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CHAP.

PANTHEISM

FOREWORD.

Pantheism differs from the systems of belief constituting the main religions of the world in being comparatively free from any limits of period, climate, or race. For while what we roughly call the Egyptian Religion, the Vedic Religion, the Greek Religion, Buddhism, and others of similar fame have been necessarily local and temporary, Pantheism has been, for the most part, a dimly discerned background, an esoteric significance of many or all religions, rather than a "denomination" by itself. The best illustration of this characteristic of Pantheism is the catholicity of its great prophet Spinoza. For he felt so little antagonism to any Christian sect, that he never urged any member of a church to leave it, but rather encouraged his humbler friends, who sought his advice, to make full use of such spiritual privileges as they appreciated most. He could not, indeed, content himself with the fragmentary forms of any sectarian creed. But in the few writings which he made some effort to adapt to the popular understanding, he seems to think it possible that the faith of Pantheism might some day leaven all religions alike. I shall endeavour briefly to sketch the story of that faith, and to suggest its significance for the future. But first we must know what it means.

If I apply this analogy to an explanation of the above definition of Pantheism as the theory that there is nothing but God, it must not be supposed that I regard the parallelism as perfect. In fact, one purpose of the following exposition will be to show why and where all such analogies fail. For Pantheism does not regard man, or any organism, as a true unity. In the view of Pantheism the only real unity is God. But without any inconsistency I may avail myself of common impressions to correct a common mis-impression. Thus, those who hold that the reasonable soul and flesh is one man--one altogether--but at the same time deny that the toe or the finger, or the stomach or the heart, is the man, are bound in consistency to recognise that if Pantheism affirms God to be All in All, it does not follow that Pantheism must hold a man, or a tree, or a tiger to be God.

Excluding, then, such an apparently plausible, but really fallacious inversion of the Pantheistic view of the Universe, I repeat that the latter is the precise opposite of Atheism. So far from tolerating any doubt as to the being of God, it denies that there is anything else. For all objects of sense and thought, including individual consciousness, whether directly observed in ourselves, or inferred as existing in others, are, according to Pantheism, only facets of an infinite Unity, which is "altogether one" in a sense inapplicable to anything else. Because that Unity is not merely the aggregate of all the finite objects which we observe or infer, but is a living whole, expressing itself in infinite variety. Of that infinite variety our gleams of consciousness are infinitesimal parts, but not parts in a sense involving any real division. The questions raised by such a view of the Universe, many of them unanswerable--as is also the case with questions raised by every other view of the Universe--will be considered further on. All that I am trying to secure in these preliminary observations is a general idea of the Pantheistic view of the Universe as distinguished from that of Polytheism, Monotheism, or Atheism.

Of course, there have been different forms of Pantheism, as there have been also various phases of Monotheism; and in the brief historical review which will follow this introductory explanation of the name, I shall note at least the most important of those forms. But any which fail to conform, to the general definition here given, will not be recognised as Pantheism at all, though they may be worth some attention as approximations thereto. For any view of the Universe, allowing the existence of anything outside the divine Unity, denies that God is All in All, and, therefore, is obviously not Pantheism. Whether we should recognise as true Pantheism any theory involving the evolution of a finite world or worlds out of the divine substance at some definite epoch or epochs, may be a debatable question, provided that the eternity and inviolability of the divine oneness is absolutely guarded in thought. Yet I will anticipate so far as to say that, in my view, the question must be negatived. At any rate, we must exclude all creeds which tolerate the idea of a creation in the popular sense of the word, or of a final catastrophe. True, the individual objects, great or small, from a galaxy to a moth, which have to us apparently a separate existence, have all been evolved out of preceding modes of being, by a process which seems to us to involve a beginning, and to ensure an end. But in the view of Pantheism, properly so-called, the transference of such a process to the whole Universe is the result of an illusion suggested by false analogy. For the processes called evolution, though everywhere operative, affect, each of them, only parts of the infinite whole of things; and experience cannot possibly afford any justification for supposing that they affect the Universe itself. Thus, the matter or energy of which we think we consist, was in existence, every atom of it, and every element of force, before we were born, and will survive our apparent death. And the same thing, at least on the Pantheistic view, is true of every other mode of apparently separate or finite existence. Therefore no birth of a new nebula ever added a grain of matter or an impulse of new energy to the Universe. And the final decease of our solar system, if such an event be in prospect, cannot make any difference whatever to the infinite balance of forces, of which, speaking in anthropomorphic and inadequate language, we suppose the Eternal All to consist.

