tinental thinkers. The year before, a complete translation of Malebranche's great work, De la Recherche de la Vérité,' with his replies to the objections of his critics, and some smaller tracts, had appeared at Oxford, and been forwarded to Dublin. Three or four years later, Berkeley himself seems to have taken a leading part in the formation of a collegiate society for the discussion of questions connected with the new philosophy. Several of the questions thus debated are found in the Berkeley Papers, and they are nearly all taken from the writings of Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke; and almost every page of the Commonplace Book shows how completely the writer's mind was absorbed by the speculative impulse communicated from their works, and how keenly he was working out for himself the fresh problems the central principles of their philosophy had suggested.

There was, however, at this time, another influence powerfully at work in Dublin society, especially amongst its ecclesiastical and academical sections, which requires some notice, from the extent to which it obviously affected Berkeley's mind, and helped to mould his future thought. The influence was that resulting from a keen religious excitement, primarily connected with the Church of which Berkeley was a member, and whose orders he soon afterwards received. The Irish Church has always been noted for the strength of its convictions, and the energy of its occasional denunciations of those who are outside its pale. This narrow, though vigorous and intrepid sectarian life was indeed a natural result of its position. Having to carry on a perpetual war with the enemy at the gate, with the dominant Romanism around it, the Church was always in fighting trim, ready to do battle against all comers at the shortest notice and in the most energetic style. Any hostile challenge would therefore be at once taken up, and at the first note of opposition or attack the flag of defiance would be unfurled, the drum ecclesiastic sounded, and the invader met with the active forces and matured strategy of theological warfare. It was thus the true Church militant, alive to any opposition however feeble, and prompt to repel any aggression however slight.

One of these characteristic outbursts of somewhat excessive zeal had occurred just three years before Berkeley entered Trinity College. Toland, the author of Christianity not 'Mysterious,' the year after the book was published, and when the excitement it produced was at its height, ventured to visit Dublin with the intention of remaining there for some time. The ground was indeed to some extent pre

pared, as on the appearance of the work in the previous year, the London booksellers had sent a number of copies to the Irish capital, where it had excited as much commotion as in England. Toland was an Irishman by birth, and shared to the full in the love of social notoriety and delight at the prospect of a faction fight which belong to his race. Though a good scholar and an honest man enough, he was not only ambitious of social distinction, but vain of his learning and abilities, and given to boastful talking of his distinguished reception at Oxford and London, and his intimate connexion with great men in both places. He seems to have gone to Dublin, partly to enjoy the learned recognition which he imagined the fame of his work would procure for him, and partly to carry the war which he claimed to wage against priestly intolerance and dogmatic assumption into the enemy's camp. He met, however, a much warmer reception than he anticipated. It was not for a moment to be supposed that the Irish Church would remain inactive with such an enemy at her very gates. She took the field at once, and proved fully equal to the emergency. Toland's own conduct was anything but prudent or conciliatory. He seems to have swaggered about the city giving vent, in season and out of season, to his aggressive and boastful loquacity. Wherever he went, he indulged in violent attacks on the clergy, and ostentatiously proclaimed himself a freethinker in religion. His presence and behaviour thus naturally excited amongst the clergy and their friends a feeling of intense irritation and bitter hostility. Molyneux, writing to Locke a short time after his arrival, thus describes the welcome he received: There is a violent sort of spirit that ' reigns here, which begins already to show itself against him, and I believe will increase daily, for I find the clergy alarmed to a mighty degree against him; and last Sunday he had his welcome to the city by hearing himself harangued against out of the pulpit by a prelate of this country. Not only, however, did the pulpits of the city thunder against Toland. The Irish Parliament took the matter up, and voted that his book should be burned by the common hangman, ordering at the same time that the author should be taken into custody by the sergeant-at-arms and prosecuted by the Attorney-General. Even before this extreme step was taken, the outcry against him had become so universal that it was even dangerous for 6 a man to have been known once to converse with him.' Toland, unable to face the storm, fled precipitately from the kingdom, discharging a Parthian pamphlet at the Irish Parliament in his flight.

6

The furor against Toland extended from the clergy, the friends of the Church, and the Parliament, to Trinity College, and stimulated the senior Fellow, Mr. Peter Browne -afterwards Bishop of Cork-to become the literary champion of outraged orthodoxy. While the excitement was at its height, Browne published his reply to Toland, which, though in some respects an able work, bears unmistakeable marks of the violent and bitter spirit the conflict had produced. In abusive language and ruthless intolerance of tone and sentiment, it far exceeds indeed the usual license of sectarian controversy. Molyneux, in sending a copy of the book to Locke, says that, though he is personally acquainted with the author, he cannot forgive his foul language and opprobrious epithets, or his continually calling in the civil magistrate and delivering 'Mr. Toland up to secular punishment. This is indeed,' he adds, a killing argument.' But truculence of this sort was not altogether confined to the Irish Church. A kind of approving echo comes from England in the shape of a congratuÎation addressed by the celebrated Dr. South to the Archbishop of Dublin that, instead of sheltering Toland, the Irish Parlia'ment, to their immortal honour, presently sent him packing, ' and without the help of a faggot, soon made the kingdom too 'hot for him.' The Archbishop was himself, however, so pleased with the reply, that Browne was, through his influence, raised to the Provostship of Trinity College a few months before Berkeley matriculated The promotion was avowedly a reward for the services he had rendered the clerical party in the struggle. The excitement was kept up by fresh pamphlets from Toland; and Berkeley, soon after entering college, would be sure to hear all about the arch-heretic, and the distinguished part which the learned Provost had taken in replying to his attacks. A year or two later, in 1704, Toland published a letter maintaining the very form of materialistic doctrine against which Berkeley's metaphysical reasonings were afterwards directed-that matter is eternal, and motion its essential property; and later still, he developed the doctrine into a scheme of avowed and tolerably coherent pantheism.

