Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/244

230 G. H. HOWISON : That I have chiefly dwelt on perfection and imperfection as respectively the attributes of God and of the non-divine minds, without entering into the subtle distinction between kinds of per- fection, is indeed a fact, but it should be regarded as a rhetorical rather than a philosophical procedure. That is to say, my book was aimed at readers of general cultivation rather than at meta- physical experts, and so I thought I should carry my new argument for the reality of God more surely home if I kept out of the region of the supersubtile, and relied upon those aspects of the difference between God and other minds which are the most obvious. The point of my argument, in this connexion, is that in God there is a perfection in which there is no imperfection at all, while in every other mind imperfection is present, though undergoing an end- less process of cancellation. Of course, subtly analysed, this last means a species of perfection. But again my point is, that the sole possible basis for species in perfection is, primarily, the con- trast between absolute perfection (excludent of imperfection) and perfection that embraces and proceeds to reduce imperfection ; and, next, the manifold modes of which this second species is sus- ceptible, resting on what I have called (see my pp. 363, 374) the "rate" of adjustment between the infinite (or perfect) and the finite (or defective) aspects of the mental being. (4) In connexion with my argument for the existence of God, Mr. Mclaggart makes this statement : " Among the different grades [of intelligent beings] which . . . are really possible . . . Dr. Howison assumes that the highest grade of all that of the ideal Type is one, and consequently that a being exists who realises the Type. So far as 1 can see, he does not attempt to prove this." Just what Mr. McTaggart means by his word "this," I am in some doubt whether he is referring to my " assuming " that the ideal Type is one of the different grades of being that are really possible, or to my taking as a direct consequence of this the actual existence of the ideal Type. As for the first of these matters, it is not true that I assume the ideal Type to be one of the really possible intelligences ; on the contrary, I show (see my pp. 353-355) that this Supreme Instance of the intelligent nature present in all possible minds is the one salient certainty in our conception of the whole series, when we view the series as conceivable simply : whatever we can not tell about the series, or the numbers in it, what we do see, and see clearly, is that it must contain, as a possibility, this Type ; this I treat as the implication in the entire process of definition by which other members in the series are determined. And as for the second point, I do not conclude to the actual existence of the divine Type directly from its ascertained possi- bility ; that would be merely repeating the thrice-buried Ontologic Proof over again, and the futility of that I have dwelt upon in my pp. 357-358. The identification of the divine Type as a necessary member of the conceivable series proves only this : that there is a