These observations are not intended to be controversial, but only to make clear the general sense in which the term Pantheism is here used. Not that it would be possible at the outset to indicate all that is implicit in the definition. I only wish to premise plainly that I am not concerned with any view of the world such as implies or admits that, whether by process of creation, or emanation, or self-division, or evolution, the oneness of the Eternal has ever been marred, or anything other than the being of God has been or can be produced.

But before passing on to the promised historical review, it is, perhaps, necessary to refer again to a remark previously made, that Pantheism may be considered either from the point of view of philosophy, or from that of religion. Not that the two points of view are mutually exclusive. But, as a matter of fact, Pantheism as a religion is, with certain exceptions among Indian saints and later Neoplatonists, almost entirely a modern development, of which Spinoza was the first distinct and devout teacher. For this statement justification will be given hereafter. Meantime, to deprecate adverse prejudice, I may suggest that a careful study of the most ancient forms of Pantheism seems to show that they were purely philosophical; an endeavour to reach in thought the ultimate reality which polytheism travestied, and which the senses disguised. But little or no attempt was made to substitute the contemplation of the Eternal for the worship of mediator divinities. Thus, in the same spirit in which Socrates ordered the sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius for his recovery from the disease of mortal life, philosophical Pantheists, whether Egyptian or Greek, or even Indian, satisfied their religious instincts by hearty communion with the popular worship of traditional gods. Or, if it is thought that the mediaeval mystics were religious Pantheists, a closer examination of their devout utterances will show that, though they approximated to Pantheism, and even used language such as, if interpreted logically, must have implied it, yet they carefully reserved articles of the ecclesiastical creed, entirely inconsistent with the fundamental position that there is nothing but God. Indeed, their favourite comparison of creature life to the ray of a candle is not really a Pantheistic conception; because to the true Pantheist the creature is not an emanation external to God, but a finite mode of infinite Being. Still the mystics did much to prepare the devout for an acceptance of Spinoza's teaching. And although so amazing a transfiguration of religion rather dazzled than convinced the world at first; nay, though it must be acknowledged that one, and perhaps more of Spinoza's fundamental conceptions have increasingly repelled rather than attracted religious people, yet it can hardly be disputed that he gave an impulse to contemplative religion, of which the effect is only now beginning to be fully realised.

FOOTNOTES:

PRE-CHRISTIAN PANTHEISM

It has been the customary and perhaps inevitable method of writers on Pantheism to trace its main idea back to the dreams of Vedic poets, the musings of Egyptian priests, and the speculations of the Greeks. But though it is undeniable that the divine unity of all Being was an almost necessary issue of earliest human thought upon the many and the one, yet the above method of treating Pantheism is to some extent misleading; and therefore caution is needed in using it. For the revival of Pantheism at the present day is much more a tangible resultant of action and reaction between Science and Religion than a ghost conjured up by speculation. Thus, religious belief, driven out from "the darkness and the cloud" of Sinai, takes refuge in the mystery of matter; and if the glory passes from the Mount of Transfiguration, it is because it expands to etherialise the whole world as the garment of God. Again, the evanescence of the atom into galaxies of "electrons" destroys the only physical theory that ever threatened us with Atheism; and the infinitesimal electrons themselves open up an immeasurable perspective into the abyss of an Unknowable in which all things "live and move and have their being." Therefore it matters little to us, except as a matter of antiquarian interest, to know what the Vedic singers may have dreamed; or what Thales or Xenophanes or Parmenides may have thought about the first principle of things, or about the many and the one. For our spiritual genealogy is not from them, but from a nearer and double line of begetters, including seers--in the true sense of the word--and saints, for both are represented by Kepler and Hooker, Newton and Jeremy Taylor, Descartes and Spinoza, Leibnitz and Wesley, Spencer and Newman. And even these have authority not through any divine right of genius or acquired claim of learning, but because they illumine and interpret obscure suggestions of our own thoughts. Indeed, to the sacrament of historic communion with the past, as well as to the chief rite of the Church, the apostolic injunction is applicable: "Let a man examine himself; and so let him eat of that bread."

Obeying that injunction, any man possessing ordinary powers of observation and reflection may, in the course of a summer day's walk, find abundant reason for interest in the speculations of historic Pantheism. For the aspect of nature then presented to him is one both of movement and repose, of variety and harmony, of multiplicity and unity. Thus the slight breeze, scarcely stirring the drowsy flowery the monotonous cadences of the stony brook, and the gliding of feathery flecks of cloud across the blue, create a peace far deeper than absolute stillness, and suggest an infinite life in which activity and repose are one. Besides, there is evident everywhere an interplay of forces acting and reacting so as mutually to help and fulfil one another. For instance, the falling leaves give back the carbon they gathered from the air, and so repay the soil with interest for the subtler essences derived therefrom and dissolved in the sap. The bees, again, humming among the flowers, while actuated only by instincts of appetite and thrift, fructify the blooms, and become a connecting link between one vegetable generation and another. The heat of the sun draws up water from ocean and river and lake, while chilly currents of higher air return it here and there in rain. So earth, sea, and air are for ever trafficking together; and their interchange of riches and force is complicated ten thousandfold by the activities of innumerable living things, all adapting themselves by some internal energy to the ever varying balance of heat and cold, moisture and drought, light and darkness, chemical action and reaction. And all this has been going on for untold millions of years; nor is there any sign of weariness now.

