SEP ^U 1930
BL 220 .H78 1866
Hunt, John, b. 1827.
An essay on pantheism
AN ESSAY ON
PA.NTIIEISM.
PANTHEISM.
REV. JOHN HUNT,
CUEATE OF S. IVES, HUNTS.
The reason why we liavo made tliis disconrse is that all men suppose that what is called
Wisdom has reference to first causes and principles.— Aristotle.
He became man that we might be made God, — S. Athanasius.
LOlNTIDOlSr
LONGMANS, CxREEN, READER, AND PYER,
1866.
[TVie H'lijhl of Tranalai'ion is Reserved.'^
% V
r
S. IVES, HUNTS ^
PBINTED BY W. LANG CKOWN STREET.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I.
BRAHMANISM AND BUDHISM.
PAGE.
Brahmanism :
Indian Origin of Pantheism - - - 3
Hindu Literature - - - - - 3
Hindus, Polytheists or Monotheists ? - - 4
Worship of Nature - - - - - 5
Brahm, or HE THAT IS - ... 5
Being and Non-Being - - - - - 7
The All-pervading Soul - . - . g
God Nameless, yet having All Names - - - 9
Matter is Ignorance and Illusion - - - 10
The Word of Brahm - - - - - 11
Brahma ------ 12
The Trimurti - - - - - - 13
Three eras of Hindu Worship - - - 14
Brahma Creates - - - - - 15
Vishnu Creates, Preserves, and Destroys - - 16
Vishnu is All Things - - - - - 1 7
Siva is All Things - - - - - 18
Materialism - - - - - - 19
VI CONTENTS.
Idealism ------ 20
Krishna and Arjuna - - - - - 21
Mystical Union with Brahm - - - 22
BUDHISM :
Sakya Muni - - - - - - 24
Nirvana and Sansara - - - - 25
Being is Eternal - - - - - 26
Budhism, not Atheism - - - . 27
Immaterial Matter - - - . - 28
Budha is All - - _ - _ 29
CHAPTER II.
PERSIAN, EGYPTIAN, AND GREEK RELIGIONS.
The Persian Religion :
Zeruane Akeme - - _ . - 31
Ormuzd, or the Personal Deity - - - 32
Domain of Ormuzd - - . _ - 33
Kingdom of Ahiiman _ ... 34
Mithras - . - . . - 35
The Sun is Mithras - - - - 36
Honover - - - . . -37
Fire Worship ----- 38
The Egyptian Religion :
Egyptian Darkness - - _ . - 39
Amnion, the Concealed God - - - 40
HeiTQes Trismegistus - . . - 41
God and the World - . _ ^ ^2
Osiris and Isis - - . , - 43
The Veil of Isis - - . - ' - " 44
Harpocrates - - - . _ -45
Hermes - . . . _ _ .-
Father Nilus - - _ . . ■ - 47
Worship of Animals - - - - 43
God in Nature - . _ , - 49
The Greek Religion :
Greek Mythology - - - - . 50
Worship of Natm-e
Zeus is all Things -
Apollo is all Things
51
52
CONTENTS. Vll
PAGE.
Pan is all Things ----- 54
Jupiter is all Things - - - - -55
CHAPTER III.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
The Ionics :
Thales of Miletus . . . - 57
Anaximander and Anaximenes - - - 58
The Italics :
Pythagoras ----- 59
The Eleatics :
Xenophanes - - - - - -61
Parmenides . - - . - 62
Zeno and Melissus - - - - - 63
Heraclitus :
Heraclitus and the Fire Worshippers - - 65
Empedocles - - - - - - 66
Anaxagoras ------ 67
Socrates and the Sceptics - - - - 68
Plato :
Is Plato's God a Person ? - - - - 70
Ideas and Phenomena - - - - 71
Aristotle ------ 72
The Stoics :
Sense and Reason - - " - - 74
World Order ----- 75
God, the Only Real Being - - - - 76
CHAPTER lY.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE JEWS.
God and Nature - - - - - 78
Judaism and Greek Philosophy - - - 79
Greek Philosophy and the Apocrypha - - - 80
Philo Judaeus - - - - - 81
I AM or Being 82
God has no true Name - - - - 83
The DiYinity of Man - - - - - 84
The Divine Log'os ----- 85
Tin CONTENTS.
PAGB.
God fills all Space - - - - 86
Creation, Ideal and Visible - . . 87
The Cabbala :
Ensoph - - - - - - 89
The Sephiroths - - - . - 90
Matter, not a Real Existence - - - 91
CHAPTER Y.
NEO-PLATONISM.
