Catholicity And Pantheism.
Number Three.
The Problem Of Multiplicity.
In the development of the Catholic idea of God, which we have given in the previous number, we have met with no opposition from pantheism.
Here, however, it raises the most difficult as well as the most sublime and profound question which can be proposed to human intelligence—the problem of multiplicity. We shall let a pantheist propose it in his own words.
It will be remembered that the last of the attributes which we vindicated as belonging to the infinite was that of absolute unity. This attribute gives rise to the problem.
"What is unity," says Cousin, "taken by itself? A unity indivisible, a dead unity, a unity which, resting in the depths of its absolute existence, and never developing itself, is, for itself, as if it were not. In the same manner, what is variety without unity? A variety which, not being referable to a unity, can never form a totality, or any collection whatever, is a series of indefinite quantities, of each of which one cannot say that it is itself and not another, for this would suppose that it is one; that is, it would suppose the idea of unity; so that, without unity, variety also is as if it were not. Behold what variety or unity isolated would produce; the one is necessary to the other in order to exist with true existence; with that existence, which is neither multiple, various, mobile, or negative existence; nor that absolute, eternal, infinite existence, which is, as it were, the negation of existence. Every true existence, every reality, is in the union of these two elements; although, essentially, the one may be superior and anterior to the other. You cannot separate variety from unity, nor unity from variety; they necessarily coexist. But how do they coexist? Unity is anterior to multiplicity; how then has unity been able to admit multiplicity?" [Footnote 162]
[Footnote 162: Cousin's History of Modern Philosophy.]
Again: "Reason, in whatever way it may occupy itself, can conceive nothing, except under the condition of two ideas, which preside over the exercise of its activity; the idea of the unit, and the idea of the multiple; of the finite and the infinite; of being and of appearing; of substance and of phenomenon; of absolute cause and of secondary causes; of the absolute and of the relative; of the necessary and of the contingent; of immensity and of space, of eternity and of time.
"Analysis, in bringing together all these propositions, in bringing together, for example, all their first terms, identifies them; it equally identifies all the second terms, so that, of all these propositions compared and combined, it forms a single proposition, a single formula, which is the formula itself of thought, and which you can express, according to the case, by the unit and by the multiple, the absolute being and the relative being, unity and variety, etc. Finally, the two terms of this formula, so comprehensive, do not constitute a dualism in which the first term is on one side, the second on the other, without any other relation than that of being perceived at the same time by reason. The relation concerning them is quite otherwise essential, unity being eternity, etc.; the first term of the formula is cause also, and absolute cause; and, so far as absolute cause, it cannot avoid developing itself in the second term, multiplicity, the finite and the relative.