"religious utilitarianism," affords a new instance of that practical-theoretical dualism to which I have already referred. Nevertheless, some of his views on the problem of God are to a certain extent independent of his ethical preoccupations. One of his proofs of the existence of a supreme spirit is derived, in fact, from his immaterialism. He could not sink to the absurdity of believing that things exist only as we see them and hear them, and that they appear and disappear according as we are present or absent; nor could he admit, without giving up his entire system, that things exist in themselves, and not as mere objects of thought. When things are not seen by us they must then exist in some other thought: either in the thought of other men, or in the thought of God. To the thought of man belongs only that which is conscious and present. All that which is invisible, all that which is unconscious, even within ourselves, belongs to the activity of God.
Berkeley sought also, therefore, to reveal the nature of God; and in the works of his last period the problem of the significance of the material world is replaced by the problem of the significance of the Supreme Power of whom the material world is merely a manifestation. And Berkeley was obliged, in consequence, to combat not only the atheists of his time, but also the
