BERKELEY, GEORGE. 



BERLIOZ, HECTOR 



by those who do not pay the close* attention to the 

 j of hi* terms. For instance. Dr. Samuel Johnson, who wu 

 freaneuUy happy in perceiving verbal distinction*, aaid he refuted 

 Bflrkrley's theory by tamping with hi* foot upon the ground. That 

 is, be imagined that Berkeley denied the existence of the perception of 

 oddity, which of OOOTM WM not the ease. 



To the believer in ao intelligent Creator (and it i* only to rocri that 

 the negative pert of Berkeley'* argument applies) the case may be 

 thu* pot : You admit that your existence and your power of per- 

 OMvhar,, at well a< the perception* by which tlie second makes yon 

 know the first, are ultimately (whatever may be the intermediate iteps) 

 to be traced to the will of the Cmtor. Yon cannot figure to yourself 

 tfce uaVmi> tore of the perception* which yon receive as coming 

 directly from the Cmtor, bnt yon rappore a power of imparting them 

 to be made inherent in a certain 'substratum' (this is Berkeley's word) 

 which you call matter? But if you admit that it ia in the power of 

 the Orator to furnish you directly with those ideas of space, figure, 

 colour, *c., which to you constitute the material world, without any 

 intervention of which yon can form a positive conception ; how do 

 you know that he has not done so ? The answer must be that there 

 M no each knowledge ; and this i the point on which Berkeley has 

 never been, and it is not too bold an assertion to say never can be, 

 refuted. 



The positive part of Berkeley's theory, in which he asserts the 

 impossibility of matter, lay* him open to precisely the same answer 

 which those may receive who actually assert its existence. We cannot 

 in our limit* show the several grounds on which he supposes he has 

 established hi* point. He ha* a notion that what he calls an ' idea ' 

 (we should say 'perception') cannot be imparted unless there be 

 something resembling the idea in that which communicates. It is 

 very difficult to abbreviate an argument which handles the nature of 

 ideas; but the leading notion* seem to us to be contained in the 

 following quotation (' Works,' v. L p. 26), with which we shall close 

 this part. The reader will observe that axioms are assumed as 

 doubtful at least, and by no means so convenient as that of the 

 existence of matter ; also that the first paragraph assumes the point 

 in question : 



"Some troth* 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, to wit, 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 subsistence without a mind ; that their being is 

 to be perceived or known ; that consequently so long as they are not 

 actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any 

 other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or elae 

 subsist in the mind of lame eternal spirit 



" There i* not any other substance than spirit, or that which per- 

 ceive*. For an idea to exist in an nnperceiring thing is a 



manifest contradiction ; for to hare an idea is all one as to perceive ; 

 that tueiefuie wherein colour, figure, and the like qualities exist, must 

 perceive them ; hence it is clear there can be no unthinking substance 

 or substratum of these ideas." 



" Hut. say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without the 

 mind, yet there may be things like them whereof they are copies or 

 resemblances, which things exist without the mind, in an unthinking 

 substance. I answer, an idea can be nothing but an idea ; a colour or 

 figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure." 



Alriphron, or the Minute Philosopher.' This is a series of dialogue* 

 between two atheist* and two Christian theUt*. The former are of 

 the class of ' good company ' philosophers who have disappeared with 

 'wit' and 'verses.' 



The Analyst' and 'Defence of Kreethinking in Mathematics.' The 

 object of these tract* (the second of which i* a rejoinder to a reply to 

 the fint) is, by pointing out the difficulties in the subject of fluxions, 

 then almost newly invented, to show one of two thing* : either that 

 HieiiMlluiiui were not such master* of reasoning as to make their 

 opinion* on religion* subject* more valuable than those of other people ; 

 or tie* that there were, in the science of fluxion*, incomprehensible 

 poiBta M difficult a* those of religion, and yet logically established. It 

 wt " r *7 dangerous use of analogy, considered with reference to the 

 interests of the cause it wa meant to serve ; but it is by no means 

 the only instance of an attempt to place mathematical on a similar 

 foothsf with moral difficulties. The point* on which Berkeley insisted 

 have sine* been cleared up, and the publication of the ' Analyst ' was 

 the immediate cause of the work of MacUnrin on the subject 



The style of Berkeley is very cleer. and his bold method of thinking, 

 and absence of all adhesion to great authorities, make his works even 

 DOW valuable to the student These same qualities make them difficult 

 to describe, and the peculiar nature of the subjects which he treated 

 has reused them to be mwrepresented, so that thtir true soope is less 

 adentood than that of any other writing* of hi* day. 



(See his Life,' prefixed to his works published in 2 vols. 4to in 

 7M. written by the Rev. Dr. Stock from particulars furnished by 

 Berkeley's brother, and first published anonymously in 177. An 

 edition of hi. works has been iraos published in 3 vols. 8vo.) 



BKRKENHofT. DR. JOHN, the son of a Dutch merchant, was 

 >* at Leads about the year 1 730. He was educated partly at the 

 Br*sM school of that town and partly in Germany, and he afterwards 



made the tour of Europe in company with one or more English noble- 

 men. He then entered the Prussian service as a cadet, and rose to the 

 rank of captain. When the war broke out between England and France 

 in 1766, he quitted the Prussian and obtained a company in the English 

 service. On the conclusion of peace in 1760 he left tlie army, and 

 commenced the study of physic at K liubur.'h. During his residence 

 there be wrote a work entitled 'Clavis Anglica Lingua? Botanicn, or a 

 Botanical Lexicon, in which the terms of botany, particularly those 

 which occur in the works of Linnaeus and other modern writers, are 

 applied, derived, explained, contrasted, and exemplified,' London, 17i'>4, 

 small 8vo. It is a useful little work, and perhaps the first of its kind 

 published. 



