# Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God/Lecture 10

The proofs we have to deal with, regarded in their first aspect, presuppose the world in general, and, above all, its contingency. The starting-point is constituted by empirical things, and by the Whole composed of these things, namely, the world. The Whole is certainly superior to its parts, the Whole, that is to say defined as the unity which embraces and gives their character to all the parts, as, for instance, even when we speak of the Whole of a house, and still more in the case of that Whole which is a self-existent unity, as the soul is in reference to the living body. By the term world, however, we understand the aggregate of material things, the collection merely of that infinite number of existing things which are actually visible, and each of which is, to begin with, conceived of as existing for itself. The world embraces men equally with natural things. When the world is thus taken as an aggregate, and even as an aggregate merely of natural things, it is not conceived of as Nature, by which we understand something which is in itself a systematic Whole, a system of arrangements and gradations, and particularly of laws. The term world as thus understood expresses the aggregate merely, and suggests that it is based simply on the existing mass of things, and has thus no superiority, no qualitative superiority at least, over material things.
So far as we are concerned, these things further determine themselves in a variety of ways, and chiefly as limited Being, finitude, contingency, and so on. This is the kind of starting-point from which the spirit raises itself to God. It adjudges limited, finite or contingent Being to be untrue Being, above and beyond which true Being exists. It ​escapes into the region of another, unlimited Being, which represents the Essence as opposed to that unessential, external Being. The world of finitude, of things temporal, of change, of transitoriness, is not the true form of existence, but the Infinite, Eternal, and Unchangeable. And even if what we have called limitless Being, the Infinite, Eternal, and Unchangeable, does not succeed in expressing the absolute fulness of meaning contained in the word God, still God is limitless Being, He is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, and thus the spirit rises at least to those divine predicates or to those fundamental qualities of His nature which, though abstract, are yet universal, or at least to that universal region, to the pure æther in which God dwells.
This elevation of the soul to God is, speaking generally, that fact in the history of the human spirit which we call religion, but religion in a general sense, that is, in a purely abstract sense, and thus this elevation is the general, but merely the general, basis of religion.
The principle of immediate knowledge does not get beyond this elevation as a fact. It appeals to it, and rests in it as a fact, and asserts that it represents that universal fact in men, and even in all men, which is called the inner revelation of God in the human spirit, or reason. We have already sufficiently examined this principle, and I accordingly refer to it once more only in so far as we here confine our attention to the fact in question. This very fact, the act of elevation to God namely, is as such rather something which is directly of the nature of mediation. It has its beginning and starting-point in finite, contingent existence, in material things, and represents an advance from these to something else. It is consequently mediated by that beginning, and is an elevation to what is infinite and in itself necessary, only inasmuch as it does not stop short at that beginning which is here alone the Immediate (and this an Immediate which afterwards exhibits a merely relative character), but rises to the Infinite by the mediate ​step of the abandonment and renunciation of such a standpoint. This elevation which is represented by consciousness, is consequently in itself mediated knowledge.
With regard to the point from which this elevation starts, we may here further remark that the content is not of a sensuous kind, not an empirical concrete content composed of sensation or perception, nor a concrete content of imagination—the truth rather being that the abstract thought-determinations implied in the ideas of the finitude and contingency of the world form the starting-point. The goal at which the elevation arrives is of a similar kind, namely, the infinitude or absolute necessity of God, conceived of not as having a more developed and richer determination, but as being wholly within the limits of these general categories. With regard to this aspect of the question it is necessary to point out that the universality of the fact of this elevation is false so far as its form is concerned. For instance, it can be maintained that even amongst the Greeks the thought of infinity, of inherently existing necessity as representing the ultimate principle of all things, was the possession of the philosophers only. Material things did not appear in this general way to the popular conception in the abstract form of material things and as contingent and finite things, but rather in their empirical and concrete shape. So in the same way God was not conceived of under the category of the Infinite, the Eternal, the inherently Necessary, but, on the contrary, in accordance with the definite shapes created by the imagination. Still less is it the case that those nations who occupied a lower stage of culture put their conceptions in any such actually universal forms. These general forms of thought do certainly pass through men’s minds, as we say, because men are thinking beings, and when they have received a fixed form in language they are still further developed into the conscious thought upon which the proof proper is based, but even in that case they take, to begin with, the form of characteristics of ​concrete objects; they don’t require to get a fixed place in consciousness as independent in their own right. It was to the culture of our time that these categories of thought first became familiar, and they are now universal, or at least universally diffused. But those very people who have shared in this culture, and no less those who have been referred to as unpractised in the independent exercise of thought based on general conceptions, have not reached this idea in any immediate way, but, on the contrary, by following the varied course of thought, and by the study of the sense in which words are used. People have essentially learned to think, and have given currency to their thoughts. The culture which is capable of abstract conception is something which has been reached through mediation of an infinitely manifold character. The one fact in this fact of the elevation of Man to God is that it is a mediation.
It is this circumstance, namely, that the elevation of the spirit to God has mediation in itself, which invites to proof, that is, to the explication of the separate moments of this process of the spirit, and to their explication in the form of thought. It is the spirit in its most inward character, that is, in its thought, which produces this elevation, which in its turn represents the course followed by the thought-determinations or characteristic qualities of thought. What is intended to be effected by this process of proof is that this activity of thought should be brought into consciousness, that consciousness should recognise it as representing those moments of thought in a connected form. Against this unfolding of these moments which shows itself in the region of mediation through thought, faith, which wishes to continue to be immediate certainty, protests, and so, too, does the criticism of the Understanding, which is at home in the intricacies of that mediation, and is at home in the latter in order that it may introduce confusion into the elevation itself. So far as faith is concerned, we may say that however many faults Understanding may find with ​these proofs, and whatever defective points there may be in their manner of unfolding the moments of the elevation of the spirit from the accidental and temporal to the infinite and eternal, the human heart will not allow itself to be deprived of this elevation. In so far as the human heart has been checked in this matter of elevation to God by the Understanding, faith has, on the one hand, appealed to it to hold fast by this elevation, and not to trouble itself with the fault-finding of the Understanding; but it has, on the other hand, told itself not to trouble about proof at all, in order that it may reach what is the surest standing ground, and in the interest of its own simplicity it has ranged itself on the side of the critical Understanding in direct opposition to proof. Faith will not allow itself to be robbed of its right of rising to God, that is, of its witness to the truth, because this is inherently necessary, and is more than any single chance fact connected with Spirit. There are facts, inner experiences in Spirit, and still more are there in the individual spirits—for Spirit does not exist as an abstraction, but in the form of many spirits—facts of an infinitely varied sort, and sometimes of the most opposite and depraved character. In order that this fact may be rightly conceived of as a fact of Spirit as such, and not merely as a fact belonging to the various ephemeral contingent spirits, it is requisite to conceive of it in its necessary character. It is this necessary character which alone vouches for its truth in this contingent and arbitrary sphere. The sphere to which this higher fact belongs is, further, essentially the sphere of abstraction. Not only is it very difficult to have a clear and definite consciousness of what abstraction is and what is the nature of its inner connection, but this power of abstraction is itself the real danger, and this is a danger which is unavoidable when abstraction has once appeared, when the believing human spirit has once tasted of the Tree of Knowledge, and thought has begun to spring up within it in the free and independent form which peculiarly belongs to it.
