GOD variable, and contingent items in the world of experience to provide the necessary stable grounding for our fragile and Xeeting cosmos However, Kant has a further criticism of the cosmological argument which is independent of his claim that it is the ontological argument in disguise All forms of the cosmological argument seek to show that a series of contingent causes, however prolonged, can be completed only by a necessary cause But if we ask whether the necessary cause is, or is not, part of the chain of causes, we are faced with a dilemma If it is part of the chain, then we can ask, in its case as in others, why it exists But we cannot imagine a supreme being saying to itself ‘I am from eternity to eternity, and outside me there is nothing save what is through my will, but whence then am I?’ (A, 613) On the other hand, if the necessary being is not part of the chain of causation, how can it account for the links in the chain that end with the existence of myself ? The argument for God’s existence that Kant treats most gently is the physico-theological proof, which he says must always be mentioned with respect and which he himself states with great eloquence: This world presents to us such an immeasurable spectacle of variety, order, purpose and beauty, shown alike in its inWnite extent and in the unlimited divisibility of its parts, that even with such knowledge as our weak understanding can acquire we encounter so many marvels immeasurably great that all speech loses its force, all numbers their power to measure, our thoughts lose all precision, and our judgement of the whole dissolves into an amazement whose very silence speaks with eloquence Everywhere we see a chain of eVects and causes, of ends and means, regularity in coming into and going out of existence Nothing has of itself come into the condition into which we Wnd it, but always points behind itself to something else as its cause; and this in its turn obliges us to make the same inquiry The whole universe would thus sink into the abyss of nothingness unless over and above this inWnite chain of contingencies one assumed something to support it—something that is original and independently selfsubsistent, and which not only caused the origin of the universe but also secures its continuance (A, 622) The argument thus presented seems to combine several of the traditional proofs of God’s existence—the argument to a Wrst cause, for instance, as well as the argument from design There is no doubt that everywhere in the world we Wnd signs of order, in accordance with a determinate purpose, apparently carried out with great wisdom Since this order is alien to the 326