thing to be done is to obtain as clear an idea as possible of what
is to be understood by Pantheism, as distinguished from Theism on
the one hand, and from Atheism on the other. There can be no doubt
that the difficulties, both metaphysical and moral, which attach to
the conception of a personal God, the Creator and Governor of the
universe, have, more than any other cause, constrained thoughtful
men who have pondered the problem of the universe, to endeavour to
escape from their perplexities and bewilderments by taking refuge
in the notion of a diffused impersonal divinity. And it must be
confessed that these difficulties are so oppressive and so staggering
to our incompetent human reason, that they might well tempt the
mere reasoner, the mere logician, the mere metaphysician, to give up
faith in a personal God, if so to do were not really to involve one's
self in more than equivalent difficulties of the very same class,
besides many other difficulties, and in truth contradictions, both
intellectual and also moral, which are involved in the pantheistic
hypothesis. That the alternative is such as I have now stated, that
the pantheistic hypothesis is necessarily beset with such difficulties
and contradictions, will in part be shown by the inquiry which, as
I have intimated, must needs come first of all in the criticism I
am to attempt. An investigation of the meaning of Pantheism, of the
characteristic idea proper to the intermediate hypothesis which rejects
equally A-Theism and Theism, will open to view the metaphysical
difficulties and contradictions involved in the hypothesis. I shall
afterwards try to show the incompatibility of the principles of
Pantheism with the true principles of natural science. The moral
considerations belonging to the Christian controversy with Pantheism I
shall reserve till the final stage in my argument.
Pantheism agrees with atheism in its denial of a personal Deity. Its
divinity of the universe is a divinity without a will and without
conscious intelligence. In what respect, then, does Pantheism really
differ from atheism? If we eliminate from our idea of the divinity
of the universe all consciousness, all sympathy, all will, what
sort of a divinity remains, what sense of a present and real divine
power is left to the man that shrinks from atheism? Atheism denies
that in, or over, or with nature there is anything whatever besides
nature. Does not Pantheism do the very same? If not, what is there,
let the pantheist tell us, in nature besides nature? What sort of a
divinity is that which is separate from conscious intelligence and
from voluntary will or power? Is it said that though there be no Deity
in the universe, yet there is a harmony, a unity, an unfolding plan
and purpose, which must be recognised as transcending all limitation,
as unerring, inexhaustible, infinite, and therefore as divine? Let us
ask ourselves what unity that can be which is above mere nature, as
such, and yet stands in no relation to a personal Lord and Ruler of the
universe; what plan and purpose that can be which is the product of no
intelligence, which no mind ever planned; what infinite and unerring
harmony can mean, when there is no harmonist to inspire and regulate
the life and movement of the whole. Do not the points of distinction
which the pantheist makes between his philosophy and the bald tenets of
the atheist amount in effect to so many admissions that the facts of
the universe cannot be stated, that the phenomena of nature cannot be
described, with anything like fidelity or accuracy, without the use of
language such as has no real meaning unless it implies the existence
and operation throughout universal nature of a supreme actuative and
providential Mind and Will?
The least and lowest implication which is involved in Pantheism, the
most elementary idea which the word pantheism can be held to connote,
the barest _minimum_ of meaning which the creed of the pantheist can
be presumed to contain, is that there is in the whole of nature--in
this universe of being--a _divine unity_. Let us then look at this word
_unity_, and consider closely what it must mean.
Those who believe in a divine unity pervading all nature must imply
that in the midst of the infinite complexity and variety of the
universe there is everywhere to be recognised a grand law and order
of nature--a method, plan, and harmony in the great whole, which must
consequently be traceable through all the parts. But whose and whence
is this grand law? Is it indeed a reality? Are all things fitted to
each other, part to part, law to law, force to force, throughout the
infinite depths of microscopic disclosures, throughout the infinite
exuberance of nature's grandest provinces, throughout all space and
all duration? Do all things work to meet each other? Is every several
life-cell, each organic fibre, moving, tending, developing, making
escapes or overtures, as if a separate angel of unerring sympathy and
insight, of illimitable plastic skill and power, of creative energy
and perfect providence, inhabited, inspired, and actuated it? Is it so
that the man of science, who enters into communion with nature's actual
life, and movement, and purpose, seems to see and feel divinities,
unrestingly, unweariedly, in silent omnipotence, in infinite diffusion,
everywhere at work, so that the reverent inquirer and gazer to
whom this wondrous spectacle is unveiled, could almost, in his own
pantheistic sense, adopt the invocation of Coleridge, and address the
powers he sees at work in such words as these:
"Spirits that hover o'er
The immeasurable fount,
Ebullient with creative Deity!
