Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/137

76 summarily, that the distinction between theism and pantheism lies just in this — that theism, in asserting God, asserts the freedom and the moral immortality of the soul; but that pantheism, while apparently asserting God to the extreme, denies his moral essence by cancelling all real freedom and therefore all immortality of worth — all that “life eternal” which means imperishable and continual progress in fulfilling freedom by universal growth in the image of God. The conclusive proof of this is, that, even in its highest form, pantheism necessarily represents what it calls God as the sole real agent in existence. Every other being exists but as part or mode of the eternal One.

At length we see why pantheism is at war with the characteristic interests of human nature. Our abiding interests are wholly identified with the reality of freedom and immortal moral life; and this, not on the ground of any passion we may have for mere unconstraint or for permanence of mere existence — a ground of course not worthy of a rational being — but on the immovable foundation laid by reason as Conscience. For when this highest form of reason is thoroughly interpreted, we know that the value of freedom and immortality lies in their indispensableness to our discipline and growth in our