in his thought. This is, in fact, merely the subjective element in the notion. We find it to be imperfect on account of the standard applied to it, because this standard is the concrete man. It might be said that we declare the Notion to be nothing more than a notion, and what is perceived by the senses to be reality, and assert that reality means what we see, feel, or perceive in sensation. This might possibly be maintained, and there are many who do maintain this, and who recognise nothing as reality unless what is felt or tasted; only it is not conceivable that men should fall so low as to ascribe reality only to what is perceived by the senses, and not to what is spiritual. It is the concrete total subjectivity of man which is floating before the mind, and which is taken as the standard, measured by which the grasping of things in the Notion is nothing more than a forming of notions or conceptions.
If, accordingly, we compare the two views—that of Anselm, and that which belongs to the present time—we see that what they have in common is that both make presuppositions. Anselm presupposes indeterminate perfection, the modern view the concrete subjectivity of men in general. As compared with that perfection, and, on the other hand, as compared with that empirical and concrete subjectivity, the Notion appears to be something one-sided and unsatisfying. In Anselm’s view, the characteristic of perfection really means, too, that it is the unity of the Notion and reality. With Descartes and Spinoza, too, God is the First, the absolute unity of thought and Being, cogito, ergo sum, the absolute Substance; and this is also the view of Leibnitz. What we thus have on one side is a presupposition, which is in reality something concrete, the unity of subject and object, and judged by this the Notion seems to be defective. According to the modern view, we must hold to the thought that the Notion is merely the Notion, and does not correspond to the concrete. Anselm, on the
