between man and that massive drift of
things which determines his destiny. Of the two terms of this relation,
God signifies the latter, while freedom and immortality are prerogatives
which religion bestows upon the former. Man, viewed from the stand-point
of religion as an object of special interest to the universe, is said to
have a soul; and by virtue of this soul he is said to be free and
immortal, when thought of as having a life in certain senses independent
of its immediate natural environment. The attempt to make this faith
theoretically intelligible has led to the philosophical disciplines
known as _theology_ and _psychology_.[199:14]

[Sidenote: Theology Deals with the Nature and Proof of God.]

Sect. 87. _Theology_, as a branch of philosophy, deals with _the proof
and the nature of God_. Since "God" is not primarily a theoretical
conception, the proof of God is not properly a philosophical problem.
Historically, this task has been assumed as a legacy from Christian
apologetics; and it has involved, at any rate so far as European
philosophy is concerned, the definition of ultimate being in such
spiritual terms as make possible the relation with man postulated in
Christianity. For this it has been regarded as sufficient to ascribe to
the world an underlying unity capable of bearing the predicates of
perfection, omnipotence, and omniscience. Each proof of God has defined
him pre-eminently in terms of some one of these his attributes.

[Sidenote: The Ontological Proof of God.]

Sect. 88. The _ontological_ proof of God held the foremost place in
philosophy's contribution to Christianity up to the eighteenth century.
This proof _infers the existence from the ideal_ of God, and so
approaches the nature of God through the attribute of perfection. It
owes the form in which it was accepted in the Middle Ages and
Renaissance to St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury at the close of the
eleventh century. He argued from the idea of a most perfect being to its
existence, on the ground that non-existence, or existence only in idea,
would contradict its perfection. It is evident that the force of this
argument depends upon the necessity of the idea of God. The argument was
accepted in Scholastic Philosophy[201:15] largely because of the virtual
acceptance of this necessity. Mediaeval thought was under the dominance
of the philosophical ideas of Plato and Aristotle, and through them
rationalism had come to be the unquestione