"Of all forms of philosophical mysticism, the idea of Pantheism seems to me one of the most extravagant. Ever-present mind is a direct inference from the universal order of nature, or rather only another mode of expressing it. But of the mode of existence of that mind we can infer nothing.
"To assert, then, that this universally manifested mind is co-existent, or even to be identified, with matter, is at best a mere gratuitous hypothesis, and as such wholly unphilosophical in itself, and leading to many preposterous consequences. But if further supposed to apply in any higher sense as to an object of worship, trust, love, obedience, or the like (as is implied in the term Pantheism), it appears to involve moral contradictions of the most startling kind.
"There are, however, many who, though rejecting Pantheism as untrue, do not conceive it absurd or contradictory. Much, however, will, in all such cases, depend on the precise sense in which it is maintained. With some it seems to have been upheld on a fanciful analogy with the conception of the human frame animated by an indwelling spirit; as if in a somewhat similar manner the supreme mind might animate nature. Without disputing this in a certain sense, the cases surely cannot be considered at all parallel: we do not infer the existence of the human mind, from the arrangement and adaptation of the bodily organs, nor is it the moral cause of their organisation.
"If Pantheism were asserted merely in the sense of a kind of vital or animating principle pervading the material world, I would admit that such an idea involves no absurdity, or contradiction, but still I should regard it as visionary and unphilosophical. I could but class it with the 'vital forces' which Kepler fancied necessary for keeping up the motions of the planets, with the 'plastic powers of nature,' 'her abhorrence of a vacuum,' and the like chimæras. But it is when men elevate such a supposed animating principle into a Deity, a being of supreme wisdom, power, beneficence, and goodness, yet residing in every atom of matter, and participating directly in every form and case of material action, that the contradiction arises." Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, pp. 176-9.
E.—THE EXTENT AND DIVISIONS OF THE SCIENCE OF NATURAL THEOLOGY.
The following passages from Professor Powell's Essay "on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy" will go far to justify the praise and blame bestowed upon his mode of procedure in the text of the foregoing chapter. But we would recommend his own pages to the student's discriminative perusal.
In extract No. 1, Baden Powell shows with equal truth and force that universal Law must be contemplated as a manifestation of one supreme Intelligence presiding over the whole Universe. A philosopher who looks on Nature with this majestic breadth of view does not need for his own deepest convictions to follow Design through a multitude of smaller evidences.
If extract No. 2 could be admitted as a full account of the conditions and limitations of Natural Theology, our science would seem to result in an obscuration of the magnificently Supreme Power already accepted. So far as its letter goes, the Creator of the Universe might appear to be shut out from the world which He has made. We cannot (as has been said) consent to this narrow consideration of Natural Theology, nor yet of Powell's meaning.
Extract No. 3 acknowledges what all physical investigators ought to acknowledge,—that although their sciences contribute very much towards solving the problem of the Universe, and although their results readily harmonize with the solution maintained by the Theist—yet there rests over that vast problem a cloud which the physical sciences cannot completely dispel. This (as we shall see in Chapter V.) is indeed the confession of the greatest minds at present engaged upon the philosophy of Natural Science.
Extract No. 1.—"From the inductive philosophy we derive our belief in the harmony, order, and uniformity of natural causes, perpetually maintained in a universally connected chain of dependence. And hence it is, that we arrive at those sublime ideas of a presiding Intelligence of which law and uniformity, universal mechanism once for all adjusted, are the proper external manifestations.