In the mood engendered by such familiar experiences of a holiday saunter, it may well occur to anyone to think with interest and sympathy of the poets and seers who, thousands of years ago, first dared to discern in this maze of existence the varied expression of one all-embracing and eternal Life, or Power. Such contemplations and speculations were entirely uninfluenced by anything which the Christian Church, recognises as revelation. Yet we must not on that account suppose that they were without religion, or pretended to explain anything without reference to superhuman beings called gods and demons. On the contrary, they, for the most part, shared, subject to such modifications as were imperatively required by cultivated common sense, the beliefs of their native land. But the difference between these men and their unthinking contemporaries lay in this; that the former conceived of one supreme and comprehensive divinity beyond the reach of common thought, an ultimate and eternal Being which included gods as well as nature within its unity. So, for them, Indra, Zeus, or Jove were mere modes of the one Being also manifest in man and bird and tree.

Every race possessing even the rudiments of culture has been impelled by a happy instinct, which, if we like, we may call inspiration, to record in more or less permanent form its experience of nature, of life, and of what seemed the mysteries of both. To this inspiration we owe the sacred books of the Jews. But it is now generally recognised that an impulse not wholly dissimilar also moved prophetic or poetic minds among other races, such, for instance, as the Egyptians, the Chaldaeans, and the Aryan conquerors of India, to inscribe on papyrus or stone, or brick or palm-leaf, the results of experience as interpreted by free imagination, traditional habits of thought, and limited knowledge. Of this ancient literature a considerable part is taken up by the mysteries apparently involved in life, conduct, and death. Most notably is this the case with the ancient Indian literature called the Vedas, and such sequels as the Upanishads, Sutras, and--much later--the Bhagavad G?t?. This collection, like our Bible, forms a library of writings issued at various dates extending over much more than a thousand years.

The forgotten singers and preachers of this prehistoric wisdom were as much haunted as we ourselves are with the harassing questions suggested by sin and sorrow, by life and death, and by aspirations after a higher state. And many, perhaps we may say most of them, found comfort in the thought that essentially they belonged to an all comprehensive and infinite Life, in which, if they acted purely and nobly, their seeming personality might be merged and find peace. Their frame of mind was religious rather than philosophical. But their philosophy was naturally conformed to it; and in their contrast of the bewildering variety of finite visible things with the unity of the Eternal Being of which all are phases, those ancients were in close sympathy with the thoughts of the modern meditative saunterer by field and river and wood.

But the enormous interval of time separating us from those early Indian thinkers necessarily involves very great differences in conditions of thought. And we should not be surprised if amidst much in their writings that stirs our sympathy, there is also a great deal which is to us incongruous and absurd. Therefore, it may be well before quoting these writings to note one or two points marking an almost incommensurable difference between their mode and ours of regarding the world.

Thus, one section of the Khandogya Upanishad consists entirely of instructions given by a father, Udd?laka, to his son, Svetaketu, who had gone through the ordinary courses of study in the Vedas, but who, in the father's view, had failed to reach the true significance of life. Accordingly, Udd?laka inquires: "Have you ever asked for that instruction by which we hear what cannot be heard, by which we perceive what cannot be perceived, by which we know what cannot be known?" The youth, more accustomed than we are to teaching by paradox, expresses no surprise at this mode of putting things, but simply asks: "What is that instruction, sir?" The father then proceeds to give an explanation of what in these days is called "Monism," that is, the absolute singleness of ultimate Being, and traces all that is, or seems to be, up to one ultimate Essence. Now, whether in the form given by Udd?laka to his exposition, his theory can properly be called Pantheism, according to the definition of it assumed above, is perhaps questionable. But that it was intended to be Pantheism there can be no doubt. "In the beginning," says Udd?laka, "there was that only which is ; one only, without a second. Others say, in the beginning there was that only which is not ; one only, without a second; and from that which is not, that which is was born." But Udd?laka rejects this latter doctrine as unthinkable--which, indeed, many explorers of Hegel have found with pain and anguish of mind. And then the father traces all the multiformity of the Universe to the desire or will of the original One, "that which is."

