PANTHEISM

PANTHEISM.

PANTHEISM (πάν, all, θεός, God), is that speculative system which, by absolutely identifying the Subject and Object of thought, reduces all existence, mental and material, to phenomenal modifications of one eternal, self-existent Substance, which is called by the name of God.

The rational solutions of the problem of existence hitherto proposed reduce themselves to the two great classes of Dualism and Unitarianism. The former divides being or substance between two original principles, the latter limits it to one. Three possible ontological theories emerge from Unitarianism, according as we identify absolute reality with Self, with the World, or with Deity:—1. Are all things educed from, and identified with, Self? Egoism emerges, of which the corollary is properly Atheism. 2. Are all things educed from, and identified with, Matter? Materialism emerges, of which the corollary is also properly Atheism. 3. Are all things educed from, and identified with, Deity? Pantheism emerges, which is subject to two grand subdivisions, according as He is conceived of as exhausted or as unexhausted in the act of producing the universe. 1°. Is he regarded as exhausted in the act? Material, physical, real Pantheism is the result, which is subject to further modifications, and of which the proper formula is, All things are God, and God is all things. 2°. Is he regarded as unexhausted in the act? Spiritual, ideal, intellectual Pantheism is the result, admitting also of further modifications, and of which the proper formula is, All things are God, but God is not all things. According to the former scheme, the one necessary eternal being is identified with the universe, the progressive evolution of material nature being regarded as the development and adequate expression of the entire Divine existence; by the latter scheme, the universe is regarded as a necessary yet inexhaustive evolution of Infinite Being, of which it forms an essential part.

Speculative origin of Pantheism. As pantheistic speculation finds its origin in that intellectual ambition which would aspire to universal knowledge, and would rest satisfied only with the personal subjugation of the empire of being, it is not to be supposed that it should be limited in its development to any particular time, age, or country. The peculiar class of thinkers likely to be determined towards pantheism are found to rise up in almost all times and in nearly all places.¹ The humble walks of sober induction are discarded as beneath the notice of a lofty and daring genius bent upon the achievement of all knowledge and the conquest of all existence; a position of the highest abstraction is assumed, properly indeterminate and absolutely general, from which, without any regard to what knowledge or existence really is, it becomes the task

of the formal ontologist to deduce the particular and determine of knowledge and existence. But neither boldness of design nor brilliancy of execution can atone either to philosophy or to humanity for the essential error and dangerous results which are invariably attendant upon all such attempts to transgress the fixed boundaries which One wiser than we has assigned to our intellectual operations. Such frequent attempts, however, and such conspicuous failures, bring with them their lesson of wisdom. And this lesson may surely be read in the history of pantheistic speculation.

The origin of pantheistic philosophy can be traced back to near the dawn of reflection in the remote East; and among no class of thinkers has this speculative system found more favour, or a more constant advocacy, than among the dreamy and subtle Orientals. In the front rank stands India, that great centre of speculative activity in the East, which has given birth to pantheistic systems as vast and various as the country on whose soil they grew. Not that speculative systems of rigid scientific strictness, or of an exclusively philosophical character, are to be found among the schools of the Hindus, so far as they are yet known to Europeans. For, with all that has been admirably said regarding the scientific grandeur and completeness of the Hindu systems of philosophy, we always find, on coming into actual contact with them, that, pervaded as they are by marvellous acuteness, they nevertheless, from their semi-religious, semi-poetical character and colouring, fail to satisfy the demands of rigid scientific speculation both in connected severity of thought and in clear accuracy of expression. This may no doubt in some measure arise from our imperfect acquaintance with their systems; but it is beyond a doubt, that those who fling the pantheistic speculations of the Hindus as a triumphant taunt in the face of Spinoza, as if all that the subtle Jew had accomplished had been often and better done before, do so either in ignorance or through sheer wantonness. For there can be no question whatever, that, so far as history informs us, no pantheistic theory has ever been forged by the brain of man so complete in conception and masterly in execution as that elaborated by Spinoza. In point of fact, however, Spinoza, with all his iron logic and severity of system, never rises to heights more purely pantheistic than are to be found among the mystical speculations of the Hindus. The main distinction is, that the Orientals vivify their philosophy with a spirit of religion, and clothe it with a garniture of poetry; while, with the western pantheist, speculation is a matter almost entirely of the intellect, and no extraneous consideration whatever, apart

¹ "Pantheistic tendencies are found," says H. Bitter, "wherever religion and philosophy are to be found, even among the islanders of the South Sea." (Hist. of Anc. Philosophy, vol. I., "Origin of Greek Philosophy.")

Pantheism, from the direct, undeviating path of a rigorous logic, finds any place in the system of this stern thinker.

Hindu Pantheism. The Hindus themselves reckon six different schools of Indian philosophy, all regarded as offshoots from the primordial doctrines of the Brahmins or sacerdotal caste, viz.,—1. The Sankhya, attributed to Kapila; 2. The Yoga schools of Pantanjali and the Bhagavad-Gita; 3. The Purva-Mimansa, attributed to Jaimini; 4. The Vedanta, or Uttara-Mimansa, by the Vyāsa¹ Krishna Dwaipayana; 5. Nyaya, of Gautama; 6. The Vaisheshika, of Kanāda.² The doctrines of these six schools, however, may be conveniently included under the three general systems denominated the Sankhya (including Nos. 1 and 2), the Nyaya (including 5 and 6), and the Vedic system (including 3 and 4). Curious to say, the only one of these schools considered by the Hindus to be orthodox or conformable to the doctrine of the Vedas, or sacred books, is the Purva-Mimansa, which is more a Brahmanical essay on the Vedas, of very indifferent merit, than a regular treatise on philosophy.³ The Sankhya system exhibits a twofold development,—the one atheistic, by Kapila; the other theistic, by Pantanjali. Both agree, however, in being dualistic, admitting, as they do, two real and substantial principles,—Material Nature and the Human Soul,—and are thus excluded from present consideration. The system termed the Nyaya is properly a scheme of logic, at once complicated and elaborate, followed up by a complementary theory of the physical world. It is to the system termed Vedic, accordingly, that we have to direct our attention.⁴

The Vedanta philosophy is the very incarnation of pantheism; and there can be no conceivable ramification of that system which does not find a place among the complicated subtleties of this singular body of doctrines. The great end of man's life, according to this philosophy, is to free himself from all vicissitude, and to attain to perfect repose. This can only be achieved by disengaging himself from that which is transient, and by attaching himself to that which is fixed, eternal, and absolute. Only two paths are open to such a deliverance,—science and good works; and but one of them leads to the golden gates of silence and rest. Good works, as transient in their nature, can only produce a corresponding degree of satisfaction; but science, as devoted to the contemplation of the supreme unity, which is subject to no change, can elevate man above all vicissitude, and secure for him enduring satisfaction.⁵ But how is such a consummation to be achieved? Sense cannot attain this science, for it has to do with the transitory; reasoning is likewise insufficient, for the discursive faculty, as essentially relative, can never become the measure of the absolute. To attain to immutable being, accordingly, it is necessary to approach it through that revelation which has been preserved in all ages by the divinely

