prevalence of deism. And, in the year
which saw that triumphant reply, there appeared a work by a new
author-Toland's Christianity not mysterious with which the
controversy entered upon a fresh phase. Within the church,
the Roman controversy had died down, and the protestant faith
had been firmly established. The time was ripe for the discussion
of the content and basis of protestant theology; and the great
trinitarian controversy followed. At this point, the chief stimulus
to theological thought came, from within the church, indeed, but
from outside the ranks of professional theologians. Locke's
Reasonableness of Christianity appeared in 1895, and marked
out the ground to be occupied by almost all controversialists for
a long time to come. In his straightforward way, he went to the
Scriptures: miracles and prophecy convinced his reason of their
authority; the same reason was used for understanding the
doctrines they revealed. He did not linger over the former—the
external evidences, as they were called, of religion. His interest
was in the content of the faith. The same interest dominates the
controversies of the first half of the eighteenth century; it was
only afterwards that the question of the external evidences came
to the front. Throughout the whole century, however, and by
both parties, the question was debated in the court of reason. The
controversy was not between rationalists and those who distrusted
reason. The question was what, on rational grounds, ought to be
believed. And, as Clarke and Tillotson and, finally, Butler appealed
to reason not less than Locke and Toland and their successors did,
so, too, there was another point of agreement between the orthodox
19
E. L. IX.
CH. XI.


## p. 290 (#314) ############################################

290 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
and the leaders of the deists. The latter, also, for the most part,
and in the earlier stages of the dispute, at any rate, professed
to accept the Christian faith. The problem was as to its content:
what was its genuine meaning and the scope of its essential
doctrines?
This much must be borne in mind by anyone who
would understand Toland, especially in his earliest and most
celebrated work. Toland was born near Londonderry in Ireland
in 1670 and died at Putney near London in 1722. His education
was varied. He was at school in Ireland, went to the university
of Glasgow, took his degree at Edinburgh, afterwards studied
at Leyden, and spent some time at Oxford, where he wrote
Christianity not mysterious (1696). He led a strenuous and
varied life, with somewhat uncertain means of livelihood. He
was the object of bitter attack by the controversialists opposed to
him; and they called in the aid of the civil power. After the
publication of his first book, he had to leave Ireland to escape
arrest by the Irish parliament, and in England he was for a time
in danger of prosecution. He busied himself in political as well as
in theological controversy, defended the protestant succession, took
part, though unofficially, in important missions, and became known
to the electress Sophia and her daughter the queen of Prussia, to
whom his Letters to Serena (1704) were addressed. He made some
influential friends, also, and Leibniz was among his correspondents.
Christianity not mysterious shows the influence of Locke-of
his Essay, however, rather than of his Reasonableness of Christi-
anity, which, published only a year before Toland's book, can hardly
have affected its argument. Locke's name is not mentioned by
Toland; but Locke's view of knowledge, as consisting in the agree-
ment of ideas, forms the starting-point of his argument and, in the
preliminary matter, he often adopts Locke's words. But he is more
aggressive in applying his principles. Locke's aim was to show that
Christianity was reasonable ; Toland's, to demonstrate that nothing
contrary to reason, and nothing above reason, can be part of Christian
doctrine. There are no mysteries in it. Revelation has unveiled
what was formerly mysterious. Whoever reveals anything must do
so in words that are intelligible, and the matter must be possible.
The things revealed, therefore, are no longer mysteries. This holds,
whether the revelation come from God or from man. The only
difference between the two cases is that a man may lie, and God
can not. Without ideas, neither faith nor knowledge is possible ;
and, ‘if by knowledge be meant understanding what is believed,
then I stand by it that faith is knowledge. ' The ideas may not be


## p. 291 (#315) ############################################

John Toland
291
adequate; but, in nature as well as in divinity, we have to be
content without adequate ideas; even a 'spire of grass' is not
known in its real essence; we understand only its properties or
attributes; and God and the soul are known in the same way.
