CHAPTER III

PANTHEISM. I

THE Rev. J. H. Blunt, in his "Dictionary of Sects, Heresies,etc.," defines Pantheists as "those who hold that God iseverything, and everything is God."

If it is granted that the value of words lies in the definitenessand coherency of the ideas that present themselves to us when thewords are heard or spoken-then such a sentence as "God iseverything and everything is God" is worthless.

For we have so long associated the word "God" with the idea of aLiving Person, who can see, hear, will, feel pleasure,displeasure, etc., that we cannot think of God, and also ofsomething which we have not been accustomed to think of as aLiving Person, at one and the same time, so as to connect the twoideas and fuse them into a coherent thought.While we arethinking of the one, our minds involuntarily exclude the other,and vice versa; so that it is as impossible for us tothink of anything as God, or as forming part of God, which wecannot also think of as a Person, or as a part of a Person, as itis to produce a hybrid between two widely distinct animals.If Iam not mistaken, the barrenness of inconsistent ideas, and thesterility of widely distant species or genera of plants andanimals, are one in principle-sterility of hybrids being due tobarrenness of ideas, and barrenness of ideas arising frominability to fuse unfamiliar thoughts into a coherent conception. I have insisted on this at some length in "Life and Habit," butcan do so no further here.(Footnote: Butler returned to thissubject in "Luck, or cunning?" which was originally published in1887. In like manner we have so long associated the word "Person" withthe idea of a substantial visible body, limited in extent, andanimated by an invisible something which we call Spirit, that wecan think of nothing as a person which does not also bring theseideas before us.Any attempt to make us imagine God as a Personwho does not fulfil [sic] the conditions which our ideas attachto the word "person," is ipso facto atheistic, asrendering the word God without meaning, and therefore withoutreality,

and therefore non-existent to us.Our ideas are likeour organism, they will stand a vast amount of modification if itis effected slowly and without shock, but the life departs out ofthem, leaving the form of an idea without the power thereof, ifthey are jarred too rudely.

Any being, then, whom we can imagine as God, must have all thequalities, capabilities, and also all the limitations which areimplied when the word "person" is used.

But, again, we cannot conceive of "everything" as a person. "Everything" must comprehend all that is to be found on earth, oroutside of it, and we know of no such persons as this.When wesay "persons" we intend living people with flesh and blood;sometimes we extend our conceptions to animals and plants, but wehave not hitherto done so as generally as I hope we shall someday come to do.Below animals and plants we have never in anyseriousness gone.All that we have been able to regard aspersonal has had what we can call a living body, even though thatbody is vegetable only; and this body has been tangible, and hasbeen comprised within certain definite limits, or within limitswhich have at any rate struck the eye as definite.And every partwithin these limits has been animated by an unseen somethingwhich we call soul or spirit.A person must be a persona- that is to say, the living mask and mouthpiece of an energysaturating it, and speaking through it.It must be animate in allits parts.

But "everything" is not animate.Animals and plants alone producein us those ideas which can make reasonable people call them"persons" with consistency of intention.We can conceive of eachanimal and of each plant as a person; we can conceive again of acompound person like the coral polypes [sic], or like a treewhich is composed of a congeries of subordinate persons,inasmuch as each bud is a separate and individual plant.We cango farther than this, and, as I shall hope to show, we ought todo so; that is to say, we shall find it easier and more agreeablewith our other ideas to go farther than not; for we should seeall animal and vegetable life as united by a subtle and tilllately invisible ramification, so that all living things are onetree-like growth, forming a single person.But we cannot conceiveof oceans, continents, and air as forming parts of a

person atall; much less can we think of them as forming one person withthe living forms that inhabit them.

To ask this of us is like asking us to see the bowl and the waterin which three gold-fish are swimming as part of the gold-fish. We cannot do it any more than we can do something physicallyimpossible.We can see the gold-fish as forming one family, andtherefore as in a way united to the personality of the parentsfrom which they sprang, and therefore as members one of another,and therefore as forming a single growth of gold- fish, as boughsand buds unite to form a tree; but we cannot by any effort of theimagination introduce the bowl and the water into thepersonality, for we have never been accustomed to think of suchthings as living and personal.Those, therefore, who tell us that"God is everything, and everything is God," require us to see"everything" as a person, which we cannot; or God as not aperson, which again we cannot.