​If, accordingly, we look more narrowly at the inner course followed by Spirit in thought and its moments, it will be seen, as has been already observed, that the first starting-point represents a category of thought, namely, that of the contingency of natural things. The first form of the elevation of the spirit to God is represented historically by the so-called Cosmological Proof of the existence of God. It has also been pointed out that on the definiteness of the starting-point depends also the definiteness of the goal which we wish to reach. Natural things might be defined in another way, and in that case the result or the truth would also be differently defined. We might have differences which would appear unimportant to very imperfectly developed thought, but which from that standpoint of thought which we at present occupy would be seen to be the very thing with which we were really concerned and which has to be reckoned with. If things were thus defined in a general way as existing, it might be shown that the truth of existence as determinate Being, was Being itself, indeterminate, limitless Being. God would thus be defined as Being—the most abstract of all definitions, and the one with which, as is well known, the Eleatics started. We recall this abstraction most vividly in connection with the distinction already made between thought in its inner and implicit form and the bringing forward of thoughts into consciousness. Who is there who does not use the word Being? (The weather is fine. Where are you? and so on, ad infinitum.) And who, in forming conceptions, does not make use of this pure category of thought, though it is concealed in the concrete content (the weather, and so on, ad infinitum), of which consciousness in forming any such conceptions is composed, and of which alone, therefore, it has any knowledge? There is an infinite difference between the possession and employment of the category of thought called Being in this way, and its employment by the Eleatics, who gave it a fixed meaning in itself, and conceived of it as the ultimate principle, as the Absolute, ​along with God at least, or apart from any God at all. Further, when things are defined as finite, Spirit has risen from them to what is infinite; and when they are defined at the same time as real Being, then Spirit has risen to the Infinite as representing what is ideal or ideal Being. Or if they are expressly defined as having Being in a merely immediate way, then Spirit rises from this pure immediacy, which is a mere semblance of Being, to the Essence, and regards this as representing the ground or basis of Being. It may again rise from them as representing parts, to God as representing the Whole; or from them as external and selfless things, to God as representing the force behind them; or from them as effects, to their cause. All these characteristics are applied to things by thought, and in the same way the categories of Being, the Infinite, the Ideal, Essence and Ground, the Whole, Force, Cause, are used to describe God. It is implied that they may be employed to describe Him, yet still as suggesting that though they may be validly applied to Him, and though God is really Being, the Infinite, Essence, the Whole, Force, and so on, they do not, all the same, exhaust His nature, which is deeper and richer than anything such determinations can express. The advance from any such determination of existence taken as a starting-point and as representing the finite in general, to its final determination, that is, to the Infinite in thought, deserves the name Proof exactly in the same way as those proofs to which the name has been formally given. In this way the number of proofs goes far beyond that of those already mentioned. From what standpoint are we to regard this further increase in the number of the proofs which have thus grown up in what is perhaps for us an unpleasant way? We cannot exactly reject this multiplicity of arguments. On the contrary, when we have once placed ourselves at the standpoint of those mediations of thought which are recognised as proofs, we find we have to explain why in thus adducing them we have confined, and can ​confine, ourselves just to the number mentioned, and to the categories contained in them. In reference to this new and further extended variety of proofs, we have to think principally of what was said in connection with those which appeared at an earlier stage and in a more limited shape. This multiplicity of starting-points which thus presents itself is nothing else than that large number of categories which naturally belong to the logical treatment of the subject. We have merely to indicate the manner in which they point to this latter. They show themselves to be nothing but the series of the continuous determinations which belong to the Notion, and not to any one notion, but to the Notion in itself. They represent the development of the Notion till it reaches externalisation, the condition in which its elements are mutually exclusive, though it has really gone deeper into itself. The one side of this continuous advance is represented by the finite definiteness of a form of the Notion; the other, by its most obvious truth, which is in its turn simply the truth in a more concrete and deeper form than that which preceded it. The highest stage in one sphere is at the same time the beginning of a higher stage. It is logic which unfolds in its necessity this advance in the determination of the Notion. Each stage through which it passes so far involves the elevation of a category of finitude into its infinitude, and it thus likewise involves from its starting-point onwards a metaphysical conception of God, and, since this elevation is conceived of in its necessity, a proof of His Being. Thus also the transition from the one stage to the higher stage presents itself as a necessary advance in more concrete and deeper determination, and not only as a series of random conceptions, and so as an advance to perfectly concrete truth, to the full and perfect manifestation of the Notion, to the equating or identification of these its manifestations with itself. Logic is, so far, metaphysical theology, which treats of the evolution of the Idea of God in the æther of pure ​thought, and thus concerns itself peculiarly with this Idea, which is perfectly independent in-and-for-itself.
Such detailed treatment is not the object of these lectures. We wish to confine ourselves here to the historical discussion of those characteristics of the Notion the rising from which to the characteristics of the Notion which are its truth, and which may be held to be the characteristics of the Notion of God, is the point to be considered. The reason of the general incompleteness which marks that method of taking up the characteristics of the Notion can only be found in the defective ideas prevalent with regard to the nature of the characteristics of the Notion itself, and of their mutual connection, as well as of the nature of the act of rising from them as finite to the Infinite. The more immediate reason why the characteristic of the contingency of the world and that of the absolutely necessary Essence which corresponds to it appear as the starting-point and as the result of the proof respectively—and this reason is at the same time a relative justification of the preference given to them—is to be looked for in the fact that the category of the relation between contingency and necessity is that in which all the relations of the finitude and the infinitude of Being are resumed and comprised. The most concrete determination of the finitude of Being is contingency, and in the same way the infinitude of Being in its most completely determined form is necessity. Being in its own essentiality is reality, and reality is in itself the general relation between contingency and necessity which finds its complete determination in absolute necessity. Finitude, by being taken up into this thought-determination, has the advantage, so to speak, of being so far prepared by this means as to point in itself to the transition to its truth or necessity. The term contingency, or accident, already suggests a kind of existence whose special character it is to pass away.
Necessity itself, however, has its truth in freedom; with ​it we enter into a new sphere, into the region of the Notion itself. This latter accordingly affords another relation for the determination of elevation to God and for the course it follows, a different determination both of the starting-point and the result, and, first of all, the determination of what is conformable to an end, and that of the End. This accordingly becomes the category for a further proof of the existence of God. But the Notion is not something merely submerged in objectivity, as it is when regarded as an end, in which case it is merely the determination of things; but, on the contrary, it is for itself, and exists independently of objectivity. Regarded in this light, it is itself the starting-point, and its transition has a determination of its own, which has been already referred to. The fact, therefore, that the first Proof, the Cosmological Proof, adopts the category of the relation of contingency and absolute necessity, finds, as has been remarked, its relative justification in this, that this relation is the most individual, most concrete, and, in fact, the ultimate characteristic of reality as such, and accordingly represents and comprises in itself the truth of the more abstract categories of Being taken collectively. The movement of this relation likewise includes the movement of the earlier, more abstract characteristics of finitude to the still more abstract characteristics of infinitude; or rather, it is, in a logically abstract sense, the movement, or procedure of the proof, that is, it is the form of syllogistic reasoning, in all cases only one and the same, which is represented in it.
