Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/349

, the dominating power over the process of perishing, so that the perishing perishes.

The defect attaching to this oriental Substance, as well as to that of Spinoza, lies in the categories of origination and perishing. Substance is not conceived of as the active agent within itself, as subject and as activity in accordance with ends; not as wisdom, but only as power. It is something devoid of content; specific character, purpose is not contained in it; the specific character which manifests itself in this originating and perishing is not grasped in thought. It is essentially purposeless empty power, which merely staggers about, so to speak. Such is the system which is called Pantheism. God is here the absolute Power, the Being in all determinate Being, the purification of Himself from determinateness and negation. That things are, is owing to Substance; that they are not, is likewise owing to the power of Substance, and this power is immediately immanent for the things.

We have an example of this Pantheism also in the expression of Jacobi: “God is Being in all determinate Being;” and we undoubtedly get from him in this connection very brilliant definitions of God. This determinate Being contains Being in an immediate manner within itself, and this Being in determinate Being is God, who is thus the Universal in determinate Being. Being is the most arid possible determination of God, and if He is to be Spirit it is supremely unsatisfactory; when used in this way as the Being of determinate Being in finite reality we have Pantheism. Jacobi’s system was far removed from Pantheism, yet the latter is involved in that expression, and Science is not concerned with what a person thinks in his own mind; on the contrary, it is what is expressed that it considers to be of importance.

Parmenides says, Being is everything. This seems to be the same thing, and thus to be Pantheism too; but this thought is purer than that of Jacobi, and is not Pantheism. For he says expressly that Being alone is,