d starting-point for all
thought. For Plato reality and rationality meant one and the same thing,
so that the ultimate reality was the highest principle of rationality,
which he conceived to be the idea of the good. In the case of Aristotle
the ideal of rationality was conceived to determine the course of the
cosmical evolution as its immanent final cause. But in itself it was
beyond the world, or transcendent. For Plato perfection itself is
reality, whereas for Aristotle perfection determines the hierarchical
order of natural substances. The latter theory, more suitable to the
uses of Christianity, because it distinguished between God and the
world, was incorporated into the great school systems. But both theories
contain the essence of the ontological proof of God. In thought one
seeks the perfect truth, and posits it as at once the culmination of
insight and the meaning of life. The ideal of God is therefore a
necessary idea, because implied in all the effort of thought as the
object capable of finally satisfying it. St. Anselm adds little to the
force of this argument, and does much to obscure its real significance.

In stating the ontological argument the term perfection has been
expressly emphasized, because it may be taken to embrace both truth and
goodness. Owing to a habit of thought, due in the main to Plato, it was
long customary to regard degrees of truth and goodness as
interchangeable, and as equivalent to degrees of reality. The _ens
realissimum_ was in its completeness the highest object both of the
faculty of cognition and of the moral will. But even in the scholastic
period these two different aspects of the ideal were clearly recognized,
and led to sharply divergent tendencies. More recently they have been
divided and embodied in separate arguments. _The epistemological_
argument _defines God in terms of that absolute truth which is referred
to in every judgment_. Under the influence of idealism this absolute
truth has taken the form of a universal mind, or all-embracing standard
experience, called more briefly the absolute. The _ethical_ argument, on
the other hand, conceives God as _the perfect goodness implied in the
moral struggle, or the power through which goodness is made to triumph
in the universe_ to the justification of moral faith. While the former
of these arguments identifies God with being, the latter defines God in
terms of the intent or outcome of being. Thus, while the epistemological