As is well known, the effect of the criticism directed by Kant against the metaphysical proofs of the existence of God has been that these arguments have been abandoned, and that they are no longer mentioned in any scientific treatise on the subject; in fact, one is almost ashamed to ​adduce them at all. It is allowed, however, that they may be used in a popular way, and these helps to truth are universally employed in connection with the instruction of youth, and the edification of those who are grown up. So, too, that eloquence which has for its principal aim to warm the heart and elevate the feelings necessarily takes and uses them as the inner fundamental and connecting principles of the ideas with which it deals. With regard to the so-called Cosmological Proof, Kant (“Critique of Pure Reason,” 2nd edition, p. 643) makes the general remark that if we presuppose the existence of anything, we cannot avoid what follows from this, namely, that something or other exists in a necessary way, and that this is an absolutely natural conclusion; and he goes on further to remark, at p. 651, with regard to the Physico-theological Proof, that “it ought always to be mentioned with respect, since it is the oldest, the clearest, and the one most in harmony with ordinary human reason.” He declares that “it would not only be a comfortless task, but an absolutely useless one, to attempt to detract in any way from the authority of this proof.” He holds, further, that “reason can never be so far repressed by any doubts suggested by subtle abstract speculation as to be unable to extricate herself from any such burrowing indecision as from a dream, by the mere glance which she directs to the wonders of Nature and the majesty of the universe, in order thus to go from one form of greatness to another until the highest of all is reached, and to rise from the conditioned to the condition, until she arrives at the supreme and unconditioned Author of all.”
If, then, the proof first adduced expresses an unavoidable conclusion from which it is impossible to escape, and if it would be absolutely useless to seek to detract from the authority of the second proof, and if reason can never be so far repressed as to renounce this method of proof and not to rise through it to the unconditioned Author of all, it must certainly appear strange that we should ​evade the demand referred to, and if all the while reason be held to be so entirely repressed that it no longer attaches any weight to this proof. But just as it may appear to be a sin against the good society of the philosophers of our time to continue to mention those proofs, it equally appears that the philosophy of Kant, and Kant’s refutations of those proofs, are something which we have long ago done with, and which is therefore not to be mentioned any more.
The fact, however, is that it is Kant’s criticism alone which has done away with these proofs in a scientific way, and which has itself become the source of the other and shorter method of rejecting them, that method, namely, which makes feeling alone the judge of truth, and asserts not only that thought is superfluous, but that it is damnable. In so far, then, as we are concerned in getting to know the scientific reasons for which these proofs have lost their authority, it is Kant’s criticism alone with which we are called to deal. It is, however, to be noticed, further, that the ordinary proofs which Kant subjects to criticism, and in particular the Cosmological and Physico-theological Proofs, whose method we are here considering, contain characteristics of a more concrete kind than the abstract merely qualitative characteristics of finitude and infinitude. Thus the Cosmological Proof contains the characteristics of contingent existence and of absolutely necessary Essence. It has also been observed that even when the antitheses are expressed by the terms conditioned and unconditioned, or by accident and substance, they still necessarily have here this merely qualitative meaning. Here, accordingly, the really essential point to be dealt with is the formal procedure of the mediation connected with the proof; and, besides, the content and the dialectic nature of the characteristics themselves are not dealt with in the metaphysical syllogisms referred to, nor in Kant’s criticism either. It is, however, just the mediation of this very ​dialectic element which it is necessary to carry through and pass judgment upon. For the rest, the particular mode in which the mediation in those metaphysical lines of argument, as well as that belonging to Kant’s estimate of them, is to be conceived of, is, as a whole, the same; and this is true of all the separate proofs of the existence of God, that is, of all those belonging to the class which starts from some given form of existence. And if we here look more closely at the nature of this syllogism of the Understanding, we shall have also settled its character so far as the other proofs are concerned, and in dealing with them we shall have to direct our attention merely to the content of the characteristics in its more definite form.
The consideration of Kant’s criticism of the Cosmological Proof comes to be all the more interesting from the fact that, according to Kant, this proof has concealed in it “a whole nest of dialectic assumptions, which, nevertheless, transcendental criticism is able to lay bare and destroy.” I shall first restate this proof in the form in which it is usually expressed, which is the one employed by Kant, and which runs thus: If anything exists—not merely exists, but exists a contingentia mundi, is defined as contingent—then some absolutely necessary Essence must exist as well. Now I myself at least exist, and therefore an absolutely rational Essence exists. Kant remarks, first of all, that the minor term contains something derived from experience, and that the major term concludes from experience in general that something necessary exists; that consequently the proof is not carried through in an absolutely a priori way, a remark which connects itself with what was mentioned before as to the general nature of this style of argument, which takes up merely one aspect of the total true mediation.
The next remark has reference to a point of supreme importance in connection with this style of argument, and which Kant expresses in the following form. The necessary Essence can be characterised as necessary only ​in one single mode, that is, in respect of all possible opposing predicates only by means of one of these, and consequently there can be only one single conception of any such thing, namely, that of the most real Essence—a conception which confessedly forms the subject of the Ontological Proof, to be dealt with much later on.
It is against this latter more comprehensive characteristic of necessary Essence that Kant first of all directs his criticism, and which he describes as a mere refinement of reasoning. The empirical ground of proof above mentioned cannot tell us what are the attributes of this necessary Essence. To reach these, reason has absolutely to part company with experience, and to seek in pure conceptions what kind of attributes or qualities an absolutely necessary Essence must possess, and what thing amongst all possible things has the requisite qualifications which should belong to an absolute necessity. We might attribute to the age the many marks of want of intellectual training which characterise these expressions, and be willing to admit that anything like this is not to be found in the scientific and philosophical modes of statement current in our day. At all events, God would not in these days be any longer qualified as a thing, nor would we try to seek amongst all possible things some one thing which should suit the conception of God. We speak indeed of the qualities or attributes of this or that man, or of Peruvian bark, and such like; but in philosophical statements we do not speak of attributes in reference to God as a thing. Only we all the more frequently hear conceptions spoken of simply as abstract specific forms of thought, so that it is no longer necessary to indicate what we mean when we ask information regarding the notion or conception of anything, or when, in fact, we wish to form a conception of any object. It has, however, quite become a generally accepted principle, or rather it has come to form part of the belief of this age, that reason should be reproached with putting its ​investigations in the form of pure conceptions, and even that this should be reckoned a crime; in other words, it is blamed for showing itself active in a way different from that of sense-perception, or from that followed by imagination and poetry. In the case of Kant we see, at any rate, in his treatment of the subject, the definite presuppositions from which he starts, and the logical result of the reasoning process he follows, so that any opinion arrived at is expressly reached and proved by means of principles, and it is held that any view must be deduced from principles, and be, in fact, of a philosophical kind. In our day, on the contrary, if we go along the highway of knowledge, we meet with the oracular utterances of feeling, and the assertions of the individual person who has the pretension to speak in the name of all men, and as a consequence of this pretends that he has also a right to impose his assertions upon everybody. There cannot possibly be any kind of precision in the characteristics which spring from such sources of knowledge, nor in the form in which they are expressed, nor can they lay claim to be logical or to be based on principles or grounds.
