the Self-existent Being, whatever that be supposed to be, must of necessity, being the original of all things, contain in itself the sum and highest degree of all the perfections of all things." With the older metaphysicians the effort of the argument lay in the proof of a Moral Self-existent Being; and that gained, they considered the infinity and perfection to follow as a matter of course; and certainly if one thinks of the mysterious nature of a cause, it leads us unavoidably to such a transcendental estimate of the First Cause of all things, as cannot naturally stop short of an Ideal. But Kant, on the other hand, fixes the great difficulty of the argument after a Moral Self-existent Being has been proved, viz., between a Moral Self-existent Being, and a God: he announces his utter perplexity how upon a simple ground of experience or the basis of causation—he is to erect a proof of the ideal. “For can ever experience be given," he says, "which should be conformable to an idea? That which is peculiar to this last consists precisely in this, that an experience can never be congruous to it. The transcendental idea of a necessary, all-sufficient, original Being is so immensely great, so raised above all that is empirical, which is always conditional, that we can never collect matter enough or experience in order to fill such a conception." But when we examine Kant's attitude as a reasoner to the ideal, it does not substantially differ from Clarke's; Clarke gives up "demonstration strictly and properly;" and Kant allows a natural strong ground of conviction. He considers that the chasm which presents itself to the passive and composed intellect between the actual and the ideal is arched over by an intuitive impulse, which springs from the whole view of the Creation, and carries the mind by a quick movement of thought, which it cannot resist, to the transcendental conclusion of an Infinite, Perfect Being. "The present world," he says, "opens to us so immense a theatre of diversity, order, fitness, and beauty, whether we seek after these in the infinity of space, or in its unbounded division; that even according to the knowledge which our weak reason has been enabled to acquire of the same, all language lacks its expression as to so many and undiscernibly great wonders-so that our judgment of the whole must terminate in a speechless, but so much the more eloquent, astonishment. Everywhere we see a chain of effects and causes, of ends and means, regularity in beginning and ending: and since nothing has come of itself into the state in which it is, it always thus indicates further back another thing, as its cause, which renders exactly the same further inquiry necessary; so that the great Whole must sink into the abyss of nothing, if we did not admit something existing of itself originally and independently, external to this Infinite Contingent, and as the cause of its origin. This highest cause, in respect of all things in the world, how great are we to think it? The world we are not acquainted with according to its whole extent still less do we know how to appreciate its magnitude by comparison with all that is possible. But what prevents us, that, since we require in respect of causality an external and supreme Being, we should not at the same time, in respect of the degree of perfection, place it above everything else possible? . . . It would consequently not only be comfortless, but also quite vain, to wish to take away something from the authority of this proof. Reason, which is unceasingly elevated by means of arguments so powerful, and always increasing under its hands, although only empirical ones, cannot, through any doubts of subtlydeduced speculation, be so pressed down that it must not be roused as it were out of a dream, from any meditative irresolution, by a glance which it casts on the wonders and majesty of the Universe; in order to raise itself from greatness to greatness up to the highest of all-from the conditional to the condition -up to the supreme and unconditional Creator."* I would only add to this argument that it must be considered that an ideal is contained in the moral nature of man; and that we have to account for its being there. It is evident that the peculiar character or construction, as we may call it, of the conscience and the moral sense is such, that the very instrument it works by is a kind of restlessness and discontent with all fact in us, and a desire to be something which we are not. The condition of good "Critique of Pure Reasor." Book 2, c. I., div. iii. s. 6. ness is not that of attaining a defined sufficient end: it is not that of reaching a resting place. That is counter to the law of our being. St. Paul has given an exposition of conscience, which plainly and vividly describes it as insatiable, swallowing, like some unfathomable abyss, all the duty, sacrifice, and effort that is thrown into it, and still demanding more. And though in the Christian dispensation the sense of a Divine justification is the remedial and appointed relief for the natural insatiableness of conscience, there remains a sense of short-coming which is ineffaceable, and is inherent and rooted in the man. What can this be the effect of but the existence of an ideal in man, the spontaneous erection of his own heart, which dwarfs every act of his, and reduces his whole life to failure and imperfection? Moral beauty, goodness, rises up before him in his conscience in a form and height which has no embodiment in fact; he sees there a whole, while all experience only shows what is fragmentary. How has he got in his nature a type, of which he has no representative in actual existence? The only answer can be, if we acknowledge causation, that whence he has the moral nature, which he has, thence he has this peculiarity and manner of that nature: viz., from the original Selfexisting Being. This ideal is implanted in him; but if so, how can that Being, who has implanted an ideal, be other than Himself, the fulfilment of it? |