How to Prove the Existence of God

Proposition 7: The existence of God is also proved from the fact that we ourselves exist while having the idea of him.

Proof: If I had the force to preserve myself, then I would exist (Lemma 2).

Therefore (Corollary Lemma 1), my nature would contain all perfections.

But I find in myself, as a thinking thing, many imperfections. I doubt, desire, etc.

I am certain of these imperfections (Scholium Prop. 4).

Therefore, I have no force to preserve myself.

I do not have those perfections because I deny them to myself.

This would be inconsistent with Lemma 1, and with my imperfections (Ax. 5).

I cannot now exist, while I am existing, without being preserved either by myself- if indeed I have that force-or by something else that does have that force (Axioms 10 and I I ).

But I exist (Scholium Prop. 4) even if I do not have the force to preserve myself.

Therefore, I am preserved by something else that has the force to preserve itself that has all the perfections.

Therefore, a supremely perfect being exists (Def. 8), God exists. Q.E.D.

Scholium: To demonstrate this proposition Descartes assumes 2 axioms:

1. That which can effect what is greater or more difficult can also effect what is less.

2. It is a greater thing to create or (Ax. 10) to preserve substance than the attributes or properties of substance.

I do not know what he means by these axioms.

What does he call easy, and what difficult?

Nothing is easy or difficult in an absolute sense, but only with respect to its cause.

So one thing can be easy and difficult at the same time in respect of different causes.*

Now if, of things that can be effected by the same cause, he calls those difficult that need great effort and those easy that need less (e.g., the force that can raise 50 pounds can raise 25 pounds twice as easily) then surely the axiom is not absolutely true, nor can he prove from it what he aims to prove.

For when he says, “If I had the force to preserve myself, I should also have the force to give myself all the perfections that I lack” (because this latter does not require as much power), I would grant him that the strength that I expend on preserving myself could effect many other thing.

Far more easily had I not needed it to preserve myself, but I deny that, as long as I am using it to preserve myself,36 I can direct it to effecting other things however much easier, as can clearly be seen in our example.

The difficulty is not removed by saying that, because I am a thinking thing, I must necessarily know whether I am expending all my strength in preserving myself, and whether this is also the reason why I do not give myself the other perfections.

For-apart from the fact that this point is not at issue, but only how the necessity of this proposition follows from this axiom- if I knew this, I should be a greater being and perhaps require greater strength than I have so as to preserve myself in that greater perfection.

I do not know whether it is a greater task to create or preserve substance than to create or preserve its attributes.

That is, to speak more clearly and in more philosophic terms, I do not know whether a substance, so as to preserve its attributes, does not need the whole of its virtue and essence with which it may be preserving itself.

What does Descartes understand by ’easy’ and what by ‘difficult’?

I do not think he means:

• ‘difficult’ as that which is impossible

• ’easy’ as that which does not imply any contradiction

In the “Third Meditation” he seems at first glance to mean this when he says: “Nor should I think that those things that I lack are more difficult to acquire than those that are already in me. For on the contrary it is obvious that it was far more difficult for me, a thinking thing or substance, to emerge from nothing than … “, etc. 37

This would not be consistent with the Author’s words nor would it smack of his genius.

For, passing over the first point, there is no relationship between the possible and the impossible, or between the intelligible and the nonintelligible, just as there is no relationship between something and nothing.

Power has no more to do with impossible thing than creation and generation, with nonentities; so there can be no comparison between them.

Besides, I can compare things and understand their relationship only when I have a clear and distinct conception of them all.

So I deny that it follows that he who can do the impossible can also do the possible.

What sort of conclusion would this be?

That if someone can make a square circle, he will also be able to make a circle wherein all the lines drawn from the center to the circumference are equal.

Or if someone can bring it about that ’nothing’ can be acted upon, and can use it as material to produce something, he will also have the power to make someth ing from something.

There is no agreement, or analogy, or comparison or any relationship whatsoever between these things and things like these. Anyone can see this, if only he gives a little attention to the matter.

Therefore I think this quite irreconcilable with Descartes’s genius.

But if I attend to the second of the two axioms just now stated, it appears that what he means by ‘greater’ and ‘more difficult’ is ‘more perfect’, and by 1esser’ and ’easier’, 1ess perfect’.

Yet this, again, seems very obscure, for there is here the same difficulty as before. As before, I deny that he who can do the greater can, at the same time and with the same effort (as must be supposed in the proposition), do the lesser.

Again, when he says: “It is a greater thing to create or preserve substance than its attributes,” surely he cannot understand by attributes that which is formally contained in substance and differs from substance itself only by conceptual abstraction.

