He did his best to fulfil that duty. And since philosophy is one of the weapons unbelievers use, he sought to blow the ground from under their feet by a philosophic mine: the theory of immaterialism. His development of this theory, which in the eyes of most historians constitutes the whole of Berkeley, is in reality merely one phase of his Glaubenkampf.
III
A thorough examination of Berkeley's leading characteristics would compel us, in any case, to conclude that he could never have been a pure philosopher, even had he so desired. Indeed, to say nothing of the dogmatic assumptions and the moral purposes to which I have already referred, he was dominated by considerations which are usually regarded as hostile to abstract speculation. He was inclined, as he himself recognized, to take up with what was new and paradoxical; and he was the sworn enemy of all that is not clear, precise, completely and universally intelligible, and in harmony with that famous "common sense" which has always been the guardian deity of British thought. Berkeley approached philosophy, at least in the first period of his career, as a good positivist, a student of physical science, and a reader of Locke. He sought to
