CHAPTER IV.
PANTHEISM.
Review of the Principal Metaphysical Hypotheses which will Replace Dogma.—Continued.
I. Optimistic pantheism—Transformation of transcendent Deism into immanent theism and pantheism—Disanthropomorphized God, according to Messrs. Fiske and Spencer—Diverse forms of pantheism—Optimistic and intellectualistic pantheism of Spinoza—Objections, Spinoza’s fatalism—The moral significance that might be lent to pantheism by the introduction of some notion of a final cause—Qualities and defects of pantheism—Conception of unity upon which it is founded—This conception criticised—Its possible subjectivity.
II. Pessimistic pantheism—Pessimistic interpretation of religions in Germany—1. Causes of the progress of pessimism in the present epoch—Progress of pantheistic metaphysics and of positive science—Penalties incident to thought and reflection—Mental depression and sense of powerlessness, etc.—2. Is pessimism curable?—Possible remedies—The labour problem and the future of society—Illusions involved in pessimism—Inexactitude of its estimate of pleasures and pains—Quotation from Leopardi—Criticism of the practical results of pessimism—Nirvâna—An experiment in Nirvâna—Will pessimistic pantheism be the religion of the future?
Conception of God being disanthropomorphized.
As theism becomes immanent, the personality of God comes to be more and more vaguely conceived. It is the very existence of God’s personality that pantheism either denies or confounds with that of the universe. According to Mr. Spencer and Mr. Fiske, the movement which led humanity to conceive its God anthropomorphically will be succeeded by a movement in the opposite direction; God will be deprived of all of His human attributes, will be disanthropomorphized. He will first be shorn of His lower impulses, and then of everything which is analogous to human sensibility; the highest human sentiments will be regarded as too gross to be attributed to Him. Similarly with the attributes of intelligence and will; every human faculty will in its turn be abstracted and divinity, as it becomes relieved of its limitations, will lose, one after the other, every item of its significance to the intelligence; it will be conceived ultimately as a vague unity simply, which eludes the forms of distinct thought. Pantheism lends itself to this notion of an indeterminate and indeterminable disanthropomorphized divinity. Nevertheless, the crudest and most naïve speculations, anthropomorphism and fetichism, in Mr. Spencer’s judgment, contained a part of the truth, namely, that the power that manifests itself in consciousness is simply a different form of the mysterious power that manifests itself beyond consciousness. The last result attained by human science, Mr. Spencer thinks, is that the unknown force which exists outside of consciousness is, if not similar to the known force that exists in consciousness, at least a simple mode of the same force, since the two are convertible into each other. So that the final result of the line of speculation begun by primitive man is that the power which manifests itself in the material universe is the same as that which manifests itself in us under the form of consciousness.
Pantheism.
If pantheism goes the length of denying the personality and individuality of God, it is by way of compensation inclined to attribute a sort of individuality to the world. In effect, if God is present in every atom of the universe, the universe is a veritable living being possessing an organic unity, and developing, like an embryo, according to a determinate law. What distinguishes pantheism from this point of view is, therefore, the substantial unity that it ascribes to the world.
Different forms of pantheism.