That part of Kant’s criticism referred to suggests the definite thought, first of all, that the proof we are dealing with leads us merely to the idea of a necessary Essence, but that any such characteristic is different from the conception of God, that is, from the characteristic of the most real Essence, and that this latter must be deduced by reason from the former by means of conceptions pure and simple. It will at once be seen that if this proof does not bring us any further than to the idea of an absolutely necessary Essence, the only objection which could be urged against it would be, that the idea of God which is limited to what is implied in this characteristic is at any rate not such a profound idea as we, whose conception of God is more comprehensive, wish for. It is quite possible that individuals and nations belonging to an earlier age, or who, while belonging to our age, are ​living outside the pale of Christianity and of our civilisation, might have no more profound idea of God than this. For all such, this proof would consequently be sufficient enough. We may, in any case, allow that God and God only is the absolutely necessary Essence, even if this characteristic does not exhaust the Christian idea, which, as a matter of fact, includes in it something more profound than the metaphysical characteristic of so-called natural theology—something more profound, too, than what is found in the conception of God which belongs to immediate knowledge and faith. It is itself questionable if immediate knowledge can even say this much of God, that He is the absolutely necessary Essence; at any rate, if one person can know this much of God immediately, another may equally well not know so much of Him immediately in the absence of any right on the part of any one to expect more of him, for a right implies reasons and proofs, that is, mediations of knowledge, and mediations are excluded from and forbidden to immediate knowledge of this kind.
But if the development of what is contained in the characteristic of absolutely necessary Essence gives us still further characteristics as duly following from it, what objection can there be to accepting these, and to being convinced of their validity? The ground of proof may be empirical; but if the proof is in itself a properly deduced consequence, and if the existence of a necessary Essence is once for all established by this consequence, reason starting from this basis pursues its investigations by the aid of what are purely conceptions; but this can be reckoned an unjustifiable act only when the employment of reason in general is considered wrong, and, as a matter of fact, Kant carries the degradation of reason as far as those do who limit all truth to immediate knowledge.
However, the characteristic of the so-called most real Essence is easily deducible from the characteristic of the ​absolutely necessary Essence, or even from the characteristic of the Infinite, beyond which we have not gone, for all and every limitation contains a reference to an Other, and is consequently opposed to the characteristic of the Absolutely-necessary and Infinite.
The real illusion or fallacy in the mode of inference which is supposed to belong to this proof, is sought for by Kant in the proposition that every purely necessary Essence is at the same time the most real Essence, and he holds that this proposition is the nervus probandi of the Cosmological Proof. He seeks, however, to expose the fallacy by pointing out that, since a most real Essence is not one whit different from any other Essence, the proposition permits of being simply inverted, that is, any—and by this is meant the most real—Essence is absolutely necessary, or, in other words, the most real Essence which as such gets its determinate nature by means of the Notion, must also contain within it the characteristic of absolute necessity. This, however, is just the principle and method of the Ontological Proof of the existence of God, which consists in this, that it starts from the notion or conception, and passes by means of the conception to existence. The Cosmological Proof uses the Ontological as a prop, since it promises to conduct us by a new footpath, and yet after a short detour brings us back to the old one, the existence of which it refused to admit, and which we abandoned for its sake.
It will be seen that the objection does not touch the Cosmological Proof, either in so far as this latter merely attains by itself to the characteristic of something absolutely necessary, or in so far as it advances from this by way of development to the further characteristic of what is most real. So far as this connection between the two characteristics in question is concerned, it being the point against which Kant particularly directs his objections, we can see that it is quite in accordance with the nature of proof that the transition from one already established ​characteristic to a second, or from a proposition already proved to another, should permit of being clearly exhibited; but we can see, too, that reasoned knowledge cannot go back in the same way from the second to the first, and cannot deduce the second from the first. Euclid first demonstrated the proposition of the known relation between the sides of a right-angled triangle by starting from this definite quality of the triangle, and deducing the relationship of the sides from it. Then the converse proposition was also demonstrated, and in this case he started from the fact of this relation, and deduced from it the right-angled character of the triangle, the sides of which had that relation to one another, and yet this was done in such a way that the demonstration of this second proposition presupposed and made use of the first. In another instance this demonstration of the converse proposition is given apagogically by presupposing the first. Thus the proposition, that if in a rectilineal figure the sum of the angles is equal to two right angles, the figure is a triangle, can be easily proved to follow apagogically from the proposition previously demonstrated that in a triangle the three angles together make two right angles. When it is shown that a predicate belongs to an object, we must go further if we are to show that such a predicate belongs to it exclusively, and that it is not merely one of the characteristics of the object which may belong to others as well, but that it is involved in the definition of the object. This proof might be stated in various ways, and is not compelled exactly to follow one single path, namely, that which starts from the conception of the second characteristic. Besides, in dealing with the connection between the so-called most real Essence and the absolutely necessary Essence, it is only one aspect of this latter that we have to take directly into account, and we have nothing at all to do with that aspect in reference to which Kant brings forward the difficulty discovered by him in the Ontological Proof. ​The characteristic of absolutely necessary Essence involves the necessity partly of its Being, partly of the characteristics of its content. If it be asked what is implied in the further predicate, the all-embracing, unlimited reality, the reply is that this question has no reference to Being as such, but to what is to be further distinguished as the characteristic of the content. In the Cosmological Proof, Being has already a definite existence of its own, and the question as to how we pass from absolute necessity to the All-Reality, and back from the latter to the former, has reference to this content only, and not to Being. Kant finds the defect of the Ontological Proof in the fact that in connection with its fundamental characteristic, the All of realities, Being is likewise conceived of as a reality. In the Cosmological Proof, however, we have already this Being elsewhere. Inasmuch as it adds the characteristic of All-Reality to what is for it absolutely necessary, it does not at all require that Being should be characterised as reality, and that it should be comprised in that All-Reality.
