Introduction

Our purpose is to point out that the Catholic Church has sound reasons for believing in the possibility of acquiring a knowledge of God by natural means. We shall, therefore, consider: (1) The possibility of proving the existence of God; (2) the proofs for the existence of God, and (3) the proofs for the principal attributes of God. Above all we shall strive to show that the traditional theodicy, conceived entirely from the point of view of the philosophy of being (an explanation and defense of the sensus communis), retains its full validity to-day, and that its arguments lose none of their force because of the objections made either by the philosophy of Phenomenalism or that of Becoming; for, apart from the philosophy of being, these are the only two conceivable theories.

In showing the demonstrability of the existence of God we shall consider: (1) The genus and species of the demonstration it demands, (2) the objections raised against, and (3) the proof given for, this demonstrability.

WHAT GENUS AND WHAT SPECIES OF DEMONSTRATION DOES THIS DEMONSTRABILITY DEMAND?

7). We are here concerned with a philosophical or, more pre- cisely, a metaphysical demonstration. In the rigor of its proof 61 and its power to convince, it must surpass the so-called scientific demonstrations of the present day.

It seems hardly necessary for us to point out that we do not claim to give a scientific demonstration for the existence of God, if by that term is understood, as is often the case nowadays, a process that does not go beyond the data of observation and experience. But if reason tells us that beings and phenomena, which are objects of experience, cannot explain themselves, but of necessity require the presence of a cause which renders them real and intelligible; if reason furthermore establishes the fact that this cause must be sought for beyond the limits of observation and experience—then we shal] have a demonstration, not indeed scientific in the modern acceptation of the term, but philosophical or metaphysical. (See Zigliara, Summa Philosophica, Vol. I, p. 157). And if we also bear in mind, with Aristotle, that science does not really differ from ordinary knowledge, and that any branch of knowledge may be truly termed a science only when it gives the “why” or the necessary ratson d’étre of what is affirmed, then we shall see that metaphysics merits the name of science far more than any of the so-called positive sciences. “Scire simpliciter est cognoscere causam, propter quam res est et non potest aliter se habere,” i.e. to know is simply to perceive the reason why a thing is actually so, and cannot be otherwise. (Post. Analyt, Bk. I; Commentary of St. Thomas, 4th lesson).

The positive sciences cannot give us this propter quid, this raison d'être, that would make intelligible the laws, which, after all, are but general facts. As Aristotle expresses it, they remain sciences of the guia, which means that they state the fact without being able to explain it, without giving the reason why it is so and not otherwise. The inductive method of reasoning, which can be traced back to the principle of causality, enables us to conclude with physical certainty that heat is the cause of the expansion of iron, but we do not see “why” this effect is to be assigned precisely

POSSIBILITY OF PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF GOD} 63 to this cause and not to any other. We account for the antecedent phenomenon merely by empirical and extrinsic processes of reasoning, and this is because we do not know why heat and iron are specifically constituted as they are. When positive science proceeds from general facts or laws, to explain the reasons for these laws, it can only provide us with temporary working hypotheses, which are not so much explanations as convenient representations apt to classify the facts. Scientists state that the distance traversed by all falling bodies through space is proportionate to the square of the time taken. That is a general fact or law; but what is the nature of the force that causes bodies to fall in this way? Are they driven towards one another or mutually attracted? If there is mutual attraction, how are we to explain it? It is a mystery. The laws according to which light travels have been discovered; but what is light? Is it a vibration of a rarefied medium, the ether, or is it an extremely rapid current of impalpable matter? Neither hypothesis claims to be the true solution, excluding the other as false. The scientist’s only concern is to give a more or less convenient classification of the phenomena.

The intelligible element found in the positive sciences is to be explained by the fact that they have recourse to the metaphysical principles of causality, induction, and finality. Since their objects, as Aristotle has pointed out, are essentially material and changeable, they reach but the fringe of being, and consequently of intelligibility. (PAys., Bk. II, ch. 1; Bk. VI, ch. 1). The objects accessible to our senses are hardly intelligible in themselves. They belong to the domain of the hypothetical and conjectural, to that which Plato termed 4eéa (opinion). The intelligible world is the sole object of true science (érwrjun). In fact, the certitude properly called scientific grows in proportion as what one affirms approaches nearer to those first principles which are, as it were, the very structure of reason—the principle of identity implied in the idea of being, that most simple and universal of all ideas, the principles of contradiction, causality, and finality. If the principle of identity and non-contradiction is not only a law of thought, but also of being, if the other principles (in order to escape the charge of absurdity) must necessarily be referred to it, then every assertion necessarily connected with such principles will have metaphysical or absolute certainty, and its negation implies a contradiction. On the other hand, no assertion relying solely on the testimony of the senses can possess other than physical certainty, and, finally, every assertion based on human testimony cannot have other than moral certainty. That is why, according to the traditional philosophy, metaphysics—the science of pure being and of the first principles of being—deserves to be called “the first of all sciences,” for it is more of a science than all the other sciences. The demonstration of the existence of God must, therefore, be in itself far more exacting than is usually the case nowadays with scientific demonstrations. It must not only establish, by reasons drawn from observation, that the world has need of an infinitely perfect cause, but also why it needs this cause and no other. Moreover, the reason given must not be a mere working hypothesis, but definitive; it must necessarily flow from the highest principle of our intelligence and from the very first of all our ideas, namely, that of being.

This demonstration, though far excelling the empirical demonstrations in point of rigor and certainty, will, however, not be so readily understood by us, at least when presented in scientific form. As Aristotle remarked (Met., Bk. I; Commentary of St. Thomas, Lect. 2; Met., Bk. II, Lect. 5; Bk. VI, Lect. 1), the realities of sense perception are in themselves not so readily knowable, because they are material and changeable (the mind must abstract from material conditions, since they are a hindrance to intelligibility), but are more readily knowable by us, since they constitute the direct object of sensible intuition, and we acquire our ideas through the senses. Metaphysical truths and realities of the purely intelligible order, though they are more easily knowable in themselves, are not so easily known by us, because sensible intuition cannot reach them. The image accompanying the idea is extremely deficient, and the idea which we obtain through the medium of the senses, is but an analogical expression of the purely intelligible reality.

Between the physical sciences (which abstract only from individual matter and consider matter in common, such as, for instance, the sensible qualities, not of any particular molecule of water, but of water in general), and metaphysics (which abstracts from all matter), is the science of mathematics (which abstracts from sensible qualities and considers quantity as either continuous or discrete). It is, to a certain extent, a combination of the rigorous exactitude of metaphysics and the facility of the physical sciences, because its proper object, quantity, on the one hand, may in itself be defined by terms that are intellectual and fixed, and, on the other hand, it may be adequately expressed by the ideas we derive from the senses, and made clear by appropriate illustrations. In this way a superficial aspect of being is presented to us, evidently very different from pure being, which is the object of metaphysics. We cannot claim to prove the existence of God by a mathematical demonstration; the nominal definition of God assures us that, if He exists, He does not belong to the order of quantity, because He is the first cause and final end, two aspects of causality with which mathematics is not concerned.

Our demonstration will, therefore, be more exact in itself than any empirical demonstration could be, but it will not be as easy to understand as is a mathematical demonstration; to grasp its full force, a certain philosophical training is required, and conflicting moral dispositions can prevent a man from perceiving its efficacy. “Some there are who do not grasp what is said to them, unless it is presented in a mathematical form. Others refuse to accept anything that does not appeal to the senses, That which is more according to general custom is better known to us, for habit becomes second nature. Aristotle observes that we must not expect the same degree of certitude from physics, mathematics, and metaphysics.” (St. Thomas, Comment. in II Met., Lect. 5). This difficulty, for the rest, applies only to the scientific form of the demonstration. Reason spontaneously rises to a certain knowledge of God’s existence by a very simple inference derived from the principle of causality. The sensus communis need not bother itself with the difficulties presented by objectivity and the transcendental and analogical value of the principle of causality, but quite naturally arrives at a knowledge of the first cause, one and unchangeable, of multiple and changeable beings. The orderly arrangement of things in this world and the existence of intelligent beings prove that the first cause is intelligent; the moral obligation made known by conscience necessarily calls for a legislator; lastly, the principle of finality demands that there should be a supreme, sovereignly good end, for which we are made, and which, therefore, is superior to us. The manner in which we shall present the traditional proofs for the existence of God, from the point of view of the philosophy of being, (which in reality is but an explanation and vindication of the sensus communis), makes it unnecessary for us to treat ex professo of the problems arising from spontaneous knowledge. The teaching of Catholic theology on this point will be found in the Dictionnaire de Théol. Cath., art. “Dieu,” cols.

874-923. 8) This will not be an “a priori” demonstration. Insufficiency of the ontological proof.

How shall we proceed in the philosophical demonstration of the existence of God? The Vatican Council tells us that it is from created things that God can be known with certainty (e rebus creatis certo cognosci potest). We do not, therefore, as the Ontologists contended, come to know of God's existence and His attributes by a direct intuition of His essence. This vision is the ultimate crowning of the supernatural order. The created intellect, by its unaided natural powers, can by no means rise to such a knowledge; created and finite as it is, the intellect has for its proportionate object created and finite being, and possesses direct knowledge only of creatures. (St. Thomas, Summa Theol., la, q. 12, a. 4). By means of created things it can come to know God, not indeed as He is in Himself, in that which essentially constitutes Him what He is (quidditative; see infra, no. 32), not in the eminent simplicity of His Godhead, as if the intellect had an intuitive perception of this, but only in so far as there is an analogical similarity between Him and His works. The great number of analogical concepts derived from created things, to which we must have recourse in order to form an idea of God, is sufficient proof that we have not that immediate intuition of which the Ontologists speak.