_And ye of plastic power that interfused
Roll through the grosser and material mass,
In organising surge! Holies of God!
(And what if Monads of the Infinite Mind?)_"
Is it so? I ask. Then, what does such a real harmony and such universal
correspondence and providence as this imply? Surely we must perforce
adopt one of two alternatives. If we refuse to believe in One Ruling,
Organizing, Creative Mind, One Living, Universal Mind and Will and
Providence, which works through all, we must endow each separate being,
or at least each form of life, with creative energy, illimitable and
all-answering sensibility and sympathy, unerring wisdom, and veritable
will. Nay, ultimately, as it seems to me, the alternative must be
between accepting the faith in an infinite God, and attributing to even
the particles of inorganic matter, amenable as these are to the laws
of gravitation and chemical combination, a wisdom, will, and power of
their own, the power of intelligence and of self-direction. As to what
are called the laws of gravitation and of chemical combination, we
know that a law, like "an idol," is "nothing in the world" but a name.
"There is no power but of God; the powers that be, are ordained of
God." A law is not a power; the laws of science do but define observed
methods of movement or forms of customary relation between thing and
thing.
Of one thing, at any rate, I think we may be sure, that a mere order
of nature, ascertained though it may have been by the truest and
surest induction, cannot have made and cannot sustain itself, cannot
be self-originated and self-impelled. So also it is certain that a
mere plastic universal power, apart from any creative or providential
mind, however its products might seem to imply intelligence, could be
animated by no conscious purpose, and could not be conceived as working
with blind automatic certainty conformably to a grand cosmical plan
or towards a providential end. And if the divinity of the pantheist
is nothing more than a personified law or order of nature, his
personification of this order or law can add nothing to its virtue
or potency, can by no means transform it from a phrase into a living
power, from a figure of speech into a real and intelligent force,
can never constitute it into a divinity. The more I reflect upon the
subject, the more assured the conclusion appears to be, that any
conception of a real unity in and of nature is self-contradictory and
unmeaning, except upon the assumption of a conscious and intelligent
Creator. The unity of nature, to a man who denies the existence of
a real God, cannot be a unity inherent in nature, cannot be a unity
according to which nature itself has been planned, and is really
working; it is an imputed unity, the conception of the pantheistic
philosopher's own mind. Unity, indeed, as apprehended by us--and it
can only be known through our apprehension of it--is essentially a
conception, a relative idea. If one could conceive nature as existing
destitute of a mind either to work on a plan, or to recognise a plan
in working, in such nature there could be no unity. Unity in action
implies a plan of voluntary working, and therefore a regulating mind.
Unity of conception and exposition implies an intelligent observer. The
unity of nature, if it be not the plan and work of the very God, can be
nothing more than a scheme and conception which has been invented and
imputed by man.
But perhaps it may be thought that the word unity, as used by
pantheists, should be understood rather as referring to the ultimate
oneness and identity of all force throughout the universe, than to
harmony of universal plan and purpose. Various as are the appearances
of nature, and the modes in which the laws of nature operate, it may
yet be set forth by the pantheist as his belief,--a belief, he will
say, which the modern advance of science tends continually to establish
as the true theory of the universe,--that all force is ultimately
one, that the different forces of nature are mutually convertible and
equivalent, that one energy of nature, Protean, universal, of infinite
plasticity and power of variation or adaptation, pervades and actuates
all things. It may be called gravitation, or electricity, or light, or
heat, or nervous energy, or vital force; but ultimately and essentially
it is one and the same; it is, to quote well-worn lines which will be
held here strictly to apply--
"Changed thro' all, and yet in all the same."
It
"Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent:
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
* * * * *
To it no high, no low, no great, no small,
It fills, it bounds, connects, and equals all."
Now if this be the pantheistic unity which is admitted by men who
deny a personal Deity, I will not stay to object that such a view is
hardly consistent with the essential distinction in nature which even
Professor Huxley and men of his school unwaveringly and powerfully
maintain, between inorganic matter and living forms. It is more to my
purpose to remark that it is much simpler and easier to believe in
a personal God, than in such an impersonal divinity as this Protean
Force. Every difficulty which belongs to the thought of God's existence
belongs to this also. This force must be self-originated, must have
been from everlasting, must be creative, omnipresent, providential,
equal to all plans, purposes, contrivances, inspirations, which have
been, or ever will be, in this dædalean and infinite universe; must be
the source of all intelligence, though itself unintelligent; of all
sympathy, although itself incapable of sympathy; must have formed the
eye, though it cannot see, and the ear, though it cannot hear; must
have blossomed and developed into personal intelligences, although
personal intelligence is a property which cannot be attributed to
it; must unquestionably be omniscient as well as omnipresent, or it
could not, in its infinite convertibility, anticipate all needs,
meet all demands, answer in absolute and universal harmony to every
faculty, capability, and tendency of all things that are and all
things that become. Now is it reasonable to object to the doctrine of
a personal Deity because of its inconceivability and its stupendous
difficulties, and yet to believe in such a primal, essential,
immaterial, creative, infinite, blind and unintelligent force as
this? Surely no contradiction could be greater. The conception of God
as from everlasting _is_ stupendous. But an infinite Protean Force
from everlasting, destitute of intelligence and will, yet continually
operative as the life, soul, wisdom, and providence, of all things, is
nothing less than contradictory and absurd.
