Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/17

Volume III. Number I.

I. The Old Ontology.—There has descended to us from Plato and Aristotle an ontological proof of the existence of God as the first cause. The proof consists in showing the presuppositions of finite, dependent being. The presupposition is of a whole or total, when something incomplete is given. The partial, incomplete, or imperfect is understood by Plato only in the sense of dependent being, that which in its very nature implies the existence of something else on which it depends.

Of course we can speak of a thing as imperfect or incomplete when we regard it as lacking something which we arbitrarily associate with it as a purpose or end. We can speak of a broken nail as an imperfect one or call an unbroken one a perfect one. But a perfect nail is not by any means a complete or perfect being. It owes to outside causes its shape and its substance; it is thoroughly a dependent being.

Whatever derives its being from another is a dependent being and presupposes the existence of that on which it depends. All beings in space are limited in extent and have environments upon which they depend or with which they stand in relation. All beings in time, that is to say, all beings that undergo change, are similarly dependent and have derived their being from antecedent being.

Plato and Aristotle reach this idea of dependence through the idea of motion. Motion in its various forms of locomotion, change, increase, diminution, and the like, is motion through