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Because he said that God is extended, some have inferred that he supposed God to be corporeal ; but he endeavoured to guard himself against this error by denying to extension everything which characterises body, and ascribing to it a number of peculiarities which body does not possess. As

to thought, he maintained that thought in God is of an entirely different nature from thought in man-that the one bears no more resemblance to the other than the dog, a sign in the heavens, does to the dog, an animal which barks. Thus the only two attributes which he admits to be accessible to the human mind he also represents as really inaccessible to it, and utterly unlike the extension or thought of which we have any experience. If the Divine thought have no more. resemblance to human thought than the dog-star to the dog that barks, we have no knowledge of the former whatever, and merely deceive ourselves when we call it thought at all. This so-called pantheism, instead of helping us to realise that God is near to us, practically assures us that God as God, as natura naturans, is unknowable by us, and, in fact, that there is no God who can be a God for the human mind.

At the third stage of his theory, Spinoza maintains that all finite things are modes of the Divine attributes of the one Divine substance. No language could be more pantheistic as mere language.

But, of course, it must be remembered that by confining the name of substance to the self-existent, self-subsistent, he had condemned himself to the use of pantheistic language, however free of pantheistic taint his thought might have been. He could not call finite things substances; he must deny them to be substances, What could he call them? Once you agree to restrict the term substance to what is absolute and self-existent, it matters comparatively little what name you give to that which is relative and created. If you call it a mode, that means merely that it is derived from and dependent on what is self-existent. Spinoza's language, "all finite things are modes of the one Divine substance," means no more, if strictly interpreted, than that all finite things are derived from, and dependent on, the one self-existent Being. Unfortunately, however, he has made it impossible for us thus to interpret him. His language must be read in the light of the fact that he withholds alike from the substance and the modes from the self-existent Being and the derivative and dependent existences - freedom of will, true personality. He affirms, indeed, that God is free; but he is careful to explain that by free he really means necessary; that Divine liberty is Divine activity necessarily determined by the Divine nature, although independent of any extraneous cause. He also expressed his belief

in the Divine personality, even when admitting that he could form no clear conception of it, but practically he ignored it in his theory. The result was the sacrifice of all individual lives, of all personal character and action, of all freedom and responsibility, to a dead, unintelligible, fatalistic unity. Spinoza was a man of a singularly pure and noble nature, yet he was compelled by the force of logic to draw from his pantheism immoral and slavish consequences which would speedily ruin any individual or nation that ventured to adopt them.

It would not have been difficult to draw from it atheism itself. That was certainly not what Spinoza taught or meant to teach. What he maintained was, that the Divine existence is the one true existence, and that the whole system of what we call nature exists only through connection with it. He did not say that space, as we understand space, and time, in the sense of duration, and the worlds which are in space and time, and what these worlds contain, are all that there is; on the contrary, he said that, besides these things, there was the whole universe of true being-substance with infinite attributes unknown to us, and with others somewhat known, absolute extension, absolute eternity, absolute thought, absolute activity. None the less did his idea of God involve the

very doctrine to which it seemed to be the contrary extreme. If the absolute substance must express itself necessarily and completely in its attributes, it must be absorbed and exhausted in these attributes; and if they in turn must necessarily and completely evolve into modes, only modes will remain. It may be said that substance, attributes, and modes are eternally distinct, although eternally connected; but this cannot be rationally thought or believed if absolute activity be necessary activity. In this case the monism of Spinoza must inevitably disintegrate and dissolve into monadism-his pantheism into atheism or naturalism.1

I have dwelt at some length on Spinozism from a desire to present one good example of what a pantheistic system is, it being impossible for me in the circumstances to delineate a variety of typical instances. I might have selected my specimen from later times, and discoursed on the pantheism of a Fichte, or Schelling, or Hegel. But I am convinced that this would have been unprofitable. The theories of any of these thinkers can only be intelligently exhibited and fairly criticised in lengthened expositions which permit much explanation and illustration. Good brief summaries of their systems exist in various histories of phil1 See Appendix XXXVIII.

osophy, but I doubt if unprofessional students will be greatly the wiser after the perusal even of the best of them.

So far as the philosophies of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel were pantheistic in their nature, or had a pantheistic interpretation imposed upon them, they presented only very inadequate and unworthy views of God. He is surely not to be identified with the moral order of the universe, or with an absolute indifference of subject and object which develops itself in reality and ideality, nature and spirit, or with a self-evolving impersonal process which, after having traversed all the spheres of matter and mind, attains a knowledge of its Godhead in the speculative reason of man. These are not rational thoughts but foolish fancies, although there may have been associated with them much that is true, suggestive, and profound. It was natural, therefore, that the idealistic pantheism attributed to the philosophers just named should have very soon almost disappeared even in Germany itself. It was like a fountain of mingled sweet and bitter waters which had scarcely emerged into the light of day before they parted into two distinct streams, the one being that which is known as speculative theism, and the other bearing various names, but always presenting some phase of naturalistic or humanitarian atheism. Pantheism is always in unstable equilibrium be

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