BERKELEY. 



46? 



Bergoo, BERGOO, a country of Africa, lying to the west 

 Berk eley. f Abyssinia, and extending about 187 geographical 

 V "~ "" v ~~~' miles from eist to west, and 2,50 from north to 

 south. Bergoo is governed by a sultan who recruits 

 his army from the inhabitants of eight large moun- 

 tains, about a day's journey from Wara, the capital 

 of Bergoo. The inhabitants of each of these moun- 

 tains are said to speak a distinct language from the 

 rest, and to be zealous Mahometans. This people, 

 more humane than some of their neighbours, never 

 make war for the express purpose of carrying off the 

 prisoners or slaves. Though the Bergoos arc Ma- 

 hometans, yet many of their tribes which depend up- 

 on them are idolatrous and cruel. They devour the 

 Beshoftheirprisoners,andpreservepartsof their skin as 

 tokens of bravery. See Browne's Travels, p. 310. (;') 

 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 shewed a very early passion for 

 literature ; for before he was twenty, he had com- 

 posed his ingenious mathematical essay, entitled, Arith- 

 tnetica absque Algebra aut Euclide demonstrata, which 

 he published in the same year that he was admitted a 

 fellow of Trinity : and, in 1709, he published his 

 justly celebrated NU 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 but 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 

 1 



a mind." This deduction, however singular, was rea- Berkeley. 

 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, by 

 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 to'virtue and religion. 



It was through his friend Swift that he became 

 known to the Earl of Peterborough, who appointed 

 him his chaplain and private secretary, and whom he 

 accompanied to Sicily and Italy in November 1713, 

 in the capacity of ambassador. On returning to 

 England in the ensuing year, he found that his hopes 

 of preferment had expired with the change of admi- 

 nistration ; which induced him to accept the offer 

 of travelling through Europe with the son of Dr 

 Ashe, bishop of Clogher. At Paris he visited the 

 ctlebrated Father Malebranche, who was then in a 

 declining state of health, and engaged with him in so 

 keen a metaphysical argument, that an increase of the 

 disorder of Malebranche, which was an inflammation 

 of the lungs, was the consequence. In fact, the 

 learned father died a few days afterwards, viz. Octo- 

 ber 13, 1715. On his way home, he drew up, at Lyons, 

 a curious tract, De Motu, which he transmitted to the 

 Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, and afterwards 

 published in London in 1721. He was likewise the 

 author of an Essay towards Preventing the Ruin of 

 Great Britain, printed in the same year, and occa- 

 sioned by the disastrous South Sea scheme of 1720. 



