The second form of the Cartesian argument is, that God cannot be thought of as a perfect Being unless He be also thought of as a necessarily existent Being; and that, therefore, the thought of God implies the existence of God. "Just as because," for example, "the equality of its three angles to two right angles is necessarily comprised in the idea of a triangle, the mind is firmly persuaded that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; so, from its perceiving necessary and eternal existence to be comprised in the idea which it has of an all-perfect Being, it ought manifestly to conclude that this all-perfect Being exists." Kant met this argument thus: "It is a contradiction that there should be a triangle the three angles of which are not equal to two right angles, or that there should be a God who is not necessarily existent. I cannot in either case retain the subject and do away with the predicate. If I assume a triangle, I must take it with its three angles. If I assume a God, I must grant Him to be necessarily existent. But why should I assume either that there is a triangle or that there is a God? I may annul the subject in both cases, and then there will be no contradiction in annulling the predicate in both cases. There may be no such thing as a triangle, why should there be such a Being as God?"
This reasoning of Kant has generally been accepted as conclusive. It does not appear to me to be so. He ought not merely to have asserted but to have shown that we can annul the subject in either of the cases mentioned. We obviously cannot. I can say "there is no triangle," but instead of annulling that implies the idea of a triangle, and from the idea of a triangle it follows that its three angles are equal to two right angles. In like manner I can say "there is no God," but that is not to annul but to imply the idea of God, and it is from the idea of God that, according to Descartes, the existence of God necessarily follows. Kant should have seen that the proposition "there is no God" could be no impediment to an argument the very purpose of which is to prove that that proposition is a self-contradiction. It is futile to meet this by saying that existence ought not to be included in any mere conception, for it is not existence but necessary existence which is included in the conception reasoned from, and that God can be thought of otherwise than as necessarily existent requires to be proved, not assumed. To affirm that existence cannot be given or reached through thought, but only through sense and sensuous experience, can prove nothing except the narrowness of the philosophy on which such a thesis is based.
Cudworth, Leibnitz, and Mendelssohn modified the Cartesian argument last specified in ways which do not greatly differ from one another. It may be doubted whether their modifications were improvements.
In the eighteenth century there were elaborated a great many proofs which claimed to be a priori theistic demonstrations based on the notions of existence and causality. Assuming that something is, and that nothing cannot be the cause of something, these arguments attempted to establish that there must be an unoriginated Being of infinite perfection, and possessed of the attributes which we ascribe to God. The most famous of them was, perhaps, that of Dr Samuel Clarke, contained in the Boyle Lecture of 1704. But Dr Richard Fiddes, the Rev. Colin Campbell, Mr Wollaston, Moses Lowman, the Chevalier Ramsay, Dean Hamilton, and many others, devised ingenious demonstrations of a similar nature. It is impossible for me to discuss here their merits and demerits. Probably not one of them has completely satisfied more than a few speculative minds. They are certainly not fitted to carry conviction to the ordinary practical understanding. Yet it is not easy to detect flaws in some of them; and the more carefully they are studied, the more, I am inclined to think, will it be recognised that they are pervaded by a substantial vein of truth. They attempted logically to evolve what was implied in certain primary intuitions or fundamental conditions of the mind, and although they may not have accomplished all that they aimed at, they have at least succeeded in showing that unless there exists an eternal, infinite, and unconditioned Being, the human mind is, in its ultimate principles, self-contradictory and delusive.[49]
There must, for example, unless consciousness and reason are utterly untrustworthy, be an eternal Being. Present existence necessarily implies to the human intellect eternal existence. The man who says that a finite mind cannot rise to the idea of an eternal Being talks foolishly, for all the thinking of a finite mind implies belief in what he says is inaccessible to human thought. No man can thoughtfully affirm his own existence, or the existence even of a passing fancy of his mind, or of a grain of sand, without feeling that that affirmation as certainly implies that something existed from all eternity as any mathematical demonstration whatever implies its conclusion. And this truth, that the most transient thing cannot be conceived of as existing unless an eternal Being exist, may be syllogistically expressed and exhibited in a variety of ways, because the contradictions involved in denying it are numerous. This is what has been done by the authors above mentioned with much ingenuity, and by some of them in a manner which never has been and never can be refuted. It may be doubted whether they did wisely in throwing their arguments into syllogistic form; but as nobody ventures to undertake the refutation of them, they must be admitted to be substantially valid. The reasonings of men like Clarke and Fiddes, Lowman and Ramsay, have sufficiently proved that whoever denies such propositions as these,—Something has existed from eternity; The eternal Being must be necessarily existent, immutable, and independent; There is but one unoriginated Being in the universe; The unoriginated Being must be unlimited or perfect in all its attributes, &c.,—inevitably falls into manifest absurdities.