Might not the existence of God be a self-evident truth (veritas per se nota), which needs not to be proved, as, for instance, is the principle of identity: “That which is, is,” or the principle of contradiction: “What is, cannot at the same time and in the same sense be and not be”? Or at least, might it not be possible to give an a priori demonstration of the existence of God, abstracting from contingent realities? St. Anselm and the defenders of the ontological argument thought so. St. Anselm points out that existence is implied in the notion conveyed to the mind of every man by the word “God.” When one fully realizes what is meant by that word, he says, one conceives of a being greater than which none can be conceived. But if such a being does not exist, then it is possible to conceive of another being, which has all the qualifications of the former, and which, in addition, really exists, and so it would be greater than the being considered to be the greatest that can be conceived. Therefore, if we wish to retain the meaning that the word “God” conveys to the mind, we must affirm that God exists.

The proposition, “God exists” or “the most perfect being that can be thought of, really exists,” is, according to St. Anselm, evident in itself and also for us (per se nota quoad nos); and in this respect it does not differ from those other two principles, “That which is, is,” and, “What is, cannot at the same time and in the same sense be and not be.”

St. Thomas and many other theologians reject St. Anselm's view on this point. Without doubt, they say, in itself (quoad se), the essence of God implies His existence, since God is the necessary being and cannot but exist; but the proposition, “God exists,” is not in itself evident for us (quoad nos). In fact, we do not know the divine essence such as it is in itself (quidditative) ; we can reach it only by means of positive analogical concepts which reveal to us the traits it has in common with created things; but what it possesses as peculiarly its own, this we know only in a negative way (non-finite being) or relatively (supreme being). It follows that we know the Deity just as we know all other essences, in an abstract way. This abstract idea which the mention of the word “God” awakens in us, though it differs from all other ideas in that it implies aseity or essential existence (existentiam signatam), abstracts, like all other ideas, from actual or de facto existence (ab existentia exercita).

To the a priori argument of St. Anselm we reply by distinguishing the minor. St. Anselm says: If the most perfect being that can be conceived did not exist, it would be possible to conceive of a being which has all the qualifications of the former, plus existence, so that this latter being would then be more perfect than the most perfect being that can be conceived. I admit that if this being did not exist, and was not conceived as self- existing, it would be possible to conceive one more perfect. But I deny the assertion that if it did not exist, though it was at the same time conceived as self-existing, then it would be possible to conceive of a more perfect being. Hence it is not logical to conclude: “Therefore, God exists”; all that can be logically concluded is: Therefore, God must be conceived as self-existing, and in truth does so exist, and is entirely independent of any other being, if He exists. (St. Thomas, Summa Theol., Ia, q. 2, a. 1).

Descartes (Méd., V, rép. aux object.) and Leibniz (Méd. sur les Idées, ed. Janet, p. 516; Monadologie, § 45) vainly endeavored to give to this argument, generally known as ontological, that logical exactness which it lacked. To regard it as conclusive in the form given it by Leibniz, two propositions would have to be established @ priori: (1) that God is possible, and (2) that if He is possible, He exists. Now, whatever one may think of the second of these propositions (that it is possible to argue from logical possibility to a real intrinsic possibility, in virtue of the principle that the operations of the intellect have objective validity, and then from this real possibility to actual existence) the first proposition of Leibniz is certainly not self-evident for us, nor can it be demonstrated a priori. The only thing that Leibniz, like Descartes, can demonstrate is, that we cannot perceive the impossibility of the existence of God. So long as we have not a direct knowledge of the divine essence, we cannot give an intrinsic reason for this possibility, and never shall be able to do so. We must recall to mind what St. Thomas wrote against St. Anselm, and say: “Because we do not know of God what He is, we cannot know whether it is possible for Him to exist.” Moreover, the idea of a being, the most perfect that can be conceived, necessarily demands certain absolute perfections, such as immutability and liberty, which seem incompatible. Herbert Spencer developed this objection, which is also one of the standard objections among theologians, at considerable length. Later on we shall see that the a posteriori proof is not affected by it. Leibniz claims to have proved that the infinite being is possible, because the negative element, being excluded from that idea, removes from it the presence of contradiction. It was pointed out to him in reply, that there is nothing negative about the idea of the swiftest possible movement, which yet involves a contradiction.*

We cannot affirm the possibility of God a priori. We only know that our ideas of being, goodness, intelligence, liberty, acquired from finite things, can be applied by way of analogy to a reality of another order, and that if a reality of another order is required to account as cause for the finite beings from which we derived these ideas, that cause must necessarily have a similarity, at least analogical, to its effects. (St. Thomas, Summa Theol., Ia, q. 4, a. 33 q. 88, a. 3; see infra, no. 29).

Fr. Lepidi (Revue de Philosophie, Dec. 1, 1909) presented the ontological argument in a new way, which we are sorry we cannot give in full here. Notwithstanding the skill and profound learning displayed in this new method, it fails to answer satisfactorily the objections raised against Leibniz, and merely transforms the ontological argument into an argument based upon the contingency of finite being. Later on we shall show (nos. 20 and 38 d) that a trained metaphysician could interpret such a proof in a sort of intuitive sense: in that the intellect, fully understanding both the sense and the import of the principle of identity, the supreme law of thought and of the reality directly implied in the idea of being, would see “quasi a simultaneo” (almost simultaneously) that the fundamental reality, the Absolute, is not this composite and changing universe, but a reality in every way identical with itself, ipsum esse subsistens, the self-¹ subsisting being, and, therefore, essentially distinct from all that is by nature composite and subject to change.

9. The demonstration will have to be a posteriori. For it to be rigorously exact, it must start with a particular effect, and trace this effect back to its proper (i.e. to its necessary and immediate) cause.

We cannot, therefore, demonstrate a priori that the essence of God is possible, and even less, that it exists; but there is another kind of demonstration, known as a posteriori. These two demonstrations, like every process of reasoning, proceed from the better known to the less known; but when we demonstrate anything @ priort, the better known is at the same time not only the source, but also the raison d’étre of our knowledge. To demonstrate a priori means to give the reason why (propter quid) the predicate of the conclusion necessarily belongs to the subject. This demonstration presupposes that one knows the essence of the subject, which is the reason for what has been demonstrated as belonging to that subject. Thus, it is demonstrated a priori that man is free, because he is a rational being and knows, not only this or that particular good, but good in general.

The a posteriori demonstration, like the preceding, is a syllogism that results in a necessary conclusion; but here the better known is not the raison d'étre of what we know by it; only in the order of things known by us does it come first; in the order of reality it is not dependent upon our knowledge. The knowledge of the effect necessarily leads us to conclude to the existence of the cause. This a posteriori demonstration does not tell us why (propter quid) the predicate of the conclusion necessarily belongs to the subject; it merely establishes that (quia) the predicate refers to the subject, that the cause exists. It does not give us the reason for what is affirmed by the conclusion, but only the raison d’étre of the affirmation of the object. Without knowing God as He is in Himself, as the ontological argument demands, we nevertheless can know by such a demonstration that He is. “To be can mean either of two things. It may mean the act of being, or it may mean the composition of a proposition effected by the mind in joining a predicate to a subject. Taking to be in the former sense, we cannot understand the being of God, nor His essence; but only in the second sense. For we know that this proposition which we form about God when we say God is, is true, and we know this from His effects.” (St. Thomas, Summa Theol., Ia, q. 3, a. 4, ad 2um). This a posteriori demonstration proving that God exists, in itself is superior to any empirical demonstration; for, as we have already remarked, it will have to explain just why the’ world demands a cause corresponding to the nominal definition of God, and which cannot be attributed to any other cause. (See supra, no. 7).

This a posteriori demonstration, or demonstration from the effect, cannot be considered a strictly metaphysical process, unless it argues from the proper effect to the proper cause, which means to the necessary and immediate cause of the effect. “From every effect,” says St. Thomas, “the existence of its proper cause can be demonstrated; because, since every effect depends upon its cause, if the effect exists, the cause must pre-exist.” (Ia, q. 2, a. 2). “Every effect depends upon its cause, in so far as it is its cause.” (Ia, q. 104, a. 1).

The proper cause in metaphysics is that which the Scholastics, following Aristotle, call causa per se primo, i.e., the absolutely first cause. (See Aristotle, // Phys., c. iii; V Met., c. ii; St. Thomas, Summa Theol., Ia, q. 45, a. 5; Commentary of Cajetan, q. 104, a. 1; John of St. Thomas, In lam, q. 44, De Creatione, disp. XVIII, a. 1 and 4).

These articles of St. Thomas, taken from his treatise on creation and the divine government of the world (conservation in being and divine movement), are the veritable and indispensable commentary on the proofs for the existence of God as given in the first part of the Summa Theologica, q. 2, a. 2. Theological speculation follows the reverse order of philosophical speculation; it argues from God to created things, and discusses the great metaphysical problems concerning God and the world, not with reference to the existence of God, but as presented by creation, conservation, and divine movement.

Why does St. Thomas say: “Ex quolibet effectu potest demonstrart propriam causam ejus esse (from every effect the existence of its proper cause can be demonstrated)”? It is because, if any other than the proper cause is assigned, the demonstration is not conclusive. For instance, it would be false to argue: “This man exists; therefore his father exists also”; and yet the father is in a certain sense the cause of the existence of his son, who often survives him. In like manner, every phenomenon presupposes an antecedent phenomenon; but frequently all trace of the latter is gone, whereas the former endures. The agnostics also refuse to acknowledge the principle of St. Thomas just mentioned, but say that from every effect it can be demonstrated, not that its cause exists, but that it has existed. Thus, they would argue that local movement presupposes a certain form of caloric energy which has disappeared; that another phenomenon preceded this one, and so on, ad infinitum.

