(_c_) Philosophers who deny the validity of all the arguments advanced by theists in proof of the existence of a transcendent Supreme Being, distinct from the world of direct human experience, endeavour to account in various ways for the intrinsic possibility of abstract essences. Agnostics either deny to these latter any reality whatsoever (16), or else declare the problem of their reality insoluble. Monists of the materialist type—who try to reduce all mind to matter and its mere mechanical energies (11)—treat the question in a still more inadequate and unsatisfactory manner; while the advocates of idealistic monism, like Hegel and his followers, refer us to the supposed Immanent Mind of the universe for an ultimate explanation of all intrinsic possibility. Certainly this must have its ultimate source in some mind; and it is not in referring us to an Eternal Mind that these philosophers err, but in their conception of the relation of this mind to the world of direct actual experience. It is not, however, with such theories we are concerned just now, but only with theories put forward by theists. And among these latter it is surprising to find some few(110) who maintain that the intrinsic possibility of abstract essences depends ultimately and exclusively on these essences themselves, irrespective of things actually experienced by the human mind, irrespective of the human mind itself, and irrespective of the Divine Mind and the Divine Nature.
As to this view, we have already seen (19) that if we abstract from all human minds, and from all actual things that can be directly experienced by such minds, we are face to face either with the alternative of absolute nothingness wherein the true and the false, the possible and the impossible, cease to have any intelligible meaning, or else with the alternative of a Supreme, Eternal, Necessary, Omniscient and Omnipotent Being, whose actual existence has been, or can be, inferred from the actual data of human experience. Now the theist, who admits the existence of such a Being, cannot fail to see that possible essences must have their primary ideal being in the Divine Intellect, and the ultimate source of their intrinsic possibility in the Divine Essence Itself. For, knowing that God can actualize intrinsically possible essences by the creative act, which is intelligent and free, he will understand that these essences have their ideal being in the Divine Intellect; that the Divine Intellect sees their intrinsic possibility by contemplating the Divine Essence as the Uncreated Prototype and Exemplar of all intrinsically possible things; and that these latter are intrinsically possible precisely because they are possible adumbrations or imitations of the Divine Nature.