real need in the English life of his time. England is to all appearances the most conservative country in the world, but it has always had its revolutions long before other countries. England first went through the political revolution for the establishment of representative government, the theoretical revolution against scholasticism, and the industrial revolution against landed property; and in the eighteenth century it went through the anti-religious revolution against Christianity. England had had its Aufklärung and its Encyclopedists before Berkeley began his work. But in this, as in the other English revolutions, the natural moderation of the race and its tendency toward balance kept the movement from attaining an excessive development and from wreaking such destruction as to compel its adversaries to oppose it without compromise. So the English tendency toward unbelief did not degenerate, but remained in part within the field of religious thought, thus obliging the apologists of religion to seek new arguments, and to jettison some old ones.
In the apologetics of Berkeley one cannot readily separate the part of morals and the part of religion, and it is not always easy to decide whether he is insisting on morality for religious reasons, or defending belief in God for moral reasons. His position, which has been called
