§  11.  The  chief  opponent  of  Mandeville  was  the  accomplished  and
almost  ideally  virtuous  Bishop  Berkeley  (1684-1753),  equally  famous
for  the  evangelic  benevolence  of  his  character  and  the  acuteness  of  his
genius.  His  mind  was  ever  full  of  projects  for  increasing  the  virtue
and  happiness  of  his  fellow-creatures ;  and  the  Utopian  character  of
some  of  these  plans  only  proves  the  intensity  of  his  philanthropic
humanity.  One  of  them  was  the  establishment  of  a  sort  of  missionary
college  in  the  Bermudas,  for  the  purpose  of  converting  and  civilizing
the  Carib  savages.  He  was  made  Bishop  of  Cloyne  in  Ireland,  and
presents  one  of  the  rare  instances  of  a  prelate,  out  of  pure  love  for  his
flock  and  an  unaffected  contentment  with  his  lot,  obstinately  refusing
any  further  promotion.  His  writings  are  exceedingly  numerous,  and
embrace  a  wide  field  of  moral  and  metaphysical  discussion.  He  is  one
of  the  most  brilliant,  as  well  as  one  of  the  earliest  maintainers  of  the
extreme  spiritualistic  theory,  and  thus  in  some  degree  an  opponent  of
Locke.  His  celebrated  argument  that  we  have  no  more  grounds  for
doubting  the  existence  of  spirit  than  we  have  for  denying  the  existence
of  matter  has  been  perverted  or  exaggerated  by  people  who  talk
loosely  into  a  supposition  that  he  argued  against  the  existence  of  mat-
ter altogether.  The  truth  is,  that  in  investigating  the  very  obscure  and
arduous  question  of  the  nature  of  that  evidence  upon  which  we  liase
our  convictions  of  material  objects  external  to  and  independent  of  our-


SOO  THE  ESSAYISTS.       .  [Chap.  XVI.
