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Itinerarium Mentis in Deum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Extract

Prefatory. The Logic of Theism.–Our world, the thing or complex of things, which is continuous and co-ordinate with our present perception, is self-transcendent. The proof is from observation, from our reactions, which are often more sensitive than our direct observations, from the testimony of philosophers, expert psychologists, and poets (cited in the text).

To say that our world is self-transcendent is to say that it presents itself to our minds as indigent of some sort of supplement or complement having some sort of ontological status which it implies in some capacity.

The problem of the Logic of Theism is the problem of determining, assigning a definite value to, these “somes.” In other words, the proof of God is the proof that what “our world implies” when it is made determinate corresponds with the received conception of God in such a way as to justify the substitution of the name God for the indication “what our world implies.”

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1934

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References

page 184 note 1 Deduction is a sub-form of eduction, a way of effecting eductions.

page 185 note 1 Logic, vol. ii, p. 3.

page 185 note 2 Science and the Modern World (Popular Edition), pp. 104, 108.

page 185 note 3 Logic of Hegel.

page 185 note 4 Studies in Philosophy and Psychology, pp. 309, 310, 373. See also p. 256, and Analytic Psychology, vol. i. p. 95 (Implicit and Schematic Apprehension).

page 186 note 1 This ultimate specification by presentations gives the true and acceptable sense of the anti-Platonist slogan, “Nothing is in the intellect which was not previously in the senses.”

page 186 note 2 Everlasting Man, Part I, chap. iv.

page 188 note 1 Hound of Heaven.

page 188 note 2 Something like the argument I am here attempting is to be found stated in a masterly way in The Natural and the Supernatural, by John Oman. I refer in particular to pp, 134, 136, 138, 169. See also the whole of chap. ix, on “The Individual and Individuality.”

page 190 note 1 This is specially emphasized in S. Thomas D'Aquin, by Sestillanges, Père O.P., by which I have been much influenced, partly by way of suggestion, partly by way of reaction (see vol. i, pp. 142, 162, 182, 189, 275).Google Scholar

page 191 note 1 It is evident from these antitheses that Spearman's third neogenetic principle, the Eduction of Correlates, was thoroughly familiar to St. Bonaventure.

page 192 note 1 It is, says my authority, “... not as having existed in itself, that even the immemorial past course of the world can be represented as real... a similar interpretation has to be given to all propositions which assert the present reality of that which has never been actually experienced” (Commentary, p. 503). The passages from Kant which are quoted in support are from the Antimony of Pure Reason, sec. vi (Smith's, Kemp translation of the Critique of Pure Reason, p. 442, Kant, , A 496, B 524Google Scholar).

page 193 note 1 Our awareness of the conditioned as being conditioned presupposes, over and above the categories, an antecedent awareness of Ideal standards; and to that latter more fundamental form of consciousness all our criteria of truth and reality are ultimately due” (Commentary, p. 416). I wish to reiterate that I do not advance this as a substantive criticism of Kant. I am not competent. But I have as a convenient device presented my ideas in the form of a criticism which, as a criticism, may or may not hit the mark. My main point is that if we are to respect reason at all we must go all the way with it, and must let it and it alone prescribe its limits. Either we must surrender ourselves unreservedly to the implication of the primary object and take what it gives to us as the standard and not as the subject of judgment, or else we must deny it from the beginning, and then, except as a result of inconsequence, we shall have no available beginning to deny it from.

page 193 note 1 Two criticisms of Bradley's Appearance and Reality show what a difficulty he had in dealing with Appearances which he was not willing to substantiate into Creatures. Professor Pringle-Pattison in an early review illustrated Bradley's treatment of Appearances by quoting from Tacitus, “they make a solitude and call it peace.” Mr. Schiller gave one of his anti-absolutist gibes the title, “On preserving Appearances.”