as idea, then we find that what is merely subjective, and merely represented in the form of an idea, is defective, and not perfect; for that is the more perfect which is not merely represented as an idea, but also is, really is. Therefore, since God is what is most perfect, He is not idea merely, but, on the contrary, He is possessed of actuality or reality.
The later, broader, and more rational form which represents the development of this thought of Anselm asserts that the conception or Notion of God implies that He is the Substance of all realities, the most real Essence. But Being also is reality, therefore Being belongs to Him.
It has been urged against this that Being is no reality, that it does not belong to the reality of a notion. Reality in a notion or conception implies determinate content in a notion, but Being adds nothing to the notion or to the content of the notion. Kant has put it in the following plausible form: I form an idea of a hundred thalers; but the notion or conception, the determinateness of the content is the same whether I form an idea of them, or whether I actually possess them.
As against the first proposition that Being ought to follow from the Notion in general, it has been urged that Notion and Being are different from each other: the Notion thus exists for itself, while Being is different. Being must come to the Notion from the outside, from elsewhere. Being is not involved in the Notion. This can be put in a very plausible way by the aid of the hundred thalers.
In ordinary life an idea of a hundred thalers is called a notion or conception. That is not a notion at all in which you may have any kind of determination of content. It is certainly true that Being may not belong to an abstract sense-idea such as blue, or to any determinateness of the Understanding which happens to be in my mind; but then this ought not to be called a notion.
