Catholicity And Pantheism.
Number One.
Introductory.
Man is made for truth. The ray of intelligence beaming from his countenance and kindling his looks with life marks his superiority over all inferior creation, and loudly proclaims this fact. Intelligence must have an object; and what can this object be but truth? As a necessary consequence from this fact, it follows that error can be nothing else than fragments of truth; ill-assorted, improperly joined together. Error does not consist in what logicians call simple ideas, or self-evident propositions; but in complex ideas, the result of a long chain of syllogisms. Another consequence, closely allied to the first, is, that the greater the error, the more universal and more widely spread, the more particular truths it must contain. Or, if it does not contain a greater number of partial truths, it must have the power of apparently satisfying a real and prevalent tendency of our mind, otherwise it would never exert dominion over the intelligence; or else it must possess the secret of awakening and alluring a true and imperative aspiration of our nature.
It is through these views that we have been enabled to explain to ourselves the prevalence of Pantheism. The simple utterance of the word Pantheism, the Deity of everything, would seem to carry its refutation with it, so plain and evident is its falsehood, so glaring its absurdity.
Pantheism, however, has been the universal error in time and space. In India, Persia, China, Greece, Rome, Pantheism flourished; now under a religious, and then under a philosophical form. After the Christian era it was the religion or system of those who did not understand the Christian dogmas as taught by the church; and the fathers of the first centuries, in battling against Gnosticism, Eclecticism, and Neoplatonism, were struggling with this old error of the world—Pantheism. Depressed for awhile by the efforts of the doctors of the church, it arose with fiercer energy under the forms of all those heresies which attacked the dogma of the Incarnation of the Word.
In the middle ages there were many philosophers who held Pantheism; and in modern times, since the dawn of the Reformation, it has become the prevalent, the absorbing error of the world. Always the same as to substance, it assumes every variety of form: now you see it in a logical dress, as in the doctrine of the German school; again it takes a psychological garb, as in that of the French school with Cousin at its head; or it assumes a social and political form, as in the Pantheism of Fourier, Leroux, Saint Simon, and all the progressists of every color or shade; and finally, it puts on a ghostly shroud, as taught by the American spiritualists. Under whatever garb it may appear, it penetrates and fills all, and pretends to explain all. It penetrates philosophy, natural science, history, literature, the fine arts, the family, society and the body politic, and religion. It holds its sway over all, and exhibits itself as having the secret of good and evil. How is this to be explained? If the falsehood of Pantheism be so evident, whence is it that it is the universal error in time and space, and has made such ravages in man's intelligence? The greater its falsehood, the more inexplicable becomes its prevalence. Has the nature of man changed? Has his intelligence lost its object? It is true, man's intelligence is not perfect. Since the fall it is weakened and obscured, but doubtless it has not ceased and could not cease to be intelligence; truth has not ceased to be its natural essential object. How, then, are we to explain the prevalence of so mighty an error?
By the fact that it is a system which by its generality seems to satisfy a supreme tendency of our mind, and to appease one of the most imperative cravings of our souls. Man's intelligence has a natural tendency to synthesize, that is, to bring everything into unity. This tendency arises both from the essential oneness of the mind and from the nature of its object. The object of the mind is being or reality in some form or other. That which does exist cannot even be apprehended, and hence cannot be the object of the mind. To understand and to understand nothing is, at the same time, the affirmation and the negation of the understanding. Now, if the object of the intelligence, in order to be known and understood by the said faculty, must represent itself under the form of being or reality, it is under this respect necessarily one. Under whatever form it may exhibit itself, under whatever quality it may be concealed, it must always be reality or being, and, as such, one. But if being, reality, or unity, taken in the abstract, was the sole object of the intelligence, there would be an end to all its movement or life. All science would be at an end, because science is a process, a movement; and movement is not possible where an abstraction is the sole object of the mind. Being and unity, then, abstractly considered, would be the eternal stupor of the mind. This cannot be so, however. Intelligence is action, life, movement. Now, all this implies multiplicity; hence the object of the intelligence must also be multiple. But does not this second condition also destroy the former, which requires that the object of the intelligence should be one? Here reason finds a necessary, though, as we shall see, only an apparent contradiction, both in the logical as well as ontological order. In the logical order, because the intelligence seems to require unity and multiplicity as the conditions without which its action becomes impossible. In the ontological order, or the order of reality, because if the object is not at the same time one and multiple, how can those conditions of the mind be satisfied?
The intelligence, then, in order to live, must be able to travel from unity to multiplicity in an ascending or descending process, and to do so, not arbitrarily, but for reasons resting on reality.
In this lies the life of the intelligence; science is nothing but this synthetical and analytical movement. Let the mind stop at analysis or multiplicity, and you will give it an agglomeration of facts of which it can neither see the reason nor the link which connects them: and hence you place it in unnatural bonds, which, sooner or later, it will break, it matters not whether by a sophistical or a dialectic process. On the other hand, let it stop at unity, and you condemn it to stupor and death.
