This argument continues, however, to possess a weight and an authority, which, in spite of its objective insufficiency, it has never been divested of.For, granting that certain responsibilities lie upon us, which, as based on the ideas of reason, deserve to be respected and submitted to, although they are incapable of a real or practical application to our nature, or, in other words, would be responsibilities without motives, except upon the supposition of a Supreme Being to give effect and influence to the practical laws: in such a case we should be bound to obey our conceptions, which, although objectively insufficient, do, according to the standard of reason, preponderate over and are superior to any claims that may be advanced from any other quarter.The equilibrium of doubt would in this case be destroyed by a practical addition; indeed, Reason would be compelled to condemn herself, if she refused to comply with the demands of the judgement, no superior to which we know- however defective her understanding of the grounds of these demands might be.
This argument, although in fact transcendental, inasmuch as it rests upon the intrinsic insufficiency of the contingent, is so simple and natural, that the commonest understanding can appreciate its value.We see things around us change, arise, and pass away; they, or their condition, must therefore have a cause.The same demand must again be made of the cause itself- as a datum of experience.Now it is natural that we should place the highest causality just where we place supreme causality, in that being, which contains the conditions of all possible effects, and the conception of which is so simple as that of an all-embracing reality.This highest cause, then, we regard as absolutely necessary, because we find it absolutely necessary to rise to it, and do not discover any reason for proceeding beyond it.
Thus, among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some faint sparks of monotheism, to which these idolaters have been led, not from reflection and profound thought, but by the study and natural progress of the common understanding.
There are only three modes of proving the existence of a Deity, on the grounds of speculative reason.
All the paths conducting to this end begin either from determinate experience and the peculiar constitution of the world of sense, and rise, according to the laws of causality, from it to the highest cause existing apart from the world- or from a purely indeterminate experience, that is, some empirical existence- or abstraction is made of all experience, and the existence of a supreme cause is concluded from a priori conceptions alone.The first is the physicotheological argument, the second the cosmological, the third the ontological.More there are not, and more there cannot be.
I shall show it is as unsuccessful on the one path- the empirical-as on the other- the transcendental- and that it stretches its wings in vain, to soar beyond the world of sense by the mere might of speculative thought.As regards the order in which we must discuss those arguments, it will be exactly the reverse of that in which reason, in the progress of its development, attains to them- the order in which they are placed above.For it will be made manifest to the reader that, although experience presents the occasion and the starting-point, it is the transcendental idea of reason which guides it in its pilgrimage and is the goal of all its struggles.I shall therefore begin with an examination of the transcendental argument, and afterwards inquire what additional strength has accrued to this mode of proof from the addition of the empirical element.
SECTION IV.Of the Impossibility of an Ontological Proof of the Existence of God.
It is evident from what has been said that the conception of an absolutely necessary being is a mere idea, the objective reality of which is far from being established by the mere fact that it is a need of reason.On the contrary, this idea serves merely to indicate a certain unattainable perfection, and rather limits the operations than, by the presentation of new objects, extends the sphere of the understanding.But a strange anomaly meets us at the very threshold;for the inference from a given existence in general to an absolutely necessary existence seems to be correct and unavoidable, while the conditions of the understanding refuse to aid us in forming any conception of such a being.
Philosophers have always talked of an absolutely necessary being, and have nevertheless declined to take the trouble of conceiving whether- and how- a being of this nature is even cogitable, not to mention that its existence is actually demonstrable.A verbal definition of the conception is certainly easy enough: it is something the non-existence of which is impossible.But does this definition throw any light upon the conditions which render it impossible to cogitate the non-existence of a thing- conditions which we wish to ascertain, that we may discover whether we think anything in the conception of such a being or not? For the mere fact that I throw away, by means of the word unconditioned, all the conditions which the understanding habitually requires in order to regard anything as necessary, is very far from making clear whether by means of the conception of the unconditionally necessary I think of something, or really of nothing at all.
Nay, more, this chance-conception, now become so current, many have endeavoured to explain by examples which seemed to render any inquiries regarding its intelligibility quite needless.Every geometrical proposition- a triangle has three angles- it was said, is absolutely necessary; and thus people talked of an object which lay out of the sphere of our understanding as if it were perfectly plain what the conception of such a being meant.
