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support of the earth in the sky, from traditional arts, from belief in revelation, from the Veda, from its sentences, and from particular numbers;" but it takes for granted that material atoms existed from eternity. The reasoning by which the belief in creation is set aside by Hindu philosophers is ever substantially that which we find thus expressed in a Sutra of the Sankhya system : "There cannot be the production of something out of nothing; that which is not cannot be developed into that which is the production of what does not already exist potentially is impossible; because there must of necessity be a material out of which a product is developed; and because everything cannot occur everywhere at all times; and because anything possible must be produced from something competent to produce it."

NOTE XXXVI., page 355

GREEK PANTHEISM.

Pantheism so pervades all Greek philosophy that the history of Greek pantheism must be studied in the history of Greek philosophy. Hegel, Zeller, Ferrier, Grote, and others, will here serve as guides. For the literature regarding the several philosophies Ueberweg may be consulted.

Parmenides gave his thoughts to the world in a poem, Пepì Þúσews, of which fragments remain, making up in all 153 lines. They are the chief source for a knowledge of his system. They have been edited in the 'Reliquiae' of Karsten and in the 'Fragmenta' of Mullach. The

dialogue Parmenides in the 'Corpus Platonicum,' even if a genuine work of Plato, is not an authority as to the teaching of the philosopher whose name serves as its title. There is a good French monograph on Parmenides by M. Riaux (1840).

No Greek philosopher thought of God as truly creative, or of the universe as in its very substance the result of the Divine action. Aristotle, in affirming that the ancient philosophers believed the world to have been made, has frequently been supposed to have testified that they believed the universe to have been created out of nothing. But this is an undoubtedly incorrect interpretation. The assertion that a thing is made does not imply that nothing existed out of which it could be made. Many of the ancients attributed to the universe a beginning, and at the same time regarded matter as eternal. The origin of things which they described was their origin from matter, not the origin of matter. See this learnedly proved in a dissertation of Mosheim, "On Creation out of Nothing," in the third volume of his edition of Cudworth's 'Intellectual System.'

Those who, like Clement of Alexandria, Huet, Cudworth, &c., have maintained that Plato believed in creation ex nihilo have mistaken what he taught about the phenomenal world of sense-about body as possessed of forms and qualities-with what he taught about the primary matter which the world of bodies presupposes. Those who suppose him to have meant by the eternity of matter merely the eternal existence in the Divine Mind of the idea of matter, overlook that the idea of the universe can be no less eternal than that of matter, and that a Divine idea could never be conceived of as disorderly, malignant, disobedient to the Divine will, and the

source of the evil and sin in the world. It is necessary to admit that Plato held that beneath the perpetual changes of sensible phenomena there was an unchangeable subject, different from the Deity and the Divine ideas, existing in a sphere independent of temporal origination, not produced by the Divine will, yet required as the means and occasion of the manifestation of Divine intelligence in the organisation of the world.

Aristotle distinctly taught the eternity both of matter and of the universe, but he conceived of primary matter as a mere capacity,-not as an actual substantial existence, which necessarily implies a synthesis of matter and form, dependent on the action of an energising cause, which must be both an efficient and a final cause. "Matter, in the theory of Aristotle," says Sir Alexander Grant, "is something which must always be presupposed, and yet which always eludes us, and flies back from the region of the actual into that of the possible. Ultimate matter, or 'first timber,' necessarily exists as the condition of all things, but it remains as one of those possibilities which can never be realised, and thus forms the antithesis to God, the ever-actual. From all this it may be inferred that Aristotle would have considered it very unphilosophical to represent Matter, as some philosophers of the present day appear to do, as having had an independent existence, and as having contained the germs, not only of all other things, but even of Reason itself, so that out of Matter Reason was developed. According to Aristotle, it is impossible to conceive Matter at all as actually existing, far less as the one independent antecedent cause of all things; and it is equally impossible to think of Reason as non-existent, or as having had a late and derivative origin."-Ancient Classics for English Readers, "Aristotle," pp. 167, 168.

The Stoic conception of the relation of God to the world is very similar to the Aristotelian. They are viewed as two distinguishable yet inseparable aspects of Being-two sides of the one all-comprehensive existence -two phases of the one actual substance. God is the productive energy, and matter is the ground or substratum on and in which this energy works. God is that by which, and matter is that through which, everything is; and in all things both coexist, neither pure spirit nor pure matter having actual existence.

Various reasons were given by the Greek philosophers for denying the creation of matter and for affirming its eternity. Their weakness is very ably shown in Pearson's work 'On the Creed,' Art. I., chap. v.

NOTE XXXVII., page 358.

JORDANO BRUNO.

There never should have been any doubt entertained as to the indebtedness of Spinoza to Bruno; but since the discovery of the Brief Treatise' of the latter, it is possible only in the minds of those who are not competently informed. A single fact may be mentioned to show how the discovery has thrown light on the relationship.

Appended to the second chapter of the Brief Treatise' are two dialogues- the first between the personifications, Understanding, Love, Reason, and Desire; and the second between two interlocutors, Erasmus and Theophilus. The German critical historians of phil

osophy have started a controversy as to whether these dialogues were written before, or after, or along with the rest of the treatise. As to the direct and immediate object of their inquiry, they seem to me to have done little more than raise a very thick cloud of dust, the reverse of helpful to clear vision; but they have brought out one important fact-viz., that the second and longer of these dialogues, which is occupied with the idea of God, the fundamental idea in Spinoza's system, may be almost composed, pieced together, from sentences of Bruno.

That there were many general resemblances between the doctrine of Spinoza and of the celebrated Neapolitan pantheist-that there were even some resemblances so special that they could only be accounted for by the later thinker having received from the earlierhad already been perceived; but the fact now mentioned has naturally led to a great deal of renewed and minute. inquiry in this direction. The consequence has been that Spinoza has been ascertained to have absorbed Bruno not less than Descartes.

On Bruno, see Chr. Bartholmèss, 'Jordano Bruno,' 2 tom. (1846-47), and Domenico Berti, 'Vita di Giordano Bruno' (1868). There are two instructive articles on his philosophy by Prof. Barach in the 13th vol. of the 'Philosophische Monatshefte.' His Italian works have been edited by Wagner, and some of his Latin works by Gfrörer.

There is a good 'Histoire du Panthéisme Populaire au Moyen Age et au Seizième Siècle,' by Auguste Jundt.

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