nothing to do with being in general, but is always shut up to being in particular. Hence Spinoza, to be consistent, cannot affirm an abso Spinoza's method can not reach ontology. lute reality, of which he is the fleeting manifestation; for on his own premise, and by his own method, he himself, as known in consciousness, is the only reality. Same fault in the reasoning of Fichte and Emerson. The reasoning of Fichte also is defective, and in the same way as that of Spinoza. He cannot pass from the finite ego to the Infinite Ego in consciousness. That step must be taken by an inference, or through a conviction which carries one beyond the province to which consciousness is shut up. In like manner, Emerson may say that his soul is a conditioned image of the unconditioned over-soul, but he abandons the socalled philosophy of consciousness in thus affirming. He utters an ontological doctrine, to which his consciousness can never attain. And he certainly is one of the most consistent of pantheists when he intrenches himself within the sphere of psychology, declaring that he is God and nature, and that he knows no reality save the subjective self. Some of the later pantheists, as if hoping to escape this fatal defect in their reasoning, have given a new definition of consciousness. They arbitrarily enlarge its function; say that it is not limited to subjective knowledge, but includes that which is objective and infinite. They define it as a knowing not only with one's self, but with the univer sal whole. Is there, however, anything in human experience answering to such a definition? Manifestly it is not real, but only verbal. An objective consciousness is an absurdity. It does not Function of consciousness mistaken. See North American Review, Article "Hegel " (April, 1868). even seem to lay a path out from the conditioned to the unconditioned. It is a phrase without a meaning, for there is no corresponding fact in our experience. What these pantheists call "consciousness" is more properly suggestion. Spinoza's finite thinking suggests an infinite thinking. Fichte's particular ego suggests a universal ego. Emerson's my-self suggests an other-self. Hegel's being suggests its opposite, which is non-being. But these contraries are not united in the human consciousness. There is another and more royal faculty of the human mind, which holds them together. As soon as we duly examine this nobler power, we find that it renders pantheism forever impossible. The proper office of this power is to furnish us with our primary beliefs, with those convictions respecting ourselves and the world, which are universal and necessary. It is prop Differs from the faculty of intuition. erly named the intuitional faculty. This faculty it is, however designated, which gives us a sure passage out into the ontological world. We may, thoughtlessly or for the sake of convenience, call it consciousness; but it is not such a power as to imply, in its workings, that we are part and parcel of all which we know. It leaves us eternally distinct from the external universe with which it acquaints us. We can never grant to the pantheist that he has found the absolute, the unconditioned, in his own consciousness. It is in the exercise of this other, our noblest and divinest faculty, - by the intuition of objective and necessary truths, that we leap "the flaming walls of the world," and stand face to face with the Father of our spirits. The only consistent form of pantheism is that idealism by which a man denies all reality save the thought process of which he is conscious. It is not objective, but purely subjective. It is not absolute, but forever cast in the mould of his particular being. granted for sake. We e are obliged, therefore, at the very outset, to grant the pantheist a position he cannot What is legitimately reach, in order to consider some of argument's the more general arguments on which he relies. We will allow that he has planted his foot in the world of unconditioned thought, not forcing him to explain the process by which he reached that position. Having conceded this much, the way is open for us to look at the arguments with which he seeks to fortify himself, that we may know what weight or want of weight there is in them. It is sometimes said that pantheism follows of God said pantheism. from the truth, admitted by all theists, that God The infinity is an infinite being. This is the point at which to involve Parker especially stumbles. He fears to clothe God with personality, lest God should thereby be unclothed of his infinity. To make him personal so runs the argument is to make him finite. He must be impersonal in order to be infinite. Personality involves limitation; but God is unlimited; therefore God is impersonal. This sounds quite conclusive; is, in form at least, unanswerable. But let us look at it. Has the major premise been proved? What human intellect has discovered that personality, always and necessarily, involves limitation? Let us see the proof that there is a whit more difficulty in the idea of an infinite, than of a finite person. No such evidence can be found. The syllogism is therefore baseless, and the whole argument sinks into a fallacious assertion. Personality is properly but another name for determinateness; and as the amount of being is greater in any case, the demand for this is not less, but more. "In reality there is no contradiction," says Julius Müller, "between determinateness and infinity. Infinity not only implies determi nateness, but positively requires it; it demands a fulness of determinations in no way limited from without by any other being, nor from within by one another." 1 This argument as the pantheist has denied. But by what right do pantheists say that God must be impersonal because he is infinite? They deny sumes what all personality. Man, to their view, is essentially impersonal; a person only a personification. Upon this theory simple reality, quite as necessarily as infinity, excludes personality. Persons are the images of our own dream. We flatter ourselves with the illusion of personality, in this phenomenal and unreal life; but we shall awake from this fantasy at length, — shall be absorbed back, that is, into the impersonal substance, whose bright shadows we are. Turning from this argument, which so remarkably defeats itself, we say that the seat of personality is in the will. It is not bound up with the idea of a given amount of being, whether less or The essence more; but is essential to the idea of freedom, liberty, independent choice. There can be no personality in the material world; for that is without the determining power, it is the realm of fate. According to the pantheist there cannot be personality anywhere, for he lifts the iron sceptre of necessity over all things. But we know that we are free. Nothing can of person ality is freewill. 1 Christian Doctrine of Sin, Book III., Pt. I., Chap. IV. uproot this conviction, or stand against it. In the freedom thus vouched for is the citadel of our personality, of all personality. To affirm that God is impersonal, is therefore to degrade him below man; is to teach that he can never have the sublime sense of liberty which we all have; is to affirm that he must come out of the sphere of the infinite, and be as one of his finite creatures, in order to feel that he has the power of doing as he will. It is not the personality of God, but of man, that is imperfect. Our will is overborne by temptation. It is weak, owing to the finiteness of the circle of being in which it acts. But God's being is not limited. Its centre is only perfect everywhere, its circumference nowhere. Hence God the person. he is immeasurably above us, in all that goes to constitute him a person. He is infinite in his being, and therefore as a person he is absolutely perfect. and The asser- Another argument, equally high-sounding and equally hollow, is founded on the ambiguous postulate that the mind cannot act excepting where it is. Hence it is inferred, by the pantheist, that all i can act truth lies within the compass of the mind; that we can have knowledge of nature, or of any other objective thing, only as our minds, in the last analysis, are identical with it. In all our acquisitions of truth we are mistaken, if we suppose that our researches pertain to external facts; for that which we regard as outward is only a shadow of the inward, while, spider-like, we spin our theories of God and the world out of our own dream. But in reply to this argument we have Contradict only to bring those principles of the commonsense philosophy, so clearly enunciated by Reid ed by our necessary beliefs. |