The turning-point in _Alciphron_ is in man’s vision of God. This is pressed in the Fourth Dialogue. The free-thinker asserts that “the notion of a Deity, or some invisible power, is of all prejudices the most unconquerable; the most signal example of belief without reason for believing.” He demands proof—“such proof as every man of sense requires of a matter of fact.... Should a man ask, why I believe there is a king of Great Britain? I might answer, Because I had seen him. Or a king of Spain? Because I had seen those who saw him. But as for this King of kings, I neither saw Him myself, nor any one else that ever did see Him.” To which Euphranor replies, “What if it should appear that God really speaks to man; would this content you? What if it shall appear plainly that God speaks to men by the intervention and use of arbitrary, outward, sensible signs, having no resemblance or necessary connexion with the things they stand for and suggest; if it shall appear that, by innumerable combinations of these signs, an endless variety of things is discovered and made known to us; and that we are thereby instructed or informed in their different natures; that we are taught and admonished what to shun and what to pursue; and are directed how to regulate our motions, and how to act with respect to things distant from us, as well in time as place: will this content you?” Euphranor accordingly proceeds to shew that Visible Nature is a Language, in which the Universal Power that is continually at work is speaking to us all, in a way similar to that in which our fellow men speak to us; so that we have as much (even more) reason to believe in the existence of the Universal Person who is the Speaker, as we have to believe in the existence of persons around us; who become known to us, when they too employ sense-symbols, in the words and actions by which we discover that we are not alone in the universe. For men are really living spirits: their _bodies_ are only the sign of their spiritual personality. And it is so with God, who is also revealed in the visible world as a Spirit. “In a strict sense,” says Euphranor, “I do not see Alciphron, but only such visible signs and tokens as suggest and infer the being of that invisible thinking principle or soul. Even so, in the self-same manner, it seems to me that, though I cannot with eyes of flesh behold the invisible God, yet I do, in the strictest sense, behold and perceive, by all my senses, such signs and tokens ... as suggest, indicate, and demonstrate an invisible God as certainly, and with the same evidence, at least, as any other signs, perceived by sense, do suggest to me the existence of _your_ soul, spirit, or thinking principle; which I am convinced of only by a few signs or effects, and the motions of one small organised body; whereas I do, at all times, and in all places, perceive sensible signs which evince the being of God.” In short, God is the living