TWO LECTURES ON THEISM DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF THE OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY BY ANDREW SETH, M.A., LL.D. PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH; AUTHOR OF SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY,' HEGELIANISM AND PERSONALITY,' 'MAN'S PLACE IN THE COSMOS WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCXCVII All Rights reserved Copyright, 1897, by Charles Scribner's Sons for the United States of America. Printed by the University Press, JUL 13 1903 BE T TWO LECTURES ON THEISM I THERE are three terms, not perhaps very clearly defined, perhaps not employed by different writers with any strict uniformity of usage, still, terms which may suffice to indicate at the outset the possible lines in which theories of the divine may move. The terms I mean are Pantheism, Deism, and Theism. There is a certain differentiation between them, even in current usage. Pantheism either identifies God with the world of men and things, or, in the emphasis it lays upon the divine as the only reality, reduces the facts of finite existence to a mere show or appearance. Pantheism in its varied forms moves between these two extremes; but the feature common to both is the denial of a distinction between God and the world. In the one case, God is explicitly equated with the world-process, so that there can be no talk of difference; in the other case, we are taught that the difference is only a difference that seems. |