Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/368

 that God is posited as the Most Perfect. He has here no further determination or characterisation, He is the perfect one only, He exists only as such, and this represents His determinate character. It is clear from this that the real point is only this unity of the Notion and reality. This unity is the characteristic of perfection and at the same time of the Godhead itself, and it is in fact the characteristic of the Idea too. It certainly, however, belongs still more to the determination of God.

The presupposition which really underlies the Notion, as it was understood by Anselm, is that of the unity of the Notion and reality, and thus we see why this proof cannot satisfy reason, because it is just this very presupposition that is in question. The view according to which the Notion determines itself in itself, gives itself an objective form or realises itself, is one which is reached later, and proceeds from the nature of the Notion itself, and cannot exist apart from this. This is the view which raises the question as to how far the Notion can itself do away with its one-sidedness.

If we compare this view with that which belongs to our own day, and which in a very special sense originated with Kant, it may be put thus: Man thinks, perceives, wills, and his acts of will are connected with his acts of thought, he both thinks and forms conceptions, and is a being both with a concrete sense nature and a rational nature. Then, further, the notion of God, the Idea, the Infinite, the Unlimited, is, according to this view, a notion merely which we construct; but we must not forget that it is only a notion which exists in our heads. Why is it said that it is only a notion? The notion is something imperfect since thought is only one quality, one form of human activity amongst others, i.e., we measure the notion by the reality which we have actually before us in concrete individuals. Man is certainly not merely a thinking being; he is a being with a sense nature as well, and may have sense objects even