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.
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. 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 determinate 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 origin of 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 admiringly 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 Spinozism, 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
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1 "Pantheistic tendencies are found," says M. Bitter, "wherever religion and philosophy are to be found, even among the islanders of the South Sea." (Hist. of Anti. 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.
The Hindus themselves reckon six different schools of Indian philosophy, all regarded as offshoots from the primordial doctrines of the Brahmans or sacerdotal caste, viz.—1. The Sankhya, attributed to Kapila; 2. The Yoga schools of Pantanjali and the Bhagavad-Gita; 3. The Pervra-Mimansa, attributed to Jaimiti; 4. The Vedanta, or Uttara-Mimansa, by the Vyasa Krishna Dvaipayana; 5. Nyaya, of Gautama; 6. The Vaisheshika, of Kanada.
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 Pervra-Mimansa, which is more a Brahmanical essay on the Vedas, of very indifferent merit, than a regular treatise on philosophy. 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.
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. 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 Pantheism 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." 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. Listen to the complete compendium of the Puranas, according to its tenor. The world was produced from Vishnu; it exists in him; he is the cause of its continuance and cessation; he is the soul."
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 phantasms 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!"
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-
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1 This Vyasa (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 vyasas 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. 60, note.)
2 See Weber's Verzeichniss der alt Indischen 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 remains, 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 compensation 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-Purana, p. 252.)
6 Vishnu-Purana, 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 diffusive air, passing through the perforations of a flute, is distinguished as the voices of the flute, so the nature of the great spirit is single, though its forms be manifold, arising from the consequence of acts." (Vishnu-Purana, 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, or Shiva the destroyer and renovator of material forms.
9 Vishnu-Purana, 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 claims, 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.
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 egotism, 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. 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 developed in China, in Persia, in Egypt, in Chaldea, and in Phoenicia, 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. 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 Anaximander 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 (ἀρχή), according to this geometrician, was not Water, as Thales had supposed, but the Infinite (τὸ ἄνερον). 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 Pythagorean thinkers who called himself by the humble yet exalted title 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-
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1 See De Theologorum Vedanticorum, by K. J. H. Windischmann, Wolfenbüttel, 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 Egyptian a species of Pantheism. In the Essai sur les Philosophes dans les Sociétés Modernes, par H. L. C. Marey, 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 Lewes (Biographical Hist. of Philosophy, Introd. to the library edition; also Ethikarath Review, April, 1847), are tolerably decided,—the former particularly so,—as to the independent origin of Greek speculation; while the modern orientalists, Roth (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, rated, 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 (δοξα) 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. 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, Timaeus 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 ought 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. 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 Heraclitus, "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 Heraclitus 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." 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 Heraclitus 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 Gnostics were 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 orientalism 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" (Bēōs), 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 Pantheism. 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,
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1 A novel and ingenious, if somewhat arbitrary, explanation of the Pythagorean doctrine of Number, is given by Professor Ferrier in his Institutes of Metaphysic (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 itself that contributes 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 Xenophanes Carmina Reliquiae, 3 vol., 8vo, Brussels, 1830-33; also C. A. Brandis Commentationum Eleaticarum, &c., Alton, 1813; and Cousin's Nouveaux Fragments Philosophiques.
3 See Lewes' Biographical History of Philosophy, library edition, p. 57. 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 genius 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 Naturae*, 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 causae*) 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.
"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 Amalric 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 naturalis*), 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 *supersessentialis*, 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
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1 See the *Encomium of Plotinus*; also Lewes' *Blog, Hist. of Philosophy*, library edition, p. 264. 2 See *Disputatio de differentia quam inter Plotini et Schellingi doctrinam de nomine summo intercedit*, G. W. Gerlach, Viteb. 1811. 3 See Lib. iii., § 4, of his *De Divisione Naturae*, Libri v., ed. T. Gale, Oxon., 1681; Fr. Ant. Staudenmaier's *Johannes Scotus Erigena* u. d. Wiesnach, er. Zeit, &c., 1534; and the Abbé Gerbert's *Troisième Conference de Philosophie Catholique*.