initiated. Sense must be ignored, and all desire for the temporal and earthly must be completely foregone. The aspirant to science must become absorbed in pious meditation, must forget his own individuality, and make the object of his contemplation the Supreme Existence,—the great end of life being not "the union of Self with Supreme Spirit," but to know that all is unity. "Best of all is the identification of Soul with the Supreme Spirit."⁶ The novice can then have the mysteries of science disclosed to him; and the sum of the revelation is contained in the formula—All is soul; Brahma (or Deity) alone exists; everything else is an illusion.⁷ "Listen to the complete compendium of the Purānas, according to its tenor. The world was produced from Vishnu:⁸ it exists in him: he is the cause of its continuance and cessation: he is the world."⁹ Having reached this sublime abstraction, the Vedantists labour to give validity to it by considerations drawn from the very idea of Brahma. If there existed out of Brahma, who is the one eternal, absolute, unlimited being, existences, limited, manifold, complex, they must have been produced by him. But as they are repugnant to his very essence, it would be impossible for Brahma to produce them, unless he possessed within himself the real source of limitation, multiplicity, and imperfection. It accordingly follows, continue these speculators, that the mind of man stands in a twofold relation to the universe,—the one resembling a state of sleep or dreaming, the other that of being awake. In the former state man realizes phantoms only, and hence regards the multiplicity of beings in the universe as distinct from Brahma; but when he rises to the waking state, these phantoms of the brain vanish before the coming light of science, and he at once recognises Brahma as everything, and addresses him as "Thou All!"¹⁰ Mind and Matter, in their mutual antithesis and reality, are here of course destroyed. All particular beings, whether spiritual or material, are not even simple modifications of the Divine substance in the same sense in which they are regarded in some systems of pantheism; the universe, material and mental, is nothing but the spectacle of the thoughts of Deity, which he represents to himself by contemplating their possible combinations if realized out of himself. For the law of Causality, which exists in every mind, the refining Hindu substitutes the doctrine of Emanation; and thus discovers, by quite irrefragable logic, that what we call Matter is a mere illusion, and Mind but an empty dream. Corresponding with these two conditions of human thought and life, there exists in the Vedantist philosophy two separate languages,—the one, that of illusion; the other, that of science. The one language is expressive of the relative and the apparent, the other of the absolute and the real. Parallel series of propositions are thus to be found in this philosophy which are apparently contradictory and mutu-

¹ This Vyāsa (compiler) is generally written and spoken of in most books of philosophy as if it were a proper name, whereas it is used here emphatically to distinguish the last of the 28 vyāsas or compilers, who are generally regarded as the redactors of the Vedas. (See The Bhagavad-Gita, a Sanskrit philosophical poem, translated by J. C. Thomson, 1855, p. 69, note.)

² See Weber's Vorlesungen über die Indische Literatur-Geschichte, Berlin, 1852.
³ For an account of the numerous philosophical sects among the Hindus, see Colebrooke's Miscellaneous Essays, vol. I., "Indian Sectaries"; also H. H. Wilson's Essays in the Asiatic Researches, vols. XVI. and XVII.

⁴ The compilation of the Vedas remounts, according to Colebrooke, to the fourteenth century B.C., and according to Sir Wm. Jones, to the sixteenth B.C.; while Ritter is emphatic in his rejection of the pretensions of the Hindu philosophy to a high antiquity. But on this whole matter critical philosophers and oriental scholars seem alike at sea.

⁵ "The great end of life (or truth) is considered by the wise to be eternal; but it would be transient if it were accomplished through transitory things. If you imagine that this great truth is the performance of religious acts, from which no recompense is sought, it is not so; for such acts are the means of obtaining liberation, and truth is (the end) not the means." (See Wilson's Vishnu-Purāṇas, p. 252.)

⁶ Vishnu-Purāṇas, chap. XIV.
⁷ "The knowledge that this spirit, which is essentially one, is one's own, and in all other bodies is the great end or true wisdom of one who knows the unity and true principles of things. As one diffuse air, passing through the perforations of a flute, is distinguished as the notes of the scale, so the nature of the great spirit is single, though its forms be manifold, arising from the consequence of acts." (Vishnu-Purāṇas, c. XIV., p. 253.)

⁸ The Supreme Being of the Hindus is regarded under the three relations of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Of this Trinity, Brahma is the creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Shiva the destroyer and renovator of material forms.

⁹ Vishnu-Purāṇas, c. I., p. 6.
¹⁰ See Cockburn Thomson's Bhagavad-Gita, c. XI.

Pantheism ally destructive of each other. But the Vedantist reminds us that there are radically two orders of things,—the real and the illusory. He omits, however, to tell us how this asserted illusion can arise out of the pure and absolute essence of the unconditioned Brahma. To any intelligence but that of a Vedantist it is no doubt palpably contradictory and absurd. Real or imaginary, contradictory or otherwise, this alleged state of illusion is a state of bondage, suffering, and error; but once free from it, the emancipated thinker is no longer perplexed with distinctions, and forms, and names; there is for him then no distinction, no name, no form; there is but one absolute substance, in which the subject and object of thought are absolutely identical.

The Vedantist neophyte having passed through this speculative novitiate, begins to reap the fruit of his vigils. The practical tendencies of the system here emerge, and in them we find, boldly and consistently conceived, and no less boldly and consistently advocated, the normal tendencies of pantheism in their relation to human duty. When man has attained to this superior knowledge of the Vedantist, he is emancipated from all ignorance, and can know no error: from ignorance, for in affirming Brahma, he affirms everything; and from error, since he has annihilated the possibility of error, which implies a particular affirmation, in annihilating the distinction of beings. He is not responsible, and can commit no sin; for such conceptions, as implying a right and a wrong, suppose distinction, which belongs to the state of illusion, but can find no place in Brahma, where all diversity ceases. He is freed, besides, from all activity, which supposes a duality,—a subject and object of action,—the very negation of that absolute unity and identity of all things which his science has taught him. He feels no emotion and is prompted by no desire, for he knows that, in being Brahma, he possesses everything. During life, the soul of the wise man continues, despite his knowledge of Brahma, to be haunted by recollections of the phantoms which flit through the realms of illusion, just as the awakened sleeper remembers the incidents of his dreams; but when death comes, the emancipation is complete,—the sage is stripped of every vestige of individuality,—he can show no longer any trace of limitation,—in form and in name he is mingled with and lost in Brahma, as rivers lose their forms and names when they meet the ocean. Such, in brief, is the pantheism of the Vedic schools of the Hindus.¹

Other forms of speculative error, frequently spoken of as pantheistic, exist among the Buddhists, the great opposing sect of the Brahmins in the religion and philosophy of the Hindus. But while these systems are heterodox and unitarian, they are nevertheless not properly pantheistic. They oscillate between materialism and idealism, and one of the schemes is so refined as to end in sheer egoism, such as that of Fichte in Germany, admitting of no real existence but that of Self or the Ego, which is alleged to be eternal, and to draw from its own depths all phenomena.² Such a system is properly atheistic.

