The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

tion, this clearly takes place only under the guidance of causality. This is so evident that it requires no proof. Therefore Chr. Wolf says (Cosmologia Generalis, prcef., p. 1) : Sane in theologia naturali existentiam Numinis e principiis cosmologicis demonstramus. Contingentia universi et ordinis naturae, una cum impossibilitate casus, sunt scala, per quam a mundo hoc adspectabili ad Deum ascenditur.

And, before him, Leibnitz said, in connection with the law of causality : Sans ce grand principe on ne saurait venir a la preuve de I 'existence de Dim.

On the other hand, the thought which is worked out in this chapter is so far from being essential and necessary to reason, that it is rather to be regarded as a veritable masterpiece of the monstrous productions of an age which, through strange circumstances, fell into the most singular aberrations and perversities, such as the age of the Scholastics was — an age which is unparalleled in the history of the world, and can never return again.

This Scholasticism, as it advanced to its final form, certainly derived the principal proof of the existence of God from the conception of the ens realissimum, and only then used the other proofs as accessory. This, however, is mere methodology, and proves nothing as to the origin of theology in the human mind. Kant has here taken the procedure of Scholasticism for that of reason — a mistake which indeed he has made more than once.

If it were true that according to the essential laws of reason the Idea of God proceeds from the disjunctive syllogism under the form of an Idea of the most real being, this Idea would also have existed in the philosophy of antiquity ; but of the ens realissimum there is nowhere a trace in any of the ancient philosophers, although some of them certainly teach that there is a Creator of the world, yet only as the ^iver of form to the matter which exists without him, 5e/iioup7o?, a being whom they yet infer simply and solely .u accordance with the law of causality. It is true that Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math., ix. § 88) quotes an argu128 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

ment of Cleanthes, which some have held to be the ontological proof. This, however, it is not, but merely an inference from analogy ; because experience teaches that upon earth one being is always better than another, and man, indeed, as the best, closes the series, but yet has many faults ; therefore there must exist beings who are still better, and finally one being who is best of all (KpaTunov, apicnov), and this would be God.

On the detailed refutation of speculative theology which now follows I have only briefly to remark that it, and in general the whole criticism of the three so-called Ideas of reason, thus the whole Dialectic of Pure Reason, is indeed to a certain extent the goal and end of the whole work : yet this polemical part has not really an absolutely universal, permanent, and purely philosophical interest, such as is possessed by the preceding doctrinal part, i.c, the aesthetic and analytic ; but rather a temporary and local interest, because it stands in a special relation to the leading points of the philosophy which prevailed in Europe up till the time of Kant, the complete overthrow of which was yet, to his immortal credit, achieved by him through this polemic He has eliminated theism from philosophy; for in it, as a science and not a system of faith, only that can find a place which is either empirically given or established by valid proofs. Naturally we only mean here the real seriously understood philosophy which is concerned with the truth, and nothing else ; and by no means the jest of philosophy taught in the universities, in which, aftei Kant as before him, speculative theology plays the principal part, and where, also, after as before him, the soul appears without ceremony as a familiar person. For it is the philosophy endowed with salaries and fees, and, indeed, als( with titles of Hofrath, which, looking proudly down fron its height, remains for forty years entirely unaware of fll existence of little people like me, and would be thoroughly fl

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