[Footnote: "as what they represent of their object has more
perfection."--FRENCH.] For there is no difference between this and
the case of a person who has the idea of a machine, in the
construction of which great skill is displayed, in which
circumstances we have a right to inquire how he came by this idea,
whether, for example, he somewhere saw such a machine constructed by
another, or whether he was so accurately taught the mechanical
sciences, or is endowed with such force of genius, that he was able
of himself to invent it, without having elsewhere seen anything like
it; for all the ingenuity which is contained in the idea objectively
only, or as it were in a picture, must exist at least in its first
and chief cause, whatever that may be, not only objectively or
representatively, but in truth formally or eminently.
XVIII. That the existence of God may be again inferred from the
above.
Thus, because we discover in our minds the idea of God, or of an
all-perfect Being, we have a right to inquire into the source whence
we derive it; and we will discover that the perfections it
represents are so immense as to render it quite certain that we
could only derive it from an all-perfect Being; that is, from a God
really existing.
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