of this money, he began preparations for his departure. It was at this time that he married Anne Forster, a lady of mystic leanings, a reader of Fénelon and of Mme Guyon. Early in September, 1728, he left Greenwich, with his wife and a few companions (among them the painter Smibert), and in January, 1729, he reached America. He landed, however, not in Bermuda, but at Newport, Rhode Island, where for two years he waited for the money which never came, read many ancient philosophers, fell in love with Plato, converted some of the American clergy to the doctrine of immaterialism, founded a philosophic society, and wrote his most extensive work, Alciphron, or The Minute Philosopher.
Late in 1731, following the advice of his friends, he returned to England, where he published the Alciphron and a defense of his Theory of Vision. For some time he was engaged in polemics with free-thinkers and mathematicians, and brought out new editions of his early philosophical works, modifying his thought in some respects.
Berkeley's stay in Rhode Island divides his philosophic activity into two parts. In his youth he was a positivist and phenomenalist, wary of metaphysics. In his maturity, under the influence of Platonism, he held psychology in less esteem, made more use of dialectics than of the