Toland was a scholar, and boasted acquaintance with more
than ten languages. He was also a theologian, and could meet
his opponents on their own ground. This interest dominated his
literary career; even his political work was in the service of the
protestant religion, and his scholarship was chiefly shown in the
field of Christian origins. His own theological views went through
various modifications. He was brought up a Roman catholic;
:
at the age of sixteen, he became 'zealous against popery';
afterwards he was connected with protestant dissenters; when
Christianity not mysterious was published, he reckoned himself
a member of the church of England, his sympathies being with
the broad (or, as it was then called, low) church party. When his
book was burned at the door of the Irish house of parliament, he
may have felt his churchmanship insecure. His later works exhibit
its gradual disappearance.
In Amyntor (1699), a defence of his Life of Milton (1698), he
gave, in answer to an opponent, a long list of early apocryphal
Christian literature. His interest in researches of this kind was
shown afterwards in Nazarenus ; or Jewish, Gentile, and
Mahometan Christianity (1718). His text, in this work, was an
Italian manuscript, with Arabic annotations, which he had dis-
covered. He took it for a translation from the Arabic and
identified it with the lost Gospel of Barnabas. In both conjectures,
later scholarship has shown that he was in error. But his discovery
led to some remarkable reflections on the differences between the
Jewish and Gentile Christians in the early church. He maintained
that the former, who kept the Jewish law themselves, but without
enforcing it on the Gentiles, represented the true original plan of
Christianity'; and he declared that he himself took 'less exception
to the name of Nazaren than to any other. ' More than a century
afterwards, the same distinction as that upon which he laid stress
was made fundamental in the explanation of early church history
offered by F. C. Baur and his followers.
Among other topics in the Letters to Serena was a discussion
of Spinoza, which, perhaps, shows the trend of Toland's speculation.
Leibniz, at any rate, in a letter of 30 April 1709, remarks that
Toland, in several of his books, refers to the opinion that there
is no other eternal being than the universe, but offers no refutation
19-2


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292 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
of this ‘pernicious' error. In his reply, Toland promises an answer
to this point in his next; but he does not seem to have kept his
word. Pantheism, however, was the doctrine with which he ended,
if we may trust the evidence of Pantheisticon (1720). This curious
piece was issued anonymously, with 'Cosmopolis' on the title-page
as the place of publication. But the author took no pains to
conceal his identity, for the preface is signed ‘Janus Julius Eoga-
nesius. ' Now, Inis Eogain or Inishowen was the place of Toland's
birth; and Janus Julius were the extraordinary names by which
he was christened and known, till a sensible schoolmaster changed
them to John. The little book, which is written in Latin, describes
the ritual of certain (supposed or real) pantheistic societies. It
imitates the fashion of a prayer-book, gives the responses of the
congregation and is printed with red rubrics. As a whole, it is
a clever skit, though in the very worst taste. But Toland had not
received any favours from fortune ; he had been harshly attacked
by his opponents, even when he regarded himself as a defender
of the Christian faith; and, perhaps, it gave him satisfaction to
retaliate bitterly.
Toland thus began as a liberal or rational theologian, and
ended with some form of pantheistic creed. His writings do not
enable us to trace accurately the steps in this change of view; but
there is no evidence that he ever accepted the cardinal point
of what is commonly called deism—the idea of God as an external
creator who made the world, set it under certain laws, and then
left it alone! He was a free-thinker rather than a deist. And
this, also, describes the position occupied by Anthony Collins, the
friend and disciple of Locke, in his best-known work, A Discourse
of Free-thinking, occasioned by the rise and growth of a sect
call's Free-thinkers (1713). Bentley's brilliant criticism of this
book, in his Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free-thinking,
gained for it an unenviable reputation. The Remarks admitted
of no answer ; but they were more successful in demolishing a
9
1 Samuel Clarke (Being and Attributes of God, 9th ed. , pp. 159 ff. ) distinguishes
four classes of Deists : (1) those who pretend to believe the existence of an eternal,
infinite, independent, intelligent Being; and. . . teach also that this Supreme Being
made the world : though at the same time. . , they fancy God does not at all concern
himself in the government of the world, nor has any regard to, or care of, what is done
therein ' ; (2) those who, also, admit divine providence in nature; (3) those who,
further, have some notion of the moral perfections of God; (4) those who, in
addition, acknowledge man's duties to God, and see the need for a future state of
rewards and punishments—but all this only ‘so far as 'tis discoverable by the light of
nature. '