The foregoing ideas will explain the fact how a particular error will either have a very short existence or fall into the universal error of Pantheism. For in this, so far as we can see, lies the reason of the universal dominion of Pantheism. Because it proposes to explain the whole question of human knowledge, it takes it up in all its universality, and the solution which it sets forth has all the appearance of satisfying the most imperative tendency of our mind. To be enabled to explain the numberless multiplicity of realities, no matter how, and, at the same time, to bring them into a compact and perfect whole, strikes to the quick the very essence of man's intelligence and allures it with its charms. If this be not the main reason of the prevalence of Pantheism, we acknowledge we do not understand how such a mighty error could ever take possession of man's mind; we are tempted to say that human understanding was made for falsehood, which is to deny the very notion of intelligence.
What Pantheism proposes to do for the mind it also promises to accomplish for the soul.
There is, in man's heart or soul, impressed in indelible characters, a tendency after the infinite, a craving almost infinite in its energy, such is the violence with which it impels the soul to seek and yearn after its object. To prove such a tendency were useless. That void, that feeling of satiety and sadness, which overwhelms the soul, even after the enjoyment of the most exquisite pleasure, either sensible or sentimental; the phenomenon of solitaries in all times and countries; the very fact of the existence of religion in all ages and among all peoples; the enthusiasm, the recklessness and barbarity which characterize the wars undertaken for religion's sake; the love of the marvellous and the mysterious exhibited by the multitude; that sense of terror and reverence, that feeling of our own nothingness, which steals into our souls in contemplating the wide ocean in a still or stormy night, or in contemplating a wilderness, a mountain, or a mighty chasm, all are evident proofs of that imperious, delicious, violent craving of our souls after the infinite. How otherwise explain all this? Why do we feel a void, a sadness, a kind of pain, after having enjoyed the most stirring delights? Because the infinite is the weight of the soul—the centre of gravity of the heart—because created pleasures, however delightful or exquisite, being finite, can never quiet that craving, can never fill up that chasm placed between us and God.
The pretended sages of mankind have never been able to exterminate religion, because they could never root out of the soul of man that tendency. I say pretended sages, because all real geniuses have, with very few exceptions, been religious; for in them that tendency is more keenly and more imperiously felt.
This is the second reason of the prevalence of Pantheism. To promise the actual and immediate possession of the infinite, nay, the transformation into the infinite, is to entice the very best of human aspirations, is to touch the deepest and most sensitive chord of the human heart.
Both these reasons we have drawn a priori; we might now prove, a posteriori, from history, how every particular error has either fallen into Pantheism or disappeared altogether. But since this would carry us too far, we will exemplify it by one error—Protestantism.
The essence of Protestantism lies in emancipating human reason from dependence on the reason of God. It is true that at its dawn it was not proclaimed in this naked form, nor is it thus announced at the present time; but its very essence lies in that. For if human reason be made to judge objects which God's reason alone can comprehend, man is literally emancipated from the reason of God.
What does this supreme principle of Protestantism mean, that every individual must, by reading the Bible, find for himself what he has to believe?
Are the truths written in the Bible intelligible or superintelligible; that is, endowed with evidence immediate or mediate, or are they mysteries?
If they be purely intelligible, endowed with evidence mediate or immediate, there is no possible need of the Bible, for, in that case, reason could find them by itself. If they be mysteries, how can reason, unaided by any higher power, find them out? It will not do to say, They are written in the Bible, and reason has merely to apprehend them. Suppose a dispute should arise as to the right meaning of the Bible; who is to decide the dispute? Reason? Then reason must grasp and comprehend mysteries in order to decide the dispute. For none can be judge unless he is qualified thoroughly to understand the matter of the dispute. From this it is evident that to make reason judge of the faith is to make it judge of the mysteries of the infinite, and, therefore, is to emancipate the reason of man from subjection to the reason of God. Hence, Protestantism was rightly called a masked rationalism.
It soon threw off the mask. The human mind saw that it can never be emancipated from the reason of God unless it is supposed to be independent, and it could never be supposed independent unless it was supposed equal to the reason of the infinite.
The result of all this is necessarily Pantheism. And into Pantheism Protestants soon fell, especially the Germans, who never shrink from any consequence if logically deduced from their premises. Such was the latent reasoning of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and others, in building up their form of Pantheism.
To understand is to master an object, to mould it so as to fit our intelligence. We can understand the infinite, we can master it. Therefore, we are at least equal to the infinite, 'we are ourselves the infinite,' we ourselves lay it down by a logical process. Hence the astounding proposal which Fichte made to his disciples, that the next day he would proceed to create God, was nothing else but the echo and logical consequence of the cry raised by the unfrocked monk of Wittenberg, proclaiming the independence of reason from the shackles of all authority.
