other. They offer alternative and mutually exclusive conceptions
of God. If the God of the cosmological argument is the
“Great First Cause,” we have no right to identify him with the
“Most real being” of the Ontological argument. If the God of
the Design argument seems a limited being, working as an
artist upon given materials,[1] he is hardly God at all. Kant
takes for granted that we cannot sum up these imperfect conceptions
in a wider reconciling truth. It is a shrewd criticism,
but needs arguing out. A great deal of popular theism is undoubtedly
hard hit by it; for popular theism is apt to throw
its arguments together in very random fashion.
It is no more than characteristic of Kant’s whole speculative philosophy that he should think the Ontological argument the one which comes nearest to success (yet the Ontological argument is held to prove—or rather to point out—not that God must exist, but that we think of him as necessary if we think of him as existing at all). As a result of this, Kant is metaphysically a sort of pantheist. The God whom all our thinking feels after is the all-inclusive system of reality. On the other hand, Kant’s religion is of a type which requires a sort of deistic God, standing outside the world and constraining it into moral paths, or standing outside our moral struggles and rewarding our goodness. Butler fears profoundly that there must be a just God who will punish us. Kant hopes, with tolerable strength of conviction, that there may be a just God who will reward us.
The main line in pure philosophy runs on from Kant’s wavering and sceptical idealism to the all-including gnosis of Hegel.[2] Hegel inherits from Kant the three arguments, and takes them as stages in one developing process of thought. The cosmological argument points to nature-pantheism, with the religions—especially those Hegel on theistic arguments. of India—which embody that attitude of mind. This involves a re-interpretation of the Cosmological argument, or a criticism of the view ordinarily taken of it. Trace out the clue of causation to the end, says Hegel in effect, and it introduces you, not to a single first cause beyond nature, but to the totality of natural process—a substance, as it were, in which all causes inhere. This is a suggestion which deserves to be well weighed. The Design argument is held to give a contrasted view. It suggests in every deed a personal but limited God, or a number of Gods—“Religions of spiritual Individuality,” including, along with “Judaism,” the anthropomorphic religions of Greece and Rome. Finally the Ontological argument sums up the truth in the two previous arguments, and gives it worthier utterance in its vision of the philosophical Absolute. This is the last word of religious truth, though pure philosophy stands still higher. And, in some sense not clearly explained, Hegel identifies this final religion with Christianity.
The theism of Hegel is ambiguous.[3] Later theists may be grouped according as their thought has been remoulded or not by the influences of Kant. The distinguished writers, whom we have to regard as repeating in essence pre-Kantian theories, generally know Kant, and frequently show traces of him in detail. But it is a plain finding of history that he has brought no “Copernican revolution”[4] to their minds.
Empiricism is restated by Paley, who is Kant’s younger contemporary as a man and also on the whole as a writer. Doubtless the archdeacon knew nothing of the German professor, and would have cared nothing for him however well he had known him. A much more significant figure is that of J. S. Mill in the tentative approach to theism found in his posthumous volume (Three Essays on Religion; 1874). Mill directs his attention to the Design argument. The inference that organized bodies are due to an intelligent cause is only reached by the “Method of Agreement”—a full inductive proof requiring, according to Mill’s Logic, the “Method of Difference.” Still, the Design argument is a good sample of a proof by means of the inferior method. Although nothing more than probability is established, it is a high probability.[5] Unfortunately, however, the method of agreement is liable to be baffled by “plurality of causes.” In this instance it may happen that the work of intelligence has only been mimicked in nature by blind forces which have accidentally produced organic life; and Mill is disposed to hold that if the evolution of species should be clearly established as due to natural law—if there has been no creation by special interposition—the argument falls to the ground and theism (apparently) is lost.[6] A further point is of some interest. If Mill’s theism holds, what is it? The belief in a God of limited power. That is what Kant contended that the Design argument pointed to, and Mill, proceeding on the Design argument, claims nothing more for his conclusion. Of course that was not Mill’s special or conscious motive for denying divine omnipotence. His extreme sensitiveness and hatred of pain constrained Mill to hold that, if a good God exists, he cannot possess infinite power. Yet the correspondence between Mill’s conclusion and what Kant had alleged to be implied in the underlying metaphysical position is very striking indeed.
Intuitionalism also has its restatements of theistic reasoning little modified by Kant. R. Flint’s theism carefully excludes the early random talk (e.g. Cicero) of an intuitive or innate knowledge of God. What is self-evident, Flint lglism re. justly remarks, neither needs nor admits of argument. We have intuitions of cause, of infinity, of good and Intuitionalism repeated; Flint. evil. The Cosmological argument proves, with the help of the first-named intuition, that there is one great First Cause; and the Design argument shows the First Cause to be intelligent or personal. The Ontological argument, though not wholly rejected as a proof, is taken rather as pointing to God’s attribute of infinity; thought rather than experience making affirmation that the intuition in question must be attached to God. The moral argument, relying upon the third intuition named, certifies us of a good God. In this way, the attributes are suggestively allotted among the four traditional proofs;[7] but we miss an explicit rebutting of Kant’s hostile assumption, that it is incompetent for us to take the thought of God piecemeal. Martineau’s Study of Religion is also essentially intuitionalist. It has two parts: “God as cause” and “God as perfection.” The Design argument comes in as a special illustration or intensification of the former of these, i.e. of the cosmological proof; but Martineau follows a side modification of intuitionalism (Maine de Biran, &c.) in identifying cause with will. This involves a very high doctrine of Libertarianism. The only ultimate cause is God. Nature exists over against Him; but its forces or processes are His own power in immediate exercise, except in so far as God has delegated freedom to human wills; and there follows a theodicy, repeating Leibnitz in more modern form. Martineau’s two main proofs yield two sets of attributes; those known as “natural” and “moral,” R. Browning’s “power” and “love.” In “God as perfection” Martineau handles the basis of ethics without reference to his own modification of the intuitionalist position (Types of Ethical Theory), according to which “good” is the better or the best. We may infer that, whatever the merits of that modification, it does not affect the theistic problem. Martineau’s Sindy also includes a section upon Immortality. The Ontological argument is omitted; but we have already observed that there is a discussion of divine
- ↑ The Design argument has mainly to do with living bodies. Might one suggest that organisms seem at least to be a working up of inorganic matter for new ends, viz. those of life?
- ↑ The idealisms of Fichte and Schelling made contributions to Hegel’s thought; Krause and the Roman Catholic Baader represent parallel if minor phases of idealism.
- ↑ Equally so the Hegelian attitude towards personal immortality.
- ↑ Such as Kant claimed to effect: Criligiw of Pure Reason, preface to 2nd ed.
- ↑ Paul Janet’s Final Causes seems to follow Mill in this (“the fact of Finality”), but without naming him.
- ↑ Janet naturally is in opposition here. Ultimately, he argues, if not immediately, there must be a rational cause to account for so rational an effect. But again of course Mill is not named.
- ↑ The three which Kant criticized, with the addition of the moral argument, which he favoured.
