Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/367

 empty abstractions. Thus it has to be shown that the characteristic or quality of Being is affirmatively contained in the Notion, and so we get the unity of the Notion and Being.

They are, however, different, too, and thus their unity is the negative unity of both, and what we are concerned with is the abolition of the difference. The difference must be discussed, and the existence of the unity must be established and exhibited in accordance with this difference. It belongs to logic to exhibit the unity in this way—that the Notion is this movement according to which it characterises itself and takes on the form of Being, and that this dialectic, this movement in accordance with which the Notion gives itself the characteristics of Being, of its opposite, and which we may call the logical element, is a further development of thought which is accordingly not found in the Ontological Proof. It is this which constitutes the defect of the latter.

As regards the form of Anselm’s thought, it has been remarked that it is implied in the content that the notion or conception of God presupposes reality, because God is the most perfect of beings. The real point is that the notion gives itself an objective form on its own account; but God is thus the most perfect of beings only in idea, or popular thought. It is when measured with the idea of the most perfect being that the bare conception of God appears defective. The conception of perfection is the standard, and thus it is seen that God as simply notion or thought does not come up to this standard.

Perfection is a merely indeterminate idea. What is really meant when anything is called perfect? The essential quality of the perfect may be directly seen in something which is the opposite of that to which it is here applied, that is to say, imperfection represents merely the thought of God, and thus perfection is the unity of thought or the Notion with reality, and this unity is therefore presupposed or pre-posited here. In