Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/486

Rh he is referring to my “assuming” that the ideal Type is one of the different grades of being that are really possible, or to my taking as a direct consequence of this the actual existence of the ideal Type.

As for the first of these matters, it is not true that I assume the ideal Type to be one of the really possible intelligences; on the contrary, I show (see my pp. 353-355) that this Supreme Instance of the intelligent nature present in all possible minds is the one salient certainty in our conception of the whole series, when we view the series as conceivable simply: whatever we can not tell about the series, or the numbers in it, what we do see, and see clearly, is that it must contain, as a possibility, this Type; this I treat as the implication in the entire process of definition by which other members in the series are determined.

And as for the second point, I do not conclude to the actual existence of the divine Type directly from its ascertained possibility; that would be merely repeating the thrice-buried Ontologic Proof over again, and the futility of that I have dwelt upon in my pp. 357-358. The identification of the divine Type as a necessary member of the conceivable series proves only this: that there is a necessary connexion between the idea of every mind and the idea of God, — no mind can define itself except in terms of God. The argument to the actual reality of God is then completed by resorting to each mind's certainty of its own actual existence through dialectic verification: the attempt to posit the contrary, only ends in positing the self again. From this the actual existence of God follows, because the actual existence of the self must carry the existence of whatever the idea of the self synthetically involves. I can hardly imagine how my reviewer can have read my pp. 356-359 and still say that I make no attempt to prove the actual existence of God as the ideal Type of all the really possible spirits; nor how he can still set it down that I assume the ideal