"It thought, 'may I be many; may I grow forth.' It sent forth fire." My limits do not allow me to quote further the fantastic account given of the farther process by which water and earth, plants, animals, and men sprang out of that desire of the One: "May I become many; may I grow forth." For our purpose it is more important to show that in the view of Udd?laka--however inconsistently he may express himself--the original One was never really divided, but remains the true Self of every finite being, however apparently separate. Thus, consider the following dialogue, the first words being a direction of the father, Udd?laka:--

"Fetch me from thence a fruit of the Nyagrodha tree." "Here is one, sir." "Break it." "It is broken, sir." "What do you see there?" "These seeds, almost infinitesimal." "Break one of them." "It is broken, sir." "What do you see there?" "Not anything, sir." The father said: "My son, that subtile essence which you do not perceive there, of that very essence this great Nyagrodha tree exists. Believe it, my son. That which is the subtile essence, in it all that exists has itself. It is the True. It is the Self; and thou, O Svetaketu, art it."

Here we are clearly taught that the "self," or inmost reality of every person and thing is the Eternal One, or Brahma, or God.

The same doctrine is taught in a more advanced form by the poem called the "Bhagavad G?t?," the date of which is probably more than a thousand years later than that of the Upanishad just quoted. In this poem, Krishna, incarnate for the nonce as Arjuna's charioteer, reveals for a special purpose his identity with Brahma, the Eternal All; and Arjuna, when sufficiently instructed adores him thus:--

"O infinite Lord of Gods! the world's abode, Thou undivided art, o'er all supreme. Thou art the first of Gods, the ancient Sire, The treasure-house supreme of all the worlds. The Knowing and the Known, the highest seat. From Thee the All has sprung, O boundless Form! Varuna, Vayu, Agni, Yama thou, The Moon; the Sire and Grandsire too of men.

The Infinite in power, of boundless force, The All thou dost embrace; the Thou art All."

The accounts given to us by the best authorities on Zoroaster and Parseeism scarcely justify us in thinking the religion of the Zendavesta to be Pantheistic in our sense of the term. For though it would appear that Ormuzd , the God of light and goodness, originated in, or was born from and one with a nameless impersonal Unity, such as may answer to Herbert Spencer's "Unknowable," it cannot be accurately said that, according to the Persian view of the world, there is nothing but God. For, to say nothing of the apparently independent existence of the principle of darkness and evil called Ahriman, the relation of the Amshaspands, or supreme spirits, and of the Izeds, or secondary spirits, as well as of the Fereurs, or divine ideas to the impersonal Unity, seems to be rather that of emanations, than parts of a Whole. Again, if it be true that, according to the Zend Avesta, the conflict of light and darkness will ultimately cease, and Ahriman with his demons be annihilated, it is obvious that this implies a beginning and an end, with a process originating in the one, and consummated in the other. But such a process, though most actual on the finite scale, and joyfully or painfully real to us, contemplating, as we do only infinitesimal parts of the Universe, and always under the forms of time and space, is yet incongruous and incommensurate with the thought of one All in All, unlimited by time or space, and whose lifetime is an Eternal Now. Thus true Pantheism takes the Universe, as it is, in its infinity; regards it as without beginning or end; and worships it. Not that Pantheism denies the existence of evil or is unmoved by the struggle between evil and good, or is uninspired by faith in the reiterated triumph of good wherever the local conflict arises. But it insists that evil is relative to the finite parts of the Universe in their supposed isolation, and cannot possibly affect the Eternal All. It allows of no creation or emanation which would put any part of the "wondrous Whole" in opposition to, or separation from, the Eternal. But from its point of view all change, evolution, progress retrogression, sin, pain, or any other good or evil is local, finite, partial; while the infinite coordination of such infinitesimal movements make one eternal peace.

Egyptian Religion need not detain us. For though, there are clear traces of Pantheistic speculation among the Priests, it can scarcely be contended that such speculations had the same influence on the cultured laity as the teaching of the Rishis had in ancient India. But the truth seems to be that the oldest popular theology of Egypt was only a variety of Negro animism and fetishism. Yet these grovelling superstitions, as is often the case, evolved in unbroken continuity a higher faith. For, in the attempt made to adapt this savage cult to the religious needs of various districts, all alike gradually advancing in culture, the number and variety of divinities became so bewildering to the priests, that the latter almost inevitably adopted the device of recognising in parochial gods only so many hints of one all-comprehensive divine energy. Not that they ever embraced monotheism--or the belief in one personal God distinct from the Universe. But if Plutarch be accurate--as there seems no reason to doubt, in his record of an inscription in a temple of Isis--they, or at least the most spiritual of them, found refuge in Pantheism. For the transfigured and glorified goddess was not regarded as the maker of the Universe, but as identical with it, and therefore unknowable, "I am all that hath been, is, or shall be; and no mortal has lifted my veil." The prevalence of such Pantheism, at least among the learned and spiritual of ancient Egypt, is, to a considerable extent, confirmed by other Greek writers besides Plutarch. But the inscription noted by Plutarch gives the sum and substance of what they tell us.

