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A NEGLECTED ARGUMENT FOR THE REALITY OF GOD
"'God,' in what sense?" ask ye? When so 'capitalized' (as we Americans say) it is, throughout this paper, the definable proper noun, i.e. Ens necessarium, whether Real or not: He by Whom the three Universes of Experience are, supposedly, getting, directly or indirectly, created from Nothing—soberly, from less than a blank. Some dozen words shall herein be capitalized when used, not as vernacular, but as terms defined. Thus, by 'idea' I mean the substance of any actual unitary thought and fancy; but 'Idea,'—nearer Plato's idea of ἰδέα or εἰδος,—denotes that whose being consists in its capacity
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for being fully represented, regardless of our ability to represent it. It is what is common to full representamina of it.
"Why avoid saying 'the existence' of God?" Merely for economy sake. Ideas are so many, words so few in philosophy that two words for one idea is wicked waste. When we sighingly say, "The Campanile of St. Mark's no longer 'exists,'" we mean, reacts against brute forces, so as to get photographed on eye-retinas, etc., though it still acts on our sense of beauty. Why, then, give 'exist' two senses between which we so much need to discriminate? Especially, with the word 'Real'
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invented by the active XIIIth century mind on purpose to signify that which has properties, i.e. characters sufficient to identify it, whether any single man or group of men in any way attribute them to it, or no. It has 'real properties,' or distinctive characters that can no more be purloined from it than lands and houses from their owner,—things that had long been called propria realia. The substance of a dream is not Real, because it was such as it was merely in that the dreamer so dreamed it; but the fact of the dream, because if it was dreamed at all, it was as
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it was, whether the dreamer accurately remember its substance,—as he almost never does,—or no, is real.
By 'Experience,' I mean any actually conscious effect, brutally produced that contributes to the formation or preservation of a habit, self-controlled and satisfying, yet destructible by no positive exercise of intellectual vigor. Thus, if a little child inserts its finger into a flame, it will Experience a feeling which will contribute to the determination of a disposition to keep all its fingers, and toes too, out of flames. This will be a self-controlled habit, since the child, if
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dissatisfied with the habit, could easily repeat the experiment, but is too well satisfied to be able to do so. I call a compulsion 'Brute,' if, and only if, its immediate efficacy nowise consists in conformity to any law or reason. Thus the acceleration downwards of the motion of a single falling body at any instant (if there be such a thing as an instantaneous acceleration,) does not consist in the behaviour of any other body, nor even of the one body at any other time, and so is in itself independent of any general rule, and is Brute. It may be compared