"Changed thro' all, and yet in all the same."
It
"Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees;
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent:
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
*****
To it no high, no low, no great, no small,
It fills, it bounds, connects, and equals all."
Now if this be the pantheistic unity which is admitted by men who deny a personal Deity, I will not stay to object that such a view is hardly consistent with the essential distinction in nature which even Professor Huxley and men of his school unwaveringly and powerfully maintain, between inorganic matter and living forms. It is more to my purpose to remark that it is much simpler and easier to believe in a personal God, than in such an impersonal divinity as this Protean Force. Every difficulty which belongs to the thought of God's existence belongs to this also. This force must be self-originated, must have been from everlasting, must be creative, omnipresent, providential, equal to all plans, purposes, contrivances, inspirations, which have been, or ever will be, in this dædalean and infinite universe; must be the source of all intelligence, though itself unintelligent; of all sympathy, although itself incapable of sympathy; must have formed the eye, though it cannot see, and the ear, though it cannot hear; must have blossomed and developed into personal intelligences, although personal intelligence is a property which cannot be attributed to it; must unquestionably be omniscient as well as omnipresent, or it could not, in its infinite convertibility, anticipate all needs, meet all demands, answer in absolute and universal harmony to every faculty, capability, and tendency of all things that are and all things that become. Now is it reasonable to object to the doctrine of a personal Deity because of its inconceivability and its stupendous difficulties, and yet to believe in such a primal, essential, immaterial, creative, infinite, blind and unintelligent force as this? Surely no contradiction could be greater. The conception of God as from everlasting is stupendous. But an infinite Protean Force from everlasting, destitute of intelligence and will, yet continually operative as the life, soul, wisdom, and providence, of all things, is nothing less than contradictory and absurd.
I can come to no conclusion, accordingly, but that Pantheism really only differs from atheism, in so far as it confesses that it is impossible to speak with ordinary propriety, or in any such way as to meet the necessities either of science itself or of the common sense and feelings of mankind, without employing theistic language. It has been said that hypocrisy is the homage which vice pays to virtue. So a profession of Pantheism is the tribute of compliance at least in speech, is the outward language of homage, which theism has power to extort from atheism. "Pantheism," as is said by the author of Lothair, "is but atheism in domino. Nothing," as the same writer adds, "can surely be more monstrous than to represent a creator as unconscious of creating."
Yes, Pantheism is but veiled atheism. Strip Pantheism of all involutions of thought and all investitures of language, and in its naked truth it stands forth as mere atheism. Every form which Pantheism takes, every disguise which it assumes, to hide from itself and from the world its real character, is a testimony borne by atheism to the necessity which all men feel for assuming the existence of Deity; What Robespierre is reported to have said with reference to political government and national well-being, that if there were not a God, it would be necessary to invent one, is felt by pantheistic philosophers to be true in regard to nature. So monstrous a conception is that of this universe without a governing mind; so clearly and directly to the common sense of mankind do the infinite harmonies of the universe seem to imply a designing and governing Intelligence; so indubitably does the might and life of the universe, ever coming forth anew, ever springing up afresh, ever unfolding and advancing, imply a central living Power, One with the infinite governing Intelligence; that pantheists, in order to speak and write intelligibly, are compelled to invest nature with the qualities which they deny to the Deity, to attribute a spirit and intelligence to the whole machine, because they deny the existence of the great Mechanist; to personify a harmony and unity which is but an abstraction, which, on their own hypothesis, is but a grand accident, a result without a cause, because they refuse to believe in a personal God.
I am very far indeed from wishing to come under the definition of what Mr. Hutton has spoken of as the "Hard Church," or to carry my positions merely by the use of the dilemma, yet I cannot refrain from saying, parenthetically, that the argument of the dilemma, carefully and truly applied, is not only always legitimate but often necessary, and I must affirm that it applies very closely in the present instance. The pantheist cannot maintain his position midway between atheism and theism. If he absolutely refuses to be a theist, it is necessary to show him that he will have to yield to the cruel necessity of acknowledging himself to be an atheist. Standing midway, his position is altogether untenable, from whichever side it is assailed. On the one side, the pantheist is condemned by the same arguments which condemn atheism; on the other side, the atheist may justly allege against the position of the pantheist the self-same difficulties which both pantheist and atheist urge against theism.
But if pantheism be in reality only atheism, I may henceforth disregard the verbal distinction between the two, and bring forward considerations and arguments which apply indifferently to either. In pursuing the discussion I shall take up in detail some points of argument already, as to their general scope, more or less distinctly intimated in the preliminary considerations which I have advanced.