The answer which St. Thomas would give to this would be that in the principle just mentioned the proper cause means that cause from which the effect necessarily and immediately proceeds. Now, if the proper causes of effects, however particular and momentary they may be, are also particular and transient, then the proper causes of universal and permanent effects are likewise universal and permanent, and hence belong to a higher order. For instance, to say that this particular animal is the direct cause of this other animal, does not suffice to explain the presence of animal life on the surface of the earth, which compels us to have recourse to more important and general principles, such as the sun, which is the permanent source of the heat required for the generation of plants and animals, and for their continuance in life, In like manner, this particular motor, which was itself set in motion by something else, truly accounts for the presence of this movement, but it does not explain the movement in itself; and if this movement (wherever it may be found) does not contain in itself a sufficient reason for its existence, it demands a universal cause, constantly in action and of a higher order, a source of energy which does not stand in need of actuation or conservation, but which produces and conserves all movement in the universe.

This argumentation is based on Aristotle’s profound analysis of the notion of the proper cause, which we were able to give only in a brief note, but which must be studied for a complete understanding of the demonstrability of God’s existence?

The principle here invoked, “that the proper effect demonstrates the existence of the proper cause,” may in the last analysis be reduced to the principle of causality, which gives us the metaphysical aspect of being, and may be formulated thus: “That which exists, but not by itself, exists in virtue of some other being, which is self-sufficient.” A contingent existence cannot have its completely sufficient cause in another contingent existence as dependent as itself; but both equally demand a necessary existence of a higher order.

The permanent causality which a being of a higher order exerts upon one of a lower order is called by the Scholastics equivocal or non-univocal causality, because it produces an effect which is not of the same nature as the cause. Thus heat is the proper cause, not only productive, but also preservative, of the expansion of bodies, of the fusion of solids, and of the vaporiza-² tion of liquids; electricity also has its own proper effects, which are, as it were, its properties ad extra.

This causality of the superior over the inferior is, of course, particularly manifest when in the hierarchy of being we consider the influence which one order exerts upon another, lower order, for instance, the influence of a living being upon nutritive minerals, which it transforms into organic substances; in the animal, the influence of sensation and desire upon the action aroused by this desire; in man, the influence of the intellect upon all the activities under its direction, and that of the will upon the other faculties under its control; in the sciences, the influence of principles upon conclusions. In all these cases the superior cause not only produces, but also conserves the effect. The evidence of principles not only engenders, but also preserves in us the evidence of conclusions; if the first disappears, then the second vanishes, just as light ceases at the setting of the sun. In the same way the attraction of the good which we perceive, stirs up and foments within us a desire for the same; especially is this the case concerning that good which we propose to ourselves as the ultimate end. When this idea of good ceases to be for us a source of attraction, then our desire itself and our activity are at an end; as long as the attraction lasts, it may buoy us up for years in our daily labors.

On the contrary, a succession of univocal or specifically similar causes, as, for instance, the temporal succession of human lives or of physical movements in the past, are at bottom but a series of effects coming from a higher cause; if the movement as such cannot be explained sufficiently in itself, it demands a prime mover, who in his turn does not have to be set in motion.

This is the deeper sense of the principle: universal and permanent effects have for their proper cause a cause that is universal, permanent, and consequently of a higher order. This cause may truly be called the first principle or highest foundation. Thus we speak of the fundamental truth of philosophy, of the fundamental principles of the sciences, of the foundations of morality. If there is a first cause, it must evidently be a cause in this profound sense. Empiricism, which accepts only univocal causes, material or accidental, which denies the superior validity of the principles of reasoning, which rejects all foundations (the foundation of induction, that of the syllogism, that of morality, and that of society), must end by denying, or at least not affirming, the existence of God. For the Empiric, who is necessarily a Nominalist, as for the ordinary grammarian, the two propositions, “God is” and “Peter is,” have about the same meaning; just as the world has no need of Peter, so it can get along without God.

Shall we fall into the other extreme, and return to the “ideas” of Plato, those supreme types, those “mothers” (see the Timaeus), which Goethe, following his natural mysticism, resuscitated in the second part of Faust? Shall we admit the selfsufficiency of man? By no means. All the material elements implied in any definition (such as that of man) cannot exist apart from matter, which is their principle of individuation. (See no. 39). But it is not so with being, truth, goodness, intellect, and will; there is nothing material or even imperfect involved in their formal notions. This will naturally lead us to conclude that the proper cause of pure being and of all contingent realities, is a self-subsistent Being, which, for that very reason, is the Supreme Truth, the foundation of all truth, the First Intellect, which conceives the eternal types of things, the Sovereign Good and Supreme Love, and the pre-eminent Source of every good desire.

This idea of the proper cause of universal effects will assume concrete shape and thus become clearer in the general proof for the existence of God, derived from the contingency of existing things, and which may be summed up by saying that the greater does not come from the less, nor the higher from the lower. (Cfr. no. 35).

10. Therefore, it is not in a series of accidentally connected past causes that we must seek for the original cause, but in one in which there is an essential connection between the causes.

From what was said above we see that the proofs for the existence of God, if they are to refer the effect back to its absolutely necessary cause, must not get hopelessly involved in a series of accidental causes. This mistake is frequently made by those who argue that the hen is the cause of the egg, and the egg the cause of another hen, and so on, indefinitely. St. Thomas can see no reason why there should be an end to such a series of causes. “It is not regarded as impossible to proceed to accidental infinity in efficient causes.” (Ia, q. 46, a. 2, ad Jum). It is only in the order of necessarily and actually connected causes, the holy Doctor continues, that we must of necessity arrive at a final cause. If a clock consisted of an infinite number of wheels, each one depending on another in ascending order, there would be in fact no principle of movement, and it would make little or no difference whether this clock were wound up a hundred times, a thousand times, or ever so many times; for the one who winds it up is only per accidens the cause of its movement. So also, in the example which St. Thomas gives, for the sound of the anvil we ascend first to the movement of the hammer, then to the movement of the blacksmith’s hand, and, finally, to some first principle of this local movement. But it does not matter much whether the blacksmith makes use of an indefinite number of hammers: “An artificer acts by means of many hammers accidentally, because one after the other is broken. It is accidental, therefore, that one particular hammer acts after the action of another. In like manner it is accidental to this particular man, in so far as he generates, to be generated by another; for he generates as a man, and not as the son of another man... . Hence it is not impossible for a man to be generated by man in infinitum.” (Ia, q. 46, a. 2, ad 7um). If the blacksmith takes up a different hammer each time he strikes the anvil, the causal action of each hammer is not necessary in order that the following one should be able in its turn to strike the anvil. Similarly, there is no need that the son in his turn should have children, for him to be dependent on his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and others as efficient causes. Neither does it seem to be metaphysically impossible for the world always to have been revolving on its axis; in this case there would have been no commencement of rotation; for, as St. Thomas remarks, “Quaelibet circulatio praecedentium transiri potuit, quia finita fuit; in omnibus autem simul, si mundus semper fuisset, nonesset accipere primum, et ita nec transitum, qui semper exigit duo extrema,” that is, “any of the previous revolutions could be completed, because it was of finite duration; but in all things that happen simultaneously, if the world had always existed, there would have been no beginning, and hence no transition, since this always demands the presence of the two extremes.” (C. Gentes, 1. II, c. 38). That there should be an actually infinite series of phenomena is not in itself an impossibility; for the series would be infinite “a parte ante” only, and finite “a parte post.”

Aristotle, who held that the world and movement are eternal, said that this was an additional reason for assuming that there must be an eternal and infinite principle of all movement, capable alone of producing perpetual motion. As for St. Thomas, he taught that we know for certain only from revelation that the world had a beginning and is, therefore, not created ab aeterno. This depends entirely upon the divine will. (Ia, q. 46, a. 2).

8 To say that it is no sufficient reason why the divine will should create at

That in a series of accidentally connected causes we must finally arrive at the first of these causes, is not because we understand what is implied by the term causality, but simply for the reason that an actually infinite multitude is an impossibility. But, as St. Thomas remarks (Ia, q. 7, a. 3, ad gum; q. 46, a. 2, ad 6um and ad 7um), there can be an actually infinite multitude only if all the units comprising it coexist simultaneously; but this is not the case with an infinite series in the past; because that which is past no longer exists. Moreover, while it is evident that an infinite number involves a contradiction in terms, it is very difficult to prove the impossibility of an actually infinite and innumerable multitude. In his opusculum, “De aeternitate mundt,” St. Thomas about the year 1264 wrote: “Adhuc non est demonstratum quod Deus non possit facere ut sint infinita in actu,” that is, “it has not as yet been proved that God cannot bring it about that there be infinite beings in actu.” In the “Quodlibeta,” which he wrote towards the end of his life, he recapitulates (No. 12, q. 2) with greater exactness what he had said on this point in the Summa Theologica (see la, q. 7, a. 4). The passage reads as follows: “To make something infinite in actu, or to bring it about that infinites should exist simultaneously in actu, is not contrary to the absolute power of God, because it implies no contradiction; but if we consider the way in which God acts, it is not possible, For God acts through the intellect and through the word, which assigns to all things their forms, and hence it must be that all things are formally made (that is, determined) by Him.”

