reasoning amount to an annihilation of the Proof, and their correctness has come to be taken for granted. Kant tells us that the Being of God cannot be got out of the notion or conception of God, for Being is something different from the Notion; we distinguish between the two, they are mutually opposed, and thus the Notion cannot contain Being, which is something outside of it and beyond it. He says further, that Being is not in any sense reality, it is to God that all reality is to be attributed, consequently Being is not contained in the notion of God, and thus it does not stand for any specific content or determination of content, but, on the contrary, is pure Form. I may imagine I have a hundred thalers, or may actually possess them, but in either case the thalers are not altered, and consequently the content is always the same whether I have them or not. Kant thus understands by the content what constitutes the notion or conception, although the meaning attached to the latter is not what is usually implied in the Notion. We may certainly put it so, if by the Notion we understand the determination of the content, and make a distinction between the content and the form which contains the thought, and, on the other side, Being. In this way all content is referred to the Notion, and all that is left to the other side is simply the characteristic of Being. Put shortly, it amounts to saying that the Notion is not Being, but that the two are different. We cannot understand anything about God, or get any knowledge of Him; we can, it is true, form notions or conceptions about Him, but this by no means implies that there is anything actually corresponding to these notions.
As a matter of fact, we know that it is possible to build castles in the air, which, all the same, don’t exist. Kant thus appeals to popular ideas so far, and in this way he has, in the general judgment, annihilated the Ontological Proof, and has won great applause for himself.
Anselm of Canterbury, a thoroughly learned theologian,
