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This argument infers the existence of God from the abstract and necessary ideas of the human mind. It has three forms:

1. That of Samuel Clarke. Space and time are attributes of substance or being. But space and time are respectively infinite and eternal. There must therefore be an infinite and eternal substance or Being to whom these attributes belong.

Gillespie states the argument somewhat differently. Space and time are modes of existence. But space and time are respectively infinite and eternal. There must therefore be an infinite and eternal Being who subsists in these modes. But we reply:

Space and time are neither attributes of substance nor modes of existence. The argument, if valid, would prove that God is not mind but matter, for that could not be mind, but only matter, of which space and time were either attributes or modes.

The Ontological Argument is frequently called the a priori argument, that is, the argument from that which is logically prior, or earlier than experience, viz., our intuitive ideas. All the forms of the Ontological Argument are in this sense a priori. Space and time are a priori ideas. See Samuel Clarke, Works, 2:521; Gillespie, Necessary Existence of God. Per contra, see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 364: Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 226—“To begin, as Clarke did, with the proposition that ‘something has existed from eternity,’ is virtually to propose an argument after having assumed what is to be proved. Gillespie's form of the a priori argument, starting with the proposition ‘infinity of extension is necessarily existing,’ is liable to the same objection, with the additional disadvantage of attributing a property of matter to the Deity.”

H. B. Smith says that Brougham misrepresented Clarke: “Clarke's argument is in his sixth proposition, and supposes the existence proved in what goes before. He aims here to establish the infinitude and omnipresence of this First Being. He does not prove existence from immensity.” But we reply, neither can he prove the infinity of God from the immensity of space. Space and time are neither substances nor attributes, but are rather relations; see Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 331–335; Cocker, Theistic Conception of the World, 66–96. The doctrine that space and time are attributes or modes of God's existence tends to materialistic pantheism like that of Spinoza, who held that “the one and simple substance” (substantia una et unica) is known to us through the two attributes of thought and extension; mind = God in the mode of thought; matter = God in the mode of extension. Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith, 127, says well that an extended God is a material God; “space and time are attributes neither of matter nor mind”; “we must carry the moral idea into the natural world, not the natural idea into the moral world.” See also, Blunt, Dictionary Doct. and Hist. Theol., 740; Porter, Human Intellect, 567. H. M. Stanley, on Space and Science, in Philos. Rev., Nov. 1898:615—“Space is not full of things, but things are spaceful. … Space is a form of dynamic appearance.” Prof. C. A. Strong: “The world composed of consciousness and other existences is not in space, though it may be in something of which space is the symbol.”

2. That of Descartes. We have the idea of an infinite and perfect Being. This idea cannot be derived from imperfect and finite things. There must therefore be an infinite and perfect Being who is its cause.

But we reply that this argument confounds the idea of the infinite with an infinite idea. Man's idea of the infinite is not infinite but finite, and from a finite effect we cannot argue an infinite cause.

This form of the Ontological Argument, while it is a priori, as based upon a necessary idea of the human mind, is, unlike the other forms of the same argument, a posteriori, as arguing from this idea, as an effect, to the existence of a Being who is its cause. A posteriori argument = from that which is later to that which is earlier, that is, from effect to cause. The Cosmological, Teleological, and Anthropological Arguments are arguments a posteriori. Of this sort is the argument of Descartes; see Descartes, Meditation 3: “Hæc idea quæ in nobis est requirit Deum pro causa; Deusque proinde existit.” The idea in men's minds is the impression of the workman's name stamped indelibly on his work—the shadow cast upon the human soul by that unseen One of whose being and presence it dimly informs us. Blunt, Dict. of Theol., 739; Saisset, Pantheism, 1:54—“Descartes sets out from a fact of consciousness, while Anselm sets out from an abstract conception”; “Descartes's argument might be considered a branch of the Anthropological or Moral Argument, but for the fact that this last proceeds from man's constitution rather than from his abstract ideas.” See Bib. Sac., 1849:637.

3. That of Anselm. We have the idea of an absolutely perfect Being. But existence is an attribute of perfection. An absolutely perfect Being must therefore exist.

But we reply that this argument confounds ideal existence with real existence. Our ideas are not the measure of external reality.

Anselm, Proslogion, 2—“Id, quo majus cogitari nequit, non potest esse in intellectu solo.” See translation of the Proslogion, in Bib. Sac., 1851:529, 699; Kant, Critique, 368. The arguments of Descartes and Anselm, with Kant's reply, are given in their original form by Harris, in Journ. Spec. Philos., 15:420–428. The major premise here is not that all perfect ideas imply the existence of the object which they represent, for then, as Kant objects, I might argue from my perfect idea of a $100 bill that I actually possessed the same, which would be far from the fact. So I have a perfect idea of a perfectly evil being, of a centaur, of nothing—but it does not follow that the evil being, that the centaur, that nothing, exists. The argument is rather from the idea of absolute and perfect Being—of “that, no greater than which can be conceived.” There can be but one such being, and there can be but one such idea.

