CHAPTER IV

PANTHEISM.II

The earlier Pantheists were misled by the endeavour [sic] to layhold of two distinct ideas, the one of which was a reality thathas since been grasped and is of inestimable value, the other aphantom which has misled all who have followed it.The reality isthe unity of Life, the oneness of the guiding and animatingspirit which quickens animals and plants, so that they are allthe outcome and expression of a common mind, and are in truth oneanimal; the phantom is the endeavour [sic] to find the origin ofthings, to reach the fountain-head of all energy, and thus to laythe foundations on which a philosophy may be constructed whichnone can accuse of being baseless, or of arguing in a circle.

In following as through a thick wood after the phantom ourforefathers from time to time caught glimpses of the reality,which seemed so wonderful as it eluded them, and flitted backagain into the thickets, that they declared it must be thephantom they were in search of, which was thus evidenced asactually existing.Whereon, instead of mastering such of thefacts they met with as could be captured easily-which facts wouldhave betrayed the hiding-places of others, and these again ofothers, and so ad infinitum-they overlooked what waswithin their reach, and followed hotly through brier and brakeafter an imaginary greater prize.

Great thoughts are not to be caught in this way.They mustpresent themselves for capture of their own free will, or betaken after a little coyness only.They are like wealth andpower, which, if a man is not born to them, are the more likelyto take him, the more he has restrained himself from an attemptto snatch them.They hanker after those only who have tamed theirnearer thoughts.Nevertheless, it is impossible not to feel thatthe early Pantheists were true prophets and seers, though thethings were unknown to them without which a complete view wasunattainable.What does Linus mean, we ask ourselves, when hesays :- "One sole energy governs all things" ? How can one soleenergy govern, we will say, the reader and the chair on which hesits? What is meant by an energy

governing a chair? If by aneffort we have made ourselves believe we understand somethingwhich can be better expressed by these words than by any others,no sooner do we turn our backs than the ideas so painfullycollected fly apart again.No matter how often we go in search ofthem, and force them into juxtaposition, they prove to have noneof that innate coherent power with which ideas combine that wecan hold as true and profitable.

Yet if Linus had confined his statement to living things, and hadsaid that one sole energy governed all plants and animals, hewould have come near both to being intelligible and true.For if,as we now believe, all animals and plants are descended from asingle cell, they must be considered as cousins to one another,and as forming a single tree-like animal, every individual plantor animal of which is as truly one and the same person with theprimordial cell as the oak a thousand years old is one and thesame plant with the acorn out of which it has grown.This iseasily understood, but will, I trust, be made to appear simplerpresently.

When Linus says, "All things are unity, and each portion is All;for of one integer all things were born," it is impossible forplain people-who do not wish to use words unless they mean thesame things by them as both they and others have been in thehabit of meaning-to understand what is intended.How can eachportion be all? How can one Londoner be all London? I know thatthis, too, can in a way be shown, but the resulting idea is toofar to fetch, and when fetched does not fit in well enough withour other ideas to give it practical and commercial value.How,again, can all things be said to be born of one integer, unlessthe statement is confined to living things, which can alone beborn at all, and unless a theory of evolution is intended, suchas Linus would hardly have accepted? Yet limit the "all things" to "all living things," grant thetheory of evolution, and explain "each portion is All" to meanthat all life is akin, and possesses the same essentialfundamental characteristics, and it is

surprising how nearlyLinus approaches both to truth and intelligibility.

It may be said that the animate and the inanimate have the samefundamental substance, so that a chair might rot and be absorbedby grass, which grass might be eaten by a cow, which cow might beeaten by a

man; and by similar processes the man might become achair; but these facts are not presented to the mind by sayingthat "one energy governs all things"-a chair, we will say, and aman; we could only say that one energy governed a man and achair, if the chair were a reasonable living person, who wasactively and consciously engaged in helping the man to attain acertain end, unless, that is to say, we are to depart from allusual interpretation of words, in which case we invalidate theadvantages of language and all the sanctions of morality.

"All things shall again become unity" is intelligible as meaningthat all things probably have come from a single elementarysubstance, say hydrogen or what not, and that they will return toit; but the explanation of unity as being the "unity ofmultiplicity" puzzles; if there is any meaning it is toorecondite to be of service to us.