The local movement against Toland was thus exactly fitted to strike the deepest chords in Berkeley's nature, and rouse the best energies of his acute and argumentative intellect. Toland was the representative of a wider attack then made on the Church by assailants variously known as sceptics, materialists, infidels, and freethinkers. While much of the substance of this attack was calculated to shock Berkeley's intense theistic feeling, the form of it outraged his most cherished institutional

and professional sympathies. Always acutely sensitive on the subject of the clergy, he must have heartily approved of the resolute stand made by the Irish Church against their assailant. As a natural result, he decided to take part in the deepening conflict, though of course this would be done in his own way, and from his own special point of view. From his refinement and elevation of nature, he could not indeed have much sympathy with the more vulgar denunciations and appeals of sectarian bigotry, or adopt the coarser forms of party warfare. Still, he was a thorough Irishman in his love of conflict, and a thorough Churchman in his resolute defence of the ecclesiastical organisation with which he was identified. And when acutely touched on these points, he could at times be incisive and bitter enough. He thus reflects under more ideal conditions and in a somewhat removed sphere the essential features of Irish Protestantism, its unwavering selfconfidence, its somewhat bristling, but at the same time genial individuality, its narrow and unfruitful but eager, vigorous, and eloquent polemical life, its extraordinary promptitude and dexterity in employing the lighter arts and readier weapons of theological warfare. All Berkeley's greater works, The Principles of Human Knowledge,' "The Minute Philosopher,' and The Analyst,' are polemical, and they are all the polemics of a Churchman against those whom he regards, often without sufficient knowledge or inquiry, as enemies of the Church, and therefore, in his view, of religion also. The first is directed against the undevout, or to adopt the trenchant language Berkeley is fond of using, the infidel metaphysician; the second against the undevout or infidel moralist; and the third against the undevout or infidel mathematician. They are all, strictly speaking, apologetics, and they all have marked features in common. Each springs from some strong personal or local impression which acting sympathetically on all the powers of his mind, especially on the imagination and moral sensibilities, calls his intellect into active exercise and supports its efforts till the end suggested by the original feeling is realised. Berkeley required indeed the spur of strong feeling and the stimulus of a practical object to bring his powers fully into play. The local excitement about Toland and his associates supplied both. It gave definiteness of aim, a practical moral purpose to his new studies. The materialistic philosopher, or infidel metaphysician, became the grand object of attack, and he is full of excitement as to the best means of assailing his position. Henceforth the new studies instead of being dry and jejune are full

of life, animation, and interest. He is busy forging weapons and selecting vantage grounds for the grand assault. In the Commonplace Book we see him ranging over the whole scientific and metaphysical field with the keen eye of a captain experienced in the art of moral warfare. We see him reconnoitring the enemy's position, discovering the weak places in his defences, and the points from which they may be most successfully attacked, constructing masked batteries, and exulting at the prospect of uncovering their fire at the critical moment to the consternation and discomfiture of the foe.

Curiously enough, Berkeley found in Cartesianism both the weapons and objects of attack. It supplied in a concentrated form what was to him at once the bane and antidote of speculation. On their mental side the leading Cartesian principles gratified the strongest sympathies of his nature, being eminently spiritual and theistic in their basis as well as in their wider scope and aim. But on their physical side these principles roused his keenest apprehensions and antipathies, as they appeared to him, in tendency at all events, materialistic. Any mechanical theory of the universe was in his view to be rejected as supplying the sceptic and materialist with the theoretical basis of his reasoning. And Descartes' mechanical theory, notwithstanding its supplementary theism, came under this general condemnation. It assumed a physical universe, a world of matter and motion, of bodies and qualities, of natural powers and products, governed in an orderly manner by laws of its own without the direct and incessant intervention of intelligence and will. Descartes' mechanical theory was therefore to be rejected, and, on the same grounds, that of Newton also. In this particular, Berkeley was perfectly impartial, being equally opposed to vortices and gravitation, to any and every theory indeed of matter and motion apart from the direct causal activity of mind. Amongst the earliest entries in the Commonplace Book, we accordingly find I agree in nothing with the Cartesians as to the 'existence of bodies and qualities;' and again, on the first page, 'Newton begs his principles, I demonstrate mine.' The book abounds with entries of a similar kind all pointing in the same. direction. The separation of the physical universe from any immediate dependence on mind was, indeed, in Berkeley's view, the root of all speculative evil. In the un-ideal world resulting from this separation, in the spaces beyond the immediate activity of intelligence and volition, the sceptic escaped as it were from the irresistible presence and power of the Deity, and was able to elaborate at will his atheistic theories