Before considering the classical and Neo-platonic Greek speculations commonly regarded as Pantheistic, we may do well to recall to mind the immense difference between the established habit of theological thought in our day, and the vague, or at best, poetically vivid ideas of the ancients. For the long tradition of nearly two thousand years, which has made monotheism to us almost as fixed an assumption as that of our own individuality, was entirely wanting in this case. Not that the idea of one supreme God had never been suggested. But it was not the Hebrew or Christian idea that was occasionally propounded; for in the ethnic mind it was rarely, if ever, regarded as inconsistent with polytheism; and consequently it verged on Pantheism. "Consequently," I say, because such monotheism as existed had necessarily to explain the innumerable minor deities as emanations from, or manifestations of the supreme God. And though such conscious attempts at reconciliation of beliefs in many gods and in one Supreme were confined to a small minority of meditative priests and speculative philosophers, yet really, the combination was implicit in the sort of polytheistic religion which possessed the family affections and patriotic associations of the early Greek world.

For though we may find a difficulty in ridding ourselves of a prejudice wrought into the tissue of our early faith by the nursery lessons of childhood, it was not the graven or molten image which was really worshipped by the devout, but that form of superhuman power which, by local accident, had been identified with the "idol." If, indeed, we supposed every "idolator" to have received definite religious teaching, analogous to that with which we ourselves were imbued in youth, we might well find his attitude inconceivable. But he had nothing of the kind. He only knew that in war, in hunting, in fishing, in farming, he was confronted with powers which passed his comprehension; and tradition permeated him with the expectation that such powers would be propitiated by his worship of the images set up in their names. There was therefore no reasoned creed, such as those of the Catholic and Reformed Churches, but only a vague sentiment brought to a focus by the associations of the shrine. From such a view of polytheism it is easy to understand how most, if not all, of the old speculative philosophers could allow the existence of the traditional gods, even while in reasoned contemplation they saw that all deities were subordinate to and merged in one universal God.

How far this unstable religious position was subject to the influence of the oriental mysticism at which we have glanced already, is, at any rate, so far as concerns the classical age of Greek philosophy, a matter of conjecture. But the resurrection of a prehistoric and almost forgotten civilization from the buried cities of Crete has brought to light many evidences of frequent intercourse, two or three thousand years before the Christian era, between European and Egyptian, or Asiatic, centres of life. Therefore, we may well believe that during the earliest stages of the evolution of thought in East and West, it was as impossible as at the present time for any local school of thinkers to be absolutely original or independent. Thus, later Greek philosophers, whether themselves within sound of the echoes of Hindoo teaching or not, may very well have grown up in an atmosphere impregnated with mythic germs, whose origin they did not know. But however that may be, Greek Pantheism, while it had many points of contact with Eastern speculation, was more purely intellectual and less essentially religious than the Pantheism of the Vedas, or the solemn dream that haunted Egyptian temples. For while the aspiration of Hindoo Pantheists was to find and assume the right attitude toward "the glory of the sum of things," the Greeks, as St. Paul long afterward said, "sought after wisdom," and were fascinated by the idea of tracing all the bewildering variety of Nature up to some one "principle" , beginning, origin.

Thus Thales of Miletus, during the late seventh and early sixth century B.C., is said to have been satisfied when he found in water--or moisture--the ultimate principle out of which all things and all life, including gods and men, were evolved. With such a speculation of infant philosophy we are here not concerned, except to say that it was not Pantheism as understood in modern times. For while his ablest exponents admit that no sufficient evidence is left to show very clearly what he meant, there seems no reason for supposing that to him the Universe was a Living God.

It would be fruitless to relate how successors of Thales varied his theory of an ultimate "principle," by substituting air or fire for water. But it is worth while to note that another citizen of Miletus, Anaximander, after an interval of some forty years, pronounced that the beginning, the first principle, the origin of all things, was neither water, nor air, nor fire, but the Infinite . And though the best authorities confess that they cannot be sure of his meaning, this may very well be because he anticipated Herbert Spencer by two and a half millenniums, in acknowledging that all things merge in one and the same Unknowable. But, so far as our evidence goes, he made no such attempt as the modern philosopher did, to persuade the religious instinct that this Unknowable could supply the place of all the gods.