Finally, in his Commentary on the Physics of Aristotle (Book III, Lect. 8), St. Thomas, discussing the Aristotelian proofs for the impossibility of an actually infinite multitude (proofs which this particular moment, rather than at any other, is to doubt whether there is such a thing as freedom. (See infra, Vol. II, ch. IV).

he himself had reproduced in his Summa*), emphatically says: “It must be observed that these arguments are probable, expressing the commonly accepted view; they are not, however, rigorously conclusive: because . . . if anyone were to assert that any multitude is infinite, this would not mean that it is a number, or that it belongs to the species of number: for by number a multitude becomes measurable, as is stated in the tenth book of the Metaphysics, and, therefore, number is said to be a species of discrete quantity; but this is not the case with multitude, which is of the nature of a transcendental.”

Among those who admit that an actually infinite multitude is not an intrinsic impossibility, we must include Scotus, the Nominalists, Vasquez, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz. The Jesuits of Coimbra, and Toletus (in the first part of his Summa, q. 7) defend as probable the opinion that the actually infinite is a possibility. Just recently Renouvier’s argument for the finite has been refuted by Milhaud (Essai sur les Conditions de la Certitude Logique, p. 177). In our day mathematicians versed in the theory of transfinite ensembles are increasingly less disposed to accept as valid any of the arguments by which the notion of an actually infinite multitude is proved to involve an intrinsic contradiction.

It is important to note, therefore, that in any of the classical proofs for the existence of God, this disputed point must be taken into consideration. Just why we cannot proceed to infinity, is because there must be a sufficient reason, a cause. Even if we could go back to infinity in a series of past accidental causes, as, for instance, transformations of energy, or of generations of living beings, or of human beings: movement, life, the human soul would still have to be explained. These accidental causes are in themselves insufficient, and demand a further explanation. To

carry the series to infinity would not change their nature. As Aristotle remarked: If the world is eternal, it is eternally insufficient and incomplete; it eternally demands a sufficient reason for its reality and intelligibility. (Met., l. XII, c. 6. See also Sertillanges, “Les preuves de l'existence de Dieu et l'éternité du monde,” four articles in La Revue Thomiste of 1897 and 1898).

This remark makes it unnecessary for us to discuss at length the first Kantian antinomy concerning the eternity of the world.

11. In this series of essentially connected causes, we eventually arrive at one which must be the proper cause, without any further affirmation.

The proper cause is that which is necessarily (per se) and immediately (primo) required. Of course, there are necessary causes which are not immediate causes (per se non primo). We can more readily understand the reason why of anything than we can discern its true cause. Aristotle says that the essence of the triangle contains the necessary though not immediate reason for the properties of the scalene triangle. These properties, in fact, necessarily presuppose that the scalene is a triangle, but they cannot be said to follow as an immediate deduction from the definition of a triangle; if such were the case, they would belong to every kind of triangle and not to the scalene per se primo caf’ aùró kal 7 aùró (of itself and from its nature). (Post. Anal., I; Commentary of St. Thomas, Lect. II). The same holds good for metaphysical causality: for the proper effect of a cause is, as it were, one of its properties ad extra, existing by reason of something else, which is its principle of inherence. The proper effect bears the same relation to its proper cause, as property does to the essence upon which it necessarily and immediately depends. It is of this proper cause that Aristotle writes (Post. Anal., 1; Commentary of St. Thomas, Lect. 10: “Quartus modus dicendi per se”: immediate necessity in the order of causality).

He gives as examples: “the murderer is the cause of death;” “the doctor cures one,” “the chanter sings.” If one were to say, “the man sings,” this would not be an example of an immediate ‘cause. To say, “the doctor sings,” would be an example of an accidental cause, since it is purely an accident that he who sings happens to be a doctor.

Other more appropriate examples of the proper cause could easily be given. St. Thomas frequently refers to the fire which generates heat; to the light which dispels the darkness; to color which is the immediately predisposing cause (formal object) of sight, as sound is of hearing; to being, which is the direct object of the intellect as goodness is of the will. In matter of fact, it is by color that we see things, it is by sound that we hear, and things become intelligible to us according to the degree in which they participate in being, desirable in so far as they are good. Thus we may say that the ens realissimum, the absolutely Real Being, makes all things real, just as fire creates heat, and light, illumination, in the sense that the self-existing Being is the proper cause not of this or that mode of being, but of being in general. (See Ia, q. 45, a. 5). In like manner, the primary intelligent Being is the proper cause of our intelligence and of whatsoever intelligibility there may be in material things. The sovereign Good is the cause of all goodness, of all attraction to the same, and of all obligation founded on the idea of good.

Many authors, in presenting the proof for the existence of God, argue from a cause which is not immediate, and as a result, their demonstration is not conclusive. If, for instance, it is a question of explaining the order in the world, we do not have to affirm the existence of an absolutely perfect being, but it is enough if we prove the existence of a primary intelligence disposing all things, one that is the proper cause of this order. In explaining local movement it is not necessary to arrive forthwith at the “Actus Purus,” but it is sufficient to show that there is a

POSSIBILITY OF PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF GOD ` 83 mover which itself is not moved locally, as would be a worldsoul (see Cajetan, In Jam, q. 2, a. 2). If this soul is itself moved by some spiritual force, we must explain the difference in movement (which is movement in general and no longer a particular kind, such as local movement), by recourse to a prime mover of a higher order, which does not have to be started in its activity. But even this would not immediately prove the existence of an infinitely perfect being. To explain the existence of contingent beings, all that is required is to show the existence of a necessary being, but it is not necessary to prove immediately the existence of a personal, intelligent, and free God.

The five classical proofs given by St. Thomas (Ia, q. 2, a. 3) ascend per se primo, necessarily and immediately, to five divine predicates, to wit, (1) that there is a first unmoved mover of all things; (2) a first efficient cause; (3) a necessary and self-existent being; (4) the maximum in being; (5) the first of intelligent beings who directs all things to their predestined end. He then proceeds to show that these five predicates cannot be affirmed of anything corporeal (q. 3, a. 1), not even of a being composed merely of essence and existence, such as we find to be the case with spiritual beings of the finite order; but that they belong exclusively to the one who is Being itself (ipsum esse subsistens, q. 3, a. 5). In the fourth article of question 3 of the Summa St. Thomas finally proves that essence and existence are the same itt God. This truth is the keystone of the two theological treatises in which God and Creation are discussed. Without it, the proofs for the existence of God cannot be said to be complete. The divine attributes—absolute simplicity, perfection and infinite goodness, immutability, eternity, uniqueness, omniscience, absolute freedom in regard to creation, omnipotence, universal providence, infinite beatitude—are all deduced from the single truth that God is the self-subsistent Being. From this it is also concluded that between God and the world there is this difference: He is essentially simple, immutable, and incapable of further perfection, and therefore necessarily distinct from the world, which is essentially composite, changeable, and imperfect.

Such, then, is metaphysical causality (causality necessarily and immediately required), and it is only upon this solid basis that we can construct the a posteriori proofs for the existence of God: for, “the proper cause of anything can be demonstrated from any of its effects.” The foundation of all these proofs is, therefore, the principle of causality, which may be expressed metaphysically by saying that “what is not per se or self-existing, necessarily depends upon some other being which is self-existing” (“quod est non per se, est ab alio, quod est per se”).

OBJECTIONS RAISED AGAINST THE DEMONSTRABILITY OF THE EXIST- ENCE OF GOD. EMPIRICAL AND IDEALISTIC AGNOSTICISM

Before establishing, by means of a reductio ad absurdum, the necessity of the principle of causality as well as its ontological and transcendental validity, it seems preferable to us to state the objections raised against this thesis by Agnosticism. Empiric Agnosticism disputes the necessity of the principle of causality and also its ontological and transcendental validity; idealistic Agnosticism concedes to this principle merely a subjective necessity.

12. The objection of the Empirics against the necessity and the ontological and transcendental validity of the principle of causality. This objection and the resulting Agnosticism are derived from Sensualistic Nominalism.

Since the time of Hume the Empiric or Sensualist objection has undergone scarcely any change. The English Positivists, John

Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, and more recently William

James, simply repeat the old objection, while the French Positivists, Aug. Comte, Littré, and their followers, stress its materialistic origin and its antireligious consequences. The Neopositivists of the present day are related to Hume and Mill in much the same way as the Scholastics who lived after the thirteenth century are related to St. Thomas. We shall consider first of all, the leaders of this school of thought, especially John Stuart Mill, whose Nominalistic logic will enable us to discern the true sense and purport of the objection.