Kant in his criticism begins by taking the advance of the characteristic of the Absolutely-necessary to unlimited reality only in this sense, since, as was previously indicated, for him the point of this advance is the discovery of the attributes possessed by the absolutely necessary Essence, as the Cosmological Proof in itself has made only one step in advance, namely, to the existence of an absolutely necessary Essence in general, but cannot tell us what kind of attributes this Essence possesses. We must therefore hold that Kant is in error in asserting that the Cosmological Proof rests on the Ontological, and we must regard it as a mistake even to maintain that it requires this latter to complete it, that is, in regard to what it has in general to accomplish. That more, however, has to be accomplished than it accomplishes, is a matter for further consideration, and this further step is undoubtedly taken in the moment contained in the Ontological ​Proof. But it is not the need of thus going further, upon which Kant grounds his objection to this proof. On the contrary, his argument is conducted from points of view which lie wholly within the sphere of this proof, and which do not touch it.
But the objection referred to is not the only one which Kant brings forward against the line of argument followed by the Cosmological Proof. He goes on (p. 637) to expose the “further assumptions,” a “whole nest” of which, he declares, is concealed in it.
It contains, above all, the transcendental principle according to which we reason from what is contingent to a cause. This principle, however, applies in the world of sense only, and has no meaning whatever outside of it. For the purely intellectual conception of the contingent cannot possibly produce a synthetic proposition such as that of causality, a proposition which has a meaning and a use merely in the world of sense, but which is supposed to help us to get beyond the world of sense. What is maintained here, on the one hand, is the well-known doctrine, which is Kant’s main doctrine, of the inadmissibility of getting beyond sense by means of thought, and of the limitation of the use and meaning of the categories of thought to the world of sense. The elucidation of this doctrine does not come within the scope of our present treatment of the subject. What has to be said on this point may be summed up in the following question: If thought cannot pass beyond the world of sense, would it not be necessary, on the other hand, to show first of all how it is conceivable that thought can enter into the world of sense? The other assertion is that the intellectual conception of the contingent cannot form the basis of a synthetic proposition such as that of causality. As a matter of fact, it is by means of this intellectual category of contingency that the temporal world as present to perception is conceived of; and by employing this very category which is an ​intellectual one, thought has already passed beyond the world of sense, and transferred itself to another sphere, without having found it necessary to endeavour to pass beyond the world of sense by using first of all the category of causality. Then, again, this intellectual conception of the contingent is supposed to be incapable of producing a synthetic proposition such as is involved in the idea of causality. As a matter of fact, however, it has to be shown that the finite passes through itself, through what it is meant to be, through its own content, to its Other, to the Infinite itself; and this is what forms the basis of a synthetic proposition according to Kant’s use of the term. The nature of the contingent is of a similar kind. It is not necessary to take the category of causality as referring to the Other into which contingency passes over; on the contrary, this Other is, to begin with, the absolute necessity, and is consequently Substance also. The relation of substantiality, however, is itself one of those synthetic relations which Kant refers to as the categories, and this just means that “the purely intellectual characteristic of the contingent”—for the categories are essentially the characteristic qualities of thought—gives rise to the synthetic principle of substantiality, so that if we posit contingency we posit substantiality as well. This principle which expresses an intellectual relation, and is a category, is certainly not employed here in an element which is heterogeneous, namely, in the world of sense, but, on the contrary, in the intellectual world, which is its natural home. If it had no defect otherwise, it might, in fact, be applied with absolute justice in that sphere in which we are concerned with God, who can be conceived of only in thought and in Spirit, and this in opposition to its employment in the sensuous element, which is foreign to it.
The second fundamental fallacy to which Kant directs attention (p. 637) is that contained in arguing from the impossibility of there being an infinite series of successive ​given causes in the world of sense, to the existence of a first cause. We are not justified in arguing thus on the principles which guide the use of reason even in experience itself, and still less can we extend this fundamental principle beyond experience. It is quite true we cannot within the world of sense and experience reason to the existence of a first cause, for in this world as a finite world there can be only conditioned causes. But just because of this, reason is not only justified in passing into the intelligible sphere, but is forced to do it; or rather, as a matter of fact, it is only in this sphere that reason is at home. It does not pass beyond the world of sense, but because it has this idea of a first cause it simply finds itself in another region, and we can look for a meaning in reason only in so far as it and its idea are thought of as being independent of the world of sense, and as having an independent standing in-and-for-themselves. The third charge brought by Kant against reason in connection with this proof is that it finds what is a false self-satisfaction, inasmuch as in the matter of the completion of the series of causes it finally casts aside a condition of any kind, while, as a matter of fact, there can be no necessity apart from a condition; and he objects, again, that the fact that we cannot conceive of anything further is held to be a completion of the conception. Now it is certain that if we are dealing with an unconditioned necessity, with an absolutely necessary Essence, we can reach it only in so far as it is conceived of as unconditioned, that is, in so far as the characteristic quality of having conditions has been done away with. But, adds Kant, anything necessary cannot exist apart from conditions. A necessity of this sort which rests on conditions, that is, on conditions external to it, is a merely external, conditioned necessity; while an unconditioned absolute necessity is simply one which contains its conditions within itself, if we must speak of conditions in connection with it. The difficulty here is just the truly ​dialectic relation above referred to according to which the condition, or whatever other definition may be given of contingent existence or the finite, is something whose very nature it is to rise to the unconditioned, to the infinite, and thus in what is conditioned to do away with what conditions, and in the act of mediating to do away with the mediation. Kant, however, did not penetrate beyond the relations of the Understanding to the conception of this infinite negativity. Continuing this argument, he says (p. 641), we cannot avoid having the thought, and yet we cannot entertain it, that a Being whom we conceive of as the Highest should, as it were, say to Himself: I am from eternity to eternity, besides me there is nothing, unless what exists by my will; but whence then am I? Here everything sinks under us, and floats without support or foothold in the presence merely of speculative reason, while it costs the latter nothing to allow the greatest as well as the smallest perfection to go. But there is one thing which speculative reason must above all else “allow to go,” and that is the putting of such a question as, Whence am I? into the mouth of the absolutely necessary and unconditioned. As if that outside of which nothing exists unless through its will, that which is simply infinite, could look beyond itself for an other than itself, and ask about something beyond itself.
In bringing forward these objections, Kant, in short, gives vent to the view which he had, to begin with, in common with Jacobi, and which afterwards came to be the regular beaten track of argument, the view, namely, that where we do not have the fact of being conditioned along with what conditions, it is impossible to form conceptions at all—in other words, that where the rational begins, reason ends.
The fourth error to which Kant draws attention is connected with the ostensible confusion between the logical possibility of the conception of all reality and the transcendental characteristics, which latter will be further ​dealt with when we come to consider Kant’s criticism of the Ontological Proof.
To this criticism Kant adds (p. 642) the “discovery” and “explanation”—made in his peculiar style—of the dialectic illusion which exists in all transcendental proofs of the existence of a necessary Essence, an explanation which contains nothing new; and then we have in Kant’s usual fashion an incessant repetition of what is always one and the same assurance, namely, that we cannot think the Thing-in-itself.