Yet, even thus understood, we cannot argue from the idea to the actual existence of such a being. Case, Physical Realism, 173—“God is not an idea, and consequently cannot be inferred from mere ideas.” Bowne, Philos. Theism, 43—The Ontological Argument “only points out that the idea of the perfect must include the idea of existence; but there is nothing to show that the self-consistent idea represents an objective reality.”I can imagine the Sea-serpent, the Jinn of the Thousand and One Nights, “The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders.” The winged horse of Uhland possessed every possible virtue, and only one fault—it was dead. If every perfect idea implied the reality of its object, there might be horses with ten legs, and trees with roots in the air.

“Anselm's argument implies,” says Fisher, in Journ. Christ. Philos., Jan. 1883:114, “that existence in re is a constituent of the concept. It would conclude the existence of a being from the definition of a word. This inference is justified only on the basis of philosophical realism.” Dove, Logic of the Christ. Faith, 141—“The Ontological Argument is the algebraic formula of the universe, which leads to a valid conclusion with regard to real existence, only when we fill it in with objects with which we become acquainted in the arguments a posteriori.” See also Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:331, Dogm. Theol., 1:221–241, and in Presb. Rev., April, 1884:212–227 (favoring the argument); Fisher, Essays, 574; Thompson, Christian Theism, 171; H. B. Smith, Introd. to Christ. Theol., 122; Pfleiderer, Die Religion, 1:181–187; Studien und Kritiken, 1875:611–655.

Dorner, in his Glaubenslehre, 1:197, gives us the best statement of the Ontological Argument: “Reason thinks of God as existing. Reason would not be reason, if it did not think of God as existing. Reason only is, upon the assumption that God is.” But this is evidently not argument, but only vivid statement of the necessary assumption of the existence of an absolute Reason which conditions and gives validity to ours.

Although this last must be considered the most perfect form of the Ontological Argument, it is evident that it conducts us only to an ideal conclusion, not to real existence. In common with the two preceding forms of the argument, moreover, it tacitly assumes, as already existing in the human mind, that very knowledge of God's existence which it would derive from logical demonstration. It has value, therefore, simply as showing what God must be, if he exists at all.

But the existence of a Being indefinitely great, a personal Cause, Contriver and Lawgiver, has been proved by the preceding arguments; for the law of parsimony requires us to apply the conclusions of the first three arguments to one Being, and not to many. To this one Being we may now ascribe the infinity and perfection, the idea of which lies at the basis of the Ontological Argument—ascribe them, not because they are demonstrably his, but because our mental constitution will not allow us to think otherwise. Thus clothing him with all perfections which the human mind can conceive, and these in illimitable fullness, we have one whom we may justly call God.

McCosh, Div. Govt., 12, note—“It is at this place, if we do not mistake, that the idea of the Infinite comes in. The capacity of the human mind to form such an idea, or rather its intuitive belief in an Infinite of which it feels that it cannot form an adequate conception, may be no proof (as Kant maintains) of the existence of an infinite Being; but it is, we are convinced, the means by which the mind is enabled to invest the Deity, shown on other grounds to exist, with the attributes of infinity, i.e., to look on his being, power, goodness, and all his perfections, as infinite.” Even Flint, Theism, 68, who holds that we reach the existence of God by inference, speaks of “necessary conditions of thought and feeling, and ineradicable aspirations, which force on us ideas of absolute existence, infinity, and perfection, and will neither permit us to deny these perfections to God, nor to ascribe them to any other being.” Belief in God is not the conclusion of a demonstration, but the solution of a problem. Calderwood, Moral Philosophy, 226—“Either the whole question is assumed in starting, or the Infinite is not reached in concluding.”

Clarke, Christian Theology, 97–114, divides his proof into two parts: I. Evidence of the existence of God from the intellectual starting-point: The discovery of Mind in the universe is made, 1. through the intelligibleness of the universe to us; 2. through the idea of cause; 3. through the presence of ends in the universe. II. Evidence of the existence of God from the religious starting-point: The discovery of the good God is made, 1. through the religious nature of man; 2. through the great dilemma—God the best, or the worst; 3. through the spiritual experience of men, especially in Christianity. So far as Dr. Clarke's proof is intended to be a statement, not of a primitive belief, but of a logical process, we must hold it to be equally defective with the three forms of proof which we have seen to furnish some corroborative evidence of God's existence. Dr. Clarke therefore does well to add: “Religion was not produced by proof of God's existence, and will not be destroyed by its insufficiency to some minds. Religion existed before argument; in fact, it is the preciousness of religion that leads to the seeking for all possible confirmations of the reality of God.”