The position of Xenophanes, who, toward the latter part of the sixth century B.C. migrated, apparently for political reasons, in fear of Persian imperialism, from Colophon in Asia Minor to Elea in Italy, was a little different, and, for our purpose, more interesting. For the few fragments which are unfortunately all that is left to us of his philosophical poetry, are strongly suggestive of Pantheism, and the interpretation put upon them by later classical and sub-classical writers, who had his works before them, would appear decisive. True, the distinguished and enlightened scholar, Simon Karsten, who, in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, found a labour of love in collecting and editing the remains of early Greek philosophers, deprecated such a judgment. Yet, while the motives for his special pleading were honourable, seeing the odious misrepresentations of Pantheism still prevalent in the Dutch scholar's native land,--misrepresentations undissipated even by the splendour of Spinoza,--his protest remains special pleading still. And he himself candidly quotes at large from an alleged work of Aristotle--possibly, only a student's notes of the latter's lectures--and also from Simplicius, as reported by Theophrastus in a comment on Aristotle's Physics, sentences which describe the system of Xenophanos as unquestionably Pantheistic. From, which description I gather that the devout philosopher regarded God as the only real Being, including all that in human language has been, is, and will be, without beginning or end, living and perceiving equally everywhere throughout His infinite essence. And if that essence is compared by Xenophanes to a sphere, neither bounded nor boundless, neither moving nor immovable, this is only because few, if any, in that age of the world, could content themselves with loyally accepting the limits imposed on man by the very nature of things, limits which now compel us to own that, while the Eternal is more real than ourselves, yet, in the strict sense of knowing, He is, from an intellectual standpoint, the Unknowable.

This Pantheism did not generate in Xenophanes any arrogant disdain for the religion of his time. For, though he condemned, in words often quoted, the folly which supposed the gods to have the human form, senses, passions and appetites, he was yet glad to worship the divine All as partially manifested in finite beings--perhaps personified powers of nature. Thus among the fragments of his poetry fortunately preserved, is one exquisite gem, a description of a festive repast in the open air. There purity comes first, symbolised by clear floor, clean hands, and spotless dishes. Upon purity waits beauty, not in the forms desired by sensuous passion, but in garlands of flowers and in delicate scents. The wine is unstinted, yet tempered with sparkling water. But, lest the plentifulness of bread and honey and cheese upon the lordly table should eclipse the highest sanctions of human joy, an altar prominent in the festive scene is heaped with offerings of flowers. Then the first note of music is the praise of God, a praise taking form in blameless poetic myths and holy thoughts. In such a feast the minds of the guests are kindled with a desire to be capable of doing right. "There is no harm in drinking with reasonable moderation; and we may honour the guest who, warmed by wine, talks of such noble deeds and instances of virtue as his memory may suggest. But let him not tell of Titan battles, or those of the giants or centaurs, the fictions of bygone days, nor yet of factious quarrels, nor gossip, that can serve no good end. Rather let us ever keep a good conscience towards the gods."

Having given so much space to an ancient who seems to me specially interesting as a prophet of the ultimate apotheosis of earthly religions, I must be content to indicate, in a very few lines, the course of the Pantheistic tradition among the Greeks after his day. The arithmetical mysticism of Pythagoras has no bearing upon our subject. Empedocles of Agrigentum, living about the middle of the fifth century B.C., and thus, perhaps, in the second generation after Xenophanes, was, in many respects, a much more imposing figure--clothed in purple, wielding political power, possessing medical skill, and even working miraculous cures, such as are apparently easy to men of personal impressiveness, sympathy, and "magnetism." But he does not appear to have so nearly anticipated modern Pantheism as did his humbler predecessor. For though the fragments of Empedocles, much larger in volume than those of Xenophanes, certainly hint at some kind of everlasting oneness in things, and expressly tell us that there is no creation nor annihilation, but only perpetual changes of arrangement, yet they present other phases of thought, apparently irreconcileable with the doctrine that there is nothing other than God. Thus he teaches that there are four elements--earth, air, water and fire--out of which all things are generated. He also anticipates Lucretius in his pessimistic view of humanity's lot; and insists on the apparently independent existence of a principle of discord or strife in the Universe. It would be a forced interpretation to suppose him to have set forth precociously the Darwinian theory of the struggle for life. For his notion seems much more akin to the Zoroastrian imagination of Ahriman. Again, he sings melodiously, but most unphilosophically, of a former golden age, in which the lion and the lamb would seem to have lain down together in peace; and trees yielded fruit all the year round. At that time the only deity was Venus, who was worshipped with bloodless offerings alone. Still, it must be remembered that, whether consistently or not, Empedocles produced an elaborate work on the Nature of Things, to which Lucretius makes eloquent and earnest acknowledgments. But that very approval of Lucretius forbids us to regard the older poet as a Pantheist in our sense of the term. For certainly to him the Universe cannot have been a living God.