For then it would be the same thing to create substance as to create attributes.

Nor again, by the same reasoning, can he mean the properties of substance which necessarily follow from its essence and definition.

Far less can he mean-and yet he appears to-the properties and attributes of another substance. For instance, if I say that I have the power to preserve myself, a finite thinking substance, I cannot for that reason say that I also have the power to give myself the perfections of infinite substance, which differs totally in essence from my essence.

For the force or essence whereby I preserve myself in my being is quite different in kind from the force or essence whereby absolutely infinite substance preserves itself, and from which its powers and properties are distinguishable only by abstract reason.38

So even though I were to suppose that I preserve myself, if I wanted to conceive that I could give myself the perfections of absolutely infinite substance, I should be supposing nothing other than this, that I could reduce my entire essence to nothing and create an infinite substance anew.

This would be much more, surely, than merely to suppose that I can preserve myself, a finite substance.

Therefore, because by the terms ‘attributes’ or ‘properties’ he can mean none of these things, there remain only the qualities that substance itself contains eminently (as this or that thought in the mind, which I clearly perceive to be lacking in me), but not the qualities that another substance contains eminently (as this or that motion in extension; for such perfections are not perfections for me, a thinking thing, and therefore they are not lacking to me).

But then what Descartes wants to prove-that if I am preserving myself, I also have the power to give myself all the perfections that I clearly see as pertaining to a most perfect being -can in no way be concluded from this axiom, as is quite clear from what I have said 38

Note that the force by which substance preselVes Itself IS nothtng but lts essence, dlffenng from It only In name.

This wtll be a pamcular feature of our discussion to the Appendix, concerning the power of God previously.

However, not to leave the matter unproved, and to avoid all confusion, I have thought it advisable first of all to demonstrate the following Lemmas, and thereafter to construct on them the proof of Proposition 7.

Lemma 1: The more perfect a thing is by its own nature, the greater the existence it involves, and the more necessary is the existence.

Conversely, the more a thing by its own nature involves necessary existence, the more perfect it is.

Proof: Existence is contained in the idea or concept of everything (Ax.6). Then let it be supposed that A is a thing that has ten degrees of perfection. I say that its concept involves more existence than if it were supposed to con tain only five degrees of perfection.

Because we cannot affirm any existence of nothing (see Scholium Prop. 4), in proportion as we in thought subtract from its perfection and therefore conceive it as participating more and more in nothing, to that extent we also deny the possibility of its existence.

So if we conceive its degrees of perfection to be reduced indefinitely to nought or zero, it will contain no existence, or absolutely impossible existence.

But, on the other hand, if we increase its degrees of perfection indeIinitely, we shall conceive it as involving the utmost existence, and therefore the most necessary existence. That was the first thing to be proved.

Since these 2 things can in no way be separated (as is quite clear from Axiom 6 and the whole of Part I of this work), what we proposed to prove in the second place clearly follows.

Note 1. Although many things are said to exist necessarily solely on the grounds that there is given a cause determined to produce them, it is not of this that we are here speaking; we are speaking only of that necessity and possibility that follows solely from consideration of the nature or essence of a thing, without taking any account of its cause.

Note 2. We are not here speaking of beauty and other ‘perfections’, which, out of superstition and ignorance, men have thought fit to call perfections; by perfection I understand only reality or being. For example, I perceive that more reality is contained in substance than in modes or accidents.

Substance contains more necessary and more perfect existence than is contained in accidents, as is well established from Axioms 4 and 6.

Corollary: Hence it follows that whatever involves necessary existence is a supremely perfect being, or God.

Lemma 2: The nature of one who has the power to preserve himself involves necessary existence.

Proof: Anyone who has the force to preserve himself also has the force to create himself (Ax. 1 0).

He needs no external cause to exist. But his own nature alone will be a sufficient cause of his existence, only necessarily, not possibly (Ax. 10).

• Not possibly because the fact that he exists now it would not follow that he would thereafter exist (which is contrary to the hypothesis).
• Necessarily because his nature involves necessary existence. Q.E.D.

Corollary: God can bring about every thing that we clearly perceive, just as we perceive it.

Proof: All this follows clearly from the preceding proposition. For there God’s existence was proved from the fact that there must exist someone in whom are all the perfections of which there is an idea in us.

There is in us the idea of a power so great that by him alone in whom it resides there can be made the sky, the earth, and all the other things that are understood by me as possible. Therefore, along with God’s existence, all these things, too, are proved of him.