“To be is to be perceived,” said the Irish philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1753). We exist and give existence by virtue of perception. Berkeley meant that God’s omniscient perception maintains all things. For a moralist—and Berkeley was a bishop—this could mean you’re never out of the sight of God, so you’d better be good! For a metaphysician, “E

God, in short, is not a being but is at once “beyond being” (in the sense that he transcends the totality of existing things) and also absolute “Being itself” (in the sense that he is the source and ground of all things).