Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God/Lecture 8
In the preceding lecture the speculative fundamental characteristics connected with the nature of the Notion, and its development into the manifoldness of specific qualities and definite forms, have been indicated. If we look once more at the special problem we are dealing with, we find that there, too, we are at once met by a multiplicity. We find that there are several proofs of the existence of God. There is an external empirical multiplicity or difference, which presents itself, first of all, as something which has had an historical origin, and which has nothing to do with the differences which follow from the development of the Notion, and which we take, accordingly, in the form in which we directly come upon it. We may, however, have a feeling of distrust in reference to that multiplicity if we happen to reflect that here we have not to do with a finite object, and remember that our study of an infinite object must be philosophical, and that we are not to deal with it and expend labour upon it in a haphazard and external fashion. An historical fact, nay even a mathematical figure, contains a number of references within it, and relations to what is outside of it, in accordance with which a conception is formed of it, and from which we reason syllogistically to the principal relation upon which they themselves depend, or to another specific quality which is of importance here and which is closely connected with them. It is said that some twenty proofs of the Pythagorean problem have been discovered. The more important an historical fact is, the more points of connection it presents with the circumstances of the time and with other historical events, so that in showing the necessity for accepting the fact as true we may start from any one of these points. The direct testimonies may also be very many in number, and each testimony in so far as it is not otherwise self-contradictory has in this sphere the force of a proof. If in the case of a mathematical proposition one single example is held to be sufficient, it is principally in connection with historical subjects and juridical cases that a multiplicity of proofs must be held to strengthen the force of the proof itself. In the region of experience or phenomena, the object, as being an empirical and individual thing, has the quality of contingency, and thus the particularity of the knowledge we have of it gives the object the same mere appearance of Being. It is its connection with other facts which gives the object its necessary character, and each of these again belongs in itself to this contingent sphere. Here it is the extension and repetition of such connection which gives to objectivity the kind of universality which is possible in this region. The verification of a fact or a perception by means of the mere number of the observations taken, relieves the subjectivity of perception from the reproach of being an illusion, a deception, or any one of those forms of error which it may by way of objection be declared to be.
In dealing with God since we presuppose the existence of an absolutely general idea of Him, it is found, on the one hand, that He infinitely transcends that region in which all objects whatsoever stand in a connected relation with one another; and that, on the other hand, since God exists only for the inner element of Man’s nature in general, we directly meet in this sphere with the contingency of thought, conception, and imagination, in the most varied forms and with what is expressly allowed to be contingency, namely, that of sensations, emotions, and such like. We thus get an infinite number of starting-points from which it is possible to advance to God, and from which we must necessarily advance, and hence the infinite number of such essential transitions which must have the force of proofs. So, too, the verification and confirmation of conviction by means of the repetition of the experiences gained of the way to truth, must appear to be necessary in order to counteract the infinite possibility of deception and error which, on the other hand, lurks in the way to truth. The individual’s trust and the intensity of his belief in God are strengthened by the repetition of the essential elevation of his spirit to God, and by the experience and knowledge he gains of God’s wisdom and providence as shown in countless objects, events, and occurrences. In proportion to the inexhaustible number of the relations in which things stand to the one object is the inexhaustible need felt by Man as he enters more and more deeply into the infinitely manifold finitude of his outward surroundings and his inner states, to continuously repeat his experience of God, that is, to bring before his eyes by new proofs the fact of God’s working in the world.
When we are in presence of this species of proof we at once feel that it belongs to a different sphere from that of the scientific proof. The empirical life of the individual, composed as it is of the most varied changes of mood and of conditions of feeling consequent on its entrance into different external states, takes occasion both from these states and when it is in them to multiply the result it has arrived at that there is a God, and seeks more and more anew to make this belief its own, and to make it a living belief for itself as being an individual existence subject to change. The scientific field, however, is the sphere of thought. Here the “many times” of the repetition, and the “at all times” which really represents the result, are united together in what is “once.” We have to deal with the one thought-determination, which, being one, comprises in itself all those special forms of the empirical life split up as it is into the infinite particularities of existence.