What, again, is meant by saying that "the soul of the world isthe Divine energy which interpenetrates every portion of themass" ? The soul of the world is an expression which, to myself,and, I should imagine, to most people, is without propriety.Wecannot think of the world except as earth, air, and water, inthis or that state, on and in which there grow plants andanimals.What is meant by saying that earth has a soul, andlives?Does it move from place to place erratically? Does itfeed? Does it reproduce itself? Does it make such noises, orcommit such vagaries as shall make us say that it feels? Can itachieve its ends, and fail of achieving them through mistake? Ifit cannot, how has it a soul more than a dead man has a soul, outof whom we say that the soul has departed, and whose body weconceive of as returning to dead earth, inasmuch as it is nowsoulless? Is there any unnatural violence which can be done toour thoughts by which we can bring the ideas of a soul and ofwater, or of a stone into combination, and keep them there forlong together?The ancients, indeed, said they believed theirrivers to be gods, and carved likenesses of them under the formsof men ; but even supposing this to have been their real mind,can it by any conceivable means become our own? Granted that astone is kept from falling to dust by an energy which compels itsparticles to cohere, which energy can be taken out of it andconverted into some other form of energy; granted (which may ormay not be true) also, that the

life of a living body is only theenergy which keeps the particles which compose it in a certaindisposition; and granted that the energy of the stone may beconvertible into the energy of a living form, and that thus,after a long journey a tired idea may lag after the sound of suchwords as "the soul of the world." Granted all the above,nevertheless to speak of the world as having a soul is notsufficiently in harmony with our common notions, nor does it gosufficiently with the grain of our thoughts to render theexpression a meaning one, or one that can be now used with anypropriety or fitness, except by those who do not know their ownmeaninglessness.Vigorous minds will harbour [sic] vigorousthoughts only, or such as bid fair to become so; and vigorousthoughts are always simple, definite, and in harmony witheveryday ideas.

We can imagine a soul as living in the lowest slime that moves,feeds, reproduces itself, remembers, and dies.The amoeba wantsthings, knows it wants them, alters itself so as to try and alterthem, thus preparing for an intended modification of outsidematter by a preliminary modification of itself.It thrives ifthe modification from within is followed by the desiredmodification in the external object; it knows that it is well,and breeds more freely in consequence.If it cannot get hold ofoutside matter, or cannot proselytise [sic] that matter andpersuade it to see things through its own (the amoeba's)spectacles-if it cannot convert that matter, if the matterpersists in disagreeing with it-its spirits droop, itssoul is disquieted within it, it becomes listless like awithering flower-it languishes and dies.We cannot imagine athing to live at all and yet be soulless except in sleep for ashort time, and even so not quite soulless.The idea of a soul,or of that unknown something for which the word "soul" is ourhieroglyphic, and the idea of living organism, unite sospontaneously, and stick together so inseparably, that no matterhow often we sunder them they will elude our vigilance and cometogether, like true lovers, in spite of us.Let us not attempt todivorce ideas that have so long been wedded together.

I submit, then, that Pantheism, even as explained by those whohad entered on the outskirts only of its great morass,nevertheless holds out so little hope of leading to anycomfortable conclusion that it will be more reasonable to occupyour minds with other matter than to follow Pantheism

further.ThePantheists speak of a person without meaning a person; they speakof a" him" and a "he" without having in their minds the idea of aliving person with all its inevitable limitations.Pantheism is,therefore, as is said by Mr.Blunt in another article,"practically nothing else than Atheism; it has no belief in apersonal deity overruling the affairs of the world, as DivineProvidence, and is, therefore, Atheistic," and again, "Theismbelieves in a spirit superior to matter, and so does Pantheism;but the spirit of Theism is self-conscious, and thereforepersonal and of individual existence-a nature per se, andupholding all things by an active control; while Pantheismbelieves in spirit that is of a higher nature than brute matter,but is a mere unconscious principle of life, impersonal,irrational as the brute matter that it quickens."

If this verdict concerning Pantheism is true-and from all I cangather it is as nearly true as anything can be said to be whichis predicated of an incoherent idea-the Pantheistic God is anattempt to lay hold of a truth which has nevertheless eluded itspursuers.

In my next chapter I will consider the commonly received,orthodox conception of God, and compare it with the Pantheistic. I will show that it, too, is Atheistic, inasmuch as, in spite ofits professing to give us a conception of God, it raises no ideasin our minds of a person or Living Bein

g-and a God who is notthis is non-existent.