Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/365

 subjective, and that this content should have attached to it the determination of Being.

We have to consider this second mediation as it appears in this finite form, or form of the Understanding, in the shape of the Ontological Proof. This proof starts from the Notion or conception of God, and goes from this to Being. We do not find this transition amongst the ancients, for instance in Greek philosophy, nor was it made in the Christian Church till after a long time. It was one of the great scholastic philosophers, Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, that profound, philosophical thinker, who first grasped this idea.

We have the idea of God; but He is not merely an idea, He is. How are we to make this transition? How are we to get to see that God is not merely something subjective in us? How is this determination of Being to be mediated with God?

The Kantian criticism was directed against this so-called Ontological Proof too, and with triumphant success, so to speak, in its day. It is still held at the present day that these proofs have been refuted as being worthless efforts on the part of the Understanding. We have, however, already recognised the fact that the act whereby these higher thoughts are here reached is the act of Spirit, the act peculiarly belonging to thinking Spirit, which Man will not renounce the right to exercise; and so, too, this proof is an act of the same sort.

The ancients did not know of this transition; for, in order to arrive at it, it is necessary that Spirit should go down into itself as deeply as possible. Spirit, when once it has arrived at its highest form of freedom, namely, subjectivity, first conceives this thought of God as subjective, and reaches first this antithesis of subjectivity and objectivity.

Anselm expressed the nature of this transition in the following fashion. The idea of God is that He is absolutely perfect. If accordingly we think of God only