one tendency is to regard the knowledge of God as an innate intuition of the human mind, the other is to make it depend on a reasoning process. The famous three arguments or proofs of the existence of God, the ontological, the cosmological, and the teleological,-are not cumulative in force but antithetical and opposed in their direction. Those who rely on the ontological proof have no need of the other two, and these add nothing to its force; on the other hand, those who rely on demonstration usually reject the ontological proof. There are two views in modern philosophy as to the nature of the finite individual. One is the adjectival view, according to which the individual is wholly constituted of his relation to a universal experience, the Absolute. His individuality consists in the fact that the absolute appears or expresses itself in temporary centres of activity. Individuality therefore is a mode of the expression of a universal reality. The other is the substantive view, according to which the individual is exclusive and exists in its own right. Its range of activity is limited by other individuals, but its relation to these is external and it is substantially distinct. The ordinary view of individuals is that they are a plurality. There is a practical ground for this. In ordinary thought we take men's bodies rather than their minds as the definite structure which determines their individuality. We contemplate the world as a spatial system. Men's bodies present to us a sameness of type in structure and function, and spatial relations become in consequence the basis of existence. Individuals appear as a many. When we attend to the mind structure, individuals seem constituted of their relations to one another. Individuals seem to derive their reality from inclusion in a greater individuality. Existence has a different meaning therefore according to whether we predicate it of the body or of the mind. When we say that a body exists, we mean that it adversely occupies space during some interval of time. When we say that a mind exists, we mean that it is an activity enduring through continual change. There are no spatial outlines which limit minds and prevent their interpenetration. When we make the finite individual the subject of a judgment, if the spatial body be the subject then we have the concept of substance or thinghood. It involves the idea of present existence. A thing to be definite must be here and now. If, on the other hand, the mind be the subject, its present existence is not actuality but potentiality. In individual activity there is no dissociation of body and mind, of thought and action, of function, and structure. Mind and body cannot even be said to be united in their activity, for the activity is a unity which precedes distinction. When we reflect on our activity from the standpoint of its process, it appears as though the moment of experience must be a unity brought about by the association in that moment of the mind and the body. Yet the intuition of our reality in that moment is the intuition of original unity. My theory is that the unity is original and not an association; and that the distinctions which arise in the process of our activity are a dissociation. It is the intuition of this unity which is the basis of the necessity of thought which posits the idea of God, the idea of a higher unity, the infinite individual whose essence involves existence. |