Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/143

 The author does not see that this is only a repetition of an Old Testament sentence, and that it says, “Your God is one.” But more remarkable still is the following:

“In other cases he expressed this truth not less clearly or even more clearly, when, for example, to a man, who called him blessed teacher, he remarked, ‘No one is blessed except the one God.’” (p. 81.)

The author does not see that here the word “one” has not even a numerical meaning. Here “one” does not mean “the only God,” but “only God.” And all this in order to prove what is included in the conception of God, which no one who pronounces the word “God” can doubt. Why this blasphemy? One is involuntarily led to believe that all that is only in order intentionally to debase the conception of God. It is impossible to imagine any other purpose.

But that is not enough for the author. He considers it necessary to adduce more proofs of the unity (that is, of what cannot be connected with the idea of God) from reason. Here are the proofs of reason:

“The proofs of the unity of God, such as the holy fathers and the teachers of the church have used on the basis of common sense, are almost the same as those which are generally used at the present time for the same purpose. Some of them are borrowed from the testimony of history and the human soul (anthropological), others, from the examination of the universe (cosmological), others again, from the very conception of God (ontological).” (p. 83.)

In the first place, this is not correct, because such proofs have never been used to prove the unity of God. They have been adduced to prove the existence of God, and there they have their place and are analyzed in Kant. In the second place, it is proved that none of them are conclusive to reason. Here are the proofs as offered by the theologian: