1700. Soon after his entrance into the College, which was his residence during the thirteen years that followed, Berkeley came to be regarded as either the greatest genius or the greatest dunce in the place. Those slightly acquainted with him took him for a fool; while his intimates thought him a prodigy of learning and goodness of heart. He pursued his studies with extraordinary ardour, "full of simplicity and enthusiasm." He was elected scholar in 1702; a B.A. in 1704; and took his master's degree in 1707. Farther on in the same year—in June—he was admitted to a fellowship. Early in 1705, in conjunction with some of his college friends, he formed a society "to promote investigations in the new philosophy of Boyle, Newton, and Locke." His Common-place Book affords us an insight into the current of his thoughts at this time. His biographer (Mr. Fraser, from whose work all the extracts in this notice are made) says: "The prevailing tendency of the whole is to the banishment of scholasticism from philosophy, as well as all talk about things which cannot be resolved into living experience of concrete matter of fact, called by him idea or sensation. He is everywhere eager to simplify things, and make knowledge practical, to bring men back to facts, and to expel empty abstractions from philosophy, as the bane of religion and morality, not less than of physical science. There is also a disposition towards the intellectual independence which rebels against the bondage of words, and an enthusiastic straightforwardness of character, apt to be regarded as eccentricity by the multitude—but with a desire to conciliate too. What he writes, plainly flows from himself, if ever any writing did flow from the mind of the writer. . . Berkeley's mind everywhere labours under the inspiration of a new thought. . . When we compare one expression of it with another, we find that it implies neither more nor less than this—a conception of the impossibility of anything existing in the universe that is independent of perception and volition; that is not either percipient and voluntary, or perceived and willed. This is Berkeley's dualism. He vacillates in the abstract expression of it, but it generally approaches this. All so-called existence that cannot be resolved to this, is, he is beginning to see, only 'abstract idea,' and therefore absurd—to be swept away as sophistry and illusion. . . It is the same principle which in mathematics, with a dim conception of it, he found to press hard against incommensurability and infinite divisibility. At times he is in awe of its tremendous consequences, and of the shock which these may occasion when it is proclaimed to a learned world which had long tried to feed itself upon abstractions. But he is resolved, nevertheless, to employ it for purging science and sustaining faith." Berkeley first appeared in print in 1707, when he published two tracts—both written in Latin—one an attempt to demonstrate arithmetic without Euclid or algebra; the other. Thoughts on some Questions in Mathematics. His Essay towards a New Theory of Vision appeared two years later. The outcome of this essay appears to be: "What, before we reflected, we had supposed to be a seeing of real things, is not seeing really extended things at all, but only seeing something that is constantly connected with their extension; what is vulgarly called seeing them is in fact reading about them; when we are every day using our eyes, we are virtually interpreting a book." Berkeley's great work, The Principles of Human Knowledge, in which his theories are still further developed, appeared in 1710. "This book is a systematic assault upon scholastic abstractions, especially upon abstract or unperceived matter, space, and time. It assumes that these are the main causes of confusion and difficulty in the sciences, and of materialistic atheism." Berkeley "is the most extraordinary instance of original reflective precocity on record." On 1st February 1709 he was ordained a deacon. One of his discourses, preached in the College Chapel, on Passive Obedience, left room for casuistry about individual duty in revolutionary times, and seriously impeded his advancement in after life, by laying him open to the charge of Jacobitism. He was nominated Sub-Lecturer and Junior-Dean in 1710, and held the post of tutor until 1724. His emoluments did not exceed £40 a-year—equivalent to some four times that amount at the present day. On a Sunday in April 1713 Berkeley appeared at the court of Queen Anne, in the company of Swift; and we soon find him making his way amongst the great men of the time, writing for The Guardian, and spending his days with Steele and Addison. "Does my cousin answer your expectations?" asked Lord Berkeley of Bishop Atterbury; who, lifting up his hands in astonishment, replied: "So much understanding, so much innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of any but angels, till I saw this gentleman." At Swift's recommendation, in November 1713, he was appointed chaplain and secretary to the