He calls the Cosmological Proof, as he does the Ontological, a transcendental proof, because it is independent of empirical principles; that is to say, it is supposed to be established, not by reasoning from any particular quality of experience whatsoever, but from pure principles of reason, and even abandons that method of deduction according to which existence is given through empirical consciousness, in order to base itself on what are simply pure conceptions. What better method indeed could philosophical proof adopt than that of basing itself only on pure conceptions? Kant, on the contrary, in speaking thus, intends to say the very worst he possibly can of this proof. So far, however, as the dialectic illusion is concerned, the discovery of which is here made by Kant, we find it to consist in the fact that while I must indeed allow that existence in general has a necessary element in it, no single thing can, on the other hand, be thought of as necessary in itself, and that I can never complete the act of going back to the conditions of existence without assuming the existence of something necessary while I can at the same time never start from this.
It must in justice be allowed that this remark contains the essential moment on which the whole question turns. What is necessary in itself must show that it has its beginning in itself, and must be conceived of in such a way as to allow of its being proved that its beginning is in itself. This requirement is indeed the only ​interesting point, and we must assume that it lay at the bottom of what was previously referred to, namely, the trouble Kant took to prove that the Cosmological Proof rests on the Ontological. The sole question is as to how we can begin to show that anything starts from itself, or rather how we can combine the two ideas that the Infinite starts from an Other, and yet in doing this starts equally from itself.
As regards the so-called explanation and solution, so to speak, of this illusion, it will be seen to be of the same character as the solution which he has given of what he calls the antinomies of reason. If I must think (p. 644 of a certain necessary element as belonging to existing things in general, and yet am not warranted in thinking that anything is necessary in itself, the unavoidable conclusion is that necessity and contingency cannot apply to, or have any connection with, the things themselves, because otherwise we would be landed in a contradiction. Here we have that tenderness towards things which will not permit any contradiction to be attached to them, although even the most superficial experience, equally with experience of the most thorough kind, everywhere shows that these things are full of contradictions. Kant then goes on to say that neither of these two fundamental principles, of contingency and necessity, is objective; but that they can in any case be only subjective principles of reason, implying, on the one hand, that we cannot stop short unless with an explanation completed in an a priori way, while, on the other hand, any such complete explanation is not to be looked for, that is, not in the empirical sphere. Thus the contradiction is preserved and is left wholly unsolved, while it is at the same time transferred from things to reason. If the circumstance that the contradiction such as it is here held to be, and such as it actually is, is not directly solved, implies a defect, then the defect would as a matter of fact have to be transferred to the so-called things— ​which are partly merely empirical and finite, but are also partly that Thing-in-itself which is incapable of manifesting itself—rather than to reason, which, even as understood by Kant, is the faculty which deals with ideas, with the Unconditioned and the Infinite. But in truth reason can in any case bear the weight of the contradiction, and can certainly solve it too; and things, at all events, know how to bear it, or rather, we should say, they are only contradiction in the form of existence; and this is true of that Kantian schema of the Thing-in-itself quite as much as of empirical things, and only in so far as they are rational can they solve it directly within themselves.
In Kant’s criticism of the Cosmological Proof those moments are at least discussed on which the point at issue really turns. We have noted two circumstances connected with this criticism: first, that the Cosmological Argument starts from Being as a presupposition, and from this goes on to the content, to the conception of God; and second, that Kant finds fault with the line of argument on the ground that it rests on the Ontological Proof, i.e., on the Proof in which the conception is presupposed, and in which we advance from this conception to Being. Since, according to the standpoint we at present occupy in conducting our investigation, the conception of God has no further determinate quality than that of the Infinite, it follows that what we are concerned with is, speaking generally, the Being of the Infinite. In accordance with the distinction previously referred to, in the one instance it is Being from which we start, and which has to get a determinate character as the Infinite; and in the other it is the Infinite from which we start, and which has to get a determinate character as having Being. Further, in the Cosmological Proof finite Being appears as a starting-point adopted empirically. The Proof essentially sets out from experience, as Kant says (p. 633), in order to lay a really firm foundation for itself. ​The relation here implied ought more strictly, however, to be referred back to the form of the judgment in general. In every judgment the subject is an idea which has been presupposed, and which is defined in the predicate, that is, an idea which is defined or determined in a general way by thought, which means, again, that the determinations or specific qualities of the content of the subject have to be indicated, even if, as in the case of the material predicates, red, hard, and so on, this general mode of determination, which is, so to speak, the share thought has in the matter, is really nothing more than the empty form of universality. Thus, when it is said that God is infinite, eternal, and so on, God is, to begin with, as a subject simply something hypothetical, existing in idea, and it is only in the predicate that it is first asserted what He is. So far as the subject is concerned, we do not know what He is, that is, what content He has, or what is the determinate character of the content, as otherwise it would be superfluous to have the copula “is” and to attach the predicate to it. Then further, since the subject represents the hypothetical element which exists in idea, this presupposition can be taken as signifying what has Being, and as implying that the subject is, or, on the other hand, that it is at first only an idea, that instead of being posited by sense-intuition, or sense-perception, it is posited in the sphere of ideas by imagination, by conception, by reason, and that it, in fact, gets such content as it has in the sphere of general ideas.
If we express these two moments in accordance with this more definite form, we shall at once get a more definite idea of the demands which are made upon them. Those moments give rise to the two following propositions—
Being defined, to begin with, as finite, is infinite; and The Infinite is.
For, so far as the first proposition is concerned, it is ​evident that it is Being properly so called which is presupposed as a fixed subject, and that it is what must in any view of it remain, that is, it is what must have the predicate of the Infinite attached to it. Being in so far as it is, to begin with, characterised as finite, and because the finite and the Infinite are simultaneously conceived of as subjects, represents what is common to both. The real point is not that a transition is made from Being to the Infinite as representing something different from Being, but, on the contrary, that we pass from the finite to the Infinite, and that in this transition Being remains unaltered. It is consequently shown here to be the permanent subject whose first characteristic, namely, finitude, is translated into infinitude. It is almost superfluous to remark that since Being is conceived of as subject and finitude as simply one characteristic, and, in fact, as the subsequent predicate shows, as a purely transitory characteristic, when we are dealing with the proposition taken by itself alone: Being is infinite, or is to be characterised as infinite, we must by the term Being understand Being as such, and not empirical Being, not the moral finite world.
This first proposition is accordingly the proposition of the Cosmological Argument, Being is the subject, and this presupposition whether it is taken as given or deduced, it does not matter how, is in reference to the act of proof as mediation through grounds or reasons in general, the immediate in general. This consciousness that the subject represents what is presupposed in general, is what is alone to be regarded as the important thing in connection with knowledge reached by demonstration. The predicate of the proposition is the content which must be proved to belong to the subject. Here it is the Infinite, which has consequently to be shown to be the predicate of Being and of its content, and as reached by means of mediation.
The second proposition: the Infinite is, has the more definitely determinate content as its subject, and here it ​is Being which has to show itself to be what is mediated. It is this proposition which forms the real point of interest in the Ontological Proof, and has to appear as the result. So far as the demands of the kind of proof sought by the Understanding, and of the mere knowledge of the Understanding, are concerned, the proof of this second proposition as connected with the first proposition of the Cosmological Argument may be dispensed with; but it is certainly demanded by the requirements of reason in its higher form, though this higher requirement of reason appears in Kant’s criticism disguised, so to speak, as a mere piece of chicanery, which has been deduced from some more remote consequence.