The Empirics deny: (1) that the principle of causality is a necessary truth, and (2) that this principle permits us to get away from the order of phenomena, in order to ascend to the first cause. Hume, following closely the teaching of the Epicureans, the sceptic Sextus Empiricus, Ockham,! Hobbes, and Berkeley, in reality denies intelligence, reason, or, what amounts to the same, he reduces it to the senses. According to his view, the idea expresses nothing more in itself than what is derived from the

1See Denzinger, n. 553-570, for the condemnation of the philosophical errors of Nicholas of Autrecourt, a disciple of Ockam. Amongst the errors that were condemned is the denial of the ontological validity of the principle of causality: (“Quod non potest evidenter evidentia praedicta ex una re inferri vel concludi alia res: that we cannot from the aforesaid evidence evidently infer or conclude to the existence of one thing from another,”’) and the proposition that reduces to a purely hypothetical formula either the principle of contradiction or that of identity: (“Quod hoc est primum principium et non aliud: si aliquid est, aliquid est, that there is no other first principle but this: if anything is, it is.) (Denz., 570). Concerning the external world, Nicholas of Autrecourt defended this thesis, which was also placed under censure: “Quod de substantia materiali alia ab anima nostra non habemus certitudinem evidentiae: Apart from our own soul we cannot conclude with evident certainty about any material substance.” (Denz., 557). In short, the only evidence and certainty which he admitted were of the logical order. His proposition: “Quod certitudo evidentiae non habet gradus (that evident certainty admits of no degrees)" was also condemned. (Denz., 556). As for created causality, his teaching is summed up in the following propositions: “Nescimus evidenter quod alia a Deo possint, esse causa alicujus effectus: quod aliqua causa causet efficienter, quae non sit Deus: we have no direct evidence that anything other than God can be the cause of any effect” and, “that there should be, besides God, any other efficient cause.” (Denz., 566). From this we see that after the Middle Ages Nominalism ended in scepticism.

senses and the imagination. It is merely an image under a common name, This constitutes the very essence of empirical Nominalism. “All our general ideas,” says Hume, “are in reality but particular ideas to which a common term is assigned, and this latter occasionally recalls other particular ideas which correspond in certain respects to the idea that the mind actually has.” * The idea, according to him, expresses nothing more profound than what the senses and the imagination furnish—it is solely an image accompanied by a common name. This is the essence of Empiric Nominalism. According to this sensualistic principle, if what the senses perceive is merely a succession of phenomena, the idea of cause is nothing else but a common image of phenomena that succeed each other, to which the common name of cause is assigned; all the rest cannot be anything more than verbal entity. In fact, Hume points out that, by means of the external senses, we perceive only phenomena followed by other phenomena instead of the causes of phenomena. “One billiard ball impinges upon another, and this other one moves; the senses tell us nothing more. ... A single case, a solitary experience, in which we observed that one thing happened after some other, does not justify us in formulating a general rule and predicting what will happen in similar cases. It would be, indeed, unmitigated temerity to judge of the whole course of nature from a simple experience, however exact and certain this might be. But when we have seen on every occasion, that two mutually related phenomena follow each other, we have not the slightest hesitation in predicting the one from the appearance of the other. We call one of these the cause, the other the effect. We take it for granted that there is some connexion between them. We say that there is in the first a power, by which it can produce infallibly the other. ... How did this new idea, therefore, of a relationship, originate in the mind? In no other way did this

2 An Inquiry Concerning the Human Understanding, Part II, Section XII, note, come about but because of the sentiment which we have in our imagination of the connexion between these facts, and of the tendency which urges us to foresee the existence of the one from the appearance of the other.” (Essay on the Human Understanding, VII).

But whence comes the idea of this force, of this power attributed to the cause in producing the effect? Hume explains it by the contact which is established between inanimate things and the sentiment of resistance or the feeling of effort that we experience whenever our body gives rise to, or, on the contrary, opposes movement. “A living being cannot move external objects without experiencing the feeling of a nisus, of an effort; likewise, every animal receives an impression or feeling of shock from every external object that is moved. These sensations, which are exclusively of the animal order, and from which we cannot a priori draw any inference, we are, nevertheless, inclined to transfer to inanimate objects and to suppose that these objects experience feelings somewhat analogous, whenever they impart or receive movement.” (Ibid.). Are there any grounds for believing that the relation between cause and effect is anything more than an invariable succession? Not at all, answers Hume, for even in the domain of internal experience we have not the slightest means of knowing whether the voluntary effort that we experience is really what produces the corporeal movement which follows. This voluntary corporeal movement is not even the immediate result of volition. It is separated from it by a long chain of causes which we have neither known nor willed (movements of certain muscles, of certain nerves, and of animal spirits).

For Hume, therefore, causality, in the final analysis, is but the succession of two phenomena. We are led to believe that this succession is invariable; but this belief is merely the result of a habit. So far as we know, there has always been a succession of contingent facts; but we have no assurance that it must always be so. Moreover, granted that causality accounts for, and always will account for, all the phenomena of the universe, what right have we to argue from this to a first cause situated beyond the world of phenomena? Arguing from this Sensualistic principle, Hume, like Berkeley, is led to deny the existence of matter; his only realities are sensations, phenomena without a substance. The same must be said about the mind. By a strange contradiction, Hume, in the beginning of his Natural History of Religion, esteems and appreciates the proof for the existence of God drawn from the order found in nature. “The wondrous arrangement in the whole of nature,” he says, “speaks to us of an intelligent Designer; and there is no philosophical thinker who can, after serious reflexion, for one moment suspend his judgment when he has placed before him the first principles of Deism and of natural religion.” (Concerning this contradiction, see Hume, His Life and Philosophy, by Thomas Huxley).

We find the confirmation and development of this same doctrine in the works of John Stuart Mill. He starts from the same principle: that concepts are but concrete images to which a common name is given. (Philosophy of Hamilton, pp. 371-380; Logic, I, p. 119). From this is deduced the principle of causality. Mill premises (Logic, III, ch. 5, § 2) that he does not mean “to speak of a cause which is not itself a phenomenon. I make no research,” he says, “into the ultimate or ontological cause of anything. To adopt a distinction familiar in the writings of the Scotch metaphysicians, and especially of Reid, the causes with which I concern myself are not efficient, but physical causes... . Of the [efficient] causes of phenomena, or whether any such causes exist at all, I am not called upon to give an opinion. . . . The only notion of a cause which the theory of induction requires, is that which can be gained by experience. The law of causation, which is the main pillar of inductive science, is but the familiar truth that invariability of succession is found by observation to obtain

POSSIBILITY OF PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF GOD = 89 between every fact in nature and some other fact which has preceded it, independently of all considerations respecting the ultimate mode of production of phenomena.” From this entirely empirical point of view “the cause of a phenomenon is an antecedent and invariable phenomenon; or, better still, is the whole of these antecedents; and we have, philosophically speaking, no right to give the name of cause to one of them, exclusively of the others.” Finally, the succession (of facts in nature) must not only be invariable in the manner that night follows day, it must also be unconditional. This leads Mill to conclude that the distinction made between agent and patient is an illusion.’ It is the principal objection of the Modernists against the traditional proofs for the existence of God that “the distinction between mover and moved, movement and the object moved, and the affirmation of the ascendancy of action over potency, all start from the same commonly accepted postulate, the postulate of morcellation.” * The passage deserves to be quoted, because it shows clearly how Empiricism leads fatally to Radical Nominalism, since it freely admits that whatever is not immediately grasped by the senses results in verbal entity. “In most cases of causation,” says Mill, “a distinction is commonly drawn between something which acts and some other thing which is acted upon; between an agent and a patient. Both of these, it would be universally allowed, are conditions of the phenomenon; but it would be thought absurd to call the latter the cause, that title being reserved for the former. The distinction, however, vanishes on examination, or rather is found to be only verbal: arising from an incident of mere expression, namely, that the object said to be acted upon, and which is considered as the scene in which the effect takes place, is commonly included in the phrase by

8 His own words on this point are: “The distinction is found to be only verbal.” tLe Roy, “Comment se pose le problème de Dieu,” in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, March, 1907.

go GOD: HIS EXISTENCE AND HIS NATURE which the effect is spoken of, so that if it were also reckoned as part of the cause, the seeming incongruity would arise of its being supposed to cause itself... . Those who have contended for a radical distinction between agent and patient, have generally conceived the agent as that which causes some state of, or some change in the state of, another object, which is called the patient. . . . But to speak of phenomena as states of the various objects which take part in them, is simply a sort of logical fiction, useful sometimes as one among several modes of expression, but which should never be supposed to be the enunciation of a scientific truth.” (Logic, III, ch. 5, § 4).

It is in his Essays on Religion (first part, written in 1868 and 1870), that Mill gives us the conclusions from his Sensualistic and Nominalistic principles. He begins with the admission that “there is nothing in scientific experience that is incompatible with the belief that the laws and the successions of facts should themselves be the result of a divine volition” (p. 127). But of what value is the argument of a first cause? “Experience properly interpreted tells us only this: that all change proceeds from a cause, and that the cause of all change is a previous change. .. . But there is in nature an element or rather permanent elements (matter and force), and we do not know whether these elements ever had a beginning. Experience affords us no proof, not even an analogy, which would justify us in asserting that a generalization based upon our experience of variable phenomena has established for us what seems to be the immutable. . . . Besides, since all change has its cause in a previous change, our experience, far from providing us with an argument in favour of a first cause, seems to militate against it, and make us incline to the view that the very essence of causality, such as we know it to be according to our limited capacity, is incompatible with the idea of a first cause” (p. 133).

Because of his Nominalistic principles, Mill likewise rejects the

POSSIBILITY OF PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF GOD » 91 syllogism which, from the fact that there are human intelligences and consciences, argues by the method of causality that there is a first intelligence and conscience. On this point he writes: “If we say from the fact alone that there is such a thing as intelligence, that this demands as its pre-requisite antecedent the existence of an Intelligence far greater and more powerful, the difficulty is not removed by this one regression we have made. The creative intelligence, just as much as the created one, demands another intelligence to explain its own existence” (p. 140). Hence, what a Nominalist understands by intelligence is not an idea that can be applied to being, and by which we could identify the selfsubsisting Intelligence with the self-subsisting Being; but it is merely a common image, with a name assigned to it, which refers to phenomena and not to being.

Mill plunges even deeper into Empiricism. “What proof have we,” he asks, “that only the intellectual can produce that which is intellectual? Have we any other means but experience, for knowing what thing produces another of its kind, what causes are capable of producing certain effects? . . . Apart from experience and especially for what goes by the name of reason, which is concerned with the self-evident, it seems that no cause can produce an effect of a higher order than itself. But this conclusion is entirely different from anything we know about nature. Are not the vegetables and the superior species of animals far nobler and more precious, for instance, than the soil and the pastures upon which they depend and from which they draw their nourishment for their growth? The purpose of all the researches of modern science is to convince us completely that the higher forms of life are evolved from the lower, and that the more elaborate and superior organization in life must yield to the inferior” (p. 142). This is the same as saying that the greater comes from the less, that being springs from non-being, that the intellectual life is the result of a material and blind fatalism, that the thoughts of the man of genius and the charity of the saints originate from a lump of dirt.

