| The track it pursues, whether rational or sophistical, is at least natural, and not only goes far to persuade the common understanding, but shows itself deserving of respect from the speculative intellect; while it contains, at the same time, the outlines of all the arguments employed in natural theology--arguments which always have been, and still will be, in use and authority. |
| These, however adorned, and hid under whatever embellishments of rhetoric and sentiment, are at bottom identical with the arguments we are at present to discuss. |
| This proof, termed by Leibnitz the argumentum a contingentia mundi, I shall now lay before the reader, and subject to a strict examination. |
| It is framed in the following manner; If something exists, an absolutely necessary being must likewise exist. |
| Now I, at least, exist. |
| Consequently, there exists an absolutely necessary being. |
| The minor contains an experience, the major reasons from a general experience to the existence of a necessary being.* Thus this argument really begins at experience, and is not completely a priori, or ontological. |
| The object of all possible experience being the world, it is called the cosmological proof. |
| It contains no reference to any peculiar property of sensuous objects, by which this world of sense might be distinguished from other possible worlds; and in this respect it differs from the physico-theological proof, which is based upon the consideration of the peculiar constitution of our sensuous world. |
| [*Footnote; This inference is too well known to require more detailed discussion. |
| It is based upon the spurious transcendental law of causality, that everything which is contingent has a cause, which, if itself contingent, must also have a cause; and so on, till the series of subordinated causes must end with an absolutely necessary cause, without which it would not possess completeness.] |
| The proof proceeds thus; A necessary being can be determined only in one way, that is, it can be determined by only one of all possible opposed predicates; consequently, it must be completely determined in and by its conception. |
| But there is only a single conception of a thing possible, which completely determines the thing a priori; that is, the conception of the ens realissimum. |
| It follows that the conception of the ens realissimum is the only conception by and in which we can cogitate a necessary being. |
| Consequently, a Supreme Being necessarily exists. |
| In this cosmological argument are assembled so many sophistical propositions that speculative reason seems to have exerted in it all her dialectical skill to produce a transcendental illusion of the most extreme character. |
| We shall postpone an investigation of this argument for the present, and confine ourselves to exposing the stratagem by which it imposes upon us an old argument in a new dress, and appeals to the agreement of two witnesses, the one with the credentials of pure reason, and the other with those of empiricism; while, in fact, it is only the former who has changed his dress and voice, for the purpose of passing himself off for an additional witness. |
| That it may possess a secure foundation, it bases its conclusions upon experience, and thus appears to be completely distinct from the ontological argument, which places its confidence entirely in pure a priori conceptions. |
| But this experience merely aids reason in making one step--to the existence of a necessary being. |
| What the properties of this being are cannot be learned from experience; and therefore reason abandons it altogether, and pursues its inquiries in the sphere of pure conception, for the purpose of discovering what the properties of an absolutely necessary being ought to be, that is, what among all possible things contain the conditions (requisita) of absolute necessity. |
| Reason believes that it has discovered these requisites in the conception of an ens realissimum--and in it alone, and hence concludes; The ens realissimum is an absolutely necessary being. |