I can come to no conclusion, accordingly, but that Pantheism really
only differs from atheism, in so far as it confesses that it is
impossible to speak with ordinary propriety, or in any such way as to
meet the necessities either of science itself or of the common sense
and feelings of mankind, without employing theistic language. It has
been said that hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue. So
a profession of Pantheism is the tribute of compliance at least in
speech, is the outward language of homage, which theism has power
to extort from atheism. "Pantheism," as is said by the author of
_Lothair_, "is but atheism _in domino_. Nothing," as the same writer
adds, "can surely be more monstrous than to represent a creator as
unconscious of creating."
Yes, Pantheism is but veiled atheism. Strip Pantheism of all
involutions of thought and all investitures of language, and in
its naked truth it stands forth as mere atheism. Every form which
Pantheism takes, every disguise which it assumes, to hide from itself
and from the world its real character, is a testimony borne by atheism
to the necessity which all men feel for assuming the existence of
Deity; What Robespierre is reported to have said with reference to
political government and national well-being, that if there were not
a God, it would be necessary to invent one, is felt by pantheistic
philosophers to be true in regard to nature. So monstrous a conception
is that of this universe without a governing mind; so clearly and
directly to the common sense of mankind do the infinite harmonies of
the universe seem to imply a designing and governing Intelligence; so
indubitably does the might and life of the universe, ever coming forth
anew, ever springing up afresh, ever unfolding and advancing, imply a
central living Power, One with the infinite governing Intelligence;
that pantheists, in order to speak and write intelligibly, are
compelled to invest nature with the qualities which they deny to the
Deity, to attribute a spirit and intelligence to the whole machine,
because they deny the existence of the great Mechanist; to personify
a harmony and unity which is but an abstraction, which, on their own
hypothesis, is but a grand accident, a result without a cause, because
they refuse to believe in a personal God.
I am very far indeed from wishing to come under the definition of
what Mr. Hutton has spoken of as the "Hard Church," or to carry my
positions merely by the use of the dilemma, yet I cannot refrain from
saying, parenthetically, that the argument of the dilemma, carefully
and truly applied, is not only always legitimate but often necessary,
and I must affirm that it applies very closely in the present instance.
The pantheist cannot maintain his position midway between atheism
and theism. If he absolutely refuses to be a theist, it is necessary
to show him that he will have to yield to the cruel necessity of
acknowledging himself to be an atheist. Standing midway, his position
is altogether untenable, from whichever side it is assailed. On the one
side, the pantheist is condemned by the same arguments which condemn
atheism; on the other side, the atheist may justly allege against
the position of the pantheist the self-same difficulties which both
pantheist and atheist urge against theism.
But if pantheism be in reality only atheism, I may henceforth
disregard the verbal distinction between the two, and bring forward
considerations and arguments which apply indifferently to either.
In pursuing the discussion I shall take up in detail some points of
argument already, as to their general scope, more or less distinctly
intimated in the preliminary considerations which I have advanced.
To explode any view of the world which excludes from it the presence
and government of a personal God, nothing more is needed than to
realize and truly understand the atheistic view in its various aspects.
Let us try the atheist's theory on the history of the universe, and see
whether it can be made to fit, or must be broken in the attempt to fit
it.
The will and interference of God, as the Lord and Ruler of the
universe, is excluded. The universe is held to have been from the
beginning without a shaping and ruling intelligence and will. No
mind has presided over its destinies, has animated its energies; no
providence of Divine power and wisdom has guided its changes and
progress, has renewed and replenished and sustained it. It follows
that no power or will from beyond itself has ever touched the
universe. Its own unaided and unguided powers have done all. If the
universe did not make itself, it has developed itself: all that has
been, or is to be, was included potentially in that which was at the
beginning, and has unfolded in necessary order. The vision presented
is to certain minds very fascinating: it is a vision of vast unbroken
progress, of continual and infinite self-development. But let it
be worked out, and let us consider what it really means. Such an
hypothesis must lead us back, in the infinite dim distance of the
original and indistinguishable past, into a universe-mist of germinal
powers from which all has since developed.--But stay. Was this mist
and expanse of universal nature in its _origines_ all homogeneous
and at one stage of existence? Then I have to ask, whence came it?
