Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/271

 The major proposition of the Cosmological Proof in the more abstract form in which we took it, contains what is the essential element of the connection of the finite and the Infinite, the thought, namely, that the latter is got by way of hypothesis out of the former. The proposition, “If the finite exists, the Infinite exists also,” put in a more definite form is primarily the following: “The Being of the finite is not only its Being, but is also the Being of the Infinite.” We have thus reduced it to its simplest form, and have left out of account those developments which might be added to it by means of the still further specified forms of reflection which belong to the Infinite as having its Being conditioned by the finite, or to the Infinite as being presupposed through the finite, or to the relation of causality between finite and Infinite. All these relations are contained in that one simple form. If, in accordance with the definition previously given, we speak of Being in more definite terms as the subject of the judgment, the proposition will run thus: “Being is to be defined not as finite only but also as infinite.” The real point is the demonstration of this connection. This, as was shown above, springs from the conception of the finite, and this speculative way of dealing with the nature of the finite, with the mediation out of which the Infinite proceeds, is the pivot round which the whole question, namely, as to the knowledge of God and the philosophical understanding of Him, turns. The essential point, however, in this mediation is, that the Being of the finite is not the affirmative, but that, on the contrary, the Infinite is posited and mediated by the abrogation of this Being of the finite.

The essential and formal defect in the Cosmological Proof consists in the fact that finite Being is not only taken directly as the beginning and starting-point, but is regarded as something true, something affirmative, with an existence of its own. All those forms of reflection referred to, such as the presupposed, the conditioned, causality,