Grice at Berkeley on Berkeley: the learned and the vulgar

Berkeley considers this as the source of an objection at Principles 51:

"Seventhly, it will upon this be demanded whether it does not seem absurd to take away natural causes, and ascribe every thing to the immediate operation of spirits? We must no longer say upon these principles that fire heats, or water cools, but that a spirit heats, and so forth. Would not a man be deservedly laughed at, who should talk after this manner?"

"I answer, he would so; in such things we ought to think with the learned, and speak with the vulgar."

On Berkeley's account, the true cause of any phenomenon is a spirit, and most often it is the same spirit, namely, God.

But surely, one might object, it is a step backwards to abandon our scientific theories and simply note that God causes what happens in the physical world! 

Berkeley's first response here, that we should think with the learned but speak with the vulgar, advises us to continue to say that fire heats, that the heart pumps blood, etc. 

What makes this advice legitimate is that he can reconstrue such talk as being about regularities in our ideas. In Berkeley's view, the point of scientific inquiry is to reveal such regularities.