III
THE RELIGION OF THE UNIVERSE
Among proposed substitutes for Christianity, none occupies a more prominent place than Pantheism, the identity of God and the universe. 'Pantheism,' says Haeckel, 'is the world system of the modern scientist.'[[1]] Pantheism, or the Religion of the Universe, is, in one aspect, a protest against Anthropomorphism, the making of God in the image of man. It is in supposing God to be altogether such as we are, to be swayed by the same motives, to be actuated by the same passions as we are, that the most deadly errors have arisen. Robert Browning, in Caliban upon Setebos, represents a half-brutal being who lives in a cave speculating upon the government of the world, wondering why it came to be made, and what could be the purpose of the Creator in making it. Every motive that could sway the savage mind is in turn discussed: pleasure, restlessness, jealousy, cruelty, sport. 'Because I, Caliban,' such is the process of his reasoning, 'delight in tormenting defenceless animals, or would crush any one that interfered with my comfort, or do things because my taskmaster obliges me to do them, so must it be with Him Who made the world.' With great grotesqueness, but with marvellous power, the degraded monster argues as to the reasons which could have prompted the Unseen Ruler to frame the earth and its inhabitants. Everything that he attributes to God is in keeping with his own base nature. What is the explanation of the horrors which have been perpetrated in the Name of God? The sacrifice of human beings, of vanquished enemies, or of the nearest and the dearest, the agonies of self-torture, did not these originate in the transference to the Invisible God of the emotions and principles by which men were guiding their own lives? They had no notion of forbearance and forgiveness and patience, therefore they did not think that there could be forgiveness with God. They were to be turned aside from their fierce, revengeful purposes by bribes and by the protracted sufferings of their foes, therefore they thought that God might be bribed by gifts or propitiated by pains. What they were on earth, delighting in bloodshed and conquest and revelry, that, they supposed, must be the Being or the Beings who ruled in the world unseen.