Thus, while everything else stands in need of a cause for its existence, the _immensitas_ implied in the conception of the Deity--who is introduced to us upon the ladder of the Cosmological Proof--suffices in lieu of a cause or, as the proof itself expresses it: _in conceptu entis summe perfecti existentia necessaria continetur_. This, then, is the sleight-of-hand trick, for the sake of which the confusion, familiar even to Aristotle, of the two principal meanings of the principle of sufficient reason, has been used directly _in majorem Dei gloriam_. Considered by daylight, however, and without prejudice, this famous Ontological Proof is really a charming joke. On some occasion or other, some one excogitates a conception, composed out of all sorts of predicates, among which however he takes care to include the predicate actuality or existence, either openly stated or wrapped up for decency's sake in some other predicate, such as _perfectio_, _immensitas_, or something of the kind. Now, it is well known,--that, from a given conception, those predicates which are essential to it--_i.e._, without which it cannot be thought--and likewise the predicates which are essential to those predicates themselves, may be extracted by means of purely logical analyses, and consequently have _logical_ truth: that is, they have their reason of knowledge in the given conception. Accordingly the predicate reality or existence is now extracted from this arbitrarily thought conception, and an object corresponding to it is forthwith presumed to have real existence independently of the conception. "Wär' der Gedank' nicht so verwünscht gescheut, Man wär' versucht ihn herzlich dumm zu nennen."[26] [26] "Were not the thought so cursedly acute, One might be tempted to declare it silly." SCHILLER, "Wallenstein-Trilogie. Piccolomini," Act ii. Sc. 7.