1. Hindu Pantheism. — Hindu philosophy proceeds upon the fundamental axiom that Brahm (q. v.) alone exists; all else is an illusion. Accordingly when man regards external nature, and even himself, as distinct from Brahm, he is in a dreaming state, realizing only phan- toms. But when he recognises Brahm as the one totality, he rises to a waking state, and science is this awakening of humanity. It is at death, however, that the soul of the sage will be comitletcly freed from il- lusion, and finally blended and lose in Brahm, the one infinite being from whom all things emanate, and to whom all things return. Pantheism is the necessary result of such a system. It denies true existence to any other than the one absolute, independent Being. It declares that what is usually called matter can have no distinct separation or independent essence, but is onl}^ an emanation from and a manifestation of the one sole existing spiritual essence, Brahm. He is the vast ocean of which the surface waves are the whole external form, the foam and surge that go to make up his substance. He is at once active and passive; ac- tive in the continued evolution of emanations that de- generate more and more from original perfection; and passive as being himself the degenerating emanations that are evolved. All, too, is JIagian illusion : light j'earned for increase, and its multiple became water; water similarly produced earth. The more visible cre- ation becomes the more it degenerates, and the more is illusion intensified. It is only by contemplation that
all forms and names and illusive appearances vanish ; the one real substance is perceived ; and the truth is apprehended that the contemplative mind is one with the Infinite. In one sense this philosophy was devout, it was penetrated with a sense of the divine in every- thing, but on the other hand every part of nature was only a part of Brahm. The cow, the elephant, the flower were all some fractions of him. In the Bhaga- vad Gita, Krishna, the teacher, tells Arjuna, his pupil, that he is the universe. " I," says the teacher, " am the creation and dissolution of the whole universe. There is not anything greater than I. All things hang on the sun as precious gems upon a string. I am moisture in the water, light in the sun and moon, in- vocation in the breeze, sound in the firmament, sweet- smelling savors in the earth, glory in the source of light. I am life in all things, and zeal in the zealous; I am the eternal soul of nature ; I am the understand- ing of the wise, the glory of the proud, the strength of the strong, free from lust and anger. . . . I," con- tinues Krishna, "am the sacrifice, I am the worship, I am the spices, I am the fire, I am the victim, I am the father and mother of the world." All this is what is termed pure pantheism, that confusion of science and religion which is at once the weakness and the strength, the glory and the shame of the Hindu mind. (See Wuttke, Gesch. des Ileidenthums, ii, 241 sq., 282 sq., 318 sq. ; Ilardwick, Chiist and other Masters, i, 178 sq., 195 sq.)
2. Egyptian Pantheism. — As in the Hindu, so again in the Egyptian system, one inscrutable Being gives a first impulse to creation by the evolution of intelligence, Kneph (q. v.), the conceptive Demiurge ; and next of Phtha (q. v.), the organizer of the world, the vital prin- ciple of fire and warmth. The various succeeding emana- tions in ogdoads and decades and dodecads are by pairs or syzygies, whereof the secondary principle is more or less antagonistic to the primary, representing the vari- ous phenomena of nature ; such, too, are the (pi\ia and vtiKOQ of Pythagoras and Empedocles. Thus Osiris (q. v.), radiant with white light, was combined with Isis (q. v.) in the many -tinted robe of nature; and Typhon (q. v.), the principle of evil, by union with Nephthys (q. v.), the ideal of consummate beauty, pro- duced the chequered state of good and evil which is the world of man. Life, as the spirit that pervades all nature, could never again be extinguished; its deifica- tion is read clearly in deciphered hieroglyphics, and death is only the narrow doorway that leads back to the fresh life of perpetual youth. In all this we see the remote elements of Gnosticism (q. v.). In the Egyptian therefore, as in the Indian system, the world of matter, whether real or phantasmal, emanates from and is, in fact, one with the Deity. The antagonism of the Eg\'ptian theogony became a dualistic system in Chald.'va and Palestine, where Bel and Nebo, or Nergal, IMatter, were made to proceed from the precosmic Ur, Light; and in Persia, as seen in the antagonism of Or- muzd (q. v.) and Ahriman. The sect of Lipari, adorers, claiming to return to pre-Zoroastrian truth, professed a modified Zabianism that was wholly pantheistic. The Dabistan (School of Morals), a work on all the Oriental forms of religious belief — Magianism, Brahminism, Ju- daism, Islam, Christianity, and that which the author, Moslau-Fairi, terms the "religion of philosophers" — names other ])antheistical sects (Dabistan, Oriental Fr, Comm. i, 203) ; but they have had nothing to do with the origin of similar principles in Europe. (See Stuhr, Die Religionssysteme der heidnischen Vulker des Orients [Berlin, 'l83()]; U bhmann, Ilandb. d. gesammten (iggp- tisch. Alterthumshiinde. esp. ii, 244 sq. ; Wutike, ^'<.•.•<7^ des Ileideul/iuins, ii, 145 sq. ; Cudworth, IntelUclnal .Sys- tem, ii, 237 sq., 245 sq. ; Kawlinson, The Great Mon- archies, vol. on Egypt; Hardwick, Christ and other Masters, ii, 244 sq. et al. ; British and For. Evangel. Rev. July, 1875, art, viii.)