GIFFORD LECTURE THE SIXΤΕΕΝΤΗ.

The cosmological proof-Contingency-Ab alio esse and esse a seThe special contingency an actual fact in experience - This Kant would put out of sight-Jehovah-Two elements in the argument, experience and ideas The generality of the experience Also of the idea - Contingency is a particular empirical fact-Ens realissimum--Only the ontological argument in disguise-Logical inference-But just generally the all-necessary being of such a world-Hume anticipated Kant -Why force analogy-Why transcend nature-No experience of such cause which must not exceed the effect-Hume's early memoranda-The "nest" - All Kant dependent on his own constant sense of school-distinctions-His entire world-The system being true, what is true?-The ontological argument No thinking a thing will bring it to be-What it all comes to, the single threefold wave-Hegel-Middle Age view from Augustine to Tauler-Meister Eckhart-Misunderstanding of mere understanding The wickedest then a possible divine reservoir -- Adam Smith and the chest of drawers - Absurd for Kant to make reason proper the "transcendent shine"-The Twelfth Night cake, but the ehrliche Kant.

THE last lecture concerned the proof from design; we come now to the other two, and first to that which is named Cosmological. As is known, the fulcrum of this proof is the peculiarity of existence as existence. Existence, that is, as existence, is contingent. But this word has so many meanings, important meanings, even, in philosophical application, crucial meanings, that a little preliminary explanation in its regard may seem called for, and may prove useful. In a former part of the course we had a contingency of things which almost meant chance. It is common knowledge that events

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happen, which might have been foreseen and calculated; and it is equally common knowledge that other events happen which no faculty of vision or power of reason, omniscience apart, could either have foreseen or calculated. Now, philosophically, that to me is, as proper quality and fundamental condition of things, the main contingency. I may walk the streets with whatever care I may; but I may for all that slip on a bit of orange peel, and fracture a limb or dislocate a joint. Such contingency as that is our very element; we pass our lives in it, and are never safe. The powers of nature threaten us from all sides, and we must wall them out. As I have already explained, this is the necessary and unavoidable result of externality as externality. Then in passing from the one argument to the other, design was spoken of as contingency. This, however, is a use of the word not quite common in English, and was suggested for the moment to meet the language of Kant. Kant, that is, in order to reduce the teleological argument to the ontological, through and by means of the cosmological, characterized the design which we see in things as zufällig to them, contingent to them. And by this he meant that this ordering of things which we call design is not inherent in the things themselves, but something added to them as though from without. Contingency, in this sense, is inessentiality, adventitiousness, extrinsicality. It is easy to understand that the order of the things on a dinner table is such inessentiality, adventitiousness, extrinsicality, contingency; it is not inherent in these things; it is something given to them something zufällig. And we see so that at least the German word may, naturally and legitimately enough, be used in such sense and with such application. As for the English word contingent, if similarly used, the shade of meaning implied will not really be found unintelligible or uncon

formable and misplaced. A third sense of contingent is proper to the cosmological argument which we have now in hand. The very fulcrum of that argument, in fact, lies in the word. Because all the things of this world are capable of being characterized as effects, we infer a cause for them. If no more than effects, they are unsupported in themselves, and seem bodily and miscellaneously to fall. That is, they are contingent. So it is that, in the very word, there lies the call for the argument in question. The contingent, as an ab alio esse, necessarily refers to an esse that is a se; what depends only must depend on something else. The cosmological, like the teleological argument, proceeds, therefore, from a fact in experience. Design is such fact, and so also is contingency-contingency in the sense of the unsupportedness, the powerlessness of things in themselves. In the three arguments for the being of a God, we proceed either from the fact to the idea, or from the idea to the fact. In the ontological argument, namely, we reason from the idea of God to the fact of His existence, while in the cosmological and the teleological arguments, we reason from the facts of existence to the idea of God. What Kant misses in the ontological argument is the element of reality, existence, fact, or the element that depends on experience. It is in vain to look for such element, he avers, in mere ideas. His action with the two other arguments, again, is, so to speak, reverse-wise to put aside this element-the element of actual fact, on which they, both of them, found. It is Kant's general object, that is, in regard to the reasoning for the existence of God, to reduce the teleological to the cosmological argument and both to the ontological, which, as dependent on mere notions, he thinks that he will be at little pains to destroy.

Kant himself states the cosmological argument thus : "If something exists, then an absolutely necessary being must also exist; but at least I myself exist: therefore there exists an absolutely necessary being." My existence, namely, is contingent. It is no existence complete in itself and sufficient of itself; it is only a derivative existence, and an existence in many ways dependent. Whether as derivative or dependent, it has its support elsewhere. It is unsupported in itself, powerless in itself, a house on the fall, a very terminable security. But I am no solitary case, I am no exception; others are as I, and there is not a single thing in this universe that is not as the others. All are contingent, all are derivative, all are dependent; they are all such that you postulate an originating and sustaining cause for them; but any such cause-any terminal, final, and ultimate cause, it is impossible in the whole series of causes in the universe anywhere to find. Trace causes as you may, you must end always with an effect. Now, it is taking our stand on these facts that we involuntarily conclude to the existence of an absolutely necessary being that is the reason at once of the existence and support of all these things of all these things which are so utterly unsupported and powerless in themselves. And so it is that the cosmological argument has been specially put in connection wtth the religion of power. Power, indeed, must have been one of the earliest feelings that, in view of this great universe of effects, surged up in the human breast. In the Hebrew Scriptures, for example, what an attribute is power! Hence that sublimity in which the earth, the ball of the universe, is but as the footstool of Him who says, I Am that I Am. We have only to think of this to have it very vividly realized to us that the cosmological argument is founded in the depths of man's own soul. It is not an argument forced, scholastic, artificial, it is not a thing of words; it is religion to

WHAT KANT WOULD PUT OUT OF SIGHт.

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the peoples. That whole image of Jehovah and the footstool of the universe is but the cosmological argument itself in its sublimest and most natural form. The contingent universe is but the footstool to the absolute necessity of God.

We must turn now, however, and see how Kant would deprive us of this rationality that we have, to say so, almost in our very blood.

The cosmological argument, we may take it, stands at this moment before us thus:- Inasmuch as something exists and contingently exists, there must exist also something that is absolutely necessary. Of this argument Kant admits: That "it is based on experience;" that "it is not led altogether à priori;" that it is called the cosmological proof, for this reason, that the world, from which it takes its name and on which it founds, "is the object of all possible experience." Nevertheless, it is precisely this ground of experience which Kant would remove from it; this, in his desire to establish it as a mere matter of void ideas only. There are thus in the argument two interests against both of which Kant turns. First, namely, there is the question of the experience; and, second, there is that of the ideas. On the first question Kant, as I have said, would put out of sight the experience; and, on the second, he would have us regard the necessary being that is concluded to, as a mere idea, and as a mere idea, further, that is only illicitly converted into the other idea of the ens realissimum, or God. Of these two operations Kant himself gives the description thus: "In this cosmological argument there come together so many sophistical propositions that speculative reason seems to have exerted here all its dialectical skill in order to effect the greatest possible transcendental false show;" but he (Kant) will expose a trick on its part,

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