ss were printed at random, the result could not possibly be
the composition of _Don Quixote_. Something would be composed which
would be as good as _Don Quixote_ for those who would have to be content
with it and would grow in it and would form part of it.

In effect, this traditional supposed proof of God's existence resolves
itself fundamentally into hypostatizing or substantivating the
explanation or reason of a phenomenon; it amounts to saying that
Mechanics is the cause of movement, Biology of life, Philology of
language, Chemistry of bodies, by simply adding the capital letter to
the science and converting it into a force distinct from the phenomena
from which we derive it and distinct from our mind which effects the
derivation. But the God who is the result of this process, a God who is
nothing but reason hypostatized and projected towards the infinite,
cannot possibly be felt as something living and real, nor yet be
conceived of save as a mere idea which will die with us.

The question arises, on the other hand, whether a thing the idea of
which has been conceived but which has no real existence, does not exist
because God wills that it should not exist, or whether God does not will
it to exist because, in fact, it does not exist; and, with regard to the
impossible, whether a thing is impossible because God wills it so, or
whether God wills it so because, in itself and by the very fact of its
own inherent absurdity, it is impossible. God has to submit to the
logical law of contradiction, and He cannot, according to the
theologians, cause two and two to make either more or less than four.
Either the law of necessity is above Him or He Himself is the law of
necessity. And in the moral order the question arises whether falsehood,
or homicide, or adultery, are wrong because He has so decreed it, or
whether He has so decreed it because they are wrong. If the former, then
God is a capricious and unreasonable God, who decrees one law when He
might equally well have decreed another, or, if the latter, He obeys an
intrinsic nature and essence which exists in things themselves
independently of Him--that is to say, independently of His sovereign
will; and if this is the case, if He obeys the innate reason of things,
this reason, if we could but know it, would suffice us without any
further need of God, and since we do not know it, God explains nothing.
This reason would be above God. Neither is it of any avail to say that