[226]. Kant’s criticism had been in part anticipated on the first circulation of the Meditations by both Mersenne and Gassendi. See particularly Gassendi’s strictures on Descartes’ confusion of existence with properties in the “Fifth Objections,” with Descartes’ unsatisfactory reply. Leibnitz repeated the same objection, and proposed to amend the Cartesian proof by a formal demonstration that God’s existence is possible, i.e. does not imply a formal contradiction. He then argues—If God’s existence is possible, He exists (by the Cartesian proof). But God’s existence is possible, therefore God exists. See, e.g., Leibnitz, Works, ed. Erdmann, p. 177; and Latta, Monadology of Leibniz, p. 274. Hume’s comments are even more akin to Kant’s. “Whatever we conceive as existent we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction. Consequently there is no being whose existence is demonstrable.” (Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, part 9.)
[227]. Appearance and Reality, chap. 24.
[228]. No thought can be merely and absolutely false, any more than any act can be merely and without qualification bad. Though words may be entirely meaningless, thoughts cannot be.
[229]. The appeal to experiment is no objection to the principle. For in making the experiment we do not, of course, get out of the circle of our thoughts, and the experiment only affords a criterion of truth in so far as it leaves us with a new thought which can only be brought into systematic harmony with our old ideas in one determinate way. Except as interpreted by thought, the experiment has no bearing on our knowledge.
[230]. This was also a favourite argument with Leibnitz, as Kant notes. For an acute examination of Leibnitz’s use of it and the other “proofs,” see B. Russell’s Philosophy of Leibniz chap. 15. For Hume’s objections to it, see the already quoted part 9 of the Dialogue concerning Natural Religion. The other “proof” of the Third Meditation, namely, that my possession of an idea of God, which I could not have derived from empirical sources, proves the reality of the idea’s object, is only a special form of the ontological argument from idea to existence.
[231]. As thus remodelled, the double ontologico-cosmological argument might be attacked on two grounds—(1) That it only proves, once more, that if we admit that all propositions are concerned with real existence, either directly or remotely, we must admit the existence of the Absolute, but does not demonstrate that all propositions are so concerned. (2) That in saying that existence is only conceivable as individual we fall back into the Cartesian misconception of existence as a predicate. I should reply, (1) that the validity of the premiss in question cannot be denied without being confirmed in the act of denial. I.e. unless the suggested proposition that “some propositions at least have no reference to a reality beyond their own presence as psychical facts in my mind,” itself has the very objective reference in question, it has no meaning, and is therefore no genuine proposition; (2) that we must distinguish between the what and the that of existence. The “that” of existence is not conceivable at all, but our position is that this inconceivable that is only logically, not really, separable from a what, and that it is precisely this inseparability of the that and the what which we mean by “individuality.”
[232]. Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, part 11.
[233]. This is quite consistent with our own view, that all real processes are teleological in the sense of being marked by subjective interest. For (a) not by any means all teleological process is actual “design” or “volition” (impulse, organic craving, habit, etc., are all cases in point); and (b) actual volition need not always be volition for the result it actually produces. Sexual selection in man would be an instance of a process which may take the form of actual volition, but in that case is rarely, if ever, volition for that improvement of the stock which de facto issues from it.
[234]. Cf. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, pp. 200, 496-497 (1st ed.). Professor Flint’s attempted reply to the Humian and Kantian criticism of the theistic “proofs” (Agnosticism, chap. 4) has not induced me to modify any of the opinions expressed in this chapter.