Chapter xiv. we were forced to deal with this in one of its bearings, and here we may attempt to form an estimate of its general truth. As an argument, it is a conclusion drawn from the presence of some thought to the reality of that which the thought contains. Now of course any one at a glance can see how futile this might be. If you identify reality with spatial or even temporal existence, and understand by thought the idea of some distinct finite object, nothing seems more evident than that the idea may be merely “in my head.” When, however, we turn from this to consider the general nature of error, then what seemed so evident becomes obscure and presents us with a puzzle. For what is “in my head” must, after all, be surely somewhere in the universe. And when an idea qualifies the universe, how can it be excluded from reality? The attempt to answer such a question leads to a distinction between reality and finite existence. And, upon this, the ontological proof may perhaps seem better worth examining.
Now a thought only “in my head,” or a bare idea separated from all relation to the real world, is a false abstraction. For we have seen that to hold a thought is, more or less vaguely, to refer it to Reality. And hence an idea, wholly un-referred, would be a self-contradiction. This general result at once bears upon the ontological proof. Evidently the proof must start with an idea referred to and qualifying Reality, and with Reality present also and determined by the content of the idea. And the principle of the argument is simply this, that, standing on one side of such a whole, you find yourself moved necessarily towards the other side. Mere thought, because incomplete, suggests logically the other element already implied in it; and that element is the Reality which appears in existence. On precisely the same principle, but beginning from the other end, the “Cosmological” proof may be
