Perceptions are not originated by me; they cannot be self-originated, because they are passive and not active; they cannot be originated by a material substance, because it does not exist. Their origin must be sought in the infinite spirit, or God. If you will examine the ideas which constitute what we call nature objects, you will observe these significant characteristics about them, to which attention has already been called. They have, as we have said, a strength, liveliness, distinctness, and orderliness that distinguish them from imaginations. They are God speaking to us in His orderly way. Nature objects are the language of God. The regularity and dependability of the world of nature reveal the character of the Being whose language the world of nature is. They reveal a Being who is intelligent, infinite, omnipotent, and benevolent. The regularity of the changing seasons, the constancy of the heavenly bodies to their orbits, the provision of the earth for man――all the laws of nature are the language of an orderly Being. Now we see the importance of Berkeley’s deviation from Locke in his (Berkeley’s) conception of all ideas as passive. All ideas being passive, there must be a cause of them. The only active causes are spirits. I am the cause or perceiver of my own imaginations. I perceive another’s movements and know that another person or spirit must be the cause. When nature speaks in its invariable and purposive harmony, I know that an infinite spirit is the cause. We are indeed living in a society of spirits, who speak to one another in their own language. The doctrine of Berkeley strikes beginners and people who temperamentally cannot understand it, as absurd. The reduction of the trees, sky, etc., to ideas is a theory that has brought down all kinds of ridicule upon it. When Dr. Johnson heard of it, he is said to have stamped his foot upon the ground, and thereby refuted it. Byron is quoted as saying, “If there is no matter, and Berkeley has proved it, it is no matter what he said.” Others have asked if we eat and drink ideas and are clothed with ideas. But Berkeley never doubted the existence of material objects, and the point of his theory is missed if we think that he did. What he denied is the existence of an unknown substance, matter, behind external objects. “The table I write on exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed, meaning thereby that if I were in my study I might perceive it or that some other person does perceive it.”