PlOTINUS :
God, the Teacher of Man - - - - 93
Revelation made to Reason - - - 94
Plotinus' Theology, Eclectic - - - - 95
The Trinity of Plotinus - - - - 96
Matter, a Phantom - - - - - 97
The Burden of the Flesh - ... 93
Porphyry - - - - - - 99
Iamblichus - - - - - - 100
Proclus :
The Trinity of Proclus - - - - 101
Pyi-amid of Being - - - - 103
The One and the Many - - - - 104
CHAPTER VI.
THE CHURCH.
Christianity and Philosophy - - - 106
Irenasus and the Patripassian Heresy - - 107
Origen ------ 108
Clemens of Alexandria - - - - 109
Arius, No Pantheist - - - - no
Athanasius - - - - - - 111
Bishop Synesius . - - _ ^ 112
Synesius' Hymns - - - - - 113
S. Dionysius - - - - - 114
The Trinities of Dionysius - - - - 115
God, not to be Named - - - - 116
God, to be called by all Names - - - 117
God, Unsearchable - - - - lis
'■''■ CONTENTS. IX
PAGB.
CHAPTER VII.
HERESY.
The Gnostics :
The Sioecial Heresy of the Gnostics - - 121
The Fh'st Gnostics - - - - 122
The Unknown Father - - - - 123
TheBythos - " " - - 124
The Pleroma - - " ' " ^'^•^
The^ons - - , - , 126
Nature Pantheism - " - ■ 1^7
Manich^ism :
John Scotus Erigena
The Division of Nature - - " - 130
God, Unknowable - " - - 131
God, the Absolute Nothing - - - 132
Creation - " " " ' ^^3
Is the Phenomenal Eternal ? - - - 134
Man's Place in Nature - - - ■ 135
Philosophy and Church Theology - - - 136
The Trinity - " - ' - 137
The Fall of Man 138
The Incarnation - - ■ " 1 39
Erigena's Disciples - - - - - 140
Amalric De Bena - - - " 141
The Abbot Joachim - - - - 142
Albigenses - ' • - - " 143
Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit - - 144
CHAPTER YIII.
SCHOLASTICISM.
Roscellin and Anselm - . - - - 146
William of Champeaux - - - - 147
Peter Abelard ----- 148
Albertus Magnus - - - - - 149
Thomas Aquinas - - " - 150
Duns Scotus - ■ - - 151
Bishop Hampden on the Schoolmen - - 152
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
CHAPTER IX.
THE ITALIAN REYIYAL.
Averroeism
_ - -
154
Giordano Bruno
_
. 155
The Existence of God, a
Primal Truth -
156
The Interior Artist -
_
- 157
Mind Omnipresent
- _ -
158
Matter and Form
- _ -
- 159
The Primitive Matter
-
160
Bruno and Aristotle
-
- 161
Cisalpini
.
162
Vanini
.
- 163
The Inquisition -
-
164
The Stake
.
- 165
CHAPTER X.
MYSTICAL DIYINITY AND PHILOSOPHY.
Man Transubstantiated into God - - . 167
TheBeghards - - - - - 168
Eckarfc - - - - - - 169
Self Annihilation - - - - - 170
The Super-Essential Essence - - . 171
God Alone can say, I AM - - - - 172
Ruysbroek - - - - . 173
Tauler - - - - - - 174
Eckart and Tauler - - - - 175
The Divine Dark - - . . - 176
Heinrich Suso - - - - . 177
The Theologia Germanica - - . .178
Luther and the Mystics - - - . 179
Jacob Bohme - - - - - 1 80
Eternal Nature - - " - - - 181
The First Principle - - - - 182
The Trinity - - - - - 183
The Fountain Spirits - - - - - 1 84
The Angels - - - - - 185
The Fall of Lucifer - - . - 186
God's Anger and Jealousy - - - 137
CONTENTS. XI
PAGE.
Christ and Lucifer - - - - - 188
The Creation of Eve - - - " 189
Angehis Silesius - - - - - 190
French Mystics :
Fenelon and Madame G-uyon . - - 192
English Mystics :
William Law - . - - - 193
The Sea of Glass - - - - 194
All Things of God - - - ■ - 195
The Christ Within - - - - 196
Nature Without God - - - - 197
Inspiration Perpetual and Universal - - 198
CHAPTER XL
SUFEYISM.
Sufeyism and Parseeism - - - - 200
Sufi Absorption - - - - - 201
Gazzali ------ 202
Sufi Poetry . - - - - 203
Salaman and Absal ----- 204
The Temptation ----- 205
The Celestial Beauty - - - - 206
The Meaning - - - - - 207
The Soul's Victory - - - - - 208
CHAPTER XIT.
IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY,
Des Cartes' Method - - - - 210
Cartesian Theology - - - - - 2 1 1
God, Immanent in Creation - - " 212
Spinoza
Spinoza's Doctrine, Cartesian - - 214
Theory of Knowing - - - - - 215
Modes of Perception - - - - 216
Intuition - - - " " - 217
Natm-e Infinite - - . - 218
The Intermediaries - - - - - 219
Spinoza and Plato . - - - 220
XU CONTENTS.
PAGE.
Bodies
- 221
The Eternal and the Temporal
222
Creation - - - - .
. 223
Is Creation Eternal ? - - - -
224
Free Necessity - . . _
. 225
Final Causes - - . - -
226
God, Incorporeal - - - _
- 227
Duration, not to be ascribed to God
228
The Divine Understanding, and the Human
- 229
Personality - - - . -
230
Man has no Free Will - - - .
231
Good and Evil . . -
- 232
Might is Plight . - - - -
233
The Life of Reason - - - -
- 234
The Soul Immortal _ _ - -
235
Life Eternal . . _ .
- 236
Ptevelation . - _ . .
237
Jesus Christ is the Truth
- 238
The Fall - -
239
Redemption - _ - -
- 240
Malebranche
Seeing all things in God - - -
- 242
S. Augustine and Malebranche -
243
No Secondary Causes _ - _
- 244
Sin - ' -
. 245
Leibnitz
The Monads -----
247
Demonstration of the Ontological Argument
- 248
Sufficient Reason - - . -
249
Pre-Established Harmony
- 250
All for the Best . _ . -
251
Faith and Reason - _ - -
- 252
Christianity, Rational - - - -
253
CHAPTER XIII.
TRxWSCENDENTALISM.
Kant's Critique - _ - -
T?T/^TT'T'T7<
- 255
The I and the Non-I
257
CONTENTS.
xni
PAGE.
The Infinite I -
-
25S
God more than a Person
-
- 259
Immoitality
-
260
Creation, Eternal
-
- 261
God is the Word or Eeason
-
262
SCHJ^LLING
The doctrine of Identity -
-
264
Nature and Spirit
-
- 265
Philosophy of Nature
-
266
Schelling and Spinoza
-
. 267
The Absolute
-
268
The Potencies in Nature
-
- 269
Time and Space
-
270
Intellectual Intuition
-
- 271
Schelling and Bohme
-
272
Personality of God
-
- 273
Christianity, not a Nature Relig
ion
274
Finite and Infinite reconciled in
Christ
- 275
Hegel
The Absolute Idea -
-
- 277
Logic or Logos
-
278
Bemg, the same as Nothing -
-
- 279
Becoming and There-Being
-
280
Philosophy of Nature and Spirit
-
281
Hegel ]mrts with Schellnig
_
- " 282
The Idea in History and Religion -
- 283
Hegelian Christianity
-
284
Hegel meant to be Orthodox
-
285
The Hegelian Trinity
-
- 286
Immortality
-
287
The One
-
- 288
CHAPTER XIV.
POETRY.
Goethe's Faust -
The All-Embracer
Creation
World Soul
290
291
292
293
Xiv CONTENTS.
FAGE.
Schiller 294
Novalis 295
Men shall be gods - - - - 296
Wieland - 297
Riickert 298
Lamartine - - - - - -299
God in Nature ----- 300
Ce Grand Tout 301
The God of Plato, Christ's God - - - 302
Shelley 303
Shelley's Spirit of Nature, Personal - - 304
Pope's Essay on Man . - - - 305
Thomson and Co^vper - - - - 306
Wordsworth - - - - - 307
Wesley 308
Bryant 309
Emerson . - . - - 310
CHAPTER XY.
WHAT IS PANTHEISM ?
Schleiermacher - - - - - 312
The Trinity not Tri-personal - - - 213
Indiyidual Immortality - - - 314
Schleiermacher's Disciples - - - - 315
Frederick Robertson - - - - 316
Theodore Parker - - - - - 317
The Religious Element - - - - 318
Parker on Pantheism - - - - 319
God Immanent in, yet Transcending the World 320
The Religious Aspect of Nature - - - 321
Emerson . - - . - 322
Oversoul ------ 323
M. Renan ----- 324
Renan on Pantheism _ _ - - 325
The Abbe Maret on Pantheism - - - 326
Pantheism or Catholicism, no Alternative - - 327
M, Cousin, a Pantheist - - - 328
Cousin's Disciples, Pantheists - - - 329
CONTENTS. XV
PAGE.