However, Mill acknowledges that there is considerable probability for the proof of God's existence drawn from the evidence of design in nature. In fact, as we shall see later on, this proof, in his opinion, is an inductive argument corresponding to the method of congruencies, “a poor argument in most cases, but also at times a rather forceful one, especially when it concerns the delicate and complicated dispositions of the vegetative and animal life” (p. 162). This means that, according to the laws of induction and the present development of science, the most probable cause of the organic structure of the eye or the ear is not “the survival of the fittest,” but a pre-ordaining intelligence.

Mill is thus logically led by the principles of Empiricism to admit that there are not really any convincing proofs for either theism or atheism. He strives even to prove that the attributes of the God of Christians, especially omnipotence and wisdom, cannot be reconciled; here, too, all his arguments are drawn from the empirical point of view. According to his theory, our imagination affords us glimpses of a God who exists, who is just and good; now it is not unreasonable for anyone who thinks so, to let himself go still farther and hope that this God exists, provided he recognizes that, if there are any reasons for hoping that it is so, there are no proofs (p. 227).

It is from his Nominalistic thesis on causality that John Stuart Mill draws all these conclusions,

The same thesis, though in a somewhat modified form, was accepted by Herbert Spencer. Mill, who was an idealist of the Berkeley type, did not admit the existence of an external world and believed that the principle of causality, like the other principles, is established by the repetition of the same psychic phenomena in each individual conscience. Spencer, on the contrary, admits the world of external things and considers the so-called principle of causality as the result of a habit which men have formed by having witnessed the constant succession of the same phenomena. He, moreover, invokes heredity, in order to explain the tendency which we experience from birth to regulate our conduct and our reasoning in accordance with this principle. He writes as follows: “Habitual psychical successions entail some hereditary tendency to such concessions, which, under persistent conditions, will become cumulative in generation after generation, and this supplies an explanation of the so-called forms of thought.” (Principles of Psychology, Part 4, ch. 7, 3rd ed., vol. I, p. 466). Thus the vast edifice of our judgments is the result of experimental perceptions, the consolidated accumulations of centuries, just as our continents were formed by the aggregation of almost imperceptible zodns. According to Spencer, there is a difference of degree only between animal sensation and the intelligent acts of men. “It is certain,” he says, “that amongst the automatic acts of the lowest forms of beings and the most highly developed conscious acts of human beings, we could set forth an entire series of acts manifested by the divers species of the animal kingdom, in such a manner that it would be impossible to say of any particular stage in the series: here intelligence begins.” ® Here indeed we find the explanation of the Positivist objection against the demonstrability of the existence of God: it is the subversion of the foundations of reason. (See solution in nn. 15, 18, 25, 29).

Spencer’s Agnosticism is but a logical consequence of this Nominalism. “It is impossible,” he writes, “to avoid making the assumption of self-existence somewhere; and whether that assumption be made nakedly (Theism), or under complete disguises (Pantheism, Atheism), it is equally vicious, equally unthinkable.... We find ourselves obliged to make certain assumptions; and yet we find these assumptions cannot be repre-

5 Quoted by Th. Ribot, La Psychologie Anglaise Contemp., 3rd ed., p. 199.

sented in thought. We are obliged to conclude that a first cause, infinite, absolute or independent, does exist; however, the materials of which the arguments are built, equally with the conclusions based on them, are merely symbolic conceptions of the illegitimate order.” (First Principles, pp. 30-32). This means that our ideas are merely common images that go by a certain name (Nominalism), images which refer directly to sensible phenomena, and which we, without any right, attribute to the absolute.

Taking up the Kantian antinomies, Spencer goes on to say “that the fallacy of our conclusions becomes manifest through their mutual contradictions. The absolute, as such, cannot be a cause; it would be related to its effect. If you say that it exists first by itself, and afterwards becomes a cause, you are confronted with another difficulty: for how can the infinite become that which it was not from the first? If you say that this can be so because it is free, then you again contradict yourself; for freedom supposes consciousness, and consciousness, being only conceivable as a relation, cannot belong to the absolute. The fundamental conceptions of traditional theology are self-destructive. The absolute cannot be conceived as conscious, neither can it be conceived as unconscious; it cannot be conceived as complex, neither can it be conceived as simple; it cannot be identified with the universe, neither can it be distinguished from it. There is the same antagonism manifested between infinite justice and mercy, between wisdom which knows all that is to come, and freedom, between infinite power and goodness, and the existence of evil. Atheism, Pantheism, and Theism are wholly unthinkable.” (First Principles, pp. 33-37).

But these three systems and the religions diametrically opposed to them, Polytheism and Monotheism, agree in recognizing that the facts of experience call for an explanation, and the “belief in the omnipresence of something which surpasses understanding, common to all religions, not only becomes more and more distinct

POSSIBILITY OF PROVING THE EXISTENCE OF GOD _ 95 in proportion as there is further development of thought in the religions, but it also remains after the various elements have mutually nullified each other; yet, it is this belief that the most merciless criticism of all religions allows to remain, or rather sets out in bolder relief” (pp. 37-39).®

Further on we shall show (nos. 29, 39, 70) that these alleged contradictions pointed out by Spencer are the result of his Nominalistic Empiricism, which makes it impossible for him to conceive the divine attributes analogically. The univocal and simple conception that he is necessarily led to form of them, must inevitably result in contradiction.

William James has made no new contribution to this subject. Concerning the traditional proofs for the existence of God he writes: “I will not discuss these arguments. The bare fact that all idealists since Kant felt entitled either to scout or to neglect them, shows that they are not solid enough to serve as religion’s allsufficient foundation. Causation is indeed too obscure a principle to bear the weight of the whole structure of theology. As for the argument from design, see how Darwinian ideas have revolutionized it. The benevolent adaptations which we find in nature, being only fortunate escapes from almost limitless processes of destruction, suggest a deity very different from the one who figured in the earlier versions of the argument.” (Religious Experience, pp. 437-438). Of the divine attributes he regards those known as metaphysical, as meaningless. “Our conception of these practical consequences,” he says, “is for us the whole of our conception of the object” (p. 445). A few lines further on he says: “God's aseity, his necessariness, his immateriality, his simplicity, his indivisibility, his repudiation of inclusion in a genus, his infinity, his metaphysical personality, his relations to evil, being permissive and not positive, his self-sufficiency, self-love, and ab-

8I have been unable to find the exact equivalents of these quotations in the English edition.—Tr, solute felicity in himself:—candidly speaking. how do such qualities as these make any definite connection with our life? And if they severally call for no distinctive adaptations of our conduct, what vital difference can it positively make to a man’s religion whether they be true or false? . . . Verbality has stepped into the place of vision, professionalism into that of life. Instead of bread, we have a stone; instead of a fish, a serpent” (p. 445 £). He even thinks “that a final philosophy of religion will have to consider the pluralistic hypothesis [Polytheism] more seriously than it has hitherto been willing to consider it” (p. 526). As for the moral attributes, “as spiritual assets they are bound up closely with pragmatism; for the tree is known by its fruits. But this idea of a practical fecundity likewise vanishes in the universal flux of empirical evolution. The moral and religious ideas undergo a change,” as their insight into nature and their social arrangements progressively develop. “After an interval of a few generations, the mental climate proves unfavourable to notions of the deity which at an earlier date were perfectly satisfactory” (p. 328). From his further comments on this subject we understand James as meaning to infer that formerly the cruel appetites of a sanguinary god were proofs of his reality in the eyes of his devotees, and that, like us, they judged the tree by its fruits. What remains, then. of the fabric of religion? Nothing but personal experience and those direct assertions that we make in its name. James arrives at practically the same conclusion as Spencer, when he writes: “What the more characteristically divine facts are, apart from the actual inflow of energy in the faith-state, I know not. ... The whole drift of my education gues to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also,” ennobling and transforming it (p. 519)." This un- * The words in italics were added by the French translator of this passage.

knowable transcendental world is none other than the subconscious or subliminal self, and it is this subconsciousness that James calls God.

The French Positivists, following Comte and Littré, have generally regarded the investigation of the problem of God not only as useless, but also as dangerous. For A. Comte, e.g., this problem, is vain, since the author of the Cours de Philosophie Positive (see sth ed., Vol. III, p. 623) holds “that there is no essential difference between man and the brute beast, and hence we must say with Gall, that sensation, memory, imagination, and even judgment, are but various degrees of one and the same phenomenon that manifests itself in each of the truly elementary functions of the brain” (ibid. III, p. 627). The intellectual and moral phenomena belong properly to animal physiology. This teaching spells the abandonment of all our metaphysical theories, since “purely verbal entities would be superseded continually by real phenomena” (ibid, III, p. 616). To be true to his principles, Comte ought to see in the real simply what corresponds to the capacity of animals, and nothing more; for what distinguishes the animal from man, as Rousseau, following Aristotle, remarks, is precisely “that it cannot attach any meaning to the little word is.” Comte is naturally led to conclude that “the traditional demonstrations for the existence of God must yield to the attacks of adverse criticism” (#bid., V, p. 590). Moreover, this belief in God is useless and dangerous. “Artfully to contrive by vain and laborious methods, first of all to bolster up the religious principles so that, thus deprived of all intrinsic and immediate force, they may serve as the basis of the moral order, would not this be, henceforth, like arguing in a vicious circle? . . . Beliefs, themselves incapable of resisting the universal development of human reason, could, therefore, serve no truly useful purpose; for, certainly, reason in its full vigour would not fetter itself again with those oppressive shackles which in its adolescent stage it had once for all completely severed. . . . Most of the time, does not the practical tendency of religious beliefs in the present condition of society chiefly consist in instilling into the hearts of the greater number of those who still hold somewhat tenaciously to these beliefs, a certain instinctive and insurmountable hatred for all those who have liberated themselves from the same, without, moreover, anything useful accruing to society from this form of emulation?” 8 The spirit of the present day is to recognize no other cult but that of Humanism.