The fact, however, that these two propositions are necessary rests on the nature of the Notion, in so far as this latter is conceived of in accordance with its true nature, that is, in a speculative way. Here, however, it is presupposed that this knowledge of the Notion has been got from logic, just as it is presupposed in the same way that logic tells us that a true proof is rendered impossible by the very nature of such propositions as the two referred to. This may, however, be briefly indicated here as well, in accordance with the explanation which has been given regarding the peculiar nature of these judgments, and it is all the more fitting to make this plain at this point, since the current principle of so-called immediate knowledge recognises and takes into consideration just this very proof of the Understanding and no other, a proof which is inadmissible in philosophy. What has to be demonstrated is a proposition, a judgment, in fact, with a subject and predicate. We cannot, to begin with, find any fault with the demand here implied, and it looks as if the whole point turned on the nature of the act of proof. But the very fact that it is a judgment which has to be proved at once renders any true philosophical proof impossible. For it is the subject which is presupposed, and consequently becomes the standard for the predicate ​the truth of which has to be proved; and accordingly the essential criterion so far as the proposition is concerned, is merely whether the predicate is adequate to the subject or not, and idea or ordinary thought, on which the presupposition is based, is taken as deciding the truth. But the main and only concern of knowledge, the claims of which have not been satisfied, and which have not even been taken into account, is just to find out whether this very presupposition contained in the subject, and consequently the further specification which it gets through the predicate, is the totality of the proposition and is true.
This is something which reason forces us to, working from within outward, unconsciously as it were. From what has been already adduced, it is evident that an attempt has been made to find what are called several proofs of the existence of God: the one set of which is based on one of the propositions above indicated, that, namely, in which Being is the subject and constitutes the presupposition, and in which the Infinite is a characteristic posited in it by means of mediation; and the other set of which has for its basis the reverse proposition, by means of which the first of the propositions loses its one-sidedness. Here the defective element, namely, the fact that Being is presupposed, is cancelled, and conversely it is now Being which has to be posited as mediated.
What has to be accomplished by the proof has accordingly been stated in a complete enough way, but still the nature of the proof itself as such has been in consequence not touched upon. For each of the propositions has been stated separately, the proof of it accordingly starts from the presupposition which the subject contains, and which has each time to be shown to be necessary through the other, and not as immediately necessary. Either proposition presupposes the other, and no true beginning can be found for them. For this very reason it appears at first to be a matter of indifference where a beginning is made. Only the starting-point is not a matter of indifference, and ​the whole point just is to find out why it is not. The question is not as to whether or not we are to begin with one or other of the presuppositions, that is, with the immediate characteristic, the ordinary idea; but rather, what we have got to see is that no beginning can be made with any such presupposition, that is, that it cannot be regarded and treated as forming the basis, the permanent foundation of the proof.
For the statement that the presuppositions belonging to each of the two propositions—of which the one is proved by the other—have to be represented as mediated, when taken in its more obvious sense, deprives them of the essential meaning which belongs to them as immediate characteristics. For the fact that they are posited as mediated implies that their essential character consists in their being transitory rather than permanent subjects. In this way, however, the whole nature of the proof is altered, for it stood in need of having the subject as a fixed basis and standard. If it starts from something which has a transitory character, it loses all support, and cannot, in fact, have any existence at all. If we consider the form of the judgment more closely, it will be seen that what has just been explained is involved in the form itself, and, in fact, the judgment is what it is just owing to its form. It has, that is, for its subject something immediate, something which has Being in general, while as its predicate, which is meant to express what the subject is, it has something universal, namely, thought. The judgment consequently itself signifies that what has Being is not a something having Being, but is a thought.
This will at once become clearer from the example with which we are dealing, and which will better help us to understand, however, why we are limited to what the example directly contains, namely, the first of the two propositions, in which the Infinite is posited as what has been mediated. The express consideration of the other, in which Being appears as a result, will be taken up in a different place.
​The major proposition of the Cosmological Proof in the more abstract form in which we took it, contains what is the essential element of the connection of the finite and the Infinite, the thought, namely, that the latter is got by way of hypothesis out of the former. The proposition, “If the finite exists, the Infinite exists also,” put in a more definite form is primarily the following: “The Being of the finite is not only its Being, but is also the Being of the Infinite.” We have thus reduced it to its simplest form, and have left out of account those developments which might be added to it by means of the still further specified forms of reflection which belong to the Infinite as having its Being conditioned by the finite, or to the Infinite as being presupposed through the finite, or to the relation of causality between finite and Infinite. All these relations are contained in that one simple form. If, in accordance with the definition previously given, we speak of Being in more definite terms as the subject of the judgment, the proposition will run thus: “Being is to be defined not as finite only but also as infinite.” The real point is the demonstration of this connection. This, as was shown above, springs from the conception of the finite, and this speculative way of dealing with the nature of the finite, with the mediation out of which the Infinite proceeds, is the pivot round which the whole question, namely, as to the knowledge of God and the philosophical understanding of Him, turns. The essential point, however, in this mediation is, that the Being of the finite is not the affirmative, but that, on the contrary, the Infinite is posited and mediated by the abrogation of this Being of the finite.
The essential and formal defect in the Cosmological Proof consists in the fact that finite Being is not only taken directly as the beginning and starting-point, but is regarded as something true, something affirmative, with an existence of its own. All those forms of reflection referred to, such as the presupposed, the conditioned, causality, ​have this in common, that what forms the presupposition, the condition, the effect, are taken as affirmative, and the connection is not conceived of as a transition, which it essentially is. What the study of the finite from a speculative point of view really yields, is not merely the thought, that if the finite exists, the Infinite exists too, not that Being is to be defined as not merely finite, but that it is further to be defined as infinite. If the finite were this affirmative, the major proposition would be the proposition—finite Being as finite is infinite, for it would be its permanent finitude which the Infinite included in itself. Those characteristics such as presupposition, condition, causality, when taken together, give a still greater stability to the affirmative show or appearance of the Being of the finite, and are for this very reason only finite, that is, untrue relations, relations of what is untrue. To get to know that this is their nature is what alone constitutes the logical interest attaching to them, though their dialectic in accordance with their special characteristics takes in each case a special form, which is, however, based on the general dialectic of the finite already referred to. The proposition which ought to constitute the major proposition of the syllogism must accordingly take the following form rather: the Being of the finite is not its own Being, but is, on the contrary, the Being of its Other, namely, the Infinite. Or to put it otherwise, Being which is characterised as finite possesses this characteristic only in the sense that it cannot exist independently in relation to the Infinite, but is, on the contrary, ideal merely, a moment of the Infinite. Consequently the minor proposition: the finite is—disappears in any affirmative sense, and if we may still say it exists, we mean that its existence is merely an appearance or phenomenal existence. It is just the fact that the finite world is merely a manifestation or appearance which constitutes the absolute power of the Infinite.