The three forms of proof already mentioned—the Cosmological, the Teleological, and the Anthropological Arguments—may be likened to the three arches of a bridge over a wide and rushing river. The bridge has only two defects, but these defects are very serious. The first is that one cannot get on to the bridge; the end toward the hither bank is wholly lacking; the bridge of logical argument cannot be entered upon except by assuming the validity of logical processes; this assumption takes for granted at the outset the existence of a God who has made our faculties to act correctly; we get on to the bridge, not by logical process, but only by a leap of intuition, and by assuming at the beginning the very thing which we set out to prove. The second defect of the so-called bridge of argument is that when one has once gotten on, he can never get off. The connection with the further bank is also lacking. All the premises from which we argue being finite, we are warranted in drawing only a finite conclusion. Argument cannot reach the Infinite, and only an infinite Being is worthy to be called God. We can get off from our logical bridge, not by logical process, but only by another and final leap of intuition, and by once more assuming the existence of the infinite Being whom we had so vainly sought to reach by mere argument. The process seems to be referred to in Job 11:7—“Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?”

As a logical process this is indeed defective, since all logic as well as all observation depends for its validity upon the presupposed existence of God, and since this particular process, even granting the validity of logic in general, does not warrant the conclusion that God exists, except upon a second assumption that our abstract ideas of infinity and perfection are to be applied to the Being to whom argument has actually conducted us.

But although both ends of the logical bridge are confessedly wanting, the process may serve and does serve a more useful purpose than that of mere demonstration, namely, that of awakening, explicating, and confirming a conviction which, though the most fundamental of all, may yet have been partially slumbering for lack of thought.

Morell, Philos. Fragments, 177, 179—“We can, in fact, no more prove the existence of a God by a logical argument, than we can prove the existence of an external world; but none the less may we obtain as strong a practical conviction of the one, as the other.” “We arrive at a scientific belief in the existence of God just as we do at any other possible human truth. We assume it, as a hypothesis absolutely necessary to account for the phenomena of the universe; and then evidences from every quarter begin to converge upon it, until, in process of time, the common sense of mankind, cultivated and enlightened by ever accumulating knowledge, pronounces upon the validity of the hypothesis with a voice scarcely less decided and universal than it does in the case of our highest scientific convictions.”

Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 572—“What then is the purport and force of the several arguments for the existence of God? We reply that these proofs are the different modes in which faith expresses itself and seeks confirmation. In them faith, or the object of faith, is more exactly conceived and defined, and in them is found a corroboration, not arbitrary but substantial and valuable, of that faith which springs from the soul itself. Such proofs, therefore, are neither on the one hand sufficient to create and sustain faith, nor are they on the other hand to be set aside as of no value.”A. J. Barrett: “The arguments are not so much a bridge in themselves, as they are guys, to hold firm the great suspension-bridge of intuition, by which we pass the gulf from man to God. Or, while they are not a ladder by which we may reach heaven, they are the Ossa on Pelion, from whose combined height we may descry heaven.”

Anselm: “Negligentia mihi videtur, si postquam confirmati sumus in fide non studemus quod credimus intelligere.” Bradley, Appearance and Reality: “Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.” Illingworth, Div. and Hum. Personality, lect. III—“Belief in a personal God is an instinctive judgment, progressively justified by reason.”Knight, Essays in Philosophy, 241—The arguments are “historical memorials of the efforts of the human race to vindicate to itself the existence of a reality of which it is conscious, but which it cannot perfectly define.” H. Fielding, The Hearts of Men, 313—“Creeds are the grammar of religion. They are to religion what grammar is to speech. Words are the expression of our wants; grammar is the theory formed afterwards. Speech never proceeded from grammar, but the reverse. As speech progresses and changes from unknown causes, grammar must follow.” Pascal: “The heart has reasons of its own which the reason does not know.” Frances Power Cobbe: “Intuitions are God's tuitions.” On the whole subject, see Cudworth, Intel. System, 3:42; Calderwood, Philos. of Infinite, 150 sq.; Curtis, Human Element in Inspiration, 242; Peabody, in Andover Rev., July, 1884; Hahn, History of Arguments for Existence of God; Lotze, Philos. of Religion, 8–34; Am. Jour. Theol., Jan. 1906:53–71.

Hegel, in his Logic, page 3, speaking of the disposition to regard the proofs of God's existence as the only means of producing faith in God, says: “Such a doctrine would find its parallel, if we said that eating was impossible before we had acquired a knowledge of the chemical, botanical and zoölogical qualities of our food; and that we must delay digestion till we had finished the study of anatomy and physiology.” It is a mistake to suppose that there can be no religious life without a correct theory of life. Must I refuse to drink water or to breathe air, until I can manufacture both for myself? Some things are given to us. Among these things are “grace and truth” (John 1:17; cf. 9). But there are ever those who are willing to take nothing as a free gift, and who insist on working out all knowledge, as well as all salvation, by processes of their own. Pelagianism, with its denial of the doctrines of grace, is but the further development of a rationalism which refuses to accept primitive truths unless these can be logically demonstrated. Since the existence of the soul, of the world, and of God cannot be proved in this way, rationalism is led to curtail, or to misinterpret, the deliverances of consciousness, and hence result certain systems now to be mentioned.