V
BERKELEY
I
Berkeley was one of those men who cannot or will not decide whether to devote themselves to thought or to action. They are enamored of ideas, but they would have ideas triumph at once in the reality of daily life. They would influence men, they would transform the world, but they rely on thought and word as instruments. They know the pleasure of intellectual activity and the joy of discovery, but they soon weary of solitary meditation. They seek to do good, and to mingle in the affairs of the social group to which they belong, but they cannot make up their minds to sacrifice truth to possibility, the things of the spirit to the necessities of common life. And even if they succeed in winning men by their enthusiasm, they fall victims at the last to their own intellectual ingenuousness. Thus their speculations are disturbed by their practical purposes, they are fatally hampered by considerations of moral propriety or by dogma; and on the other
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