childhood disappeared. The personal God whom the Moravians worshipped was exchanged for the impersonal Divinity of philos- ophy. Nor did tliis theology seem impious. No, it was the very essence of true religion." There is good reason to believe that M'ith regard to the personal existence of the soul after death, Schleiermacher sacrificed his philosophy, as he certainly did in other points, to his religion. This, however, only the more clearly sliows how inconsistent the pantheistic view of the nature of God is with the doctrine of conscious existence after death. The ab sorption of the soul in God, of the Finite into the Infinite, is the highest destiny that Pantheism can acknowledge for man.
8. As man is only a mode of God's existence, his acts are the acts of God, and as the acts of God are necessary, it follows that there, can be no freedom of the will in man. Spinoza says,^ " Hinc sequitur mentem humanam partem esse infiniti intellectus Dei : ac proinde cum dicimus, mentem humanam hoc vel illud percipere, nihil aliud dicimus, quam quod Deus, non quatenus infinitus est, sed quatenus per naturam humanse mentis explicatur, sive quatenus humanJE mentis essentiam constituit, banc vel illam habeat ideam." " In mente nulla est absoluta sive libera voluntas. Mens certus et determinatus modus cogitandi est adeoque suarum actionum non potest esse causa libera." ^ '< Eodem hoc modo demonstratur, in mente nullam dari facultatem absolutam intelligendi, cupiendi, araandi, etc." ^
Cousin says, " We are thus arrived then in the analysis of the me, by the way of psychology still, at a new aspect of ontology, at a substantial activity, anterior and superior to all phenomenal activity, which produces all the phenomena of activity, survives them all, and renews them all, immortal and inexhaustible, in the destruction of its temporary manifestations." ^ Thus our activity is only a temporary manifestation of the activity of God. All our acts are his acts.^
Mr. Hunt, analyzing Spinoza's system, and using mainly his language on this point, says, " Spinoza ascribed to God a kind of freedom : a free necessity. But to created existences even this kind of freedom is denied. ' There is nothing contingent in the nature of beings ; all things on the contrary are determined by the necessity of the Divine nature, to exist and to act, after a certain fashion.' ' Nature produced ' is determined by ' nature produ-
> £lliices, part ii. prop. xi. coroll., vol. ii. p. 87, edit. Jena, 1803.
2 Ibid. prop, xlviii. Demon, vol. ii. p. 121. 8 Jl,id. Scholium.
4 Elements of Psychology, translated by Henry, N. Y. 1856, p. 429.
• Princeton Review, 1856, p. 368.
304 PART I.— THEOLOGY. [Ch. IH. — Anti-Theism.
cing. It does not act, it is acted upon. The soul of man is a
Spiritual automaton There can be nothing arbitrary
in the necessary developments of the Divine essence." ^
As Pantheism makes creation an eternal, necessary, and continu- ous evolution of the Infinite Being, all liberty of second causes is of necessity excluded. A distinction may be made between the necessity by which a stone falls to the ground, and the necessity by which a mind thinks ; but the necessity is as absolute in the one case as in the other. Liberty in man is rational self-determination, that is, spontaneity determined by reason. But reason in man is impersonal, according to Pantheism. It is God as explicated in us. All the acts of the human mind are the acts of God as determined by the necessity of his nature. The same doctrine of fatalism is involved in the idea that history is merely the self-evolution of. God. One idea, or phase of the Infinite Being, is exhibited by one age or nation, and a diflferent one by another. But the whole is as much a necessary process of evolution as the growth of a plant.
Sir William Hamilton, therefore, says that Cousin destroys lib- erty by divorcing it from intelligence, and that his doctrine is incon- sistent not only with Theism but with morality, which cannot be founded " on a liberty which at best only escapes necessity by taking refuge with chance." ^ And Morell, a eulogist of Cousin, says, that according to Cousin : " God is the ocean, we are but the waves ; the ocean may be one individuality, and each wave another ; but still they are essentially one and the same. We see not how Cousin's Theism can possibly be consistent with any idea of moral evil ; neither do we see liow, starting from such a dogma, he can ever vindicate and uphold his own theory of human liberty. On such Theistic principles, all sin must be simply defect, and all defect must be absolutely fatuitous." ^
9. Pantheism in making man a mode of God's existence, and in denying all freedom of the will, and in teaching that all " phenom- enal activity " is " a transient manifestation " of the activity of God, precludes the possibility of sin. This does not mean that there is in man no sentiment of approbation or disapprobation, no sub- jective difference between right and wrong. This would be as absurd as to say that there is no difference between pleasure and pain. But if God be at once God, nature, and humanity; if reason in us be God's reason ; his intelligence our intelligence, his activity our activity ; if God be the substance of Avhich the world is the
1 Essay on Pantheism, p. 231. 2 Hamilton's Discussions, p. 43.
8 Histcn-y of Modem Philosophy, N. Y. 1848, p. 660.
§ 5, A.J PAI^THElSM. 305
phenomenon ; if we are only moments in the life of God, then there can be nothing in us which is not in God. Evil is only limitation, or undeveloped good. One tree is larger and finer than another ; one mind is more vigorous than another ; one mode of action more pleasurable than another; but all alike are modes of God's activity. Water is water, whether in the puddle or in the ocean ; and God is God, in Nero or St. John. Hegel says that sin is something un- speakably higher than the law-abiding motion of the planets, or the innocence of plants. That is, it is a higher manifestation of the life of God.
Spinoza teaches that " sin is nothing positive. It exists for us but not for God. The same things which appear hateful in men
are regarded with admiration in animals It follows
then that sin, which only expresses an imperfection, cannot consist in anything which expresses a reality. We speak improperly, ap- plying human language to what is above human language, when we say that we sin against God, or that men offend God." ^
It is the necessary consequence of the doctrine that God is the universal Being, that the more of being the more of God, and there- fore the more of good. And consequently the less of being, the less of good. All limitation, therefore, is evil; and evil is simply limita- tion of being. Spinoza^ says, "Quo magis unusquisque — suum esse conservare conatur et potest, eo magis virtute prgeditus est ; contra quatenus unusquisque — suum esse conservare negligit, eate- nus est impotens." In the demonstration of this proposition, he says, " Virtus est ipsa humana potentia," ^ making power and good- ness identical. Professor Baur of Tiibingen,^ says : "Evil is what is finite ; for the finite is negative ; the negation of the infinite."
It is only, as just said, another form of this doctrine that power, or strength, is in man the only good. This does not mean the strength to submit to injury; the strength of self-sacrifice; the strength to be humble and to resist evil passion ; but the power to carry out our own purposes in opposition to the will, interests, or happiness of others. That is, that might is right. The victor is always right, the vanquished is always wrong. This is only one manifestation of God, suppressing or superseding a less perfect manifestation. Spinoza's doctrine is, " To the pursuit of what is agreeable, and the hatred of the contrary, man is compelled by his nature, for ' every one desires or rejects by necessity, according to the laws of his nature, that which he judges good or bad.' To
1 Hunt, p, 231. 2 Eihices, iv. prop, xx., vol. ii. p. 217, edit. Jena, 1803.
8 Ibid. 4 In the Tubingen Zeitschrift, 1834, Drittes Heft, p. 233.