PANTHEISM
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PANTHEISM
nevertheless, by using its formulas as mere allegories and symbols of speculative ideas, combats it in its foun- dations, and is to be regarded as the most important mediaeval prelude to the pantheistic speculation of modern times." The fundamental notion of Eckart's system, which approached gross pantheism nearer than that of any other Mystic, is God's eternal efflux from himself, and his eternal reflux into himself^the pro- cession of the creature from God, and the return of the creature back into God again by self-denial and eleva- tion above all that is of a created nature. According- ly Eckart urges man to realize habitually his oneness with the Infinite. From this time the doctrine of a mystical union with God continued to occupy a prom- inent place in the writings of those German divines who were the forerunners of the Reformation. The lan- guage was pantheistic, but the tenet designed to be in- culcated was acciu-ate and spiritual. '■ This mysticism," says Mr. Vaughan, " clothes its thought with fragments from the old philosopher's cloak, but the heart and body belong to the school of Christ."
G. Modern Panfheism. — Spinoza has usually been re- garded as the father of modern pantheism, but in the writings of Giordano Bruno (q. v.), who wrote in the course of the latter half of the 16th century, a system as decidedly pantheistic as that of Spinoza is fully de- veloped. It is a mixed system, partly Pythagorean, partly hylozoic, and partly borrowed from the writings of Proclus. He and his productions were burned, and his writings are consequently scarce, but Hallam (I/itrod. to the Lit. of Europe, ii, 14G-15I) has supplied the Eng- lish reader with copious extracts. Bruno boldly lavs down the principle that all things are absolutely iden- tical, and that the intinite and the finite, spirit and matter, are nothing more than different modifications of the one universal Being. The world, according to this S3-stem, is simply the unity manifesting itself under the conditions of number. Taken in itself, the unity is God; considered as producing itself in number, it is the world. Birth is expansion from the one centre of life ; life is its continuance ; and death is the necessary return of the ray to the centre of light. The doctrine, some- what modified, has in more recent times been taught in Italy by Vincenzo Gioberti (q. v.), but he can hardly be classed with Pantheists. He adhered to the Church as a communicant, and, with conditions, accepted the doc- trines of Christianity. (See the sketch of Italian phi- losophy by Dr. Botta in Ueberweg, Uist. of Philosophy, ii, 499 "sq.)
It was reserved for the Jew Baruch Spinoza to first exhibit the dogmas of pantheism in the regular form of a demonstration. lie stands to-day the represent- ative of the pantheism of modern times. His system is alone worthy of the name of a philosophy. Yet its fallacy is not indiscernible, and proves most clearlj^ that man must depend on revelation rather than on his own consciousness for a knowledge of the Infinite, and a hope in a life beyond the grave. An Old-Testament disciple simply, Spinoza ignored the teachings of Christ and his apostles, and accepted merely the belief in God. Spinoza was not a disbeliever in God, as Bayle errone- ously claims, but rather a disbeliever in the world. He was an Acosmist, to use Jacobi's expression, rather than an atheist. Spinoza's system, suggested primarily b)' the Cabala (q. v.) of Judaism, will be set forth in detail in the article Spisozaism. It is sufficient for us to say here that, aside from a study of the speculations of his own people, Spinoza was a careful student of Cartesian- ism, which derives existence from thought. Spinoza more fully developed this principle in his own system. He identified them, and referred both to the one Infi- nite Substance of which everything besides is simply a mode or manifestation. His natura naturans expresses the extended Deity. " Life is the divine expansion ; thought is an attribute of the Deity, rather it is the Deitj' itself as sentient substance, though perfectly pas- sive and impersonal." This deity of Spinoza, then, is
not a conscious and intelligent individual, but whatever of mental faculties it possesses can only be the aggre- gate of the mental powers and actions of the innumera- ble beings (if we may so call them) that possess intelli- gence. The extension ( = the material universe) is eternal and self-existent. The personal identity of men and other supposed beings is an illusion. All re- ligions are but salutary inventions to keep men in civil order and society, and to promote a virtuous and moral life. To speak of the intelligence or the will of the Deity is to speak of him as a man ; it is as absurd as to ascribe to the Deity bodily motion. There is nothing whatever in common between the Divine Mind and human intelligence. "Cogitatio Deo concedenda, non intellectus." There is no such thing as freedom of thought or will; everything is one extended chain of consequences, and thought begets thought by a neces- sity that is under no other control than the fatal law of its own being. Evil is inconceivable where all is equally divine and necessary, and where liberty is null. All is good where all is order; it is our own ignorance of ul- timate results, and of the necessary relation of things, that makes us think things evil which are not substan- tially so. Of a future state Spinoza speaks mistily. He is unable to imagine the soul separate from the body. Immortality consists in a return to God, to the annihi- lation of all personal and individual existence ; it is the idea of Averroes (q. v.) again revived.