This process of proving that God is may be called the ideal process, or the argument from universal and necessary ideas intuitively given. It is not _a priori_, because the ideal is held by intuition; nor is it an argument from innate ideas, as Descartes held; nor--since really objective, and present to the mind--is it an argument from the primitive beliefs or constituent principles of human nature, as Dr. Reid and the Scottish school maintained, and which is only another form of the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas; or an argument drawn from our own _fonds_, as Leibnitz imagined, or from the _a priori_ 9 cognitions or necessary forms of the intellect, as Kant held, and which is only the doctrine of the Scottish school of Reid and Stewart differently stated; but from principles or data really presented in intuition, and along with the empirical intuition of things. It places, therefore, the being of God on as firm a basis and renders it as certain to the understanding as our own existence, or as any fact whatever of which the human mind has cognizance; indeed, renders it absolutely certain and undeniable. But while we say this, and while we maintain that the ideal intuition is given along with the empirical intuition, with which our author confounds it, and from which philosophy or natural theology disengages it, we by no means believe that the race is indebted to this ideal or metaphysical process--which is too difficult not only for the Positivists, but for their great opponent, Dr. McCosh--for the origin of their belief in God. All ages and nations, even the most barbarous and savage tribes, have some sort of belief in God, some religious notions which imply his existence; and, hovering above the various Eastern and Western mythologies, we find the belief in one God or the divine unity, though neglected or rejected for the worship of inferior gods or demons, or the elements--that is, the worship of creatures, which is idolatry, since worshipped as God. The ignorant savage, but a grade above the beasts, has never risen to the conception of God or of the Great Spirit from the contemplation of nature, nor has he attained to religious conceptions by a law of his nature or by instinct, as the bee constructs its cell or the beaver its dam.