46 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



since particulars cannot serve to establish universality. It must 

 be existential, since the whole series of conditions must have 

 some starting point in real existence. The only judgment that 

 can meet these requirements is, of course, the definition of the 

 highest concept, a definition, which, as the ontological proof is 

 supposed to show, contains existence as an essential predicate. 

 While every other concept may be defined without reference to 

 its existence, the very definition of substance posits its existence. 



Now let us suppose that from this first principle the whole 

 system of universal truths has been deduced. The problem still 

 remains, how the rationalist shall unite the mass of particular 

 contingent propositions with this system how, for example, he 

 is to establish deductively the fact that this wax is white. He 

 has deduced, let us say, the universal, All wax is white, or (in 

 conditional form), If wax, then whiteness; but how shall he deduce 

 the existence of this particular bit of wax. For according to 

 the logic of rationalism the existence of particular objects is a 

 fact altogether irrevelant to the laws of their action. 1 It may 

 even be questioned whether the statement of their existence has 

 any meaning for him. The wax, we say, exists. But the very 

 terms of which the proposition is composed have their meaning 

 wholly exhausted in relations the determinate variation of the 

 sensible qualities of the wax, its modes of behavior under various 

 conditions. Abstracted from these relations, the existence of 

 the w r ax reduces to that of a portion of extended substance, which 

 we have no sufficient means of distinguishing from any other 

 portion. It seems as if the union of essence and existence in 

 the definition of the highest concept served only to make ultimate 

 the breach between essence and existence elsewhere. 



But what of the assumption, that the system of universal 

 truths is deducible from its first principle? This is, of course, a 

 mere postulate of the rationalistic logic its verification is not 



J Cf. Leibniz s recognition of this difficulty in his distinction between truths 

 of reason and truths of fact. The latter are, indeed, as he holds, demonstrable 

 from the former; but only by an infinite process of deduction, which can be accom 

 plished only in the divine consciousness. 



