APPENDIX E 425 



he is referring to my " assuming " that the ideal Type is one 

 of the different grades of being that are really possible, or 

 to my taking as a direct consequence of this the actual exist- 

 ence of the ideal Type. 



As for the first of these matters, it is not true that I assume 

 tlie ideal Type to be one of the really possible intelligences ; 

 on the contrary, I show (see my pp. 353-355) that this 

 Supreme Instance of the intelligent nature present in all 

 possible minds is the one salient certainty in our conception 

 of the whole series, when we view the series as conceivable 

 simply : whatever we can not tell about the series, or the 

 numbers in it, what we do see, and see clearly, is that it must 

 contain, as a possibility^ this Type ; this I treat as the impli- 

 cation in the entire process of definition by which other 

 members in the series are determined. 



And as for the second point, I do not conclude to the 

 actual existence of the divine Type directly from its ascer- 

 tained possibility; that would be merely repeating the 

 thrice-buried Ontologic Proof over again, and the futility 

 of that I have dwelt upon in my pp. 357-358. The iden- 

 tification of the divine Type as a necessary member of the 

 conceivable series proves only this : that there is a necessary 

 connexion between the idea of every mind and the idea of 

 God, — no mind can define itself except in terms of God. 

 The argument to the actual reality of God is then completed 

 by resorting to each mind's certainty of its own actual exist- 

 ence through dialectic verification : the attempt to posit 

 the contrary, only ends in positing the self again. From this 

 the actual existence of Ciod follows, because the actual exist- 

 ence of the self must carry the existence of whatever the 

 idea of the self synthetically involves. I can hardly imagine 

 how my reviewer can have read my pp. 356-359 and still 

 say that I make no attempt to prove the actual existence 

 of God as tlie ideal Type of all the really possible spirits ; 

 nor liow he can still set it down that 1 assume the ideal 



