great doctrines of natural religion can be shown by reason to be true. They are embodied in Christianity, which is proved by experience to be useful, and rests on a basis of positive evidence which makes it probable; and this is a sufficient ground, not for believing it absolutely, but for having faith in it, by which Berkeley appears to have meant acting on the hypothesis of its truth.

When carefully analysed, we do not think that the Minute Philosopher carries us higher than this, which is also in substance the result reached by Berkeley's more famous contemporary, Butler. It would be no difficult matter to show that, though morally and practically there is all the difference in the world between Berkeley and Butler, and many of their opponents, the chief dispute between them intellectually, was as to a question of fact, as to the proper method of discussing which they were substantially agreed. The fact that the conclusions at which they arrived differed so widely, and involved such important differences of another kind, suggests questions which meet us at every turn in that great controversy. Is it possible that the parties to it should have really and adequately understood its scope?

Have they not at some point or other managed to leave the matter upon a false issue? The full discussion of these questions would lead us far beyond our limits, and an inadequate discussion of them would be worse than useless.

III

BERKELEY'S OCCASIONAL WORKS1

THE Occasional works of a remarkable man are often as characteristic as any part of his writings, and we propose to complete our sketch of him by saying something of his minor productions, a list of which is given below.

The only other matter contained in his works consists of mathematical speculations. A great part of these tracts is purely technical, but they are also directed, to a very great extent, to the philosophy of the subject, and to the various metaphysical ques

11. Sermon on Passive Obedience.

2. An Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain. 3. A Discourse addressed to Magistrates and Men in Authority.

4. A Word to the Wise.

5. A Letter to the Roman Catholics of the Diocese of Cloyne.

6. Maxims concerning Patriotism.

7. The Querist.

8. A Proposal for the better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations, etc.

9. Concerning Motion.

tions which may be connected with all mathematical study.

The least technical of the tracts in question are three-A Tract concerning Motion,' a part of the 'Analyst,' and 'A Defence of Freethinking in Mathematics.' The consistency of aim and the persistency of mind, which were Berkeley's most striking peculiarities, are nowhere more forcibly illustrated than in these works. Though their special object is mathematical, each is, in its way, an argument on the subject which continually exercised the author's mind. To exorcise metaphysical phantoms, and to reduce every subject with which he had to deal to the clearest and most positive form, was the great object of Berkeley's writings on all subjects.

The Tract concerning Motion' is accordingly intended to prove that space and motion are relative terms, that absolute space and absolute motion are nonentities, and that it is impossible to discourse about them at all without falling into endless absurdities and contradictions. The whole tract also assumes, and in several places states, the doctrine which one metaphysical school of our own days has developed so energetically, and maintains so vigorously-that the fundamental definitions of geometry, which regard a line as length without breadth, and a point as position without magnitude, etc., are merely fictions invented for special purposes, which we must on no account allow ourselves to regard as being real existences.

There never was a more consistent antagonist than Berkeley, to what the positivists of our own days mean by metaphysics. The following are a few examples chosen from a great number: 'Power, gravity, and words of that kind are employed more usually, and that not injudiciously in the concrete, to denote the motion in bodies, the difficulty in resistance, etc.; but when they are used by philosophers to signify natures distinct and abstracted from all these, which are neither objects of sense, nor can be figured by any power of mind or imagination, they are sure to produce error and confusion. We generally suppose that corporeal power is something easily conceived. Those who have given more attention to the subject think otherwise.'

And after referring to the language of Torricelli and Leibnitz on the subject, he says: 'Thus must even the greatest men, when they give way to abstraction, have recourse to words having no certain signification, and indeed mere scholastic shadows. . . Metaphysical abstractions . . . still give unnecessary trouble to philosophy. . . . As geometricians, for the sake of practice, devise many things which they neither themselves can contrive nor find in the nature of things, for the same reason those who treat of mechanics employ certain abstract and general words, and assume power, action, attraction, solicitation, etc., which are of the first utility for theories, enunciations, and computations concerning motion, although in actual truth, and bodies really, they are sought in

vain, as much as those things imagined by mathematical abstraction. . .

'What sort of extension is that which we can neither perceive by our senses nor figure in the imagination? for nothing can enter the imagination which from the nature of the thing is not possible to be perceived by sensation, since imagination is nothing else than a faculty representing the objects of sensation, either existing in act or at least being possible.'

As the 'Tract concerning Motion' is an illustration of the vigour and profundity of Berkeley's intellect, the Analyst' exemplifies his passion for turning everything to an immediate practical purpose. Its title is 'A Discourse addressed to an Infidel Mathematician, wherein it is examined whether the Object, Principles, and Inferences of the Modern Analysis are more distinctly conceived or more evidently deduced than Religious Mysteries and Points of Faith.'

Inasmuch as Berkeley's Fundamental proposition in the 'Tract upon Motion,' and in other parts of his works, is that a great number of words, commonly in use amongst mathematicians, ought to be rejected, at all events, in the senses in which they were understood by those who used them, because they led to endless confusions and difficulties, it could hardly be called dexterous advocacy to say that matter of the same sort was to be found in theology.

To say in one breath that the word 'matter' is to be rejected from philosophy because its use introduces