§ 8. Of course, it would be quite open to us to hold that there may be, within the Absolute, finite beings of superhuman power and goodness with whom humanity is capable of co-operating for ethical ends. Only such beings, if they exist, would not be God in the same sense in which the Absolute may be called God. They might deserve and win our reverence and our co-operation, but because themselves finite and therefore only imperfectly real and individual, they could not logically take the place which belongs only to the completely and perfectly individual realisation of the ideal. That would still fall partly outside them in the nature, as a whole, of the system which harmoniously includes both ourselves and them. Thus such beings would be “gods” in the sense of polytheism rather than God in that of monotheism.
Further, I can see no means of deciding a priori that there could be only one such being in the universe. Even supposing the series of finite beings to be itself finite, it is not evident that it could contain only one “best” member. And supposing it infinite, could there be a “best” member at all?[[224]] Also it appears quite beyond the power of Metaphysics to find either proof or disproof of the existence and agency of such finite but exalted beings. We cannot say that our general conception of Reality is such as to negative the suggestion, and yet again that general conception gives us no positive evidence in favour of taking it as true. It would certainly be the grossest presumption to maintain that the Absolute can contain no higher types of finite individuality than those presented by human society; on the other hand, it would be equally presumptuous to assert that we have reasoned knowledge of their existence and their direct social relation with ourselves. Hence we must, I think, be content to say that the hypothesis, so far as it seems to be suggested to any one of us by the concrete facts of his own individual experience, is a matter for the legitimate exercise of Faith.
§ 9. These reflections may naturally lead to some remarks, which shall be made as brief as possible, about the so-called philosophical “arguments for the existence of God,” which played a prominent part in Metaphysics before their discrediting at the hands of Kant and Hume.[[225]] Kant’s great achievement lies in having demonstrated that the whole force of the “proofs” depends upon the famous ontological argument, best known in modern Philosophy in the form adopted by Descartes in the fifth Meditation. Descartes there argues thus:—By “God” I mean a completely perfect being. Now, existence is a perfection, and non-existence an imperfection. Hence I cannot think of a non-existing perfect being without self-contradiction. Hence God, because by hypothesis perfect, must exist, and is the only being whose existence logically follows from its definition.
Kant’s even more famous criticism of this famous inference turns upon the principle which he had learned from his study of Hume, that logical necessity is “subjective.” If I think of a logical subject as defined by certain properties, he argues in effect, I am necessitated to ascribe to it all the predicates implied in that definition. That is, I must affirm them or contradict myself. Hence, if “existence” is originally included among the perfections by which the subject “God” is defined, the proposition God exists is certainly necessary, but is also tautological, and amounts, in fact, to the mere assertion that “an existing perfect being is an existing perfect being.” But if the “existence” spoken of in the predicate is something not included in the definition of the subject, then you cannot infer it from that definition. Now “real existence” is not a predicate which can be included in the definition of a concept. The predicates by which an imaginary hundred dollars are defined are the same as those of a real hundred dollars. It is not by the possession of a new predicate, but by being actually given in a concrete experience, that the real coins differ from the imaginary. Hence all propositions asserting real existence are synthetic, (i.e. assert of their subject something which is not contained in the concept of it), and the real existence of God or any other object can never be deduced from its definition.[[226]]
This Kantian criticism has itself been subjected to much criticism, principally at the hands of Hegel and those subsequent philosophers who have been specially affected by the Hegelian influence. What appears to be the general principle of the Hegelian criticism has been most clearly expressed in English philosophy by Mr. Bradley,[[227]] upon whose discussion the following remarks are chiefly founded.
In estimating the worth of the ontological proof, we must distinguish between the general principle implied in it and the particular form in which it presents that principle. It is manifest that Kant is perfectly right when he contends that, taking existence to mean presence in the space and time-order, you cannot reason from my possession of any idea to the existence of a corresponding object. You cannot say whatever I conceive must exist as I conceive it. But the principle of the ontological proof is perhaps not necessarily condemned by its failure to be thus universally applicable. The principle involved appears to be simply this. The idea and the reality outside its own existence as a fact in the time-order which it “means” or “stands for” are mutually complementary aspects of a whole Reality which include them both. For there is, on the one side, no “idea” so poor and untrue as not to have some meaning or objective reference beyond its own present existence.[[228]] And, on the other, what has no significance for any subject of experience is nothing. Hence in its most general form the ontological argument is simply a statement that reality and meaning for a subject mutually imply one another. But it does not follow that all thoughts are equally true and significant. In other words, though every thought means something beyond its own existence, different thoughts may represent the structure of that which they mean with very different grades of adequacy. That which my thought means may be far from being real in the form in which I think it.