2 Cf. chap. xm, sec. 1, post.


## p. 293 (#317) ############################################

Collins and Tindal
293
free-thinker than in refuting free-thinking; and, perhaps, this was
Bentley's sole object in exposing the author's slipshod scholarship.
But he was not blind to an ambiguity of which Collins had taken
advantage. “Free-thinking' may mean nothing more than the
exercise of reason. If this had been all that Collins argued for,
there would have been little point in his contention, for both
parties claimed that they followed reason. So far, Tillotson would
certainly have been with him, and, indeed, Collins claims his
support. But he used the term, also, to cover the attitude or
doctrines of a 'sect of free-thinkers,' without any clear account
of their position, or any suggestion that the word had more than
one meaning. The ambiguity is connected with the duality of the
motives which seem to have determined the writings of Collins.
One of these was faith in reason faith which he had inherited
from Locke; the other was a suspicion and dislike of priestcraft.
These two motives are indicated by the titles of his earliest
works_Essay concerning the use of Reason (1707), and Priest-
craft in perfection (1709). They are combined in A Discourse
of Free-thinking, in a way which generates more heat than light.
Collins held firmly to a belief in God as established by reason;
but (though sometimes in guarded language) he was a hostile
critic of the Christian creed. His works produced a crowd of
controversial literature : his chief later work-Discourse of the
Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724)-having
called forth no less than thirty-five replies in two years. He was
also the author of a small book called A Philosophical Inquiry
concerning Human Liberty and Necessity (1715)—an acute and
clearly-written argument in favour of the necessitarian solution of
the problem.
In some respects and these, perhaps, the most important-
the most significant work of the whole deistical movement was
Tindal's Christianity as old as the Creation : or, the Gospel,
a Republication of the Religion of Nature (1730). It is no mere
defence of the use of reason, nor attack on Christian mysteries.
It is a masterly presentation of the prevalent philosophical ideas
of the time and a comparison of them with the rational theology
which found favour with leaders of the church. "The will of God,'
said Samuel Clarke, then the most prominent figure in British philo-
sophy and theology, 'always determines itself to act according to
the eternal reason of things,' and 'all rational creatures are obliged
to govern themselves in all their actions by the same eternal rule
of reason. ' "The religion of the Gospel,' said Sherlock, preaching
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294 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
a missionary sermon, 'is the true original religion of reason and
nature,' and its precepts are 'declarative of that original religion
which was as old as the creation. These extracts Tindal prints
on his title-page; and his own aim is to show that 'natural
religion and external revelation, like two tallies, exactly answer
one another, without any other difference between them but as to
the manner of their being delivered. ' Tindal grasps firmly the
principles of natural religion, as they were taught by Clarke and
Wollaston and other theologians of the day. Reason convinces us
of the being and attributes of God, and of the truths of morality;
the goodness of God makes it impossible that He should have
concealed from any of His creatures what was necessary to their
well-being. Christianity, therefore, cannot displace deism, as
Clarke held that it could : it can only confirm it. And, as reason
suffices to establish the truths of deism, it would seem that
Christianity is superfluous. Tindal, however, did not expressly
draw this conclusion : he was seventy years of age when he wrote
this book, and he retained his fellowship at All Souls, through
many changes of government and of personal creed, till his death.