Continuing the article of Mr.Blunt from which I have alreadyquoted, I read :-

"Linus, in a passage which has been preserved by Stobaeus,exactly expresses the notion afterwards adopted by Spinoza: 'Onesole energy governs all things; all things are unity, and eachportion is All; for of one integer all things were born; in theend of time all things shall again become unity; the unity ofmultiplicity.'Orpheus, his disciple, taught no other doctrine."

According to Pythagoras, "an adept in the Orphic philosophy,""the soul of the world is the Divine energy which interpenetratesevery portion of the mass, and the soul of man is an efflux ofthat energy.The world, too, is an exact impress of the EternalIdea, which is the mind of God."John Scotus Erigena taught that"all is God and God is all."William of Champeaux, again, twohundred years later, maintained that "all individuality is one insubstance, and varies only in its non-essential accidents andtransient properties." Amalric of Bena and David of Dinantfollowed the theory out "into a thoroughgoing Pantheism." Amalric held that "All is God and God is all.The Creator and thecreature are one Being.Ideas are at once creative and created,subjective and objective.God is the end of all, and all returnto Him.As every variety of humanity forms

one manhood, so theworld contains individual forms of one eternal essence."Davidof Dinant only varied upon this by "imagining a corporeal unity. Although body, soul, and eternal substance are three, these threeare one and the same being."

Giordano Bruno maintained the world of sense to be "a vast animalhaving the Deity for its living.soul." The inanimate part of theworld is thus excluded from participation in the Deity, and aconception that our minds can embrace is offered us instead ofone which they cannot entertain, except as in a dream,incoherently.But without such a view of evolution as wasprevalent at the beginning of this century, it was impossible tosee "the world of sense" intelligently, as forming "a vastanimal."Unless, therefore, Giordano Bruno held the opinions ofBuffon, Dr.Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, with more definitenessthan I am yet aware of his having done, his contention must beconsidered as a splendid prophecy, but as little more than aprophecy.He continues, "Birth is expansion from the one centreof Life; life is its continuance, and death is the necessaryreturn of the ray to the centre of light." This begins finely,but ends mystically.I have not, however, compared the Englishtranslation with the original, and must reserve a fullerexamination of Giordano Bruno's teaching for another opportunity.

Spinoza disbelieved in the world rather than in God.He was anAcosmist, to use Jacobi's expression, rather than an Atheist. According to him, "the Deity and the Universe are but onesubstance, at the same time both spirit and matter, thought andextension, which are the only known attributes of the Deity."

My readers will, I think, agree with me that there is very littleof the above which conveys ideas with the fluency and comfortwhich accompany good words.Words are like servants: it is notenough that we should have them-we must have the most able andwilling that we can find, and at the smallest wages that willcontent them.Having got them we must make the best and not theworst of them.Surely, in the greater part of what has beenquoted above, the words are barren letters only: they do notquicken within us and enable us to conceive a thought, such as wecan in our turn impress upon dead matter, and mould [sic] thatmatter into

another shape than its own, through the thought whichhas become alive within us.No offspring of ideas has followedupon them, or, if any at all, yet in such unwonted shape, andwith such want of alacrity, that we loathe them as malformationsand miscarriages of our minds.Granted that if we examine themclosely we shall at length find them to embody a little germ oftruth-that is to say, of coherency with our other ideas; butthere is too little truth in proportion to the trouble necessaryto get at it.We can get more truth, that is to say, morecoherency-for truth and coherency are one- for less trouble inother ways.

But it may be urged that the beginnings of all tasks aredifficult and unremunerative, and that later developments ofPantheism may be more intelligible than the earlier ones. Unfortunately, this is not the case.On continuing Mr.Blunt'sarticle, I find the later Pantheists a hundredfold moreperplexing than the earlier ones.With Kant, Schelling, Fichte,and Hegel, we feel that we are with men who have been decoyedinto a hopeless quagmire; we understand nothing of theirlanguage-we doubt whether they understand themselves, and feelthat we can do nothing with them but look at them and pass themby.

In my next chapter I propose to show the end which the earlyPantheists were striving after, and the reason and naturalness oftheir error.