Is it necessary for the theologian to have received the gift of discernment of spirits, in order that he may correctly judge whether this extract from the writings of August Comte proceeds from the love of God or from pride?

Littré is of the same opinion. “Science,” he says, “does not declare that there is no God, but that everything happens as if there were no God. Positive philosophy accepts this declaration, and refuses to discuss further what can neither be known from experience nor in any way proved.” (Philosophie Positive, V1, 159). “Kant and the Nominalists have made of the metaphysical arguments a tabula rasa” (ibid., I, p. 238), “for the metaphysical entities are purely imaginary, and they can in no way be verified as facts; the existence of God deduced from them, has no more reality than they have” (zbid., X, p. 14). Continuing in this strain, he writes elsewhere: ° “Why, then, obstinately persist in inquiriung whence you came and whither you are going; whether there be an intelligent, free and good creator? . . . You will never find out anything at all about that. Give up such vain chimeras. .. . Man’s perfection and that of the social order consists in paying no attention to such things. The mind becomes clearer in proportion as it allows these so-called problems to remain in greater obscurity. These problems are a disease, which is cured simply by

8 Cours de Philosophie Posit., IV, pp. 106-7. 9 Revue des Deux Mondes, 1st June, 1865, p. 686.

not thinking of such things.” We find the same ideas expressed in the writings of the Neo-Comtistes, Lévy-Bruhl and Durkheim.

More recently the question of God’s existence has again been brought up by Le Roy in his defence of the Positivist objections against the traditional proofs.*? Le Roy adopts the Bergsonian type of Sensualism or Nominalism. “The general idea,” he says, “is due to the way in which our nervous system is constituted, the apparatus of perception being of very different kinds, all closely related through the medium of the centres with the same motor phenomena. Abstraction is, therefore, a setting-in-relief due to a motor phenomenon.” (Matière et Mémoire, pp. 168-176). “The idea is but a mediating image.” (Evolution Créatrice, p. 327). “Of becoming in general I have but a verbal knowledge” (p. 322). From this point of view, Le Roy is drawn to conclude with John Stuart Mill that “all the proofs for the existence of God are based upon the purely utilitarian principle of morcellation, introducing a distinction between mover and moved, movement and the object moved, potency and act . . . Substances and things are but verbal entities, by which we ‘objectify’ and mobilize the universal flux; they are convenient arrangements and simplifications for the name and action implied. ... If the world is a vast connected whole of unceasing transformations, one need not think that this graduated and far-stretching cascade of happenings necessarily demands a first source... . To affirm the primacy of act is a tacit admission of the same postulates. If causality is merely the outpouring of a full into a void, the reception by one object of the communicated contents of another, in one word, if it is the anthropomorphous operation of an agent, then well and good! But of what value are these idols of the practical imagination? Why not simply identify being with becoming?”

10 “Comment se pose le problème de Dieu,” in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, March, 1907.

Le Roy also invokes the Kantian objection which shall be discussed later on in this work: that to arrive at any conclusion, the traditional proofs must inevitably have recourse to the ontological argument. God, according to Le Roy, is “a reality in the becoming,” who as yet is not and never will be, and who is transcendental merely in name. “Immanence and transcendence correspond to two moments in duration: immanence to what has become, transcendence to what is becoming. If we declare that God is immanent, this means that we consider Him in the light of what he has become in us or in the world; but for the world and for us He ever remains an infinite in becoming, an infinite, which is creation in the true sense, not mere development; and viewed in this way, God appears to be transcendental.” 2 We wonder whether the author grasped the full import of these words, for, as we have already remarked, his conclusion is manifestly opposed to what was defined by the Vatican Council, (See nos. 4 and 5).

We sce what this objection of the Positivists against the possibility of proving the existence of God amounts to. Nothing new has been added to it since the time of Hume, who reduced every idea to a common image with a name, and causality to a common image of an invariable succession of phenomena, called by the name of cause. Everything which is not directly grasped by the senses and the conscience is but a verbal entity, and as for reason, there is no such thing. Apart from the phenomenal order, the principle of causality is valueless; and even here we have no assurance that it must be always referred absolutely to this order.

13. Kant’s objection against the ontological and transcendental value of the principle of causality. The Kantian theory of knowledge likewise undermines the foundation of the traditional proofs for the existence of God. 11 Rev, de Mét. et Mor., July, 1907, p. 512.

Kant rejects Empiricism, because all idea of necessity is eliminated from this system and for Kant, Newton’s physical laws, and also the moral law, are a necessity that cannot be doubted. But in his opinion, Dogmatic Rationalism is wrong in claiming to have an intuition of the intelligible, and to be able by a scientific process of reasoning to conclude that causes and substances exist; he becomes involved in antinomies whenever it occurs to him to approach these problems. On this point the Empirics are right, and Kant is wrong. Metaphysics has not succeeded in establishing itself as a science, and never will do so; for that is impossible. The only science is that of phenomena and the Newtonian physics imposes itself upon us as a necessity. How shall we explain this necessity of scientific knowledge? We know from experience that a connection exists between facts, but experience tells us nothing about the necessity for this. It must, therefore, be the mind which, by consulting its categories of substance, causality, reciprocal action, etc., concludes that there is a necessary connection between phenomena. These categories enable us to establish a priori contacts between phenomena, or to form what Kant calls “synthetical a priori judgments.”

The principle of causality, by which metaphysicians claim to arrive at the idea of a first cause, is only one of these “synthetical a priori” principles. We must agree with Hume in admitting that the proposition, “Everything which happens has a cause,” is not an analytical judgment, for the predicate is not included in the idea of the subject. Nor is it a purely explicative judgment, which merely develops the notion of the subject in order to reveal the presence of the predicate, as, for instance, when we say, “What contradicts something does not apply to it,” or, “All bodies are extended.” It is an extensive judgment which really adds to the sum of knowledge, and therefore, is synthetical, as too is this other judgment, “All bodies are heavy”; but at the same time we are compelled to accept it as an a priori judgment, rendered neces- sary by the exigency of science. It might be expressed by the following formula: “All changes take place in accordance with the law of connexion between cause and effect”; it applies only to the world of phenomena and does not justify us in attributing all these changes to a cause of another order, which is not itself also a change. (Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction, § IV; Transcendental Analytic, Il, c. 2, sect. 3, n. 3; Transcendental Dialectic, Il, c. 2, sect. 9, n. 4, 4th antinomy). Such a concept of the principle of causality always postulates an antecedent phenomenon, never an absolute cause.

From the noumenal point of view, it may still be possible that there is a first cause. The idea of God is an ideal necessary for the completion of knowledge, which is irresistibly drawn to explain the conditioned by the absolutely unconditioned, The natural tendency of the human mind is to conceive God as the prototype of all things, the supreme reality, absolutely one, simple, completely determined, possessing all the perfections which constitute personality. But this metaphysical demonstration is absolutely insufficient, for want of an intelligible intuition that would serve as a basis for it; the analysis of the concepts and of the principles has made this clear in advance. However, Kant undertakes to establish that the transcendental illusion hidden in the ontological argument vitiates the proof of God’s existence derived from the notion of contingency, as also that from the teleological argument. (Transcendental Dialectic, Il, c. 3). When we come to discuss these proofs, we shall consider these special difficulties.

Likewise, for pure reason, the idea of a personal God is a hypothesis which invests our ideas with the greatest possible unity; it is “simply a regulative principle,” which stimulates the mind in the unification of knowledge.

Practical reason alone leads us to admit the existence of God, not by any demonstration, but by a free act of faith, a purely rational belief, of which “the certitude is subjectively adequate, although objectively insufficient.” The existence of God and the future life are two inseparable assumptions that follow inevitably from the idea of moral obligation. The moral law says: “Do what may render you worthy of happiness” (happiness and virtue are necessarily connected by a synthetical @ priori judgment). Now God alone can realize the harmony between virtue and happiness. Therefore, God must exist. The moral unbeliever is the one who does not admit what, in truth, cannot possibly be known, but what is morally necessary for one to suppose. This sort of incredulity always has its origin in a lack of moral interest. The greater the moral sentiment in a man, the firmer and livelier must be his faith in everything he feels himself obliged to assume, from the point of view of practical necessity. (Logic, Introduction, IX; Critique of Practical Reason, Il, c. 5).

Such, then, is Kant’s objection against the demonstrability of God's existence. He does not deny, as the Empirics do, the necessity of the principle of causality; but he does dispute its ontological and transcendental validity. (See solution in nos. 18, 25, 29).

Kant, as Spencer after him, confirms his thesis by an exposition of the antinomies with which, in his opinion, speculative reason clashes, whenever it proposes to go beyond the range of phenomena. The antinomy which most of all interests us here, is the fourth, which concerns the necessary being that is the cause of the world; but it becomes involved with the third, relating to freedom, if it demands that the first cause be a free cause; and also with the first relating to the eternity of the world and its extension, and with the second, which concerns the nature of cosmic matter.

