sequently, the best means of attaining eternal felicity is to discover the nature of the divine will as expressed in natural and in moral law, and to obey that will in all respects. We are to believe in God because only thus may we obtain the imperishable good. Religion is useful, therefore it must be true—yet after all the very basis of its utility is its truth.
In the Siris this somewhat narrow religious utilitarianism becomes broader. God is still the wise and good Ruler, and He is still the infinite Spirit who provides finite spirits with their ideas: but, thanks to the influence of Plato, He has become the cosmic principle, the creator of that universal ether which explains the life of the world better than any mechanistic theory. The Master of Morals has become a Demiurge; and beyond him the philosopher, liberated for the moment from the necessities of apologetics, believes that he can perceive the very essence of divinity, the ineffable One of the neo-Platonists.
But though Berkeley rises to great heights in the last pages of the Siris, he is less original there than elsewhere. His importance in the history of English religious thought consists primarily in his reconciliation between the divine will and the human desire for well-being. For Locke, the validity of moral law is derived from the omnipotence of God; for Paley, that validity lies purely