Berkeuhout took the degree of Doctor of Physio at Leyden in 1 7t;."., 

 on which occasion he published his ' Dissertatio Medica Inaugur 

 Podagra,' dedicated to his relation Baron de Bielfeld (4to, pp. 28). ( )n 

 returning to England, Dr. Berkenhont settled at Islewortli iu Middlesex ; 

 and until his death, which took place in 1791, employed a great part 

 of lii* time in writing on an immense variety of subjects. In 1766 his 

 ' I'harmacopocia Medici ' appeared, which reached a third edition in 

 1782. His 'Outlines of the Natural History of Great Britain and 

 Ireland ' came out by a volume at a time in 1769-71. The copy at 

 the British Museum it bound up with a short treatise entitled the 

 ' Naturalist's and Traveller's Companion ' (London, 1772, 8vo, pp. 69). 

 It has no name, but is probably by the same indefatigable author. 



In 1771 he published 'Dr. Cadogan's Dissertation on the Gout 

 examined and refuted,' and in 1777 ' Biograpbia Literaria, or a Biogra- 

 phical History of Literature, containing tha Lives of English, Scottish, 

 and Irish authors, from the dawn of Letters in these kingdoms to the 

 present time, chronologically and classically arranged,' London, 1771, 

 4to, pp. 537. This volume contains the authors who lived from the 

 beginning of the 5th to the end of the 16th century. In a very long 

 preface, dated from Richmond in Surrey, the author promises his 

 readers a second, third, and fourth volume, but they never made their 

 appearance. 



Dr. Uerkenhout's next work was ' A Treatise on Hysterical Diseases, 

 translated from^tha French.' In 1778 he wai sent with certain com- 

 missioners appointed to treat with America, anil on his return obtained 

 a pension in consideration of his political services, and the loss sustained 

 by him in giving up hia practice for a time. In 1780 he published 

 ' Lucubrations on Ways and Means, inscribed to Lord North.' His 

 next work was an ' Essay on a Bite of a Mad Dog,' and in the following 

 year he published his 'Symptomatology.' In 1788 appeared Dr. 

 Herkenhout's ' First Lines of the Theory and Practice of Philosophical 

 Chemistry,' never a very valuable and now an utterly useless work. 



In 1779 he published a continuation of Campbell's ' Lives of the 

 Admirals,' 4 vola. 8vo. Hia last publication, according to the writer 

 of his life, was ' Letters on Education, to his Son at Oxford,' 1791, 

 2 vols. 12mo. Probably this is a mistake. We have seen a similar 

 work entitled ' A Volume of Letters from Dr. Berkenhout to his Son 

 at the University,' but it ia in one octavo volume (of 374 pages), is 

 printed in 1790, and addressed to a aon at the University of Cambridge. 

 It is a very poor production. Dr. Berkenhout, though certainly 

 undeserving of the lavish panegyrics of hia friends, was an active, 

 energetic, and indefatigable writer ; and though he has no claim to 

 the rare pr.iise of creating knowledge, it would be unjust to deny him 

 the credit due to those who acquire and diffuse it 



BERLICHINQEN, GOETZ VON, a German knight, a petty feudal 

 lord of Suabia, notorious in the history of the middle ages for hi* 

 bravery and his lawless turbulence. He lived during the reign of the 

 Emperor Maximilian I., the predecessor of Charles V. Qoetz wu 

 called Iron-Handed, because, having lost his right hand in battle, he 

 had a steel one made with springs, by means of which, it is said, he 

 could still handle bis lance. He was often at war with his neighbours, 

 and at times took the part of the peasantry against the nobles. In 

 1513 he declared war against the free imperial town of Nuruberg. 

 With 170 men he waylaid the merchants returning from Leipzig, 

 plundered them of all they had, and consigned, many to hia dungeons, 

 in order to exact a ransom for them. Upon this tho emperor put him 

 under the ban of the empire, and sentenced him to pay 14,000 florins. 

 The money waa collected after some difficulty, and the offender was 

 restored to his civil rights. Having again offended tho emperor, he 

 was at last besieged iu a castle by the imperial troops, where he 

 defended himself desperately, but was wounded, and died. Gotlie has 

 taken him for the subject of one of his dramas, 'Goetz von Berlichingen,' 

 till very popular in Germany, as being a picture of the manners and 

 social state of the latter part of the middle ages, before the imperial 

 authority was thoroughly enforced through the country by means of 

 standing armies, well disciplined, and provided with artillery. Gtithe'a 

 drama has been translated by Sir Walter Scott 



UKKLIOX., HKCToK, was born at Cdte-St-Andro", in the depart- 

 ment of Isore, in France, on December 11, 1803. Hia father, a phy- 

 sician, detiroua of bringing him up to that profession, resolutely 

 refu-cd tho supplications of the sou to be allowed to devote himself 

 to music, to which he was profoundly attached, and wherein he felt 

 he could distinguish himself. He wan however allowed to study music 

 in his leisure hour*. When he had attained the age of twenty he 

 was sent to Paris to complete his medical stndiox ; but he soon 

 deserted the lectures of the faculty; entered the Conservatoire de 



