lungs, consumptive coughs, pleurisy, peripneumony, erysipelas, asthma, indigestion, cachectic and hysteric cases, gravel, dropsy, and all inflammations. It was a preservative against smallpox; it was of great use in the gout; it cured gangrene, scurvy, all hypochondriac maladies, and fevers. It was 'particularly recommended to seafaring persons, ladies, and men of studious and sedentary habits.' It was excellent for children, and it 'answered all the purposes of elixir proprietatis, Stoughton's drops, best turpentine, decoction of the woods and mineral waters.'

This leads to an

Whence came all these virtues? inquiry into vegetable life, the nature of air, the 'pure ether or invisible fire' of the ancients and moderns; and this of course sets the Bishop off on all his great metaphysical hobbies as to the impossibility that matter should be a cause, as to the necessity of referring all motion to spiritual agency, as to the wisdom of the ancients, as to absolute space and fate, as to innate ideas as conceived of by Plato and Aristotle, as to the excellencies of Plato in particular, and finally, as to the Platonic Trinity.

This work is followed up by 'Farther Thoughts upon Tar-water'—the last of Berkeley's performances, in which we learn that, besides curing almost every kind of disease-cancer, for instance, diabetes, the plague, dropsy, yellow fever, and most other things

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it will make stupid children clever: 'It may render them for a time perhaps unseemly with eruptions, but withal healthy and lively, and I will

venture to add that it lays in the true principles of a good constitution for the rest of their lives. Even the most heavy, lumpish, and unpromising infants appear to be much improved by it. A child there is in my neighbourhood of fine parts who at first seemed stupid, and an idiot, but by constant use of tar-water grew lively and observing, and is now noted for understanding beyond others of the same age.'

It is interesting to contrast the easy natural way in which, in his old age, the Bishop gradually runs through the pure ethereal fire up to the Platonic Trinity, and then gently runs down the scale to 'Captain Drape's affidavit of the great and surprising efficacy of tar-water in the cure of the smallpox,' with the terse, systematic, combative energy with which in his youth he put forward and defended his speculations about the non-existence of matter.

There are several points in the Siris well worthy of more attention than we can at present give to them. For instance, Berkeley gives in a very few words his own theory as to innate ideas, which closely corresponds with one which has of late years been accepted by many writers, and which is by no means inconsistent with Locke's doctrine on the subject: 'Aristotle held that the mind of man was a tabula rasa, and that there were no innate ideas. Plato, on the contrary, held original ideas in the mind, that is, notions which never were nor can be in the sense, such as being, beauty, goodness, likeness, purity.

Some perhaps may think the truth to be this: that there are properly no ideas or passive objects in the mind but what are derived from sense; but that there are also besides these her own acts or operations such are notions.'

:

The whole attitude of Berkeley's mind towards the old philosophers is very remarkable. He held something of the same opinion about them as was long afterwards held by De Maistre, though he expresses it in a much more reasonable and less mystical way.

Though for many reasons we may not agree with them, the following passages have a liberal and enthusiastic tone which is as attractive as the substance of the remarks themselves is noticeable. 'There are traces of profound thought as well as primeval tradition in the Platonic, Pythagorean, Egyptian, and Chaldaic philosophy. Men in those early days were not overlaid with languages and literature. Their minds seem to have been more exercised and less burdened than in later ages; and, as so much nearer the beginning of the world, to have had the advantage of patriarchal lights handed down through a few hands.'

"The human mind is so much clogged and borne downward by the strong and early impressions of sense, that it is wonderful how the ancients should have made even such a progress, and seen so far into intellectual matters, without some glimmering of a

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divine tradition. Whoever considers a parcel of rude savages left to themselves, how they are sunk and swallowed up in sense and prejudice, and how unqualified by their natural force to emerge from this state, will be apt to think that the first spark of philosophy was derived from heaven; and that it was, as a heathen writer expresseth it, Oconapádoτos φιλοσοφία.

'In the Timæus of Plato mention is made of ancient persons, authors of traditions and the offspring of the gods. It is very remarkable that, in the account of the Creation contained in the same piece, it is said that God was pleased with his work, and that the night is placed before the day. The more we think, the more difficult shall we find it to conceive how mere man, grown up in the vulgar habits of life, and weighed down by sensuality, should ever be able to arrive at science without some tradition or teaching which might either sow the seeds of knowledge, or call forth and excite those latent seeds that were originally sown in the soul.'

II

BERKELEY'S 'MINUTE PHILOSOPHER’ , 1

WE purpose now to say something of Berkeley's principal controversial and practical work-Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher-which is composed of seven dialogues, and professes on the title-page to be 'an Apology for the Protestant Religion against those who are called Freethinkers.'

The Minute Philosopher has obtained an immense reputation, and is not only quoted for its arguments, but praised as a picked specimen of the style of composition to which it belongs. It is probably difficult at the present day to judge fairly of its merits in point of style. It was published in 1732, and was obviously meant to be a popular performance. If we are to trust other observers besides Berkeley, that time was a specially irreligious one. The impulse given to religion in England by the dread of Popery which led to the Revolution, and by the reaction. against the licentiousness of Charles II.'s reign, had died out, and the new impulse created by Methodism

1 Works of George Berkeley, D.D., Bishop of Cloyne. 1843.