On the other hand, the denial of human liberty and the absolute predestination of the Calvinists give the same result. If we are not free agents, if God can do what he lists with us, we are no longer agents in the strictest and truest sense of the word. Now, every substance is an act, a monos, a force; if, then, we are not agents, we are not substances, and hence we become qualities, phenomena of the infinite substance. All this as regards doctrine. But Protestantism ran into Pantheism by another road almost as soon as it arose, for the action of the feelings is swifter and more rapid than logic. Protestantism being rationalism in doctrine is necessarily naturalism with regard to the soul; and by presenting to the soul only nature, its authors left the craving after the supernatural and the infinite thirsty and bleeding. What was the consequence? Many Protestant sects fell into mysticism, which is but a sentimental Pantheism, a species of interior theurgy. History is too well known to render necessary any proof of these assertions. These are the consequences at which active minds must arrive when, in their researches, they do not meet with truth.
As to those minds which are not active, or not persevering in their inquiries, they fall into indifference, which is but a scepticism of the soul, as doubt is the scepticism of the mind.
Now, the question arises, What is the best method of refuting Pantheism? Many have been the refutations of Pantheism, but they are limited to pointing out the absurd consequences following from it, which consequences, summed up, amount to this: that Pantheism destroys and makes void the principle of contradiction in all the orders to which it may be applied; that is to say, it makes void that principle in the ontological order or order of realities, in the logical order, etc.
But, notwithstanding the truth and force of this refutation, we do not know that it has converted a single Pantheist. From the fact that Pantheism is more prevalent at the present time than ever it was, we should conclude that it has not. We say this with all the respect and deference due to those who have exerted their talents in the said arena. For we know that some of the noblest intellects have brought their energy to bear against this mighty error. But, if we are allowed to express our opinion, we say that all former refutations have been void of effect for lack of completeness, and a determination on the part of their authors to limit themselves to the abstract order, without descending to particulars, and to the order of realities. The result was, that while Pantheism, without any dread of consequences, applied its principles to all orders of human knowledge, and to all particular questions arrayed under each order, and was, as it were, a living, quickening system—false, indeed, in the premises, but logical and satisfactory in the consequences resulting from those premises—the refutations of it, confined within the limits of logic, were a mere abstraction; true, indeed, and perfectly satisfactory to any one who could apply the refutations to all the orders of human knowledge, but wholly deficient for those who are not able to make the application. We think, therefore, that a refutation of Pantheism should be conducted on the following principles:
1st. To admit all the problems which Pantheism raises, in all the generality of their bearing.
2d. To examine whether the solution which Pantheistic principles afford not only solves the problem, but even maintains it.
3d. If it is found that the Pantheistic solution destroys the very problem it raises, to oppose to it the true solution.
These are the only true principles, as far as we can see, which will render a refutation of Pantheism efficient. For, in this case, you have, in the first place, a common ground to stand upon, that is, the admission of the same problems; in the second place, if you can prove that the Pantheistic solution of the problems destroys them, instead of solving them, it will be readily granted by the Pantheist for the sake of the problems themselves. When you have done all this, you do not leave the mind in doubt and perplexity, but you present to it the true solution, and it will then be ready to embrace it.
A refutation conducted upon those principles we have attempted in the articles we now publish.
We take Pantheism in all its universality and apparent grandeur; we accept all its problems; we examine them one by one, and we show that the Pantheistic solution, far from resolving the problems, destroys them; and we substitute the true solution. In a word, we compare Pantheism with Catholicity; that is, the universality of error with the universality of truth—the whole system of falsehood with the whole system of truth. We make them stand face to face, and we endeavor to exhibit them so plainly that the brightness and splendor of the one may thoroughly extinguish the phosphoric light of the other. We show the Pantheist that, if he ever wants a solution of his problems, he must accept Catholicity, or proclaim the death of his intelligence.
To do this it will be necessary for us to compare Pantheism and Catholicity in all orders; in the logical order, in the ontological order or the order of reality; and under this order we must compare them in the moral, social, political, and aesthetic orders. The truth of the one or the other will appear by the comparison.
It is true we undertake a great task; great especially as regards the positive part of the refutation. For it embraces the whole of theology; not only with relation to what is commonly regarded as its object, but in the sense of its being the supreme and general science, the queen of all sciences, the universal metaphysic in all possible orders. We own that we have felt the difficulty of such a task, and many times have we abandoned it as being far above our strength. But a lingering desire has made us return to the work. We have said to ourselves: Complete success and perfection are beyond our hope, but we can at least make the attempt; for, in matters of this kind, we think it well to reverse the wise maxim of the Lambeth prelates, and rather attempt too much than do too little.