The end of the summer of 1721 found Berkeley still in London. England was in the social agitation and misery consequent upon the failure of the South Sea Company, a gigantic commercial speculation connected with British trade in America. A new inspiration took possession of him. He thought he saw in this catastrophe signs of a decline in public morals worse than that which followed the Restoration. “Political corruption”, “decay of religion,” “growth of atheism,” were descriptive words used by the thoughtful. Berkeley’s eager imagination was apt to exaggerate the evil. He became inspired by social idealism, and found vent for his fervour in _An Essay towards preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_, which, as well as the _De Motu_, made its appearance in 1721. This _Essay_ is a significant factor in his career. It was the Cassandra wail of a sorrowful and indignant prophet, prepared to shake the dust from his feet, and to transfer his eye of hope to other regions, in which a nearer approach to Utopia might be realised. The true personality of the individual is unrealisable in selfish isolation. His favourite _non sibi, sed toti mundo_ was henceforward more than ever the ruling maxim of his life. II. Middle Life (1722-34). In October, 1721, Berkeley was in Dublin. The register of the College shews that “on November 14, 1721, Mr. Berkeley had the grace of the House for the Degree of Bachelor and Doctor of Divinity.” There is no ground for the report that he returned to Ireland at this time as Chaplain to the Duke of Grafton, the Lord Lieutenant(12). But preferment in the Church seemed within his reach. “I had no sooner set foot on shore,” he wrote to Percival in that October, “than I heard that the Deanery of Dromore was vacant.” Percival used his influence with the Lord Lieutenant, and in February, 1722, Berkeley’s patent was “passing the Seals for the Deanery of Dromore.” But the Bishop of Dromore claimed the patronage, and this led to a protracted and ineffectual lawsuit, which took Berkeley to London in the following winter, “to see friends and inform himself of points of law,” and he tells that “on the way he was nearly drowned in crossing to Holyhead(13).”