In further tracing the historical evolutions of pantheistic speculation, we find ourselves at once transplanted from India to Greece; for while the philosophical systems de-

veloped in China, in Persia, in Egypt, in Chaldea, and in Phœnicia, were as false as they were various, they nevertheless exhibit no instances of speculative theories legitimately pantheistic. And without waiting to consider the vexed question of how much Greece owed to the philosophical ideas of the East, it is sufficient here briefly to ascertain the precise character of Greek speculation in itself, irrespective of its peculiar genesis, which is at best extremely problematical.³ It is but a shallow view of the history of human development in matters of speculation that would ascribe every similarity of doctrine or coincidence of thought to direct filiation; for a comparatively limited knowledge of the struggles of individual minds towards scientific insight will not only warrant the possibility of something more than even a general resemblance in the speculative efforts of independent thinkers, but will positively lead the inquirer to anticipate the independent recurrence of the same methods, ideas, and sympathies, in places the most distant and in times the most remote. It is not necessary, therefore, apart from direct evidence, to ascribe to a Hindu source, as is often done, every possible vestige of the pantheistic theory recorded in the annals of philosophy. Pantheism, if a great speculative error, is at least not an unnatural one for erring men, as both history and observation can attest; not unnatural either for Brahman or Greek, Jew or German.

Passing over as dualistic the earliest speculative evolution of the Ionic school, with which began properly the history of Greek thought, and the adherents of which followed what has been called the "physical" method of investigation, we approach the second development of Ionian philosophy in the class called "mathematicians," which originated with Anaximander⁴ of Miletus (611–547 B.C.), the father of the pantheistic tendencies of Grecian speculation. With him began the purely deductive method of philosophizing afterwards employed by the Pythagoreans and Eleatics; and consequently, also, with him began the disposition to develop the universe from one grand indeterminate abstraction. The beginning of things (ἡ ἀρχή), according to this geometrician, was not Water, as Thales had supposed, but the Infinite (τὸ ἀπέρον). This Infinite or primary existence is One, yet All. Finite things, of whatever kind, are but the manifestations of this eternal unlimited All. Creation takes place by an eternal motion of the Infinite. It does not seem, however, that Anaximander identified this Infinite Existence with Infinite Mind, much less that he called it by the name of Deity. To all intents and purposes, however, his grand error was identical with that of Hegel and his school in modern times, who maintain that "creation is the mundane existence of God." The direct pantheistic conception of Deity was posterior to the time of Anaximander.

Pythagoras (584–489 B.C.), the first among scientific thinkers who called himself by the humble yet exalted title ras of "philosopher," took up the method of Anaximander, and endeavoured to improve upon his notion of the ἀρχή. Like his predecessor, Pythagoras held the principle of things to be absolute unity, from which multiplicity origi-

¹ See De Theologumens Vedanticorum, by K. J. H. Windischmann, Bonn, 1833; also Windischmann's Die Philosophie im Fortgange der Weltgeschichte; and Ritter's History of Ancient Philosophy, vol. IV., London, 1846.

² The author of the Précis de l'Histoire de la Philosophie (known to English readers as Henry's History of Philosophy) falls into the mistake of reckoning Egoism a species of Pantheism. In the Essai sur l'Unité dans les Sociétés Modernes, par H. L. C. Maret, troisième édition, Paris, 1845, p. 176, the rhetorical Abbé falls into a similar mistake respecting Fichte, who is erroneously ranked by him among the pantheists. This is a blunder, however, which is by no means peculiar to this churchman, for numerous writers,—and especially English ones,—have committed the same error.

³ The Greeks themselves admitted their obligations to the oriental philosophers. Among others, Ritter (Hist. of Anc. Phil., vol. I.) and Lowes (Biographical Hist. of Philosophy, Intro., to the library edition; also Edinburgh Review, April, 1847), are tolerably decided,—the former particularly so,—as to the independent origin of Greek speculation; while the modern orientalists, Rühl (Geschichte unserer abendländischen Philosophie, vol. I.) and Gladisch (Die Relig. u. die Phil. in ihrer weltgesch. Entwicklung), find nothing in the early Greek teachers but reproductions of eastern thought.

⁴ Let it be noted here, once for all, that biographies of the philosophers alluded to in this article will be found under the name of each throughout the work.

Pantheism, noted, and of which it was but the manifestation. This original principle was Number, and the absolute unity was One. As One is the basis of all numerical calculation, so also it is the last expression of our attempt to analyse the Infinite. Therefore the Infinite must be One; and Numbers are the ultimate nature of things. The Pythagoreans did not separate Numbers from things. "They held Numbers," says Aristotle, "to be the first principle, and, as it were, the material cause (ὕλη) of entities, as well as of their peculiar manifestations." (Metaph., b. i., c. 5.) As to the precise significance which Numbers bore in the theory of Pythagoras critics are not agreed. Some are inclined to a literal, some to a symbolical interpretation of the term.¹ However this may be, suffice it to say, that by reducing mind and matter to phenomenal manifestations of the infinite and absolute One, he thereby constructed a scheme essentially pantheistic. It remains doubtful, however, as in the case of his predecessor, whether or not he made mind an attribute of his Infinite One. To reason from the spurious and notoriously pantheistic works ascribed to his followers, Timæus of Locrum, and Ocellus Lucanus, and thus convict the master of a pantheism which he did not in terms avow, would be at once futile and foolish. Suffice it to say, pantheism was there in substance, if not in name.

Not content with the solution which the great problem of existence had received at the hands of the "mathematicians," Xenophanes the Eleatic (born 620 B.C.) came forward with what was in form a new theory, yet in substance not widely different from that of his predecessors. According to Pythagoras, the Infinite Unity contains and produces everything. Xenophanes denied the possibility of such a production. If aught was made, he alleged it must have been either from that which was, or from that which was not: not the former, for if it already was, it could not be made; not the latter, for out of nothing nothing can come (ex nihilo nihil fit). Creation being therefore impossible, it necessarily follows that there is but one Being in the universe, eternal, absolute, infinite. Of this unconditioned being all finite existences, whether material or mental, are merely modifications. But had not his predecessors reached this unity of being before? Wherein, then, did Xenophanes differ from them in his doctrine of the One? In this, that, as Aristotle phrases it, "he cast his eyes wistfully upon the whole heaven, and pronounced that unity to be God." (Metaph., i. 5, § 7.) This Deity he endowed with self-existence and intelligence; but, denying him personality, he converted monotheism into pantheism.² Parmenides, Melissus, and Zeno, the other noted disciples of this school, while identifying thought and existence, and continuing the unitarian tendencies of the Eleatics generally, seem to have stopped short of an articulate avowal of pantheism. They all agreed, however, in the essential unity of being, and in the illusory character of sensible phenomena.

The next pantheist among the Greek ontologists was Heracleitus, "the weeping philosopher" (born 503 B.C.). The Eleatics founded their philosophy upon the certitude of the Reason; this thinker upon that of Sense. The former were rational pantheists; the latter was a material pantheist. For while Heracleitus held that we became conscious through the senses, he besides maintained that it was not we that became conscious, but the universal intelligence which became conscious in us. "Inhaling," he says,

"through the breath the Universal Ether, which is Divine Pantheism. Reason, we become conscious."³ With this philosopher, Fire was the first principle of things; it was ever kindling, ever dying out, and was identical with God. In this "perpetual flux and reflux" of things Hegel finds an anticipation of his doctrine, that "Being and non-Being is the same" (Seyn und Nichtseyn ist dasselbe). Hegel accordingly claims kindred with the melancholy old Greek, and alleges that he has developed every position of the Heraclitean system in his logic.