The form taken by the syllogism of the Understanding ​has no place for the dialectic character which thus marks the finite, nor has it any way of expressing it. It is not in a position to express the rational element in it; and since religious elevation is the rational element itself, it cannot find satisfaction in that form of the Understanding, for there is more in it than this form can express. It is accordingly in itself of the greatest importance that Kant should have deprived the so-called proofs of the existence of God of the regard they enjoyed, even though he had done no more than create a prejudice against them by showing their insufficiency. Only, his criticism of these proofs is insufficient in itself; and besides, he failed to recognise the deeper basis upon which these proofs rest, and so was unable to do justice to their true elements. It was he who at the same time began the complete maiming of reason, which has since his day been content to be nothing more than the source of purely immediate knowledge.
So far we have been dealing with the elucidation of the conception which constitutes the logical element in the first characteristic of religion, and have been regarding it, on the one hand, from the side from which it was viewed in metaphysics in its earlier phase; while, on the other hand, we have been looking at the outward form in which it was put. But this is not sufficient if we are to get a real knowledge of the speculative conception of this characteristic. Still, one part of this knowledge has already been indicated, that, namely, which has reference to the passing over of finite Being into infinite Being, and we have now to indicate briefly the other part, the detailed elucidation of which will be deferred till we come to deal with another form of religion to be taken up subsequently. This is just what appeared previously in the form taken by the proposition: the Infinite is, and in which consequently Being is defined in general as what is mediated. The proof has to demonstrate this mediation. It already follows from the ​foregoing remarks that the two propositions cannot be separated from each other. The very fact that the form of the syllogism belonging to the Understanding is abandoned so far as the one is concerned, implies that the separation of the two has been abandoned also. The moment which has still to be dealt with is accordingly already contained in the given development of the dialectic of the finite.
If, however, in showing how the finite passes over into the Infinite, we have made it appear as if the finite were taken as the starting-point for the Infinite, so, too, the other proposition, which is merely the converse proposition or transition, seems to be necessarily defined as a passing over from the Infinite to the finite, or, in other words, has to take on the form of the proposition: “The Infinite is finite.” In this equation the proposition: the Infinite is, would not contain the entire characteristic which has to be dealt with here. This difference disappears, however, when we consider that Being, since it is the Immediate, is directly differentiated from the characteristic of the Infinite, and is, as a direct consequence of this, characterised simply as finite. The logical nature which thus belongs to Being or immediacy in general is, however, presupposed as given by logic. This characteristic of the finitude of Being, however, comes directly into view in the connection in which Being here stands. For the Infinite, in resolving to become Being, determines itself to what is other than itself; but then the Other of the Infinite is just the finite.
If, further, as was previously indicated, the subject appears in the judgment as something presupposed, what has Being in fact, while the predicate is something universal, namely, thought, then in the proposition, “The Infinite is,” a proposition which is at the same time a judgment, the determination seems rather to be reversed, since the predicate expressly involves Being, while the subject, the Infinite namely, exists in thought only, ​though certainly in objective thought. Still we might remember the common idea that Being itself is only a thought, chiefly in so far as it is regarded in this abstract and logical way, and all the more if the Infinite, too, is only a thought, for in this case its predicate also could not possibly be anything else but a subjective thought. In any case, the predicate regarded from the point of view of its form in the judgment is the Universal and is thought, while considered according to its content or determinateness it is Being, and taken in a more definite sense it is immediate and also finite or particular Being. If, however, it is meant by this, that Being, because it has been thought, is therefore no longer Being as such, then this is simply an absurd idealism which maintains that if anything is thought it therefore ceases to be, or even that what is cannot be thought, and that therefore only nothing is thinkable. Still the idealism which enters into that aspect of the entire conception or notion to be considered here will be discussed later on when we enter on the explanation already indicated. The point, however, to which attention should really be directed is, that it is just the judgment indicated which, owing to the antithesis of its content and its form, contains in it that counter-stroke which expresses the nature of the absolute union in one of the two previously separated sides, and which is the nature of the Notion itself.
Put shortly, what we have so far learned regarding the Infinite is, that it is the affirmation of the self-annulling finite, the negation of the negation, what is mediated, but mediated by the annulling of the mediation. This already means that the Infinite is simple reference to self, that abstract equality with self which is called Being. Or, it is the self-annulling mediation, while the Immediate is just the mediation absorbed and annulled, in other words, that into which the self-annulling mediation passes, that which it becomes by annulling itself.
It is just in consequence of this that this affirmation, ​this thing which is equal to itself in one, is thus immediate and equal to itself only when it is simply the negation of the negation, that is, it itself contains the negation, the finite, but as an appearance or semblance which annuls itself and is preserved in something higher. Or, since the immediacy which it comes to be by this act—that abstract equality with itself into which it passes over and which is Being—is only the moment of the Infinite conceived of in a one-sided way, and the affirmative as representing it appears only as this entire process, and is therefore finite, it follows that the Infinite, in determining itself in the form of Being, determines itself as finitude. But finitude and this immediate Being are consequently just the negation which negates itself. This apparent end, the passing of the living dialectic into the dead repose of the result, is itself only the beginning again of this living dialectic.
This is the Notion, the logical and rational element in the first abstract characteristic of God and religion. The side represented by the latter is expressed by that moment of the Notion which starts from immediate Being, and which is absorbed in and taken up into the Infinite. The objective side, however, as such is contained in the self-unfolding of the Infinite into Being and finitude, which, just because of this, is merely momentary and transitory—transitory merely, in virtue of the infinitude whose manifestation it merely is, and which represents the force in it. The so-called Cosmological Proof is of use solely in connection with the effort to bring into consciousness what the inner life, the pure rational element of the inner movement, really is, and which, regarded in its subjective aspect, is called religious elevation. If this movement, when it appears in that form of the Understanding in which we have seen it, is not conceived of and understood as it is in-and-for-itself, still the substantial element which forms its basis does not lose anything in consequence. It is this substantial element ​which penetrates the imperfection of the form and exercises its power; or rather, we might say, it is itself the real and substantial force. The religious elevation of the soul to God consequently recognises itself in that expression of the truth, imperfect as it is, and is aware of its inner and true meaning, and so protects itself against the syllogism of the Understanding and its methods which stunt this true meaning. That is why, as Kant says (in the place already referred to, p. 632), “this method of proof undoubtedly most readily carries persuasion with it, not only for the ordinary understanding, but for the speculative understanding too; and it obviously contains, too, the main lines on which all the proofs of natural theology are based, and which have at all times been followed, and will be still further followed, however much people may try to trick them out and conceal them under all sorts of fancy embellishments;” and, I add, it is possible by following the Understanding entirely to miss the meaning of the substantial element contained in these great fundamental lines of argument, and to imagine they have been formally refuted by the critical understanding, or, it may be, in virtue of the want of understanding as well as the want of reason characteristic of so-called immediate knowledge, politely to throw these arguments on one side unrefuted or to ignore them.