THE PROOFS OF GOD S EXISTENCE. 45 



of a necessary belng.^ Thus the cosmological proof 

 stands and falls with the ontological. 



The physlco-theologlcal proof in its turn depends 

 on the cosmological, and must argue from the con- 

 tingent existence of the world to an absolute First 

 Cause, if it is to be adequate. For in itself it is 

 concerned wholly with the finite and cannot properly 

 infer anything but an adequate yf;^?V^ cause of pheno- 

 mena. The argument from design cannot validly 

 pass from the conception of a great Architect of the 

 world, designing and disposing his materials like a 

 human craftsman, to an absolute and infinite Creator. 



Thus the onlyargument in favour of the existence 

 of God which has any cogency, the only one which 

 could give us any insight 'into His nature, is in- 

 adequate. It cannot prove an infinite God. 



This admission of Kant's we shall do well to 

 store up for subsequent use, when it will be necess- 

 ary to inquire whether infinity is a possible or 

 desirable attribute of the Deity. For should it 

 appear (v. ch. x.) that an infinite God would be 

 an embarrassment rather than an advantage, the 

 inability of the argument from design to justify a 

 false conception of the Deity will have been a 

 fortunate deficiency. 



§ 20. The four antinomies involved in thje at- 

 tempt to think the ultimate nature of the world are 

 concerned with its infinity, the infinite divisibility of 

 substances, the conflict of causation and freewill, and 



^ All other conceptions would be inadequate predicates, which 

 could not determine their subject singly, and hence could not 

 establish its existence. For all real existences are subjects con- 

 taining an infinity of predicates, and the only predicate which 

 contains an infinity of attributes and can thus put its subject on 

 a par with a real existence and thereby confer reality upon it, is 

 the conception of an ens realissimum. 