It will be sufficient for us to consider the fourth antinomy, at the same time briefly commenting on the other two.

According to the thesis of this fourth Kantian antinomy, there exists either in, or in connection with, the world, a necessary being, which ts the absolute cause of the universe. Without such a being, we could not explain the various changes that take place in the world; for all change presupposes a complete or determined series of causes or conditions, and therefore, postulates a first cause or condition, an unconditioned existence, not contingent, but necessary.

According to the antithesis, an absolutely necessary being does not exist, either in the world or out of it, as its cause. Granted that there is in the world a necessary being, this being either constitutes an integral part of the cosmos, or it coincides with the sumtotal of phenomena. But if a part of the cosmos were necessary and uncaused, it could have no possible reference to the conditioned phenomena that succeed each other in time. If the whole cosmic series constituted the necessary being, this would be the same as saying that a hundred thousand idiots can constitute one intelligent man. Finally, if this necessary being is outside of and apart from the world, directly it begins to act, it admits a beginning of something within itself, and therefore belongs to time and is in the world, which is contrary to the hypothesis.

This fourth antinomy is involved with the third, which concerns freedom. Its thesis states that we must admit a free causality. In matter of fact, there can be no regress to infinity in the series of causes; for in that case there would be no first cause of the phenomena about which we are certain, and hence they would be without sufficient reason for their existence. But to have a finite series of causes, we must commence with a cause which does not have to be determined by any preceding cause. In other words, we must have recourse to a free causality.

According to the antithesis, there can be no such thing as freedom, A free act would be an act without any assignable reason for its determination as such; the free cause would pass from indetermination to determination without sufficient reason, (See solution of this antinomy in Volume II, of this work, ch. IV, nos. 59, 61-63).

The two other antinomies relating to time, space and matter, may be passed over as of less importance in the discussion of this question of the demonstrability of God's existence. We have already remarked (no. 10) that the great classical proofs for the existence of God do not take into consideration the question of the eternity or non-eternity of the world. It is evidently not impossible to establish by an a priori argument that God created freely from all eternity, just as the sun and its rays of light are simultaneous. There would, in that case, be an infinite series of actually completed phenomena, in which there is nothing contrary to reason, regardless of what the first Kantian antinomy may say on the subject; for this series would be infinite only a parte ante, and completed a parte post. The objection that creation by God could have had no beginning in time, simply because no sufficient reason can be given why the world should begin to exist at a certain moment rather than at any other, again brings up the same difficulty as that about freedom. If freedom involves no contradiction, then creation in time is a possibility.

As for the second antinomy, which concerns divisible matter, or matter which is not infinite in extension, we shall discuss this problem in connection with the principle of substance (see no. 23).

Kant solves the antinomies of time, space, and matter by rejecting both thesis and antithesis. It cannot be said of the world, as a thing in itself, either that it is finite or that it is infinite in time and space; neither that it is composed of simple parts or that it is divisible ad infinitum. Space and time are the a priori forms of sensibility.

As for freedom and necessary being, they cannot exist in the phenomenal or sensible order; but Kant sees no reason why they could not exist in the noumenal or intelligible order; and that is all that speculative reason can say about it: for it is unable to prove that God exists.

14. The general principle of modern agnosticism.

By way of a brief summary, we may say that Kantian Empiricism and Idealism are two phases of Agnosticism. As the Encyclical “Pascendi” remarks, the general principle of Agnosticism is nothing else but Phenomenalism, “Human reason strictly limited to the sphere of things phenomenal, which means to the appearances of things, and precisely such as they appear, has neither the power nor the right to go beyond these limits; hence it cannot rise up to God, not even so much as know whether He exists through the medium of created things.” (Denz., 2072). Human reason can have knowledge only of phenomena and of the laws by which they are governed. Our ideas, even the very first ones implied in the first principles, have merely phenomenal, but no ontological, validity. From them we can form no concept of the substantial being, if such a being exists under the veil of these phenomena. With far more reason we may say that they have no transcendental value; for they do not permit us to know God, the transcendental Being, supposing that He really exists.!*

The first principles include such primary notions as being, essence, existence, unity, identity, truth, goodness, efficient and final cause, and, as a consequence, intelligence essentially related to being, as also volition essentially related to goodness. The corresponding first principles are those of identity, contradiction, sufficient reason, causality, finality, to which may be added the following axioms: (1) Whatever is a subject of existence is called substance; (2) the intelligibility of anything corresponds to the degree of its participation in being. (Nihil est intelligibile nisi in

12 Medieval Agnosticism, such as we find it, for instance, in the writings of Maimonides, is of a less radical type.

quantum est in actu); (3) only that can be the object of volition which appeals to one as being good. (Nihil volitum nisi praecognitum ut conveniens).

By ontological validity we understand the inherent aptness of these first principles to make known to us not only the phenomena previously perceived by the senses or by consciousness, but also being itself (7ò dv), the senses revealing the presence of the same to us by means of these phenomena.

By transcendent validity we mean that these first ideas are in themselves apt to convey to us a true knowledge of God, considered as the first transcendental and non-immanent cause, The principal ideas of this type are called by the Scholastics, transcendentals; ** though the term is used in a different sense, meaning that such ideas transcend not only created beings, but also the limits of the genera or the categories and may be found according to their various modes in all these genera. Thus, being and the properties of being, such as unity, truth, goodness, quality, relation, action, passion, place and time, are found in varying degrees in each of them.

This twofold validity, ontological and transcendental, of first ideas and first principles, is generally rejected by agnostics.

Empirical Agnosticism (such, for instance, as we find in the writings of Spencer, Mill or W. James) rejects it, since it reduces first ideas to mere composite ideas, to which a general name is given. It is the most radical form of Nominalism. These composite images, formed according to the laws of association of particular images, the residua of sensation, are such that the similarities between the ideas have a constructive and the differences between them a neutralizing effect. Just like sensation, they

18 According to Kant, that inquiry “is called transcendental, which is not so much occupied with objects as with the mode of our cognition of these objects, in so far as this mode of cognition is possible a priori.” (Critique of Pure Reason, Introd., Ch, VII).

represent merely sensible phenomena. From this point of view substance is simply a collection of phenomena, and causality a succession of phenomena that cannot be said really to have been produced.

Personality is nothing else but a sequence of interior phenomena mysteriously grouped together by our consciousness of them. Reason can have knowledge only of phenomena, because between it and the senses there is no essential difference.

In the idealistic Agnosticism of Kant and his disciples, the neocritics, the ontological and transcendental validity of first ideas finds no acceptance, since these are reduced to purely subjective forms of thought, the sole purpose of the names being to indicate the various groups of phenomena. Causality is but a subjective form, uniting the phenomena which occur successively in time.

Agnosticism, whether empirical or idealistic, as a general rule confirms its thesis by an exposition of the antinomies in which, as it claims, reason always ends whenever it seeks to transcend phenomena. Briefly, they say that, on the one hand, a necessary and unconditioned being is required to explain this world of ours; on the other hand, the unconditioned cannot be a cause, for it would come into relation with its effect. If, to safeguard its independence, we say that it was first of all self-existent and afterwards began to act, we find ourselves obliged to admit that it had a beginning, which is an open contradiction. (Fourth antinomy of Kant and Spencer.)

If we say that it can act when it so wishes, because it is free, we find ourselves confronted with the special antinomy of freedom. The free act, which, on the one hand, seems to be a requisite, is, on the other hand, without a determining cause, without a sufficient reason. (Third antinomy of Kant). We also get in conflict with the antinomy relating to time; for if the world had a beginning in time, no cogent reason could be given why it should have begun at a certain moment in time rather than at any other. (First antinomy of Kant). Finally, freedom presup- Poses consciousness, and since we cannot conceive of consciousness except as a relation implying a duality consisting of subject and object, it cannot be predicated of the absolute, which must be both one and simple (Spencer, Fichte).

The fundamental conceptions of traditional theology are irreconcilable. The absolute, on the one hand, must be conceived as absolutely simple, while on the other hand we must attribute to it a multiplicity of perfections which it cannot formally possess without their destroying its simplicity. In addition to these antinomies, we have the classical difficulties as to how infinite justice can be reconciled with infinite mercy, foreknowledge with freedom, the omnipotence of an infinitely good God with the existence of evil.

Thus, these antinomies seem to confirm the general principle of Agnosticism, which, as we have seen, is nothing else but Phenomenalism, or the negation of the ontological and transcendental validity of reason.

All the objections raised against the demonstrability of God’s existence can easily be traced to the Empirics or Idealists.

To prove this demonstrability we shall defend: (1) the ontological validity of first ideas and first principles, and at the same time show the necessity of these principles; (2) their transcendental validity. The ontological range of first ideas is essentially presupposed by their transcendental validity. It is clear that if these ideas have but a phenomenal import, and do not enable us to detect the substantial being underlying the phenomena, they cannot be the means of our reaching God, the first transcendental cause.

Perhaps some may be surprised that so many pages of this book are taken up with the discussion of the abstractive intuition of intelligible being and of the first laws of being. The reason is that it seems to us impossible to reply to the current objections against the traditional proofs for the existence of God, without recurring to these preliminary fundamentals of general metaphysics concerning being, identity, becoming, multiple, substance, causality, and finality. If there are any ideas that are of profound and permanent significance from an apologetic point of view, may we not say that it is above all these first notions which demand our serious consideration? From their analysis we obtain an explanation and justification of the sensus communis or natural reason.

Footnotes

1. Sce Revue Thomiste, July, 1904, “Note sur la preuve de Dieu par les degrés des étres,” by R. Garrigou-Lagrange. ↩

2. See Appendix I at the end of this book. ↩