With Heracleitus the history of Greek pantheism properly closes. The only result of the unitarian systems of Elea, which were mainly pantheistic, was, as in the case of all erroneous forms of speculation, to shake the foundations of the human reason, and drive men to scepticism. This determination of human thought is actually to be found in the succeeding epoch among the Sophists. Socrates arose to put down the Sophists: Plato carried out the method of Socrates; and Aristotle brought this movement to a close. Philosophy in the hands of the Stagirite was once more reduced to a system; but it was not long till the sceptics of the succeeding epoch arose to demolish it. Doubt had its day; and no long time had elapsed when a new power arose in Christianity, taking hold upon the minds and hearts of men such as no system of belief had ever done before. This divine light broke forth in a region intermediate to the philosophical speculations of both the East and the West. Its influence was accordingly felt long both by sceptical Greek and mystical oriental; and out of this clash of opposing doctrines arose in the early centuries of the Christian era the sect called the Gnostics, and the philosophical movement known as the "Alexandrian schools." From both of these speculative movements arose evolutions of pantheism as thorough-going as any that had preceded them. Among the Gnostics, who attempted to harmonize oriental and Christianity by torturing the latter to suit their eastern predilections, faith was subordinated to philosophy, rather than philosophy to faith. Their ontology was in general of a dualistic cast, but it not unfrequently took a turn towards pantheism. The most notorious of the latter class was Valentinus, who, so far as his precise doctrines can be ascertained, held all finite existences to be emanations from the "Universal" and "Unknown Father" (Βυθός), a sort of indeterminate Brahma, who was the sole being in the universe, and of which all else were but the modes.

On turning to the Alexandrian schools, we witness the collision of oriental ideas and Greek thought with Christianity. The first of the "Neo-Platonists" was Philo the Jew, born 27 B.C. at Alexandria. This eminent thinker had been long familiar with all the three modes of thought peculiar to the Platonist, the oriental, and the Jew. By distrusting the Senses, discarding the Reason, and taking refuge in Faith, he gave philosophy a determination towards mysticism, and united it once more to religion. (See Mysticism.) The material being thus gathered, it remained for Plotinus to give this speculative evolution a solid metaphysical basis. Farther attempts were made to perfect this eclectic system by his followers; but it continued to present a strange agglomeration of doctrines, all swallowed up by the all-embracing one of pantheism.

The object of philosophy, these thinkers held with Plato,

¹ A novel and ingenious, if a somewhat arbitrary, explanation of the Pythagorean doctrine of Number, is given by Professor Ferrier in his Institutes of Metaphysics (prop. i., § 16, p. 88). He holds that Pythagoras made Number the ground of all conceivability. "In nature, per se," he says, "there is nothing but absolute inconceivability. If she can place before us things, she cannot place before us or one thing. So said Pythagoras. According to him, it is intelligence alone which contributes a to a 'thing,' gives unity," &c. This exposition of the doctrine has at least the merit of being intelligible. Aristotle, however, who was not deficient, we presume, either in acuteness or in general information respecting such matters, seems to have held a different view from the Professor. (See Metaph., i. 5.)

² See Karsten's Xenophanis Carminum selectiorum, 3 vols. 8vo, Brussels, 1830-33; also C. A. Brandis Commentationum Eleaticarum, &c., Alton, 1813; and Cousin's Neotericorum Fragmenta Philosophorum.

³ See Lawes' Biographical History of Philosophy, library edition, p. 57.

Pantheism. to be Universals, of which all phenomena were but the modes. This ideal world, again, of Universals was but the mode of God's existence. But how can I, a finite being, comprehend God, who is infinite? It is obviously impossible so long as I remain finite. Since, then, I do possess a knowledge of the Infinite, it cannot be through my reason, which can only deal with finite things, but through some higher faculty, altogether impersonal, by which I become for the time being infinite, and am identified with the object of my contemplation. "The faculty," says Plotinus, "by which the mind divests itself of its personality is Ecstasy. In this ecstasy the soul becomes loosened from its material prison, separated from individual consciousness, and becomes absorbed in the Infinite Intelligence from which it emanated. In this Ecstasy it contemplates real existence; it identifies itself with that which it contemplates."¹ Here, then, is the doctrine of Absolute Identity in all its fullness, of which pantheism is but the corollary. Thought and thing are identical, and this is the only possible ground of knowledge. We know the Infinite, according to Plotinus, by an immediate intuition (παρνοσία, out of and beyond reason; we know it, according to Schelling, through an "intellectual intuition." Thus the fundamental position of both systems is the same.² By a process of subtle dialectics the Alexandrians came to the conclusion that the Deity consisted of a Trinity in Unity. This Trinity consisted of the hypostases, of which the first is Unity simply, not properly Being; the second, Intelligence, which is identical with Being, Mind, absolute and eternal (νοῦς); third, the Universal Soul, the Soul of the world (ψυχή τοῦ πᾶντος or τῶν ὅλων), the source of all activity and life, mental and material. In his highest state, Deity is neither thought nor existence, but simple Unity, reminding one of Hegel's Absolute Nothing. The next peculiarity of this system—the corollary indeed of what has gone before—is the law of Emanation, or the mode in which the world of mind and matter is produced by the Universal Soul. It is at this point the pantheism of the "Neo-Platonists" becomes palpable. If God made the universe, he did so, says the human reason, so far as it can give a deliverance on the matter, either from his own substance or from something else already existent. If the former, Deity and the universe are in fact identical,—hence pantheism; if the latter, Deity and the universe are radically and eternally distinct, which is the assertion of dualism, but no satisfactory explanation of the origin of the world. The Christians affirmed that God made the world out of nothing by the energy of his own omnipotence; the Alexandrians maintained that he made it out of his own substance, but that, while not distinct from him in essence, it was nevertheless distinct from him in act. The pantheism thus reached is of the most refined and subtle character. Instead of confounding God with the world, after the manner of the material pantheists, the Alexandrians held that the nature of Deity was not exhausted in the act of creation, although the matter created was identical in essence with himself. Thus, while the ordinary pantheistic formula, "All things are God," holds true for this system, its converse, "God is all things," is directly opposed to its express development of the law of Emanation. Proclus, with whom ancient philosophy properly ends, terminated the speculative evolution of the "Neo-Platonists." He endeavoured to work up into methodical connection the labours of his predecessors in that school; and brought as subtle a scientific faculty to the task as any that had yet been known among the Alexandrians. (See especially his Institutio Theologica.)

On descending to the philosophy of the middle age, we come in contact with a man of great learning and original genius in the person of John Scotus Erigena, who flourished during the seventh century. This eminent thinker stands alone as an original advocate of pantheism during that entire epoch. So far as Erigena was indebted to previous speculators, Neo-Platonism, combined with eastern thought, seems to indicate the direction of his philosophy. The traditional account of his travels in the East seems to be confirmed by the striking and almost literal coincidences which Colebrooke detected between parts of his writings and certain portions of the Sankhya philosophy. He begins with Absolute Unity as the origin and essence of all things, and endeavours, in his De Divisione Naturæ, to explain how this radical unity, or Deity, has produced the universe of multiplicities with which he is emphatically identical. From the plenitude of the Divine Intelligence first causes (primordiales causæ) are derived, which give birth in turn to the world of nature, destined ultimately to return to the bosom of the Absolute. Like Proclus among the Alexandrians, and like Hegel in more modern days, Scotus Erigena seems to have maintained the strict analogy and correspondence of the world of ideas and the world of realities; so that the relations of human thought are properly expressions of the real relations of the universe.³ "If," he says, "the knowledge of all things is the reality of all things, this cause [viz., Deity] which knows all is all." He again winds up his theory of human knowledge in these words:—"Everything is God; God is everything; God is the only real substantial existence." The pantheism of Erigena again reappears towards the end of the twelfth century, in the speculations of Amaury de Chartres and, with modifications, in those of his pupil David de Dinant, who was a material pantheist.

