Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God

If the undertaking which is commonly called proof of the existence of God has been understood in the form in which it was set forth in the first lecture, the chief objection to it will have been got rid of. For the nature of proof was held to consist in this, that it is only the consciousness of the proper movement of the object in itself. If this thought might be attended with difficulties in its application to other objects, these difficulties would necessarily disappear in the case of the object with which we are concerned, for it is not a passive and external object, but really a subjective movement, the elevation of the Spirit to God, an activity, the following of a certain course, a process, and thus has in it that necessary procedure which constitutes proof, and which has only to be taken up and studied in order that it may be seen to involve proof. But the expression proof carries with it too definitely the idea of a merely subjective line of thought to be followed on our behoof, to allow of the conception of it just stated being considered sufficient in itself apart from any attempt to expressly examine and get rid of this contrasted idea. In this lecture, then, we must first come to an understanding about the nature of proof in general, and with especial definiteness as regards that aspect of it which we here put aside and exclude. It is not our business to assert that there is no proof of the kind indicated, but to assign its limits, and to see that it is not, as is falsely thought, the only form of proof. This is bound up with the contrast drawn between immediate and mediated knowledge, in which in our time the chief interest centres in connection with religious knowledge, and even the religious frame of mind itself, which must accordingly be likewise considered.

The distinction, which has already been touched upon in connection with knowledge, implies that two kinds of proof must be taken into account, of which the one is clearly that which we use simply as an aid to knowledge, as something subjective, whose activity and movement have their place within ourselves, and are not the peculiar movement of the thing considered. That this kind of proof finds a place in the scientific knowledge of finite things and their finite content, becomes apparent when we examine the nature of the procedure more closely. Let us take for this purpose an example from a science in which this method of proof is admittedly applied in its most complete form. If we prove a geometrical proposition every part of the proof must in part carry its justification within itself, so also when we solve an equation in algebra. In part, however, the whole course of procedure is defined and justified through the aim which we have in connection with this, and because that end is attained by such procedure. But we are very well aware that that of which the quantitive value has been developed out of the equation, has not as an actual thing run through these operations in order to reach the quantity which it possesses, and that the magnitude of the geometrical lines, angles, and so on, has not gone through and been brought about by the series of propositions by which we have arrived at it as representing a result. The necessity which we see in such proof corresponds indeed to the individual properties of the object itself, these relations of quantity actually belong to it; but the progress in connecting the one with the other is something which goes on entirely within us; it is a process for realising the aim we have in view, namely, to see into the meaning of the thing, not a course in which the object arrives at its inherent relations and their connection. It does not thus create itself, and is not created, as we create it and its relations in the process of attaining insight into it.