Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/249

 it we enter into a new sphere, into the region of the Notion itself. This latter accordingly affords another relation for the determination of elevation to God and for the course it follows, a different determination both of the starting-point and the result, and, first of all, the determination of what is conformable to an end, and that of the End. This accordingly becomes the category for a further proof of the existence of God. But the Notion is not something merely submerged in objectivity, as it is when regarded as an end, in which case it is merely the determination of things; but, on the contrary, it is for itself, and exists independently of objectivity. Regarded in this light, it is itself the starting-point, and its transition has a determination of its own, which has been already referred to. The fact, therefore, that the first Proof, the Cosmological Proof, adopts the category of the relation of contingency and absolute necessity, finds, as has been remarked, its relative justification in this, that this relation is the most individual, most concrete, and, in fact, the ultimate characteristic of reality as such, and accordingly represents and comprises in itself the truth of the more abstract categories of Being taken collectively. The movement of this relation likewise includes the movement of the earlier, more abstract characteristics of finitude to the still more abstract characteristics of infinitude; or rather, it is, in a logically abstract sense, the movement, or procedure of the proof, that is, it is the form of syllogistic reasoning, in all cases only one and the same, which is represented in it.

As is well known, the effect of the criticism directed by Kant against the metaphysical proofs of the existence of God has been that these arguments have been abandoned, and that they are no longer mentioned in any scientific treatise on the subject; in fact, one is almost ashamed to