The brilliant and unfortunate Giordano Bruno, who was burnt as a heretic in the streets of Rome in, 1600, stands prominently forward in the records of philosophy as the precursor of Benedict Spinoza. Bruno's pantheistic system, which is little more than a purification and development of the speculations of the Eleatics and of Plotinus, is set forth with singular eloquence and richness of poetic colouring. With him, Deity, the Infinite Intelligence, is the principle and essence of all things (natura naturans); he is the cause of the universe (natura naturata), yet he did not create it; he simply informed it with life, for he is the universe, although not limited by it. He is self-existent, absolute, and simple. He is incessantly active as a cause; and all his energies are determined by his nature. His activity is necessary; and yet he is perfectly free. The universe is the infinite activity of his mind; and hence it is infinite, eternal, and imperishable. To hold the contrary were to limit his power. But while Deity is thus the essential substance of the universe, he is nevertheless separated from nature: he is superessentialis, just as a mind is conceivable apart from any one of its thoughts. The universe is properly a living being, an immense infinite animal; and Deity, as the soul of the universe, modifies and influences it throughout all its parts. There exists but one sole intelligence which dwells in God in perfection, but in inferior spirits in imperfection, varying according to the capacity of their natures down to the lowest level of created beings. These differences of endowment are not generic, however; they are simply differences of degree. Man occupies a middle place in the scale of intelligence; and his noblest function, according to Giordano, is to discover the harmony that exists between the order of the

¹ See the Enneades of Plotinus; also Lewes' Blog. Hist. of Philosophy, library edition, p. 264.

² See Disputatio de differentiâ quæ inter Plotinæ et Schellingi doctrinam de numine summo intercedit, G. W. Gerlach, Viteb. 1811.

³ See Lib. iii., § 4, of his De Divisione Naturæ, Libri v., ed. T. Gale, Oxon., 1681; Fr. Ant. Staudenmaier's Johannes Scotus Erigena in A. Wismeth. er. Zeit., No. 1834; and the Abbé Gerbert's Troisième Conférence de Philosophie Catholique.

Pantheism, external universe and the internal ideas of the soul; to perceive the identity of his intelligence and that of the Deity, of the Subject and Object of thought.¹ There is no real distinction between good and evil, between happiness and misery, between beauty and deformity; all are essentially good, proceeding as they do from good, and intended as they are for the best. Such distinctions are therefore merely relative and illusory; they are not absolute and real.

Spinoza. In 1632, just thirty-two years after the burning of Bruno, was born in Amsterdam, Benedict Spinoza, who was destined to give a method and shape to the heretical theory for which the Italian suffered, such as it had never received before at the hands of man. No speculator is more frequently abused than the subtle Jew, and no one is less understood. The legitimate and even avowed consequences of his system induce the belief—perhaps a natural one—in thoughtless minds, that the author of them must have been a very bad man. Yet such was not the case. He lived a thoughtful, industrious, and strictly moral life, grinding optical glasses for his livelihood, and spending the remainder of his time in calm, speculative seclusion. He seems to have been a man of a naturally reverential and earnest disposition. This appears frequently from certain attitudes of mind and turns of thought in his writings, as well as from the fact that, in his great work, the Ethica, in which his pantheistic system is elaborated, it was his design to deduce mathematically from the knowledge of God the fundamental laws of morality, and the principles that should regulate human life.

Philosophical critics have got up a polemic as to whether or not Spinozism was a legitimate development of Cartesianism; whether or not the philosophy of Descartes contained in embryo that of Spinoza, and only required the speculative courage and strong logic of the Jew to convert it into pantheism.² Considered in itself, and especially in relation to the philosophers in question, the dispute,—as indeed all such usually are,—is rather an idle one than otherwise. Suffice it to say, that Spinoza studied the works of Descartes with intense interest and admiration, as is abundantly evinced by his unrivalled abridgment of the doctrines of that philosopher, and, in particular, that he agreed with the Cartesians in holding that what was true in thought was true also in things. The latter principle formed the basis of Descartes' main argument for the existence of Deity; and Spinoza resolved, if possible, to put it to a more extensive and solid use. He accordingly set to work to develop by strict mathematical demonstration an ontological system embracing Deity and the universe. His scheme is developed in the work, published posthumously in 1677, entitled Ethica, Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata; et in quinque partes distincta; in quibus agitur—I. De Deo; II. De Natura et Origine Mentis; III. De Origine et Natura Affectuum; IV. De Serevitate Humana seu de Libertate Humana; V. De Potentia Intellectus seu de Libertate Humana. Such is the plan and range of this celebrated work. First God, then man, the laws of his nature, and the character of his activity. With Spinoza, as with all pantheists, the main point to be attended to, in order to a comprehension of his system, is the method which he employs. The only "refutation of Spinoza" (and how many such have there been!) consists in rejecting his method as false and illegitimate. Other pantheists may be overthrown by their pursuing the suicidal course of in-

conclusiveness. But it is not so with Spinoza; for no single Pantheist opponent, nor any combination of hostile criticism, has yet succeeded in convicting this arch-pantheist of tripping Spinoza in his logic, or of wandering far from the method with which he set out. Once grant the all-sufficiency of logic, the essential harmony of thought and existence, and the infallibility of the deductive method, and the chances are, that in the hands of an able and daring thinker the ontology of the universe will be pantheistic. So at least was it with Spinoza. His method deceived him; and in proving true to it, he became a pantheist. Spinoza opens the first book of the Ethica, which is entitled De Deo, in genuine geometrical fashion, by laying down a series of definitions and axioms, from which he proceeds to evolve demonstratively, in a set of theorems each dependent on what has gone before, his entire scheme of God and the world. This he does with uncommon accuracy and clearness of language; so that if it is difficult to understand him, the defect does not lie in the author. Before entering upon a brief analysis of his system, it is necessary to exhibit his definitions and axioms.

