Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/157

] not at first seen to rest on the consciousness of God, but that when we realize what it means we see that it does so rest. But if this be so, then in making the consciousness of self his first principle of knowledge, Des Cartes has stopped short of the truth. It can only be the first principle if it is understood not as the consciousness of the individual self, bat in a sense in which the consciousness of self is identical with the consciousness of God. Des Cartes, however, is far from a clear apprehension of the ultimate unity of thought and being, which nevertheless he strives to find in God. Beginning with an absolute separation of the res corjitans from the res extensa, he is continually falling back into dualism just when he seemed to have escaped from it. Even in God the absolute unity, idea and reality fall asunder ; our idea of God is not God in us, it is only an idea of which God s existence is the cause. But the category of causality, if it forms a bridge between different things, as here between knowing and being, at the same time repels them from each other. It is a category of external relation which may be adequate to express the relation of the finite to the finite, but not the relation of the finite to the infinite. We cannot con ceive God as the cause of our idea of him, without making God a purely objective and therefore finite existence. Nor is the case better when we turn to the so-called onto- logical argument, that existence is necessarily involved in the idea of God, just as the property of having its angles equal to two right angles is involved in the idea of a triangle. If indeed we understood this as meaning that thought transcends the distinction between itself and existence, and that therefore existence cannot be a thing in itself out of thought, but must be an intelligible world that exists as such only for the thinking being, there is some force in the argument. But this meaning we cannot find in Des Cartes, or to find it we must make him inconsistent with himself. He was so far from having quelled the phantom &quot; thing in itself,&quot; that he treated matter in space as such a thing, and thus confused externality of space with externality to the mind. On this dualistic basis, the ontological argument becomes a mani fest paralogism, and lies open to all the objections that Kant brought against it. That the idea of God involves existence proves only that God, if he exists at all, exists by the necessity of his being. But the link that shall bind thought to existence is still wanting, and, in consistency with the other presuppositions of Des Cartes it cannot be supplied. But again, even if we allow to Des Cartes that God is the unity of thought and being, we must still ask what kind of unity ? Is it a mere generic unity, reached by abstraction, and therefore leaving out all the distinguishing character istics of the particulars under it ] Or is it a concrete unity to which the particular elements are subordinated, but in which they are nevertheless included ] To answer this question, we need only look at the relation of the finite to the infinite, as it is expressed in the passage already quoted, and in many others. Des Cartes always speaks of the infinite as a purely affirmative or positive existence, and of the finite in so far as it is distinguished from the infinite, as purely negative, or in other words as a nonentity. &quot; I am,&quot; he says, &quot; a mean between God and nothing, between the Supreme Being and not-being. In so far as I am created by God, there is nothing in me that can deceive me or lead me into error. But on the other hand, if I consider myself as participating in nothingness, or not-being, inas much as I am not myself the Supreme Being, but in many ways defective, I find myself exposed to an infinity of errors. Thus error as such is not something real that depends on God, but simply a defect ; I do not need to explain it by means of any special faculty bestowed on me by God, but merely by the fact that the faculty for discerning truth from error with which he has endowed me, is not infinite.&quot; 1 But if we follow out this principle to its logical result, we must say not only that error is a consequence of finitude, but also that the very existence of the finite as such is an error or illusion. All finitude, all determination, according to the well-known Spinozistic aphorism, is negation, and negation cannot constitute reality. To know the reality of things, therefore, we have to abstract from their limits, or in other words, the only reality is the infinite. Finite being, qua finite, has no existence, and finite self-consciousness, con sciousness of a self in opposition to, or limited by, a not-self is an illusion. But Des Cartes does not thus reason. He does not see &quot; anything in the nature of the infinite which should exclude the existence of finite things.&quot; &quot; What &quot; he asks &quot; would become of the power of that imaginary infinite if it could create nothing Perceiving in ourselves the power of thinking, we can easily conceive that there should be a greater intelligence elsewhere. And even if we should suppose that intelligence increased ad infinitum, we need not fear that our own would be lessened. And the same is true of all other attributes which we ascribe to God, even of his power, provided only that we do not suppose that the power in us is not subjected to God s will. In all points, therefore, He is infinite without any exclusion of created things.&quot; The truth of this view we need not dispute ; the question is as to its consistency with Cartesian principles. It may be a higher idea of God to conceive him as revealing himself in and to finite creatures ; but it is a different idea from that which is implied in Des Cartes s explanations of error. It is an inconsistency that brings Des Cartes nearer to Christiantity, and nearer it may also be said, to a true metaphysic ; but it is not the less an inconsistency with his fundamental principles which necessarily disappears in their subsequent development. To conceive the finite as not constituted merely by the absence of some of the positive elements of the infinite, but as in necessary unity with the infinite ; to conceive the infinite as not merely that which has no limits, or determinations, but as that which is self-determined and self-manifesting, which through all finitude and manifesta tion returns upon itself, may not be erroneous. But it would not be difficult to show that the adoption of such a conception involves the rejection or modification of almost every doctrine of the Cartesian system. In connection with this inconsistency we may notice the very different relations in which Des Cartes conceives mind on the one side and matter on the other, to stand towards God, who yet is the cause of both, and must therefore, by the principle of causality, contain in himself all that is in both. Matter and mind are to Des Cartes absolute opposites. Whatever can be asserted of mind can be denied of matter, whatever can be asserted of matter can be denied of mind. Matter is passive, mind is active; matter is extended, and therefore divisible ad infinitum; mind is an indivisible unity. In fact, though of this Des Cartes is not conscious, the determination of the one is mediated by its opposition to the other ; the ideas of object and sub ject, the self and not-self, are terms of a relation distin guishable but inseparable. But in the idea of God we must find a unity which transcends this difference in one way or another, whether by combining the two under a higher notion, or, as it would be more natural to expect on Cartesian principles, by abstracting equally from the particular characteristics of both. Des Cartes really does neither, or rather he acts partly on the one principle and partly on the other. In his idea of God he abstracts from the properties of matter but not from those of mind. &quot; God,&quot; he says, 