Cosmologia Generalis

PREFACE.

Pure chances are a ladder by which one ascends from this observable world to God. And although others before us have used the same, the argument is nevertheless only reduced to evidence through cosmological principles, so that it may defend the name of demonstration. Furthermore, cosmological principles have no less use in demonstrating the divine attributes. For since, to avoid the absurdity of pure chances in the existence of the world, we admit God, the author of the universe, we must conceive of Him in such a way that we may discover in His attributes the sufficient reason why this is the world of which cosmological principles speak. Therefore, if we are to attain certain knowledge of God, we are bound to build it upon cosmological principles. And for the sake of attaining this, we have recognized the necessity of General Cosmology and therefore have no hesitation in introducing it into philosophy. Moreover, it had to be placed before natural theology—which no one is ignorant of being a part of Metaphysics—since the latter takes from the former the principles of demonstration; it had to follow Ontology immediately, because it seeks its principles of demonstration from that alone. For just as those things which pertain to being considered in general are taught in Ontology, so those abstract predicates of being are applied in General Cosmology to the world in general. Cosmological notions are therefore no less abstract than ontological ones, and for that reason, transcendental Cosmology [is] a fitting