Page:Journal of Speculative Philosophy Volume 16.djvu/264

Rh matter can be regarded as divisible, or composed of parts, only in so far as it relates to the imagination ; but in the second book, when he comes to account for the imagination, he is obliged to assume these same parts for an adequate explanation (see the Postulates, and Props. XV, XVI, XVII, with Cor. and scholium, of Pt. 2).

In truth, Spinoza is a juggler who keeps in stock two Gods — one the perfect infinite and absolute being, the other the mere sum of the universe with all its defects as they appear to us. When he wishes to show God as the adequate cause of all, to explain truth, inculcate morality, his legerdemain, brings the First before us; when finite things, change, error, etc., are to be accounted for, his Second appears — the God who does things not in so far as he is Infinite, and who is affected with the idea of finite things.

We might have known, a priori, that such contradictions must occur in a pantheistic system like Spinoza's. It rests upon the basis that the only real knowledge is immediate knowledge. In this case the Absolute becomes mere Being, an Abstract Universal, possessed with no determinations whatever, for determinations are negations. Such, when Spinoza is truly logical, is his God. But, in this case, he cannot account for particular concrete objects. The two elements are necessarily irreconcilable from such a standpoint as Spinoza's regarding knowledge.

Two logical pantheistic systems are possible. One must start with the conception of an Absolute Perfect Being in whom are all things, but this theory cannot account for things as we find them. It must deny that they are what they seem to be, and elevate them into the Divine. But the rock on which every such theory must split is the problem: If, then, all things are divine, how, then, do they appear to us otherwise? Here is where Spinoza failed. The other theory must start from the conception of things as they seem to be, and produce its Pantheism, not by elevating them into God, but by bringing God down to them. Such a theory, of course, can never arrive at the conception of the Absolute, the Perfect, and the Infinite. Strictly speaking, it is not Pantheism at all; it is Pancosmism. But this is not a solution; it is merely an assumption of all that is to be explained.