uniform order, whilst images, are fitful and irregular; and we are conscious of not having produced the sensations ourselves. The problem of natural science therefore consists in discovering the exact uniform relation which obtains between our sensations, so that the presence of a sensation shall indicate to us what other sensation we may expect. The interpretation of nature therefore simply means the discovery of the laws which govern the relations of our sensations. With matter in general, that indefinite something which is supposed to underlie all sensations, science has nothing whatever to do.
Berkeley nevertheless thinks that sensations necessarily require a cause which is distinct from ourselves. In attempting to formulate an idea of this cause, he starts from an analogy with our own activity. Our own faculty of producing and changing ideas is the only activity of which we have knowledge. Berkeley calls this faculty the will and regards the will as the essence of the soul: the soul is the will (Commonplace Book). He also conceives the causes of our sensations after the analogy of this will: these are produced immediately by God. Thus Berkeley’s philosophy passes over into theology. This immediate relationship with God satisfies his religious feelings. He regards the idea that God should first have created matter and then ordained that it should influence our minds as unnecessarily circuitous.— The divine will is not only evident in the separate sensations, but likewise in their uniform sequence, and the teleology of phenomena reveals the divine prescience.
Berkeley elaborates his philosophical ideas in popular form and in polemical controversy against the Free-thinkers in two beautiful and ingenious dialogues (Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, 1712, and Alciphron, 1732).
