Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/114

 perishableness. The origin of this idea of pantheism is to be found in the fact that stress is laid on the abstract, not on the spiritual unity; and then, when the idea takes its religious form, where only the substance, the One, ranks as true reality, those who hold these opinions forget that it is just in presence of this One that the individual finite things disappear, and have no reality ascribed to them, and yet they attempt to retain this reality in a material way alongside of the One. They do not believe the Eleatics, who say, the One only exists, and expressly add, and what is not has no existence whatever. All that is finite would be limitation, negation of the One; but that which is not, limitation, finiteness, limit, and that which is limited, have no existence whatever.

Spinozism has been charged with being atheism, but the world, this All, does not exist at all in Spinozism; it has an outward form it is true, we speak of its existence, and our life is to be in it as thus existing. In the philosophical sense, however, the world has no reality at all, has no existence. No reality is ascribed to these individual things; they are finite in nature, and it is plainly stated that they do not exist at all.

Spinozism has been universally charged with leading to the following conclusions:—If all be One, then this philosophy maintains that good is one with evil, and that there is no difference between good and evil, and with this all religion is done away with. You hear it asserted that if the distinction of good and evil is not valid in itself, then it is a matter of indifference whether a man be good or bad. It may, indeed, be conceded that the distinction between good and evil is done away with potentially, that is, in God, who is alone the true Reality. In God there is no evil; the distinction between good and evil could exist only if God were Evil; no one, however, would concede that evil is something affirmative, and that this affirmative is in God.