The remaining deistical writers require only the briefest notice.
Thomas Woolston was an enthusiast in patristic study, and his
enthusiasm seems to have verged on insanity in his later years.
He had two passions—love of the fathers and hatred of the
protestant clergy? ' The latter was intensified by his being
deprived of his fellowship at Cambridge; the former led to his
allegorical interpretation of scripture. This method he applied
to the New Testament miracles, in his series of Discourses
(1727—30), ridiculing the ordinary view of them as actual events.
The historical occurrence of the miracles was afterwards (1729)
defended by Sherlock in The Trial of the Witnesses ; and, to this
work, Peter Annet replied in The Resurrection of Jesus examined
by a Moral Philosopher (1744), in which the expressions are
of an open, not to say scandalous, kind rare in the earlier
literature of deism. Thomas Chubb, an obscure tradesman of
Salisbury, with no pretentions to scholarship or education, published
a number of tracts in which points of the Scriptures were criticised
and views similar to those of Tindal asserted. The same doctrine
was stated once more by Thomas Morgan, a physician, in The
Moral Philosopher (1737—41). In the main, he follows Clarke
and Tindal; but he also recalls the investigations of Toland
by the prominence which he gives to the opposition between
1 Hunt, J. , Religious Thought in England, vol. II, p. 40.


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The Influence of Deism 295
the Judaising and the universal factors in early Christianity.
Christianity not founded on argument, a pamphlet published
in 1742 by Henry Dodwell (son of the theologian and scholar of
the same name), is one of the latest publications of this school
of thought.
Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury stand in a different relation to
the deistical movement from that of the writers already named.
Bolingbroke was not a philosopher, though various occasional
writings of his were collected and published by Mallet as Philo-
sophical Works (1752). But he illustrates the way in which the
fundamental doctrines of deism had permeated the thinking of
the men of fashion who played with ideas; and he did much
to confirm this attitude and to extend its influence. Voltaire
regarded his views as significant, and the superficial optimism of
Pope's clear-cut verse, in his Essay on Man, was directly due to
Bolingbroke. As a deist, Shaftesbury may have been coupled
with Boling
broke in the popular mind, and may, also, have lent
inspiration to Pope. But he had a far profounder view of the
problems of thought, which will receive consideration in con-
nection with the group of writers distinguished as moralists.
The line between deists and churchmen was not always drawn
very clearly. There was a good deal of common ground in the
assumptions of both parties; and there was, besides, a general
ferment of theological thought which disregarded customary
boundaries. The latter characteristic is exhibited in the works
of William Whiston, mathematician and theologian. They were
related to the controversy, but hardly belong to it. Whiston was
a man of active and original mind, which led him outside the
established church, but in a direction of his own, different from
that of Toland or Tindal. He was opposed to rationalism, and
a believer in prophecy and miracle; but he came to the conclusion
that the Arian heresy represented the true and primitive Christian
creed. His views are fully developed in Primitive Christianity
Revived (1711-12); but they had previously become notorious,
and had led, in 1710, to his being deprived of the Cambridge
professorship in which he had succeeded Newton. He founded a
society to promote the true faith, as he held it, and composed
a revised liturgy for its use; and he wrote on a variety of topics,
not all of them theological. His translation of Josephus (1737),
however, has proved of more lasting value than his original works.
Conyers Middleton, on the other hand, showed how near a clergy-
man might come to the deistical position. He was immersed in


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296 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
the controversy, and he did something to infuse into it a new
historical spirit. The whole tendency of his contributions, how-
ever, was critical and destructive. He separated himself from most
apologists of the day by denying verbal inspiration; and he
examined and rejected the evidence for the ecclesiastical miracles
in a manner which admitted of wider application. This argument
is contained in his most important theological work, entitled
A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed
to have existed in the Christian Church through several successive
Ages (1748). Of the content of religion, Middleton takes little
account, except as a bulwark of the social order. His work shows
that interest was drifting away from the question of content, from
which it had started, towards the question of external evidences
which suited so well the genius of the later eighteenth century.