The Saint- Simonians, Pantheifits - - 330
Amand Saintes' Alternatiye - - - 331
M. Saisset on Pantheism . _ . 332
Pantheism, an Enquiry concerning Being - - 233
A Doctrine of Being, the Foundation of all Theology 334
Pantheism, a Question concerning Creation - 335
: Impossibility of conceiving Creation - - 336
j Why did God Create ? - - - - 337
^^ Creation from Nothing, impossible - - - 338
Sir William Hamilton's Pantheism - - 339
Milton on Creation - - - - 340
God, Personal or Impersonal ? - - - 341
Athanasius and Arius - - - " 342
God, not Uni-Personal - - - - 343
Athanasius on the Divinity of Man - - 344
The Atonement - - " - - 345
Propitiation . - . - . 346
Providence, General or Special ? - - " 347
Prayer ------ 348
Miracles - - - - - - 349
God is both Personal and Impersonal - - 350
GodandEial - - - " - 351
Predestination - - - - " 352
Spinoza and Toplady - - - - 353
Immortality ----- 354
The Divine Immanency - - - - 355
Soul in Nature ----- 356
The Ancients on Development - - - 357
DeMaillet ----- 358
J. B. Robinet - - - - " "^^^
Nature, Progressive - - - - ^^^
Nature is One - - . - " " ^^^
Lamarck .-.--- 362
Geoffi-oy S. Hilake - - - - 363
S. Hilaire and Cuvier - - - - 364
Cuvier and Goethe - - ' - 365
Vestiges of a Natural History of Creation - S66
God workino: in Nature - - - - 367
XVI CONTENTS.
Mr. Charles Darwin . - - - 368
>Sir Charles Lyell and Professor Huxley - - 369
Professor Owen on Homologies - - 370
Correlation of Physical Forces - - - 3 7 1
Cognition of the Infinite - . - 372
What is Revelation ? - - - -373
Pantheism, the Theology of Reason - - 374
Plato's Pantheism reconciled with his Teleology - 375
Plato reproached with An tlii'opomorphism - 376
The real Error of the Pantheists - - - . 377
Christ, the Visible Image of the Invisible - 378
CONCLUSIOiJ
S. Paul and the Pantheistic Poet - - 380
Reason and Revelation - - - - 33 1
Wisdom justified of her Children - - 382
ERRATA.
Page 105, Hue 30 for S. John's read S. John.
. . 112, . . 25/07' Bishop of Pcntaijolis rea J Bishop of the Ptoleni-
ais in Pentapolis.
. .129, . . 23 after 1583 supply it is found in the Calendar of Catholic
worthies.
. . 145, . . 20 for began read begun.
. . 155, . . 33 /or Neopolitan read Neapolitan.
. . 157, . . \Q for productions read production.
. .162, . . 13 /or Hengard read Bcngard.
. . 262, . . 1 5 /ir phantom reaJ phantasm.
. . 290, . . 45Jbr it read there ; and supply ihis line,
Their song in sweet f ragnuice.
. . 309, .. 31 ;>i/Uhe * after "^ Plame ' line 17
. . 311, . . 3 for thought read thoughts.
INTEODUCTION.
IT sometimes greatly helps to the underst.mding of a book when
the author can give his readers an account of how the
subject first engaged his own mind, and what were the different
stages through which it passed before its final expression in
writing. I do not know if a writer can always give such an ac-
count even when he is willing. I do not knoAV that I can give
an account of the origin of the present essay. So many causes
have arisen during the last few years, calling for a more com-
plete enquiry into this subject than has been made by any
English author, that the marvel is it has not been taken up
by some who have the learning, leisure, and ability necessary to
do it justice. Germany and France have their Essays on Pan-
theism from all sides, and by the representatives of all schools.
England has nothing but meagre accounts in Encyclopedias or
Histories of Philosophy, the reading of which, speaking generally,
would make no man wiser than he was before. Pantheism is
something so frightful and so frightfully vague that running a lance
against it is a dash of rhetoric, which hurts no one and offends
no one ; not that it is a man in an iron mask, but that it is an
iron mask and nobody knows Avho the man is who owns it.