But these different spheres are different only as regards form; the matter of them is the same. Thought only brings the manifold content into a simple shape. It epitomises it without depriving it of its value or of anything that is essential to it. Its peculiar work rather is to bring this essential element into prominence. But here, too, we get various different determinations. First of all, the thought-determination is seen to be related to the starting-point from which Spirit rises from the finite up to God. Even if it reduces the innumerable characteristics to a few categories, these categories are still several in number. The finite, which has been called in a general way the starting-point, has various characteristics, and these consequently are the source of the different metaphysical proofs of the existence of God, that is to say, the proofs belonging to the sphere of thought only. In accordance with the historical form of the proofs, as we have to deal with them, the categories of the finite in which the starting-points get their definite character are, first, the contingency of earthly things, and next, the teleological relation which they have in themselves and to one another. But besides this finite beginning, finite so far as the content is concerned, there is yet another starting-point, namely, the Notion of God, which so far as its content is concerned is infinite and something that ought to be, and the only finite element in which is that it can be something subjective, an element of which it has to be divested. We may without prejudice admit a variety of starting-points. This does not in itself in any way conflict with the demand which we considered ourselves justified in making that the true proof should be one only; in so far as this proof is known by thought to represent the inner element of thought, thought can also show that it represents one and the same path, although starting from different points. Similarly the result is one and the same, namely, the Being of God. This, however, is a kind of indeterminate Universal. A difference, however, emerges here to which we must give somewhat closer attention. It is intimately connected with what we have called the beginnings or starting-points. These differ according to their starting-points, each of which has a definite content; they are definite categories; the act whereby the spirit rises from them to God is in itself the necessary course of thought, which, in accordance with an expression commonly used, is called a syllogistic argument. This has necessarily a result, and this result is defined in accordance with the definite character which attaches to the starting-point, for it follows only from this. Thus it comes about that the different proofs of the existence of God result in giving different characteristics or aspects of God. This is opposed to what is considered most probable, and to the opinion that in the proofs of the existence of God the interest centres in the fact of existence only, and that this one abstract characteristic or determination ought to represent the common result of all the different proofs. The attempt to get out of them determinations of the content is rendered unnecessary by the fact that the whole content is found ready to hand in the ordinary idea of God, and this idea thus presupposed, whether in a more definite or in a vaguer form, or in accordance with the ordinary procedure of Metaphysics above referred to, is definitely laid down beforehand, and made to represent the so-called Notion of God. The reflection that the characteristics of the content result from the transitions which take place in the course of reasoning, is not expressly made here, and least of all in connection with the proof which descends to the particular after having started from what had been previously determined, namely, the notion or conception of God, and which is expressly intended merely to satisfy the demand that the abstract characteristic of Being should be attached to that conception.