What, going ever further and further back, where were the infinitely
earlier, fainter, evanishing entities or powers, into which infinite
creative force and potentiality was diffused? and what the one life
and grand harmony of influences and impulses, tending towards an
infinite goal of progress and perfection, which pervaded the whole?
What does all this mean? Is this easier, simpler, more rational, than
to believe in God from everlasting? Is anything gained in simplicity,
comprehensibility, probability, or in scientific character, by denying
that in the "increasing purpose" which "runs through the ages" there
is any guidance of a divine intelligence or working of a divine will;
and calling the whole process from first to last, from everlasting to
everlasting, "development"? What is this word development but a name?
Does the use of the word explain anything? Does the use of the word
reduce the mystery of the universe to the simplicity of an axiom? Does
the use of the word provide a simple equivalent for all that divine
wisdom, power, and providence, have ever been imagined to do for the
universe? Men call the mystery of being and becoming by the name of
development, and then say that all things are effected by development,
and that development explains all! Whereas this development of which
they talk so familiarly, as though they understood all its secrets, and
were privy to its infinitely various and mighty workings, and could
unfold its source and meaning, is itself all the time the very mystery
to be resolved and explained. Development is in truth as amazing and
incomprehensible a mystery as creation. It seems to be but another
word for creation. Only they who affect its use instead of the word
_creation_, insist upon creation without a creator. The unintelligent
and unconscious universe, on their view, is continually creating itself.
The hypothesis of development, however, is not only unintelligible and
utterly devoid of reality, when criticized in its general principle;
as might be expected, it altogether breaks down when it is tested
in detail. Professor Huxley's protoplasm breaks it down. All the
scientific evidence, as that eminent teacher of science showed at
Liverpool last autumn, is opposed to the idea that protoplasm was
developed out of inorganic matter. The hypothesis of spontaneous
life-generation appears to be exploded. Science, at any rate, on its
own positive principles, has no right whatever to pretend that life has
ever been developed out of what was not living. Here, then, a great
and, so far as science can help us to form a judgment, an altogether
impassable barrier rises to view against any development hypothesis. At
a certain stage in the history of the universe protoplasm, organized
life, made its appearance on the scene, starting up as a perfectly new,
an original, an undeveloped phenomenon. Before, all had been inorganic
and dead; now Life was abroad in the world, destined to increase and
multiply, and replenish the universe. Let those who deny divine and
creative will and government, inform us whence came this life. It was
not developed. Must it not have been created. If not, then whence, I
ask, whence did it spring?
The argument which I have just urged should, as I venture to think, be
conclusive even with those who know, and seek to know, nothing more
of science than the order and method of its phenomenal processes. I
will now bring forward a consideration which will, I hope, be admitted
to have weight by those men of science--it is to be greatly lamented
that there should be so few of these--who have studied the nature and
working of the mind as well as the phenomena of sense. We have seen
that protoplasm--that Life--was not developed out of inorganic matter,
but appears to have been an entirely new and primary fact on the face
of the universe. Life came in and appropriated, put to its own uses,
bound up under its own seal, impregnated with its own specific virtue,
the raw inorganic materials which it found in nature; but the power of
Life itself was altogether new. A fact in some sort analogous to this
confronts us in a higher sphere, in the sphere of living intelligence
itself. I refer to the emergence of personal consciousness among
the world of living creatures. To me it appears that the sense of
personality is an altogether new and original fact, one which cannot
be conceived as developed or developable out of any pre-existing
phenomena or conditions. Whence it comes, or how it arises, I know not.
But it appears to be, in and of itself, the assertion of an essential
separateness between One's Self and all phenomena, all constituents,
all conditions whatever. The sense of an I Myself, of Personality,
asserts an antithesis between the Man, and all that the Man uses, takes
up into his personality, makes his own. As Life binds up inorganic
matter under its seal, but is not developed out of inorganic matter, so
the voluntary and responsible Self binds up under the seal of its own
personality all that belongs to the manifold life of its complex being.
As life brings into the universe a new world of phenomena, higher and
more manifold than those of mere inorganic matter, yet embodying and
adopting these, so personality brings into the universe a new world
of vastly higher and rarer phenomena than those of mere vitality,
yet embodies and adopts these:--it introduces all that belongs to
reflection and morality, giving birth to an intelligence and a world
of thought, in which all the lower and anterior phenomena of the world
become matters of cognisance, and are mirrored as objects of thought.