Among the opponents of the deists, the two greatest were
Samuel Clarke and Joseph Butler. Their contributions to the
thought of the period are reserved for discussion in the last section
of this chapter. Of the others, some have been already referred
to; most do not call for more than bibliographical mention ; but
one name figures so largely in the controversy as to require further
notice. By his learning, but, still more, by his mental vigour and
resource, William Warburton made an impression upon his time
which is not yet forgotten. He was born in 1698 and died in
1779. Bred in a solicitor's office, he took orders without having
passed through a university, and, after other preferments, became
bishop of Gloucester in 1759. He was ready for almost any kind
of literary work-controversy preferred. He wrote The Alliance
between Church and State (1736); defended the orthodoxy of Pope's
Essay on Man; edited Shakespeare (1747); published a hostile View
of Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy (1754), and had the courage to
issue Remarks on Hume's Natural History of Religion (1757). His
most famous work was The Divine Legation of Moses demonstrated
on the Principles of a Religious Deist (1737—41). This vast
work, which was never completed, was designed to meet a deistical
objection to the Old Testament scriptures——that the books of
Moses contain no reference to the doctrine of a future life. An
objection of this sort does not seem to have been prominent in the
writings of the greater deists ; but it suited Warburton's purpose
and enabled him to propound an ingenious paradox. He agrees
that morality needs the support of a belief in a future life of
rewards and punishments; he agrees that Moses did not appeal
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Samuel Clarke
297
common among ancient authors of other countries. But just this,
he argues, proves the divine legation of the lawgiver. The laws of
nature are an insufficient support for morality; without the belief
in a future life, government cannot be maintained-except by
miracle. The absence of the belief among the Jews is, therefore,
taken as a proof that they were under the immediate providence
of God, working by means outside natural law. The defence of
this paradoxical theory gave Warburton ample scope for display-
ing his learning and his controversial talent on a great variety of
topics, the relevance of which is not always apparent. Of his
learning, Bentley said that he had a 'monstrous appetite and bad
digestion. ' His ability to get up a case and score a point has
been traced to his legal training; a critic of his own day attributed
to the same source some of the coarser and more violent features
of his controversial method. Of insight into history, philosophy
or religion, he does not seem to have had any conspicuous share.
IIL. MORALISTS.
Samuel Clarke was not a man of original genius; but, by sheer
intellectual power, he came to occupy a leading position in English
philosophy and theology. He touched the higher thought of the
day at almost every point. The new physics, deism, the trinitarian
controversy, biblical and classical study--all occupied him. Only
as to Locke, and the new turn which Locke gave to many
problems, he never defined his position. He was born in 1675,
and died in 1729. In 1697, he published an annotated Latin
translation of the Cartesian Rohault's Traité de physique, and
thereby prepared the way, as he intended to do, for the reception
of Newton's works as text-books at Cambridge ; he also translated
Newton's Optics. In 1699, his controversies with the deists began,
with Toland's Amyntor for a text. In 1704 and 1705, he delivered
two courses of Boyle Lectures, entitled, respectively, A Demon-
stration of the Being and Attributes of God, and A Discourse
concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and
the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. He published
editions of Caesar's Commentaries (1712) and Homer's Iliad
(1729), as well as many books of biblical exegesis. His treatise
entitled The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity (1712) brought
upon him the accusation of Arianism, and led to trouble with con-
vocation. In 1715—16, he was engaged in a controversy with
Leibniz, which arose from a comment of the latter on a remark of
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298 Berkeley and Contemporary Philosophy
Newton's in which space was spoken of as the sensorium of God,
branched out into fundamental questions of metaphysics, and
came to an end only with the death of the German philosopher.
