Spinoza, like Scotus, was never the representative man of a school; yet to this philosophy, propounded in the 17th century, can be most reasonably referred that pantheistic spirit which has pervaded the philosojjhy as well as the theology of Germany since the beginning of our present ara. Schelling (q. v.) and Hegel (q. v.), in fact, have proved themselves most faithful disciples of Spinoza, carrying out to their legitimate extent the principles of this rigid logical Pantheist. Fichte (q. v.), by his subjective idealism, had banished from the realms of existence both nature and God, reducing ev- erything to the all-engrossing A>/o. Schelling repro- duced what Fichte had annihilated, but only to identify them with one another, thus declaring the universe and God to be identical, nature being, in his view, the self-development of Deity. The philosophy of Hegel was equally pantheistic with that of Schelling, inas- much as he declared everything to be a gradual evolv- ing process of thought, and (.iod himself to be the whole process.
Thus " the fundamental principle of philosophical (i. e. modern) pantheism," to use the language of Dr. Buchanan (^Faith in God and modern Atheism com- pared), "is either the unity of substance, as taught by Spinoza, or the identity of existence and thoiujht, as taught, with some important variations, by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The Absolute is conceived of, not as a living Being to whom a proper personality and certain intelligible attributes may be ascribed, but as a vague, indeterminate somewhat, which has no distinc- tive character, and of which, in the first instance, or prior to its development, almost nothing can be either affirmed or denied. But this absolute existence, by some unknown inherent necessity, develops, deter- mines, and limits itself: it becomes being, and consti- tutes all being: the infinite passes into tlie finite, the absolute into the relative, the necessary into the con- tingent, the one into the many; all other existences are only so many modes or forms of its manifestation. Here is a theory which, to say the very least, is neither more intelligible nor less m3'Sterious than any article of the Christian faith. And what are the proofs to which it appeals, what the principles on which it rests? Its two fundamental positions are these — that finite things have no distinct existence as realities in nature, and that there exists only one Absolute Being, mani- festing itself in a variety of forms. And how are they demonstrated? Simply by the affirmation of universal 'Identitv.' But what if this affirmation be denied?
PANTHEISM
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PANTHEISM
What if, founding our replj' on the clearest data of con- sciousness, we refuse to acknowledge that existence is identical with ihotight ? What if we continue to believe that there are objects of thought which are distinct from thought itself, and which must h^ presented to the mind before they can be represented by the mind? What if, while we recognise the ideas both of the tinite and the infinite, the relative and the absolute, the contingent and the necessar}', we cannot, by the utmost effort of our reason, obliterate the difference between them, so as to reduce them to one absolute essence? Then the whole superstructure of pantheism falls along with the idealism on which it depends; and it is found to be, not a solid and enduring s3-stem of truth, but a frail edifice, inge- niously contrived out of the mere abstractions of the human mind."
Pantheism is by no means confined to the philo- sophic schools of Germany. It has been taught, also, from her pulpits and her theological chairs (comp. Bretschneider, Dof/matik, i, 13; Ebrard, Kirchen- it. Dogmeiifjesch. iv, 267 sq. ; Schwarz, Gesch. der neuesten Theologie [3d ed. Leips. 180-4, 8vo], bk. i and ii; Dor- ner, Gesch. der Protest. Theologie ; Baur [Tubingen school, and therefore in defence of pantheism in Chris- tian theology], Dogmengesch. iii, 320 sq.). Extreme Kationalists have not hesitated to pronounce Schleier- macher a Pantheist in the tendency of his doctrines. Hunt, in his Essay on Pantheism, has accepted this de- cision. There seems, however, to be no ground for such an assertion. Schleiermacher admired Spinoza, and even lauded that great thinker. In one of his famous Dis- courses on Religion, Schleiermacher exclaims with en- thusiastic adoration — " Offer up reverently with me a lock of hair to the manes of the holy repudiated Spi- noza. The high World Spirit penetrated him ; the In- finite was his beginning and his end ; the universe his only and eternal love," etc. This is but a tribute which one thinker believed due to another. Schleiermacher coveted inquir}', a fair and fidl investigation of all things, feeling confidence from his own experience that Christianity could endure the test. He did not ignore the great services of the philosophers, and recognised in Spinoza what services he had rendered the world. But it is absurd to accuse Schleiermacher of pantheism, be- cause in his religious discourses he now and then used expressions to his refined hearers — thoroughly impreg- nated with the speculations of their day — which can be twisted into a shape where pantheistic notions can be discerned. It is about as reasonable as to deduce them from the expressions in Scripture to which we had oc- casion to refer in the early portion of this article. Ja- cobi (cj. V.) had spent his life's strength in breaking down the old Kationalists, who placed religion in reason, and had pleaded that religion is devout feeling, or an immediate self-consciousness. Schleiermacher closely followed this teacher, and out of Jacobi's sj-stem drew his entire theology. See Schleiermacher.