The Idea of God

¹⁴ We may validly infer the existence of God from necessary existence being comprised in the concept we have of him.

When the mind reviews the different ideas that are in it, it discovers that the chief idea among them by far is the idea is an omniscient, all-powerful, and absolutely perfect Being.

• This idea has an existence that is absolutely necessary and eternal.

The idea of a triangle is made up of the equality of its 3 angles to 2 right angles. This firmly persuades the mind that the 3 angles of a triangle are equal to 2 right angles.

Likewise, the mind perceives eternal and necessary existence to be comprised in its idea of an all-perfect Being, it concludes that this all-perfect Being exists.

¹⁵ Our ideas of other things merely have the idea of contingent existence, not necessary existence.

The mind has no idea of any other thing in which it can discover that necessary existence.

From this circumstance alone, it will discern that:

• the idea of an all-perfect Being has not been framed by itself, and
• it does not represent a chimera, but a true and immutable nature, which must exist since it can only be conceived as necessarily existing.

¹⁶ Prejudices hinder many from clearly knowing the necessity of the existence of God.

Our mind would have no difficulty in assenting to this truth, if it were wholly free from prejudices.

But we have been accustomed to:

• distinguish, in all other things, essence from existence, and
• imagine at will many ideas of things which neither are nor have been.

This is why when we do not steadily fix our thoughts on the contemplation of the all-perfect Being, that a doubt arises as to whether the idea we have of him is not one of those which we frame at pleasure, or at least of that class to whose essence existence does not pertain.

¹⁷ The greater objective (representative) perfection there is in our idea of a thing, the greater also must be the perfection of its cause.

When we further reflect on the various ideas that are in us, it is easy to perceive that there is not much difference among them, when we consider them simply as certain modes of thinking, but that they are widely different, considered in reference to the objects they represent; and that their causes must be so much the more perfect according to the degree of objective perfection contained in them.

[Footnote: “as what they represent of their object has more perfection."—FRENCH.]

There is no difference between this and the case of a person who has the idea of a machine, in the construction of which great skill is displayed, in which circumstances we have a right to inquire how he came by this idea, whether, for example, he somewhere saw such a machine constructed by another, or whether he was so accurately taught the mechanical sciences, or is endowed with such force of genius, that he was able of himself to invent it, without having elsewhere seen anything like it; for all the ingenuity which is contained in the idea objectively only, or as it were in a picture, must exist at least in its first and chief cause, whatever that may be, not only objectively or representatively, but in truth formally or eminently.

¹⁸ The existence of God may be again inferred from the above.

Thus, because we discover in our minds the idea of God, or of an all-perfect Being, we have a right to inquire into the source whence we derive it; and we will discover that the perfections it represents are so immense as to render it quite certain that we could only derive it from an all-perfect Being; that is, from a God really existing.

For it is not only manifest by the natural light that nothing cannot be the cause of anything whatever, and that the more perfect cannot arise from the less perfect, so as to be thereby produced as by its efficient and total cause, but also that it is impossible we can have the idea or representation of anything whatever, unless there be somewhere, either in us or out of us, an original which comprises, in reality, all the perfections that are thus represented to us;

But, as we do not in any way find in ourselves those absolute perfections of which we have the idea, we must conclude that they exist in some nature different from ours, that is, in God, or at least that they were once in him; and it most manifestly follows [from their infinity] that they are still there.

¹⁹ Although we may not comprehend the nature of God, there is yet nothing which we know so clearly as his perfections.

This will appear sufficiently certain and manifest to those who have been accustomed to contemplate the idea of God, and to turn their thoughts to his infinite perfections.

Although we may not comprehend them, because it is of the nature of the infinite not to be comprehended by what is finite, we nevertheless conceive them more clearly and distinctly than material objects, for this reason, that, being simple, and unobscured by limits*, they occupy our mind more fully.

*After LIMITS, “what of them we do conceive is much less confused. There is, besides, no speculation more calculated to aid in perfecting our understanding, and which is more important than this, inasmuch as the consideration of an object that has no limits to its perfections fills us with satisfaction and assurance.”

²⁰ We are not the cause of ourselves, but that this is God, and consequently that there is a God.

But everyone has not observed this.

When we have an idea of any machine in which great skill is displayed, we usually know with sufficient accuracy the manner in which we obtained it

We cannot even recollect when the idea we have of a God was communicated to us by him, seeing it was always in our minds, it is still necessary that we should continue our review, and make inquiry after our author, possessing, as we do, the idea of the infinite perfections of a God:

It is most evident by the natural light, that that which knows something more perfect than itself, is not the source of its own being, since it would thus have given to itself all the perfections which it knows.

Consequently, it could draw its origin from no other being than from him who possesses in himself all those perfections, that is, from God.