Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/498

 PANTHEISM

448

PANTHEISM

Varieties. — Those agroc in tlio fiindamontal iloc- trine tlmt benoatli the apparent diversity and mul- tiplicity of things in the universe there is one only being absolutely necessary, eternal, and infinite. Two questions then arise: What is the nature of this being? How are the manifold appearances to be ex- plained? The principal answers are incorporated in such difTcrcnl carliersystcmsas Brahminism, Stoicism, Neo-Platonisiii, and Gnosticism, and in the later sys- tems of Scotus Kriugcna and Giordano Bruno (qq. v.).

Spinoza's pantheism was reaUstic: the one being of the world had an objective character. But the svstems that developed during the nineteenth century went to the extreme of idealism. They are properly grouped under the designation of "transcendental pantheism", as their starting-point is found in Kant's critical [)hilo.sophy. Kant Tq. v.) had distinguished in knowledge the matter which comes through sensa- tion from the outer world, and the forms, which are purely subjective and yet are the more important factors. Furthermore, he had declared that we know the appearances (phenomena) of things but not the things-in-themselves (noumena). And he had made the ideas of the soul, the world, and God merely im- manent, so that any attempt to demonstrate their olDJective value must end in contradiction. This sub- jecti\'ism paved the way for the pantheistic theories of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.

Fichte set back into the mind all the elements of knowledge, i. e. matter as well as form; phenomena and indeed the whole of reality are products of the thinking Ego — not the individual mind but the ab- solute or universal self-consciousness. Through the three-fold process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, the Ego posits the non-Ego not only theoretically but also for practical purposes, i. e. for effort and struggle, which are necessary in order to attain the highest good. In the same way the Ego, free in itself, posits other free agents by whose existence its own freedom is limited. Hence the law of right and all morality; but hence also the Divine being. The living, active, moral order of the world, says Fichte, is itself Gotl; we need no other God, and can conceive of no other. The idea of God as a distinct substance is impossible and contradictory. Such, at any rate, is the earlier form of his doctrine, though in his later theorizing he emphasizes more and more the concepts of the Abso- lute as embracing all individuals within itself.

According to Schelling, the Absolute is the "identitj' of all differences" — object and subject, nature and mind, the real order and the ideal; and the knowledge of this identity is obtained by an intellectual intuition which, abstracting from every individual thinker and every possible object of thought, contemplates the absolute reason. Out of this original unity all things evolve in opposite di- rections: nature as the negative pole, mind or spirit as the positive pole of a vast magnet, the universe. Within this totality each thing, like the particle of a magnet, has its nature or form determined according as it manifests subjectivity or objectivity in greater degree. History is but the gradual self-revelation of the Absolute; when its final period will come to pass we know not; but when it does come, then God will be.

The system of Hegel (q. v.) has been called "logical pantheism", as it is constructed on the "dialectical" method; and "panlogismus", since it describes the entire world-process as the evolution of the Idea. Starting from the most abstract of notions, i. e. pure being, the Absolute developes first the various cate- gories; then it extemahzes itself, and Nature is the result; finally it returns upon itself, regains unity and self-consciousness, becomes theindividual spirit of man. The Absolute, therefore, is Mind; but it attains its ful- ness only by a process of evolution or "becoming", the stages of which form the historj' of the universe.

These idealistic constructions were followed by a

reaction due largely to the development of the n.atural sciences. But these in turn offer, apparently, new support to the central positions of pantheism, or at any rate they point, it is claimed, to that very unity and that gradual unfolding which panllicisin has all along asserted. The principle of the ccin.servation of energy through ceaseless transforinalintis, and the doctrine of evolution applied to all things and all phenomena, are readily interpreted by the pan- theist in favour of his own system. Even where the ultimate reality is said to be unknowable, as in Herbert Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy", it is still one and the same being that manifests itself alike in evolving matter and in the consciousness that evolves out of lower material forms. Nor is it sur- prising that writers like the late Professor Paulsen should see in pantheism the final outcome of all specu- lation and the definitive expression which the human mind has found for the totahtv of things (" Einlcitung in die Philosopliie", Berlin, 1882, 242).

His statement. in fact, may well serve as a summary of the pantheistic doctrine: (1) Reality is a unitary being; individual things have no absolute indepen- dence; they have existence in the All-One, the ens realissimum et perfectissimum of which they are the more or less independent members; (2) The All-One manifests itself to us, so far as it has any manifesta- tions, in the two sides of reality — nature and history; (3) The universal interaction that goes on in the physi- cal world is the showing forth of the inner esthetic teleological necessity with which the All-One unfolds his essential being in a multitude of harmonious modi- fications, a cosmos of concrete ideas (monads, entel- echies). This internal necessity is at the same time absolute freedom or self-realization (op. cit., 239-40).

Catholic Doctrine. — The Church has repeatedly condemned the errors of pantheism. Among the propositions censured in the Syllabus of Pius IX is that which declares: "There is no supreme, all-wise and all-provident Divine Being distmct from the universe; God is one with nature and therefore sub- ject to change; He becomes God in man and the world; all things are God and have His substance; God is identical with the world, spirit with matter, necessity with freedom, truth with falsity, good with evil, jus- tice with injustice" (Denzinger-Bannwart, "Ench.", 1701). And the Vatican Council anathematizes those who assert that the substance or essence of God and of all things is one and the same, or that all things evolve from God's essence (ibid., 1803 sqq.).

Criticism. — To our perception the world presents a multitude of beings each of which has qualities, activities, and existence of its own; each is an individ- ual thing. Radical differences mark off living things from those that are lifeless; the conscious from the un- conscious; human thought and volition from the activ- ities of lower animals. And among human beings each personality appears as a self, which cannot by any effort become completely one with other selves. On the other hand, any adequate account of the world other than downright materialism includes the concept of some original Being which, whether it be called Fir.st Cause, or Absolute, or God, is in its nature and existence really distinct from the world. Only surli a Being can satisfy the demands of human thought, either as the source of the moral order or as the ol ject of religious worship. If, then, pantheism not only merges the separate existences of the world in one ex- istence, but also identifies this one with the Divine Being, some cogent reason or motive must be alleged in justification of such a procedure. Pantheists indeed bring forward various arguments in support of their several positions, and in reply to criticism aimed at the details of their system; but what lies back of their reasoning and what has prompted the construction of all i)antheistic theories, both old and new, is the crav- ing for unity. The mind, they insist, cannot accept