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 they are widely different, considered in reference to the objects they represent. Their causes must be so much the more perfect according to the degree of objective perfection contained in them.

There is no difference between this and a person who has the idea of a machine.

We see that he constructs the machine with great skill. This makes us ask how he came up with such an idea:

• Did he see such a machine being constructed by another?
• Or did was he taught the mechanical sciences so accurately?
• Or is he endowed with such force of genius that he was able to invent it, without having seen anything like it elsewhere?

All the ingenuity contained in the idea objectively only must exist in its first and chief cause, whatever that may be, just like a picture.

This ingenuity is not only an object or representation, but a formal or eminent truth.

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

Likewise, we discover in our minds the idea of God or of an all-perfect Being. This gives us a right to inquire into the source whence we derive it.

We 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.

Nothing cannot be the cause of anything.

The more perfect cannot arise from the less perfect.

It is impossible for us to have the idea or representation of anything unless there be somewhere, either in us or out of us, an original which comprises all the perfections that are thus represented to us.

But we do not find in ourselves those absolute perfections.

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.

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.

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.