But it is self-evident that the different premises, and the variety of syllogisms which are constructed by means of these, will also yield several results differing in content. If, accordingly, the starting-points seem to permit us to take the fact of their being distinct from one another as implying a relation of equality or indifference between them, this indifference is of a limited character in view of the results which a multiplicity of characteristics of the conception of God yields; and indeed the primary question regarding their mutual relations crops up of itself in this connection, since God is one. The relation most readily thought of here is that according to which God is defined as being in His several characteristics one subject consisting of several predicates, as, for instance, when we are in the habit of speaking not only of finite objects which are described by a variety of predicates, but also when we attribute to God a variety of attributes, and speak of Him as being all-powerful, all-wise, as righteousness, goodness, and so forth. The Orientals speak of God as the many-named, or rather as the infinite-all-named, and imagine that the demand to declare what He is can be exhausted only by the inexhaustible statement of His names, that is, of His characteristics or specific qualities. We have already said of the infinite number of starting-points that they are comprised by means of thought in simple categories, and so here the necessity is still greater for reducing the multiplicity of attributes to a smaller number, or rather to one notion, all the more that God is one notion which has in it several inseparable notions; and while we allow with regard to finite objects that each in itself is certainly only one subject, an individual, that is, something indivisible, a notion or conception, we still regard this unity as being in itself manifold, made up of many things external to one another and separable, a unity which is in conflict with itself by the very fact of its existence. The finitude of living beings consists in this, that in them body and soul are separable, and, still more, that the members, nerves, muscles, and so on, the colouring matter, oil, sweat, &c., &c., are also separable; in fact, that what we regard as predicates existing in an actual subject or individual, such as colour, smell, taste, and so on, can separate from each other as independent materials, and that it belongs to the very nature of the unity that it should thus break up into parts. Spirit reveals its finitude in its variety, and in general in the want of correspondence between its Being and its notion. It becomes manifest that the intelligence does not adequately correspond to the truth, the will to the Good, the Moral, and the Right, the imagination to the understanding, and both these to the reason, and so on, and, besides, that the sense-consciousness with which the whole of existence is always kept supplied, or at any rate nearly so, consists of a quantity of momentary, transitory, and so far untrue elements. This very thorough separability and separateness of the activities, tendencies, aims, and actions of Spirit, which we meet with in empirical reality, may in some degree serve as an excuse for conceiving of the Idea of Spirit as something which breaks up into faculties, capacities, activities, and the like; for it is as an individual form of existence, a definite single being, that it is this particular finite existence which is thus found in a separate form of existence external to itself. But it is God only who is this particular One, and only as He is this One is He God; thus subjective reality is inseparable from the Idea, and consequently cannot be separated in itself. It is here that we see the variety, the separation, the multiplicity of the predicates which are knit into a unity by the subject only, but which in themselves would be in a condition of difference which would result in their coming into opposition and consequently into antagonism with each other, and which would show in the most decided way that they were something untrue, and that multiplicity of characteristics was an unsuitable category.
The next shape taken by the reduction of the several characteristics of God resulting from the several proofs, to the one notion or conception which is to be conceived of as being one in itself, is the ordinary one, according to which they are to be carried back to a higher unity, as it is called, i.e., a more abstract unity, and, since the unity of God is the highest of all, to what is consequently the most abstract form of unity. The most abstract unity, however, is unity itself, and from this it would result that the Idea of God means simply that God is unity—and to express this in terms implying a subject, or at least something which has Being—that He is the One in fact, a description, however, which implies that He is One only as against many, so that the One in Himself might still also be a predicate of the many, and therefore be unity in Himself, the One Substance rather, or, if you like, Being. But such an abstract form of determination would simply bring us back to this, that what would result from the proof of the existence of God would be simply the Being of God in an abstract sense, or, what comes to the same thing, that God Himself would simply be the abstract One (neuter) or Being, the empty Essence of the Understanding, over against which would be placed the concrete idea of God, which cannot find satisfaction in any such abstract characterisation. But not only is the ordinary idea not satisfied with this abstraction, the Notion looked at in its general aspect is by its very nature concrete itself, and what appears outwardly as difference and multiplicity of characteristics is simply the development of its moments, which all the while remains within itself. It is therefore the inner necessity of reason which shows itself active in thinking Spirit, and produces in it this multiplicity of characteristics; only, since this thought has not yet got a grasp of the nature of the Notion itself, nor consequently of the nature of its relation and the necessity of the connection, what are virtually stages in development appear to be simply an accidental multiplicity, the various elements of which follow on one another and are outside of one another, just as this thought also, moving within the circle occupied by each one of these characteristics, so conceives of the nature of the transition which is called Proof, that the characteristics, while connected with each other, still remain outside of each other, and mediate with each other merely as independent. It does not recognise that mediation with self is the true and final relation in any such process. And it will become evident that this is the formal defect in these proofs.