This, it may be objected, is not equivalent to a proof of the existence of an infinite and eternal Being. It leads merely to the alternative, either an infinite and eternal Being exists, or the consciousness and reason of man cannot be trusted. The absolute sceptic will rejoice to have the alternative offered to him; that the human mind is essentially untrustworthy is precisely what he maintains. I answer that I admit that the arguments in question do not amount to a direct positive proof, but that they constitute a reductio ad absurdum, which is just as good, and that if they do not exclude absolute scepticism, it is merely because absolute scepticism is willing to accept what is absurd. I am not going to examine absolute scepticism at present. I shall have something to say regarding it when I treat of antitheistic theories. Just now it is sufficient simply to point out that if disbelief in an infinite, self-existent, eternal Being necessarily implies belief in the untrustworthiness of all our mental processes, the absolute sceptic is the only man who can consistently disbelieve in God. Unless we are prepared to believe that no distinction can be established between truth and error—that there is no certainty that our senses and our understandings are not at every moment deceiving us—no real difference between our perceptions when we are awake and our visions when we are asleep—no ground of assurance that we are not as much deluded when following a demonstration of Euclid as any have been who busied themselves in attempting to square the circle,—we must accept all arguments which show that disbelief of the existence of an infinite and eternal Being logically involves a self-contradiction or an absurdity, as not less valid than a direct positive demonstration of the existence of such a Being. If, although I am constrained to conclude that there is an infinite and eternal Being, I may reject the conclusion on the supposition that reason is untrustworthy, I am clearly bound, in self-consistency, to set aside the testimony of my senses also by the assumption that they are habitually delusive. When any view or theory is shown to involve absolute scepticism it is sufficiently refuted, for absolute scepticism effaces the distinction between reason and unreason, and practically prefers unreason to reason.
II.
The a priori arguments have a value independent of their truth and of their power to produce conviction. True or false, persuasive or merely perplexing, they are admirable means of disciplining the mind distinctly to apprehend certain ideas which experience cannot yield, yet which must be comprehended in any worthy view taken of God. They help us steadily to contemplate and patiently to consider such abstract and difficult thoughts as those of being, absolute being, necessary being, cause, substance, perfection, infinity, eternity, &c.; and this is a service so great, that it may safely be said—as some writer whose name I cannot recall has said—that they will never be despised so long as speculative thinking is held in repute.
While believing that several of these arguments on the whole accomplish what they undertake, I am not prepared to maintain that any of them are faultless or even conclusive throughout. They are all, probably, much too formal and elaborate, so far as any directly practical purpose is concerned. It ought to be constantly kept in view that they presuppose an immediate apprehension of the infinite, and that their value consists entirely in establishing that that apprehension implies the reality and presence of God. The simplest mode of doing this must be the best. It may be thought that no reasoning at all is needed; that the intuition does not require to be supplemented by any inference; that if the infinite be apprehended, the living God must be self-evidently present to the human mind. But this is plainly a hasty view. Few atheists will deny that something is infinite, or that they immediately apprehend various aspects of infinity. What they refuse to acknowledge is, that the apprehension of the infinite implies more than the boundlessness of space, the eternity of time, and the self-existence of matter. There is certainly some reasoning needed in order to show that this interpretation of the intuition is inadequate. But such reasoning cannot be too direct, for otherwise the function of the intuition is almost certain to be obscured, and argument is almost certain to be credited with accomplishing far more than it really effects.
According to the view of the theistic argumentation which has been given in the present course of lectures, all that is now necessary to complete the theistic proof is very simple indeed. The universe has been shown to have an inconceivably powerful and intelligent cause, a Supreme Creator, who has dealt bountifully with all His creatures, who has given to men a moral law, and who has abundantly manifested in history that He loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity. We are further conscious of having ideas or intuitions of infinity, eternity, necessary existence, and perfection. We may dispute as to whence and how we have got them, but we cannot deny that we possess them. Were any person, for example, to affirm that he did not believe that there is a self-existent or necessary being—a being which derived its existence from no other and depends upon no other but is what it is in and of itself alone—we should be entitled to tell him either that he did not know the meaning of what he said, or that he did not himself believe what he said. But if we undoubtedly possess these ideas, they must, unless they are wholly delusive—which is what we are unable to conceive—be predicable of some being. The sole question for us is, Of what being? And the whole of our previous argumentation has shut us up to one answer. It must be, Of Him who has been proved to be the First Cause of all things—the Source of all the power, wisdom, and goodness displayed in the universe. It cannot be the universe itself, for that has been shown to be but an effect—to have before and behind it a Mind, a Person. It cannot be ourselves or anything to which our senses can reach, seeing that we and they are finite, contingent, and imperfect. The author of the universe alone—the Father of our spirits, and the Giver of every good and perfect gift—can be uncreated and unconditioned, infinite and perfect.