The comparative analysis of Berkeley's Treatise concerning the principles of human knowledge (1710) and Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous (1713), as they show the two successive stages of immaterialism first doctrinal drawing, allows us to build the following hypothesis: the dialogism that the Treatise ceaselessly calls for seems to lead to the Dialogues, as if Berkeley could at last use a rhetoric adequate for this philosophical project. But, to the contrary, the quantitative study of the speech distribution of the dialogues reveals that they take on the Treatise latent dialogism with the sole aim of nullifying it. It fact, Philonous' overwhelming speech mastery allows him to deliver real doctrinal accounts, whereas Hylas dissipates his efforts along contradictory objections. Dialogism, then, is but a limited tool for Berkeley's rhetorical reform, embodying an interlocutor to dissolve it easier.
