BERKELEY, GEORGE, the celebrated and inge nious bishop of Cloyne, in Ireland, was born at Kilc rin, near Thomastown, in the county of Kilkenny, being the eldest son of William Berkley, Esq. a cadet of the noble family of Earl Berkley of Berkley Castle. He received the first rudiments of his education at Kil kenny school, under Dr Hinton, whence Swift had, but a few years before, removed to the university ; and was, at the age of fifteen, admitted a pensioner of Tri nity College, Dublin, of which he became a fellow, June 9, 1707. He sheaved a very early passion for literature ; for before he was twenty, he had com posed his ingenious mathematical essay, entitled, "frith tnetica ahsque Algebra aut Euclide demonstrata, which he published in the same year that he was admitted a fellow of Trinity : and, in 1709, lie published his justly celebrated New Theory of Vision, in which he establishes the very important conclusion, that mag nitude as made known by the touch, is essentially dif ferent from magnitude as made known by the eye, of which it is not the direct province to perceive the di mension of solidity, or to discern or judge of the dis tance of objects. A person born blind, he concludes, would, if suddenly restored to sight; be altogether unable to tell how any object that affected his sight would affect his touch ; but would imagine, that all the objects he saw were in his eye, or rather in his mind.
The difference thus exhibited between the notions acquired by two of our senses, probably tended to convince Berkeley, that the objects of our perceptions are mere ideas, quite independent of material sub stance. 'In his Theory of Vision, however, he goes no farther than to assert, that the objects of sight are nothing hut ideas in the mind ; not denying, that there is a tangible world which is really external, and which exists whether we perceive it or not. But in his Principles of Human Knowledge, which he pub lished in the subsequent year, he, without any cere mony, denies the existence of every kind of matter whatever ; nor does he think this conclusion one that need, in any degree, stagger the incredulous. " Some truths there are," says he, " 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, that
all the choir of heaven, and furniture of earth,—in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind." This deduction, however singular, was rea dily made from the theory of our perceptions laid ' down by Descartes and Mr Locke, and at that time generally received in the world. According to that theory, we perceive nothing but ideas which are pre. sent in the mind, and which have no dependence whatever upon external things ; so that we have no evidence of the existence of any thing external to our own minds. Berkeley appears to have been altogether in earnest in maintaining his scepticism concerning the existence of matter ; and the more so, as he con ceived this system to be highly favourable to the doc trines of religion, since it removed matter from the world, which had always been the stronghold of the atheists.
Berkeley by no means confined his studies to meta physics; for, in the year 1712, he published the sub= stance of three sermons, delivered in the college cha pel, in support of the doctrine of passive obedience ; in consequence of which he was represented as a Ja cobite, and refused some preferment in the church of Ireland to which he had been recommended... This unfavourable impression, however, was removed by the good offices of Mr Molyneux, by whom Berkeley was introduced to the patronage of the Prince and Princess of Wales, afterwards George II. and Queen Caroline. In the same year, he published, in London, a farther, defence of his system of immaterialism, in Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. He was at this period the friend of his two ingenious countrymen Swift and Sir Richard Steele; and was be loved and respected by both, though men of the most opposite principles. Through their good offices he became known to the most celebrated wits and learn-. ed men of the time • particularly Pope, Arbuthnot, and Addison, with whom he formed an intimacy that terminated only with his life. He was induced,•hy this intercourse, to become a contributor to the cele:-. brated periodical works the Spectator and Guardian which he adorned with several pieces highly favour able and religion.