Page:Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica - with preliminary dissertations on the history of the sciences - illustrated by engravings (IA gri 33125011196181).pdf/145

Rh As Descartes conceived the existence of God (next to the existence of his own mind) to be the most indisputable of all truths, and rested his confidence in the conclusions of human reason entirely on his faith in the divine veracity, it is not surprising that he should have rejected the argument from final causes, as superfluous and unsatisfactory. To have availed himself of its assistance, would not only have betrayed a want of confidence in what he professed to regard as much more certain than any mathematical theorem; but would obviously have exposed him to the charge of first appealing to the divine attributes in proof of the authority of his faculties; and afterwards, of appealing to these faculties, in proof of the existence of God.

It is wonderful, that it should have escaped the penetration of this most acute thinker, that a vicious circle of the same description is involved in every appeal to the intellectual powers, in proof of their own credibility; and that unless this credibility be assumed as unquestionable, the farther exercise of human reason is altogether nugatory. The evidence for the existence of God seems to have appeared to Descartes too irresistible and overwhelming, to be subjected to those logical canons which apply to all the other conclusions of the understanding. ”

The above argument for the existence of God (very improperly called by some foreigners an argument a priori), was long considered by the most eminent men in Europe as quite demonstrative. For my own part, although I do not think that it is by any means so level to the apprehension of common inquirers, as the argument from the marks of design everywhere manifested in the universe, I am still less inclined to reject it as altogether unworthy of attention, It is far from being so metaphysically abstruse as the reasonings of Newton and Clarke, founded on our conceptions of space and of time; nor would it appear, perhaps, less logical and conclusive than that celebrated demonstration, if it were properly unfolded, and stated in more simple and popular terms. The two arguments, however, are, in no respect, exclusive of each other; and I have always thought, that, by combining them together, a proof of the point in question might be formed, more impressive and luminous than is to be obtained from either, when stated apart.