Between this philosophical idea of a Oneness, not thought of as God, and the spiritual contemplation of a universal Life of which all things are modes, the highest thoughts of men hovered during the process by which, in some measure under extraneous influences, Greek speculation finally produced Neo-platonism--or, as we might say in the current phraseology of our time--a restatement of Plato's teaching. Of this school, arising in the early Christian centuries, some leaders were undoubtedly Pantheists. But we cannot say this of Plato himself, nor of his master Socrates. For though these great men were more profoundly interested in the moral order of the world than in any questions of physical nature, or even of metaphysical subtleties, they were never given to the kind of contemplation suggested above in extracts from the Classical Books of the East, the contemplation which educes the moral ideal from unreserved subordination of self to the Universe as of the part to the Whole. Doubtless the inspiration imparted by Socrates to a disciple in mere intellect his superior, and the resulting moral and religious suggestions abounding in the Dialogues, did much to impel the current of religious evolution toward that spiritual aspect of the Infinite All which fascinated some of the Neo-Platonists, and received its most splendid exposition from Spinoza. But the conditions imposed by necessary brevity compel me to pass by those classic names with this acknowledgment, and to hasten toward the fuller revelation of Pantheism as a religion.

FOOTNOTES:

POST-CHRISTIAN PANTHEISM.

In speaking of Neo-Platonism I incidentally mentioned its apparent subjection to "extraneous influences," These, of course, included the rising power of Christianity and its Jewish traditions.

Even before the advent of the new revelation, the Jewish settlements existing in all great cities of the Graeco-Roman world excited interest at any rate among sentimentalists touched by the fascination at that time beginning to be exerted by oriental religions. And this influence of Jewish traditions was much facilitated by the existence of a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures.

Now, what the Hebrew tradition did for Greek philosophy was, of course, not to favour its Pantheistic trend, where that existed, but much more to convert such semi-Pantheism from a mere intellectual speculation to contemplative devotion. For Hebraism itself had become almost as intensely monotheistic as the later Islam. And, though monotheism may be a stage in the progress of religion from Animism to Pantheism, it may, also, by the peculiar intensity of the personal devotion it sometimes inspires, cause the very idea of any farther expansion of faith to be counted a sin.

Perhaps the influence of Hebraism on Hellenism may be illustrated by the Alexandrian Philo's pathetic endeavour not only to trace the wisdom of the Greeks to Moses, but to show that this derived lore is much mightier for good when re-invested with the spiritual power and ardent devotion of the Jewish faith.

"If any one will speak plainly," he writes, "he might say that the intelligible world is nothing other than the word of the world-making God. For neither is the intelligible city anything other than the thought of the architect already intending to build the city. This is the teaching of Moses, not mine. At any rate in what follows, when he records the origin of man, he declares outright that man was made in the image of God. But if a part reflects the type, so also must the entire manifestation, this intelligible ordered world, which is a reproduction of the divine image on a larger scale than that of man."

How Philo managed to extort this out of the Pentateuch is a question of interest, but one on which I cannot delay. Suffice it, that while he thus showed his reverence for the traditions of his race, his whole aim is to fire philosophy with religious devotion. But he was not, in any strict sense of the word, a Pantheist, though he regarded the Logos as an emanation from the Eternal, and the kosmos, the ordered world, as in some way emanating from the Logos. Perhaps, indeed, if we could exclude from emanation the idea of time, as Christians are supposed to do when they speak of the "eternal generation" of the Divine Son or the "procession" of the Holy Ghost, we might regard Philo, with the succeeding Neo-Platonists and some of the Gnostics, as approximately Pantheistic. But his vagueness and uncertainty about matter forbid such a conclusion. For whether he regarded matter as eternally existing apart from the divine substance, or whether he looked upon it as the opposite of Being, as a sort of positive nothing, in either case, it cannot be said that for him the whole Universe was God, and nothing but God.

If I have given more space to the great Alexandrian Jew than my narrow limits ought to afford, it is because I think I may thus avoid the necessity of saying much about the philosophic schemes of the Neo-Platonists, the phantasies of the Gnostics, or the occasionally daring speculations of the Christian Fathers. For whether the works of Philo were much studied by the Greeks or not, they certainly described the spiritual resultant--so to speak--emerging from the mutual impact of Western and Oriental, especially Jewish, ideas. Which resultant was "in the air" from the first century of the Christian age; and the later epistles ascribed to St. Paul, as well as the Fourth Gospel, show clear traces of it.