1. 1. By a thing which is its own cause (causa sui) I understand a thing of which the essence involves existence, or a thing which cannot be conceived of except as existent.
2. 2. A thing is said to be finite, in suo genere, which can be limited by another thing of the same nature; e.g., body is called finite because we can always conceive another body as larger. So one thought is limited by another thought. But body is not limited by thought, nor thought by body.
3. 3. By substance I mean that which exists in itself (in se), and is conceived by itself (per se); the conception of which, in other words, does not involve the conception of anything else as the cause of it (a quo formari debeat).
4. 4. By attribute I understand that which the intellect perceives as constituting the very essence of substance.
5. 5. By mode I mean an affection (affectio) of substance, or that which is in something else, through which also it is conceived.
6. 6. By God I understand a being absolutely infinite; that is, a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses an eternal and infinite essence.
   Explanation.—I say absolutely infinite, but not infinite suo genere; for whatever is infinite suo genere only, does not possess infinite attributes, whereas that which is absolutely infinite contains in its essence whatever implies essence, and involves no negation.
7. 7. A thing is said to be free which exists by the sole necessity of its own nature, and by itself alone is determined to action; but that thing is necessary (necessaria), or rather constrained (coacta), which owes its existence to something else, and is determined to action according to a fixed and definite method.
8. 8. By eternity I mean existence itself, in so far as it is conceived to follow necessarily from the sole definition of an eternal thing.
   Explanation.—For this kind of existence is conceived as an eternal verity, and cannot therefore be explained by duration or time, even though this duration should be conceived as without beginning and without end.

1. 1. All things which exist, exist either of themselves or through something else.
2. 2. That which cannot be conceived [as existing] through something else (per alium) must be conceived [as existing] through itself (per se).
3. 3. From a given determinate cause an effect necessarily follows; and if there be no given determinate cause, no effect can follow.
4. 4. The knowledge (cognitio) of an effect depends upon and implies the knowledge of its cause.
5. 5. Things that have nothing in common with each other cannot be understood through each other; in other words, the conception of the one does not involve the conception of the other.
6. 6. A true idea (idea vera) must correspond with its object (no ideato).

¹ See a passage from the De l'Infinite, quoted by Lewes in his Biog. Hist. of Philosophy, library edition, p. 320, which contains a vigorous sketch of the life and works of this unhappy thinker. See also Opere di Giordano Bruno, by Adolfo Wagner, 2 vols., Leips. 1830; and the Jordano Bruno of C. Bartholomae, 2 vols., Paris, 1848.

² See, for example, among recent books of the kind, H. C. W. Sigwart, Ueber den Zusammenhang d. Spinozism. u. d. Cartesian. Philos.; e. philos. Versuch; also, Welchen Einfluss hat d. Philos. d. Cartesius auf d. Ausbildung der des Spinoza gehalt, u. welche Berührungen haben beide Philosophien m. einand. gemein? von H. Ritter.

³ These extracts are translated from the Benedicti de Spinoza Opera quae supersunt omnia of C. H. Bruder, 3 vols., Leips. 1843.

Pantheism. 7. Whatever can be conceived as non-existent, the essence of that thing does not involve existence. (Ethica, pars. I., pp. 187-8.)

Spinoza. Such is the foundation on which Spinoza commences to rear the vast edifice of his ontology. It will be perceived that, alike in definition and in axiom, he adheres strictly to the method which he has resolved to pursue, and which has been already alluded to. This he continues to do throughout proposition, corollary, and scholium with an accuracy and rigour which Euclid himself has not surpassed. Without taking up in detail the successive evolutions of his system, a rapid outline of it may here be given.

There are two classes of existences, according to Spinoza, which appear to be real, but whose reality lies merely in appearance. These are the phenomena of Mind and Matter, on the one hand, and what are called the substances Mind and Matter, on the other. Existence is but accidental and transient in these objects; and hence there must be somewhere a being or beings endowed with the characteristic of self-existence: there must be a substance underlying all these accidents and changes, and that substance must be self-existent. This follows from the very definition of substance, the essence of which implies existence as part of the idea. It is obvious there can be but one substance possessed of self-existence, and that one substance is God. But to see how this position is established, and also to witness a specimen of Spinoza's logic, we may turn to

PROPOSITION XIV.—There is no substance but God, nor can any other be conceived.

Demonstration.—Since God is a Being absolutely infinite, possessed of every attribute (by defn. 6) which expresses the essence of substance, he necessarily exists (by prop. xi.). If there is any other substance besides God, it must be explained by some attribute of God; and thus two substances would exist possessed of the same attribute, which (by prop. v.) is absurd. There is therefore no substance but God, and hence no other can be conceived. For, if such could be conceived, it must be conceived as existent, which, by the first part of this demonstration, is absurd. Therefore, there is no substance but God, nor can any other be conceived. Q.E.D.

Corollary 1. Hence, it very clearly follows, in the first place, that God is one; i.e. (by defn. 6), there is only one substance in nature, and that substance is absolutely infinite, as already hinted in the scholium to prop. x.

Corollary 2. It follows, in the second place, that an extended object and a thinking object are either attributes of God, or (by ax. 1) affections of those attributes. (Ethica, part I., p. 197.)

There is, accordingly, but one substance, infinite, self-existent, eternal, necessary, simple, and indivisible, of which all else are but the modes. God, as the infinite substance, with its infinity of attributes, is the natura naturans. As the infinity of modes under which his attributes are manifested, he is the natura naturata. God is the immanent, but not the transient, cause of all things. The universe is not God, but simply the necessary modes of being of his attributes. According to Descartes, there were two substances, Spirit and Matter, of which the essences were respectively Thought and Extension. But as Thought and

Extension are only modes of existence, and as there can be Pantheism. only one substance, it follows, according to Spinoza, that Thought and Extension are two infinite attributes, and the Spinoza. only two known to us of the one infinite substance.¹ Now, as the attributes of Deity are only different manifestations of one nature, infinitely absolute, it follows that there must be a complete harmony and correspondence between the successive modes of one attribute and the successive modes of every other. Thus, a mode of thought² must correspond with a mode of extension; every idea must harmonize with its ideate or object, being only the same phenomenon under a different aspect. Extension is Thought objectified, and Thought is Extension subjectified. What God does as an extended substance, he thinks as an intelligent substance; for thought and thing, subject and object, are in him absolutely identical. All things are modes of his attributes of Extension, and all thoughts are modes of his attribute of Thought. The circle is a mode of God under his attribute of Extension: the idea of a circle is the corresponding mode under his attribute of Thought.³

Again, as Deity is necessarily existent, he can only act through and by the necessary laws of his being. Freedom, in the ordinary sense of that term, is accordingly incompatible with the only legitimate idea of such a being; but freedom, in the proper sense of the word, as applicable to a being whose acts are determined solely by the laws of his essential nature, can not only be predicated of Deity, but can be predicated of him and of him alone of all beings in the universe. And as good men are free when most a law to themselves, so we magnify God's freedom when we affirm he must have acted as he has done. His acts are therefore at once free and necessary: necessary, from the very essence of his nature; and free, from the very nature of their necessity. The nature of man being limited, and his existence derived, he cannot act as a free cause, in the proper sense of that term. What we ordinarily call "will" (voluntas) is simply a mode of thought, is simply a link in the causal nexus which binds all phenomena to the one causa causatum. "Will" cannot therefore be applied to Deity (voluntas non potest vocari causa libera, sed tantum necessaria, prop. xxxii.), nor does he possess any proper personality. It follows, again, that in God there can be no such distinction as good and evil, and in ascribing moral qualities either to his actions or to those of ourselves, we simply indulge in baseless fancies (entia imaginationis) which have no real existence, and which are derogatory to the true dignity of God. For our convenience, we form these abstractions of human excellence; but in the eye of God, everything is just what it has the means of being; and there is properly no resistance of his will.⁴

But to pass to a more special consideration of man. Man is composed of Body and Spirit. But Body and Spirit, as has been already shown, are not two independent realities. Body is but a mode of Extension, and Spirit is but a

¹ That Spinoza makes this infinite substance material, as some have alleged, is entirely erroneous; for body with him is but a mode of Extension, while Extension itself is an attribute of the one Substance—Deity. There is therefore equal warrant for making the Deity of Spinoza spiritual as there is for making him material; for in point of fact He is properly neither, being the identity, as Spinoza expressly states, of the natura naturans and the natura naturata. Materialism and spiritualism are equally indifferent to Spinoza, and he accepts of the extremes of both systems with like equanimity.

