Thus, among all nations, through the darkest polytheism glimmer some
faint sparks of monotheism, to which these idolaters have been led,
not from reflection and profound thought, but by the study and natural
progress of the common understanding.
There are only three modes of proving the existence of a Deity, on
the grounds of speculative reason.
All the paths conducting to this end begin either from determinate
experience and the peculiar constitution of the world of sense, and
rise, according to the laws of causality, from it to the highest cause
existing apart from the world- or from a purely indeterminate
experience, that is, some empirical existence- or abstraction is
made of all experience, and the existence of a supreme cause is
concluded from a priori conceptions alone. The first is the
physicotheological argument, the second the cosmological, the third
the ontological. More there are not, and more there cannot be.
I shall show it is as unsuccessful on the one path- the empirical-
as on the other- the transcendental- and that it stretches its wings
in vain, to soar beyond the world of sense by the mere might of
speculative thought.
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