But the inspiration of the time-spirit was not confined to the Christian Church. For the city of Alexandria, where that spirit seems to have been peculiarly potent as shown in the transfigured Judaism of Philo, was the birthplace of the Neo-Platonic school already mentioned above. And among its greatest members, such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, the religious influence of the East was distinctly apparent. True, they followed Socrates and Plato in reverence for knowledge as the unfailing begetter of virtue. But their speculations about the divine Being were touched by Oriental emotion. And we may with some confidence believe that their development of the Platonic Trinity owed a good deal to the rapid spread of Christianity. Thus the sentiment, the fervour, the yearning for "salvation," the worship and devotion taught by the best of the Neo-Platonists were not so much, from Athens as from Sinai and Galilee. Yet, though there were in their world-conception many anticipations of the gospel of the "God-intoxicated man," whom the counsels of the Eternal reserved for the fulness of times, it would scarcely be accurate to describe the system of any of them as strictly Pantheistic. For they were always troubled about "matter" as an anomalous thing in a divine universe, and in treating of it they hesitated between the notion of an eternal nuisance which the Demiurgus, or acting God, could only modify, not destroy, and, on the other hand, a strained theory of an evil nothing, which is yet something. Again, so far from realising Spinoza's faith in God as so literally All in All that there is nothing else but He, they would not tolerate the contact of the Infinite with the finite, of God with the world. Consistently with such prepossessions, they held obstinately to the notion of some beginning, and therefore some ending of the ordered world. And this beginning was effected by emanations such as the Logos, or, as others had it, the world-soul and other divine energies, between the Eternal and creation; a phantasy which, however poetically wrought out, is not really consistent with Pantheism.

The orthodox Christian fathers were not less conscious than the Neo-Platonists or Gnostics of the perennial problem of the Many and the One. But they were restrained, perhaps, by the "faith that comes of self-control," perhaps by mere common sense, from indulging in attempts to connect the Infinite with the Finite by "vain genealogies." Indeed, for the most part they confessed that whatever light the Gospel might shed on moral issues, it left untouched the ultimate question of the relation of the Infinite to the Finite. And the only aspect of their most venturesome speculations which I need recall is their insistence, even when apparently verging toward Pantheism, on a transcendent as well as an immanent God, that is on a Creator existing, so to speak, outside the Universe and apart from it as well as permeating every part. Thus, for example, Augustine would seem to deny to the world any separate creature existence when he says, that but for the divinity everywhere in it, creation would cease to be. But in his insistence on the creation of the world from nothing, he directly contradicts Pantheism, because he must necessarily be taken to mean that there is now something other than God.

That there have been devout Christians whose mystic speculations on the relations of the soul to the Eternal logically involved Pantheism--if logic in such a case had any function--there can be no doubt. But for most of them "God's word written" seemed to confirm God's word in heaven and earth as known to them, proclaiming that there had been a beginning and there must be an end. Therefore, whatever might be the immanence of the Creator in His works, God could not, in their minds, be identified with "the fashion of this world" which "passeth away."

Yet the time was coming when the Divine word both in Scripture and in Nature was to be otherwise read. For men began to learn that the Bible was other than they had supposed and the Universe immeasurably greater than they had conceived.

FOOTNOTES:

MODERN PANTHEISM.

Modern Pantheism as a religion begins with Spinoza. Whether it ended with him is a question which the future will have to decide. But the signs of the times are, at least in my view, very clearly against such a conclusion. And amongst the omens which portend immortality, not necessarily for the philosophical scheme, but for the "God-intoxicated" devoutness of his Pantheism, is the desire, or rather the imperious need increasingly realized, for a religion emancipated from theories of creation or teleology, intolerant of any miracle, save indeed the wonders of the spiritual life, and satisfying the heart with an ever present God. For it is to be remembered that Spinoza was the first Pantheist who was also a prophet, in the sense of speaking out the divine voice of the infinite Universe to its human constituent parts. Not that I would minimize the religious fervour of the Neo-Platonists: it is their Pantheism that seems to have been imperfect. But in Spinoza we have a man who, inheriting by birth the tradition--I might even say the apostolic succession--of the Jewish prophets, and gifted with an insight into the consummation of that tradition in Jesus Christ, was driven by a commanding intellect to divorce the spiritual life he prized from creeds that had become to him Impossible, and to enshrine it in the worthier temple of an eternal Universe identical with God. It is not, then, with his philosophy that I am so much concerned as with his religion.

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