Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 11.djvu/499

 PANTHEISM

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PANTHEISM

dualism or pluralism as the final account of reality. By an irresistible tendency, it seeks to substitute for the apparent multiplicity and diversity of things a unitary ground or source; and, once this is determined, to explain all things as somehow derived though not really separated from it.

That such is in fact the ideal of many philosophers cannot be denied; nor is it needful to challenge the statement that reason does aim at unification on some basis or other. But this very aim and all endeavours in view of it must likewise be kept within reasonable bounds: a theoretical unity obtained at too great a sacrifice is no unity at all, but merely an abstraction that quickly falls to pieces. Hence for an estimate of pantheism two questions must be considered; (1) at what cost does it identify God and the world; and (2) is the identification really accomplished or only at- tempted? The answer to (1) is furnished by a review of the leading concepts which enter into the pantheis- tic system.

God. — It has often been claimed that pantheism by teaching us to see God in everything gives us an ex- alted idea of His wisdom, goodness, and power, while it imparts to the visible world a deejier meaning. In point of fact, however, it makes void the attributes which belong essentially to the Divine nature. For the pantheist God is not a personal Being. He is not an intelligent Cause of the world, designing, creating, and governing it in accordance with the free determina- tion of His wisdom. If consciousness is ascribed to Him as the one Substance, extension is also said to be His attribute (Spinoza), or He attains to self-con- sciousness only through a process of evolution (Hegel). But this very process implies that God is not from eternity perfect; He is forever changing, advancing from one degree of perfection to another, and helpless to determine in what direction the advance shall take place. Indeed, there is no warrant for saying that He "advances" or becomes Ynore "perfect"; at most we can say that He, or'rather It, is constantly passing into other forms. Thus God is not only impersonal, but also changeable and finite — which is equivalent to saying that He is not God.

It is true that some pantheists, e. g. Paulsen (op. cit.), while frankly denying the personality of God, pretend to exalt His being by asserting that He is "supra-personal". If this means that God in Himself is infinitely beyond any idea that we can form of Him, the statement is correct; but if it means that our idea of Him is radically false and not merely inadequate, that consequently we have no right to speak of infinite intelligence and will, the statement is simply a make- shift which pantheism borrows from agnosticism. Even then the term " supra-personal " is not consist- ently applied to what Paulsen calls the All-One; for this, if at all related to personality, should be described as infra-personal.

Once the Divine personality is removed, it is evi- dently a misnomer to speak of God as just or holy, or in any sense a moral Being. Since God, in the panthe- istic view, acts out of sheer necessity, i. e. cannot act otherwise, His action is no more good than it is evil. To say, with Fichte, that God is the moral order, is an open contradiction; no such order exists where nothing is free, nor could God, a non-moral Being, have estab- lished a moral order either for Himself or for other beings. If, on the other hand, it be maintained that the moral order does exist, that it is postulated by our human judgments, the plight of pantheism is no bet- ter; for in that case all the actions of men, their crimes as well as their good deeds, must be imputed to God. Thus the Divine Being not only loses the attribute of absolute holiness, but even falls below the level of those men in whom moral goodness triumphs over evil.

Man. — No such claim, however, can be made in behalf of the moral order by a consistent pantheist. For him, human personality is a mere illusion: what XI.— 29

we call the individual man is only one of the countless fragments that make up the Divine Being ; and since the All is impersonal no single part of it can validly claim personality. Futhermore, since each human action is inevitably determined, the consciousness of freedom is simply another illusion, due, as Spinoza says, to our ignorance of the causes that compel us to act. Hence our ideas of what "ought to be" are purely subjective, and our concept of a moral order, with its distinctions of right and wrong, has no founda- tion in reality. The so-called "dictates of conscience" are doubtless interesting phenomena of mind which the psychologist may investigate and explain, but they have no binding force whatever; they are just as illusory as the ideas of virtue and duty, of injustice to the fellow-man and of sin against God. But again, since these dictates, like all our ideas, are produced in us by God, it follows that He is the source of our illu- sions regarding morality — a consequence which cer- tainly does not enhance His holiness or His knowledge.

It is not, however, clear that the term illuttion is jus- tified; for this supposes a distinction between truth and error — a distinction which has no meaning for the genuine pantheist; all our judgments being the utter- ance of the One that thinks in us, it is impossible to discriminate the true from the false. He who rejects pantheism is no further from the truth than he who defends it; each but expresses a thought of the Abso- lute whose large tolerance harbours all contradictions. Logically, too, it would follow that no heed should be taken as to veracity of statement, since all statements are equally warranted. The pantheist who is careful to speak in accordance with his thought simply re- frains from putting his philosophy into practice. But it is none the less significant that Spinoza's chief work was his "Ethics", and that, according to one modern view, ethics has only to describe what men do, not to prescribe what they ought to do.

Religion. — In forming its conception of God, pan- theism eliminates everj- characteristic that religion pre- supposes. An impersonal being, whatever attributes it may have, cannot be an object of worship. An infinite substance or a self-evolving energy may excite fear; but it repels faith and love. Even the beneficent forms of its manifestation call forth no gratitude, since these result from it by a rigorous necessity. For the same reason, prayer of any sort is useless, atonement is vain, and merit impossible. The supernatural of course dis- appears entirely when God and the world are identified.

Recent advocates of pantheism have sought to ob- viate these difficulties and to show that, apart from particular dogmas, the religious life and spirit are safe- guarded in their theory. But in this attempt they divest religion of its essentials, reducing it to mere feel- ing. Not action, they allege, but humility and trust- fulness constitute religion. This, however, is an arbi- trary procedure; by the same method it could be shown that religion is nothing more than existing or breathing. The pantheist quite overlooks the fact that religion means obedience to Divine law; and of this obedience there can be no question in a system which denies the freedom of man's will. According to pantheism there is just as little "rational service" in the so-called religious life as there is in the behaviour of any physical agent. And if men still distinguish be- tween actions that are religious and those that are not, the distinction is but another illusion.

Immortality. — Belief in a future life is not only an incentive to effort and a source of encouragement; for the Christian at least it implies a sanction of Divine law, a prospect of retribution. But this sanc- tion is of no meaning or efficacy unless the soul sur- vive as an individual. If, as pantheism teaches, im- mortality is absorption into the being of God, it can matter little what sort of life one leads here. There is no ground for discriminating between the lot of the righteous and that of the wicked, when all alike are