To repeat these four points in another form—the intuition of an Absolute Reason is (_a_) the necessary presupposition of all other knowledge, so that we cannot know anything else to exist except by assuming first of all that God exists; (_b_) the necessary basis of all logical thought, so that we cannot put confidence in any one of our reasoning processes except by taking for granted that a thinking Deity has constructed our minds with reference to the universe and to truth; (_c_) the necessary implication of our primitive belief in design, so that we can assume all things to exist for a purpose, only by making the prior assumption that a purposing God exists—can regard the universe as a thought, only by postulating the existence of an absolute Thinker; and (_d_) the necessary foundation of our conviction of moral obligation, so that we can believe in the universal authority of right, only by assuming that there exists a God of righteousness who reveals his will both in the individual conscience and in the moral universe at large. We cannot _prove_ that God is; but we can show that, in order to show the existence of any knowledge, thought, reason, conscience, in man, man must _assume_ that God is. As Jacobi said of the beautiful: “Es kann gewiesen aber nicht bewiesen werden”—it can be shown, but not proved. Bowne, Metaphysics, 472—“Our objective knowledge of the finite must rest upon ethical trust in the infinite”; 480—“Theism is the absolute postulate of all knowledge, science and philosophy”; “God is the most certain fact of objective knowledge.” Ladd, Bib. Sac., Oct. 1877:611-616—“Cogito, ergo Deus est. We are obliged to postulate a not-ourselves which makes for rationality, as well as for righteousness.” W. T. Harris: “Even natural science is impossible, where philosophy has not yet taught that reason made the world, and that nature is a revelation of the rational.” Whately, Logic, 270; New Englander, Oct. 1871, art. on Grounds of Confidence in Inductive Reasoning; Bib. Sac., 7:415-425; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:197; Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, ch. “Zweck”; Ulrici, Gott und die Natur, 540-626; Lachelier, Du Fondement de l’Induction, 78. _Per contra_, see Janet, Final Causes, 174, note, and 457-464, who holds final cause to be, not an intuition, but the result of applying the principle of causality to cases which mechanical laws alone will not explain.