Clarke's Boyle Lectures may be safely reckoned his greatest
work. They contain little that is strikingly new; but the arrange-
ment of the separate points and the logical consecutiveness of the
whole are masterly; and they show, nearly always, an elevation
of tone and clearness of phrase which were often lacking in the
controversies of the age. Clarke arranges his argument in a series
of propositions which he first states and then proceeds to demon-
strate; but, otherwise, he did not imitate mathematical method, as
Descartes and Spinoza had done. Nor did he, like Descartes,
.
rely on the purely ontological argument. He argued from
existence, not from idea: maintaining that there must be a
self-existent being to account for existing things, and then going
on to show the attributes which must belong to this self-existent
being. When he has to prove that intelligence and wisdom are
among these attributes, he relies expressly on a posteriori
reasoning. The whole argument—therein resembling Locke's
belongs to the cosmological variety. Clarke's system has been
represented as only a less logical Spinozism; but the comparison
is superficial. One salient point of resemblance-the view of
space as an attribute of God-means something different in the
two systems; for Clarke does not identify space with matter.
And the method of his argument leaves room for the recognition
of freedom and for a distinction of morality from nature, which
were impossible for Spinoza
Clarke's theory of morality has exerted a more permanent in-
fluence, and shows more traces of originality, than any of his other
doctrines. He had an idea of a moral universe constituted by moral
relations, analogous to the physical relations of the physical universe.
There are certain 'fitnesses of things' over and above their merely
physical relations : 'there is,' he says, “a fitness or suitableness of
certain circumstances to certain persons, and an unsuitableness of
others, founded in the nature of things and in the qualities of persons,
antecedent to will and to all arbitrary or positive appointment
whatsoever. ' Many illustrations are given of these 'relations of
things'; but their nature is not further explained. 'Fitness,
‘agreement, 'suitableness' are the terms by which they are
described. They differ, therefore, from the causal relations with
which physical science is concerned. They indicate a different
aspect—the moral aspect
of reality. But they are known in the
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6
Rational Ethics
299
same way-by reason. As they are in themselves, so they appear
to be to the understanding of all intelligent beings. And, so far
as they are intelligent, all reasonable beings guide their conduct
by them. God is a free being; but, being rational, it is impossible
that He can act against them: He is, therefore, necessarily good.
The same relations ought to determine human conduct; but the
will of man is deflected by his passions and particular interests,
and his understanding is imperfect, so that moral error is possible
and common. For this reason, also, the obligation of virtue needs
the support of religion.
Clarke thus gave a new reading of an old doctrine. The view that
morality is not arbitrary, but belongs to the order of the universe,
had found frequent expression in theories of the law of nature';
Cudworth, influenced by Platonic idealism, had insisted that the
nature or essence of things is immutable, and that good and evil
are qualities which belong to that essence; Clarke goes one step
further in holding that goodness is a certain congruity of one
thing with another—a relation as eternal as is the nature of the
things. But he gave no further definition of this congruity, beyond
the description of it by a variety of terms. That it needed very
careful statement became obvious from some of the consequences
drawn by his followers. His views were defended, against the
first of a new school of psychological moralists, by John Balguy,
in The Foundation of Moral Goodness (1727-8). Still earlier,
William Wollaston, in his Religion of Nature delineated (1722),
had given point to the intellectualism of the moral theory pro-
pounded by Clarke. What Clarke had called 'fitness' was inter-
preted by him as an actual existing relation or quality: a wrong
act is simply the assertion in conduct of a false proposition. Thus,
“if a man steals a horse and rides away upon him,' he does not
consider him as being what he is,' namely, another man's horse ;
and 'to deny things to be as they are is the transgression of
the great law of our nature, the law of reason. ' Bentham's
criticism of this is hardly a caricature: 'if you were to murder
your own father, this would only be a particular way of saying he
father. '
A more fruitful line of ethical thought was entered upon by
Clarke's contemporary, the third earl of Shaftesbury, grandson
of the first earl, Locke's patron, and himself educated under
Locke's supervision.