² It is scarcely necessary to observe that "Thought" (cogitatio) is used by Spinoza in the Cartesian sense, as equivalent to any mental mode, whether cognition, feeling, or volition.

³ It will be perceived that the celebrated "pre-established Harmony" of Leibnitz is little more than an adaptation of the singularly ingenious theory of the great pantheist. With Leibnitz, mind and body are adapted to each other by a pre-ordinating power; with Spinoza their movements coincide, because they are essentially the same,—ideas and ideate being the same modification of the one absolute being, but manifested through different attributes. (For further illustration on this point, see an able article on Spinoza in the Westminster Review for July 1, 1855, attributed to Mr Froude.)

⁴ Such is the extraordinary manner in which Spinoza explains the mystery of evil. It might be supposed at first sight that his system makes God the real cause of all the error and crime that is in the world; but such a conclusion he avoids by leading a proof of the positive non-existence of what is called evil. When Blyenbergh presses him with this difficulty, Spinoza replies calmly, as is his wont, "God is really and absolutely the cause of all things which have real existence (essentia), whatever they may be. If you can demonstrate that evil, error, crime, &c., have any real existence, I entirely admit that God is the cause of those evils, errors, crimes, &c. It appears to me, however, that I have sufficiently shown that what constitutes the real essence of evil, error, crime, is no real thing at all, and therefore that God cannot be regarded as the cause of it." (Epistola xxxvi., § 4, vol. II., p. 255.)

Pantheism. mode of Thought. Thought and Extension are attributes of the one absolute substance, God, evolving themselves in two parallel streams, so to speak, of which each separate body and spirit are but the waves. What I call my mind is only a succession of certain modes of Thought: what I call my body is only a succession of certain modes of Extension. The sum of my ideas, at any moment, constitute my soul: the sum of my material qualities, at any moment, constitute my body. Body and soul are apparently two, but really one: they have no independent existence: they are parts of God. The human mind is percipient of bodily affections, —not directly, but by coincidence; and as it belongs to the nature of thought to cognise its own modifications, as well as those of the other attributes of Deity, the human mind, being a portion of that thought, is likewise cognisant of the ideas of corporeal affection. In other words, the mind is self-conscious; or, as Spinoza expresses it, "Mens se ipsam non cognoscit, nisi quatenus corporis affectionum ideas percipit." (Eth., pars. ii., prop. xxiii.) Perception is of two kinds—adequate and clear, inadequate and obscure. An idea is adequate and clear when it conforms to its object; inadequate and obscure when it imperfectly represents it. The former class is positively true, the latter negatively false. Inadequate and false ideas are either the ideas of bodily affections or the perception of those ideas. Adequate and clear ideas are those abstracted from the former class, and elaborated by a process of reflection. This reflective process is regarded as being within the direction and control of the mind itself; and here, in his theory of knowledge, as well as afterwards in his theory of morals, Spinoza, in the judgment of some, departs from the absolute necessitarianism which his system induces, and which he himself had already avowed.¹ It may be noted, however, that Spinoza was perfectly well aware that the theoretical aspect of man's relation to the all-embracing nexus of causation seldom influences very materially the ordinary practical bearings of any question involving self-control; nor did he forget, at the same time, that a certain measure of self-direction may be not inconsistent with a scheme of the most thorough-going necessitarianism. But it is not to be forgotten that such considerations, as resulting from psychological observation, and not from the application of the method of formal demonstration which Spinoza professes throughout to employ, cannot be regarded as falling in harmoniously with the other evolutions of his system. Nor do they; for at bottom, and on such a scheme, personality is only phenomenal, and human liberty an illusion. The better we know, according to him, the better we act; and upon this hypothesis he passes on from the sphere of knowledge proper, to a consideration of the passions and affections of human nature. There is a necessary desire in all being, says Spinoza, to remain in existence. God, whose essence is existence, is possessed of this desire; but as his being is under no limitation, he is absolutely perfect and perfectly happy. But the human soul, while participating in this desire of Deity, is necessarily limited, and hence necessarily unhappy. This desire for a continuance of being becomes in man a desire to remain intelligent, and, if possible, since limited, to enlarge the sphere of his knowledge, seeing that knowledge is the constituent element of the mind. But this simple and fundamental activity of our nature is frequently impeded in its development by the obstruction of external causes consequent upon our inadequate and confused knowledge. Hence emerges from the bosom of this primary desire a new class of emotions termed passions, such as joy and sorrow, hope and fear, love and hatred, &c. To increase the sum of our being is accordingly the great end of life: the pursuit of this end is

virtue, and the attainment of it happiness. To perfect happiness, therefore, it is necessary to diminish the number of our inadequate ideas; for it is owing to these Spinoza. that passion and pain have any existence. Phenomenal knowledge of sense and internal perception, such as occupies the attention of the great mass of mankind, is the fertile source of the ills to which they are exposed. Now, to escape from these evils incidental to obscure knowledge, it is necessary to get behind phenomena, and to inquire into the relations, causes, and essences of things, until we have grasped the attributes of God. This is the first stage of clear and adequate knowledge; but it is not the only one. To sages and men of devout meditation a third and highest degree of adequate knowledge is attainable in rising to the universal and absolute idea of God. As here is the highest light, so here is the most perfect peace. Were our knowledge of God capable of present completeness, we might attain to perfect happiness; but such is not possible. Out of the infinity of his attributes, two only—Thought and Extension—are accessible to us; while the modes of those attributes being essentially infinite, escape our grasp. Universal science is thus possible for God alone, and he is the only being absolutely happy. We may nevertheless, by prosecuting arduously and courageously our real good, enlarge the boundaries of positive knowledge, and thus emancipate ourselves from the tyranny of ignorance and the slavery of passion. To know God and to love him is thus the true source of self-mastery, peace, and blessedness.

It follows from the unequal distribution of clear and adequate knowledge, that men possess real being in very unequal degrees. And it is from this fact that Spinoza deduced his ingenious and startling theory of the immortality of the soul. Such a doctrine is at first sight impossible in Spinoza's philosophy; for, as the soul is only the collection of our ideas, and as our ideas have their origin in the affections of body, it necessarily follows that the destruction of the body at death is the destruction of our ideas, and the consequent annihilation of the soul. But Spinoza, while granting the validity of this conclusion, qualifies it in a very important manner. He reminds us that all knowledge is not necessarily phenomenal; that there are adequate as well as inadequate ideas; and that while the latter perish with the body, whence they arose, the former are absolutely indestructible. For, as occupied with the essences of things, with the attributes of God, or with God himself, the human soul, even although the body were destroyed, would find objects of thought, time without end, in what is essentially permanent and enduring. For men who are destitute of this higher knowledge and being there is on this system no positive hereafter. And this Spinoza calmly admits. The man who has been the slave of passion; who has had no love or knowledge of God as the source of all goodness; who has possessed no proper personality while living; who has, in short, been wholly occupied with the body, will lose everything in losing the body. Our immortality, then, rests with ourselves. It is the reward of a life of virtue and of high noble endeavour.