Now, we may surely say that the more internally harmonious and systematic my thought is, the more adequately it represents the true nature of that which it means. If thoroughly systematic coherent thought may be mere misrepresentation, our whole criterion of scientific truth is worthless. How freely we use this ontological argument in practice will be readily seen by considering the way in which, e.g., in the interpretation and reconstruction of historical facts, the internal coherency of a systematic and comprehensive interpretation is taken as itself the evidence of its truth.[[229]] Hence it may be argued that if there is a systematic way of thinking about Reality which is absolutely and entirely internally coherent, and from its own nature must remain so, however the detailed content of our ideas should grow in complexity, we may confidently say that such a scheme of thought faithfully represents the Reality for which it stands, so far as any thought can represent Reality. That is, while the thought would not be the Reality because it still remains thought, which means something beyond its own existence, it would require no modification of structure but only supplementation in detail to make it the truth.
But if we have anywhere thought which is thus internally coherent, and from its own nature must remain so, however knowledge may extend, we have it surely in our metaphysical conception of the real as the absolutely individual. Thus the ontological proof appears, in any sense in which it is not fallacious, to amount merely to the principle that significant thought gives us genuine knowledge; and therefore, since the thoroughgoing individuality of structure of its object is presupposed in all significant thought, Reality must be a perfect individual. That this perfect individual must further be “God,” i.e. must have the special character ascribed to it by beliefs based upon specifically religious emotions, does not follow. How far the “God” of religion is a correct conception of the metaphysical Absolute, we can only learn from the analysis of typical expressions of the religious experience itself. And it is obvious that if by “God” we mean anything less than the Absolute whole, the ontological proof ceases to have any cogency. It is impossible to show that the possibility of significant thought implies the presence of a special finite being, not empirically known to us, within the Absolute.
The “cosmological” proof, or “argument from the contingency of the world,” unlike the ontological, has the appearance, at first sight, of starting with given empirical fact. As summarised by Kant for purposes of criticism, it runs thus:—“If anything at all exists, there must be also an absolutely necessary being. Now, I exist myself; ergo, the absolutely necessary being exists.” To make the proof quite complete, it would be necessary to show that the being whose existence is affirmed in the minor premisses, to wit, myself, is not itself the “absolutely necessary being,” and the argument thus completed would become in principle identical with the second of the “proofs” given by Descartes in the third Meditation, where it is inferred that if I, a dependent being, exist, there must be a God on whom I and all things depend.[[230]] As Kant has pointed out, the whole force of this inference rests upon the previous admission of the ontological argument. By itself the cosmological proof only establishes the conclusion that if any dependent existence is real, independent existence of some kind must be real also. To convert this into a “proof of the existence of God” you must further go on to identify the “independent existence” thus reached with the “most real” or “most perfect” being of the ontological proof. For otherwise it might be suggested, as is done by one of the speakers in Hume’s dialogue, that the series of phenomenal events itself, taken as an aggregate, is the “necessary existence” upon which the “contingent existence” of each several event depends. “Did I show you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable should you afterwards ask me what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of the parts.”
To avoid this objection, we must go on to maintain that only the “most perfect being” can be an ultimately necessary being, and that its “necessary existence” is a consequence of its character. This, as we have seen, is the very assertion made in the ontological proof. Hence our criticisms of the ontological proof will be equally applicable to the cosmological. If we combine the two, restating them in accord with our previous remodelling of the former, the argument will take the following form. All propositions directly or indirectly refer to real existence. Hence it would be self-contradictory to assert that nothing exists. But existence itself is only conceivable as individual. Hence the absolutely individual must be really existent. And this is identical with the general principle of our own reasoning in Book II. of the present work. Clearly, if valid, it is valid simply as an argument for a metaphysical Absolute; it neither proves that Absolute itself to be what we mean in religion by God, nor affords any ground for asserting the existence of God as a finite individual within the Absolute.[[231]]