This theory is generally ranked as the earliest appearance in European thought of the cosmological argument.
He supposes in metaphysics the same transcendence in forming cosmological, psychological, and ontological " ideals."
His investigation tends to show that in the course of tradition cosmological myths are transformed into eschatological dogmas.
The cumbrous mythology and cosmogony of Mithraism at last weakened its hold upon men's minds, and it disappeared during the 4th century before a victorious Catholicism, yet not until another faith, equally Iranian in its mythology mad cosmological beliefs, had taken its place.
Thus, according to him, in the first place reason forms a cosmological " ideal " of a multitude of simple units related; secondly, it forms a psychological " ideal " of a multitude of wills, or substance-generating activities, which communicate with one another by ideas so that will causes ideas in will, while together they constitute a collective will, and it goes on to form the moral ideal of humanity (das sittliche Menschheitsideal); and, thirdly, it forms an ontological " ideal " of God as ground of this moral " ideal," and therewith of all being as means to this end, and an " ideal " of God as world-will, of which the world is development, and in which individual wills participate each in its sphere.