Such, then, are the main features of a pantheistic system of philosophy which has never been surpassed in bold ingenuity, and never equalled in scientific rigour. However we may be disposed to regard the moral consequences of its general reception, it must not be denied that, in the hands of the author, it was by no means an immoral system. To try Spinoza by a Christian standard may be instructive, but it is hardly just, for he never was, nor professed to be, a Christian.² Monstrous as his philosophy is when viewed in

¹ Even so acute a thinker and fair a critic as Theodore Jouffroy, on reviewing this development of Spinozism, affirms, "Here is the radical contradiction lurking through his whole system." (Introduction to Ethics, 2d Lecture on "Spinoza.")

² Yet the school of Herder and Schleiermacher in Germany have claimed him as such.

Pantheism, many of its ramifications, and pernicious as must be the result of its practical adoption, it is beyond a doubt that the author does not seem to have so regarded it. The system is profoundly false, and the heart of man rises up in wrath against it; yet it is not fair, as is often done, to denounce Spinoza as an atheist, or to regard him as essentially a bad man. Novalis called him a god-intoxicated man (Gott trinkener Mann), an epithet which, if we may judge from the frequency of its quotation, seems to have been regarded by many as a happy one. Pantheism and atheism are not in strictness identical; yet it is true they are not far separated in their practical tendencies. It is no new remark, however, that men are frequently better than their doctrines; and (so inconsequent and self-deceiving is man) while soundness of doctrine is no absolute guarantee for purity of life, so erroneous opinion is not necessarily accompanied by habits of vice. Exceptional cases, however, should not be made the bases of laws, any more than imperfect moral inductions should be elevated into absolute standards of moral life.

Schelling and Hegel. In following the progress of pantheistic speculation, as traceable in the annals of philosophy, the ontological systems of modern Germany should next demand attention. As, however, the speculative systems of Schelling and Hegel—the most celebrated pantheists of modern times—have been treated of in the article METAPHYSICS, under the section devoted to "Ontology," no special notice of these philosophers is required here; and the reader is referred once for all to that article for further information respecting the most recent evolutions of pantheism.

Estimate of Pantheism. Such, in conclusion, is an outline of the numerous attempts at constructing a science of Being which have ended in pantheism, which is but another name for failure. And in this we have an epitome of the history of all such attempts. Did the results of pantheistic speculation, as of many other fantastic follies of the human brain, terminate merely when the ingenious fabricator had placed the last cope-stone upon his imposing edifice, they might excite a smile, as the harmless amusements of misdirected genius, but would awaken no serious alarm in the breasts of earnest men who are interested in the advancement of truth and the triumph of goodness. But such speculations have a more intimate practical bearing, both directly and indirectly, than might at first sight be supposed. For, apart from the opprobrium which they bring upon philosophy for its speculative variation and egregious absurdity, such doctrines exert a more subtle and dangerous influence in determining men to scepticism, and to a disregard of the ordinary obligations of morality and religion. For if philosophers, by sheer dint of a reckless logic, wring conclusions from the human reason abhorrent to the common sense and shocking to the conscience,—thus bringing into hostile collision the primary elements of our nature,—what escape is there from the most complete intellectual doubt, from the most absolute moral indifference? Thoughtless men may smile or sneer at all such speculations as equally foolish and harmless; but there is assuredly a Nemesis in all erroneous speculation, as there is in all wrong-doing. And this retribution comes not unfrequently nearer the ordinary business and bosoms of men than they are well aware of. A word, then, on the method pursued by the pantheistic philosophers, for it is here the vice of their system lies.

The total falsehood of all pantheistic systems may be established both directly and indirectly:—directly,—1. From its misapplication of the laws of thought; and, 2. From its violating, in limine, the original data of consciousness: indirectly,—3. From its virtually contradict-

ing the intellectual and moral consciousness of mankind; Pantheism, and, 4. From its rendering religion impossible.

1. The one invariable method employed by pantheists is the formally deductive. Now, this method, in order to be thorough-going, in order to transport the thinker into the sphere of absolute existence, would, first of all, require to vindicate the possibility of such existence; would next need to establish the fact of its existence in general; and would, lastly, be constrained to demonstrate its special existence as determinate and individual reality. Now, are all, or is any, of these tasks possible for the logical method of scientific Being? The laws of formal thinking are those of Identity, Contradiction, and Excluded Middle.¹ These laws, as admitted on all hands to be merely regulative and analytical, cannot, of course, add to what already is,—cannot, in point of fact, furnish any existent reality at all. They can neither say that a thing is, nor what a thing is; they can merely say what it is not. Being merely explicative, and perpetually employed on the evolution of identical propositions, they are limited in strictness to the sphere of what is already fixed upon as determinately existent, and as clearly defined. A single fact the laws of logic cannot afford; and when once a fact is postulated, they can never in any degree amplify its positive contents.² Before it is possible to apply the laws of formal thinking in the pursuit of determinate existence, we would require to define existence in general. But do we know anything of existence in general? Is existence per se aught more than a mere abstraction? And if only a mere abstraction, no application to it of the laws of formal thinking can ever succeed, as has just been shown, in clearing the boundaries of abstraction and gaining the territories of real existence. In short, all such demonstrations begin with abstractions and end with abstractions. This brings us to consider—

2. Wherein does the pantheist violate the original data of consciousness? In this, eminently, that he ignores the essential condition of knowledge in arrogating to himself a capacity for defining existence per se, which involves a violation of the limitation of all human knowledge. Spinoza demonstrates that Substance exists because the essence of it implies existence as part of the idea, according to his definition of Substance. Here he makes two erroneous assumptions. In the first place, he identifies thought and existence in assuming that his idea of Substance and the thing Substance are convertible; and, in the second place, he assumes that we have a knowledge of absolute Substance, of Substance irrespective of all qualities, which contradicts the articulate and unequivocal deliverance of consciousness respecting the essential relativity of all our knowledge. In short, Spinoza, and all metaphysicians with him who employ the deductive method of philosophizing, virtually maintain with the sophist Protagoras, that "man is the measure of the universe, both of that which is, and of that which is not." Everything is and must be as we conceive it; an assumption which is not only destitute of a shadow of foundation, but is directly opposed to positive evidence to the contrary.

3. But not only may pantheism be redargued in its premises,—it can also be proved false from the consequences to which it consistently leads. These consequences are both intellectual and moral: intellectual, in contradicting the primary deliverances of consciousness, which assert the real antithetic existence of Self and not-Self; and moral, in giving the lie to the conscience, and denying the possibility of moral obligation. The pantheist maintains that, as man's personality is merely phenomenal, and his power of self-control at bottom but a chimera, every one's actions, whether external or internal, are determined by causes over which

¹ For further information respecting these laws, see Logic; also Appendix I to Sir W. Hamilton's Discussions on Philosophy, &c.

² The reader will find this admirably put by Mr John Veitch in Appendix C, iii., to his Memoir of Dupald Stewart.