LOTZE.1
"To conclude that because the notion of a most perfect
Being includes reality as one of its perfections, therefore a most perfect
Being necessarily exists, is so obviously to conclude falsely, that
after Kant's incisive refutation any attempt to defend
such reasoning would be useless. Anselm, in his more free and spontaneous
reflection, has here and there touched the thought that the greatest which we
can think, if we think it as only thought, is less than the same
greatest if we think it as existent. It is not possible that from this
reflection either any one should develop a logically cogent proof, but the way
in which it is put seems to reveal another fundamental thought which is seeking
for expression. For what would it matter if that which is thought as most
perfect were, as thought, less than the least reality? Why should this thought
disturb us? Plainly for this reason, that it is an immediate certainty that
what is greatest, most beautiful, most worthy is not a mere thought, but must
be a reality, because it would be intolerable to believe of our ideal that it
is an idea produced by the action of thought but having no existence, no power,
and no validity in the world of reality. We do not from the perfection of that
which is perfect immediately deduce its reality as a logical consequence; but
without the circumlocution of a deduction we directly feel the impossibility of
its non-existence, and all semblance of syllogistic proof only serves to make
more clear the directness of this certainty. If what is greatest did not exist,
then what is greatest would not be, and it is not impossible that that
which is greatest of all conceivable things should not be."
PROFESSOR ROBERT FLINT.2
"Anselm was the founder of that kind of argumentation
which, in the opinion of many, is alone entitled to be described as a priori
or ontological. He reasoned thus: 'The fool may say in his heart, There is no
God; but he only proves thereby that he is a fool, for what he says is self-contradictory.
Since he denies that there is a God, he has in his mind the idea of God, and
that idea implies the
existence of God, for it is the idea
of a Being than which a higher cannot be conceived. That than which a higher
cannot be conceived cannot exist merely as an idea, because what exists merely
as an idea is inferior to what exists in reality as well as in idea. The idea
of a highest Being which exists merely in thought, is the idea of a highest
Being which is not the highest even in thought, but inferior to a highest Being
which exists in fact as well as in thought.' This reasoning found unfavorable
critics even among the contemporaries of Anselm, and has commended itself
completely to few. Yet it may fairly be doubted whether it has been
conclusively refuted, and some of the objections most frequently urged against
it are certainly inadmissible. It is no answer to it, for example, to deny that
the idea of God is innate or universal. The argument merely assumes that be who
denies that there is a God must have an idea of God. There is also no force, as
Anselm showed, in the objection of
Gaunilo, that the
existence of God can no more be inferred from the idea of a perfect being, than
the existence of a perfect island is to be inferred from the idea of such an
island. There neither is nor can be an idea of an island which is greater and
better than any other that can ever be conceived. Anselm could safely promise
that he would make
Gaunilo a present of such an island
when he had really imagined it. Only one being --an infinite, independent,
necessary being --can be perfect in the sense of being greater and better than
every other conceivable being. The objection that the ideal can never logically
yield the real --that the transition from thought to fact must be in every
instance illegitimate --is merely an assertion that the argument is fallacious.
It is an assertion which cannot fairly be made until the argument has been
exposed and refuted. The argument is that a certain thought of God is found
necessarily to imply His existence. The objection that existence is not a
predicate, and that the idea of a God who exists is not more complete and
perfect than the idea of a God who does not exist, is, perhaps, not incapable
of being satisfactorily repelled. Mere existence is not a predicate, but
specifications or determinations of existence are predicable. Now the argument
nowhere implies that existence is a predicate; it implies only that reality,
necessity, and independence of existence are predicates of existence; and it
implies this on the ground that existence
in re
can be distinguished from existence
in
conceptu,
necessary from contingent existence, self-existence from derived existence.
Specific distinctions must surely admit of being
predicated.
That the exclusion of existence --which here means real and necessary existence
--from the idea of God does not leave us with an incomplete idea of God, is not
a position, I think, which can be maintained. Take away existence from among
the elements in the idea of a perfect being, and the idea becomes either the
idea of a nonentity or the idea of an idea, and not the idea of a perfect being
at all. Thus, the argument of Anselm is unwarrantably represented as an
argument of four terms instead of three. Those who urge the objection seem to
me to prove only that if our thought of God be imperfect, a being who merely
realised that thought would be an imperfect being; but there is a vast distance
between this truism and the paradox that an unreal being may be an ideally
perfect being."
