ABSTRACT
Descartes informed Burman that the intuition of the self as existing implicitly contains a logically prior intuition of God as existing. The world of aspirations is more intimate to human personality than the world of facts through which it makes its way; and this permanent truth is enshrined in the approach to reality through God. Thus the idea of God, whether true or false, arises naturally from reflexion on the human condition, and is wide enough to gather up any rational view of perfection. In this sense, Descartes could fairly claim that 'all metaphysicians agree unanimously on the description they give of the attributes of God'. The objection appears plausible, for the history of religions shows that conceptions of God progressively embody the attributes to which men have from time to time assigned the greatest value.