Towards the end of the year 1859, after I had been four years
in orders, and working in a parish far away from books and
civilization, I was deeply affected with a sense of my ignorance
of theology. I found many difiiculties which I could not answer,
and which I yet believed could be answered. I removed to a
curacy in London and formed a plan of reading all the books
which had been written against Christianity and mastering all
the systems which are said to be in opposition to it. I had no
conception of the magnitude of what I undertook ; but, being
within reach of the British Museum, I began to work, and con-
Xviii INTRODUCTION.
tinned till I had collected materials for a complete history of the
various forms which unbelief in Christianity and Natural
Theology had assumed. I intended so putting them together that
I might have a comprehensive view of the whole, and see at a
glance what was their real value. The pjiblication of the
' Essays and Reviews,' and the controversies which followed them
gave a new and absorbing interest to my studies. I had already
seen that such a book must come soon. It was the expression
of the phase through which theology was then passing. It only
startled those who did not know the signs of the times. The
book itself and the answers to it all deepened my conviction
that the whole science of theology needed to be reviewed, and,
in many cases, new ground to be occupied. I intended to treat
of Pantheism, Atheism, Deism — ^French, Enghsh, and German ;
the antagonism of Christianity with Heathenism in the times
of Porphyry and Celsus, French Socialism, German Rationalism
in all its forms ; and, finally, of the present state of theology
and the prospects of the Church of the Future. In the spring
of 1863, I showed the plan to a friend, who said it would take
me twenty more years to complete such a work. He advised
me to finish one part first, and then go on to the rest. I have
followed his advice, and the volume which is now published is
the result. If this Essay has any success, it will be followed
next by an Essay on Deism — a subject on which we have no
work in English, such as it deserves.
The question of Pantheism and its relation to the received
doctrines of Christianity was first raised in my mind by a pas-
sage in Dr. Caird's sermons. This passage I have quoted at
page 212. The preacher showed the difference between the
Divine mechanism and the human. Man constitutes a machi ne
and leaves it to God's laws, but God can only leave a machine
to His own laws ; in other words. He cannot leave it. There is
no second God to take care of it. ^ Not from a single atom of
matter can He who made it for a moment withdraw his superin-
tendence and support. Each successive moment all over the
INTRODUCTION. xix
world the act of creation must be repeated.' This idea, as I have
elsewhere shown, is purely Cartesian. Leibnitz set his face
against it as the very essence of the errors of Spinoza. But,
here I fou^id it in the sermons of a popular preacher, whose
orthodoxy as a minister of the Calvinistic Church of Scotland
had never been questioned. I was anxious to know what was
Spinoza's doctrine, and wherein he really differed from such
theologians as Dr. Caird. I read first the article on Spinoza
in Bayle's Dictionary. It gave me no satisfaction, for I had a
strong suspicion that Bayle was trying to refute what he did
not understand. I then read the account of Spinoza in Mr.
Lewes's History of Philosophy ; but here, too, from the writer's
want of sympathy with such thinkers as Spinoza, he seemed
unable to grasp the real significance of Spinoza's theology. I
went through other Histories of Philosophy in search of
Spinoza's doctrines. At last I read Spinoza himself, and found
what I had often found before that every second-hand account
of any author is to be received with suspicion. From Spinoza
I proceeded to Malebranche, and here I perceived how easily
Spinoza's doctrines might be held along with ' the faith of the
Catholic Church.' Malebranche, like his master, Des Cartes,
claimed to be a disciple of S. Augustine and S. Anselm. The
exercise of reason in theology had the same results with the
priest of the Oratory as wi^th the Jew of Amsterdam. After
reading Malebranche, I met the works of Theodore Parker,
which, with all their errors, must do good to every earnest man
who reads them. Here the Cartesian idea of the Divine
Immanency was applied with a boldness which was startling and
astonishing : yet, with such a power of eloquence and such an
exercise of manly reason as to carry the conviction that there
must be some truth in it somehow or somewhere. I had heard
that the German Transcendentalists were all Pantheists. It
was necessary to the completion of my enquiry to study them.
XX INTRODUCTION.
This, in itself, was no ordinary undertaking. I was warned of
the danger of the study. I was told that the power of the
Transcendentalists was so seductive, that over the study of them
might be written what Dante inscribed over the gate of Hell, —
* No one who enters here will ever return.' It is true that
no one who enters here will take the same view of Christianity
which he had before. He will believe it more, or less. It is
the furnace of mind where men's thoughts are tried. It is good
for a man to go there, but be must go in earnest. There is
wisdom there for the wise, but only confusion for him who ^ reads
to scorn.'
After studying the German philosophies, it was evident that the
whole field of theological thinking had to be gone over. I began
with the theology of the Hindus. On Hinduism I was
necessarily limited to translations and second-hand accounts. I
followed Creuzer with such assistance as I could get from
English writers. I do not suppose that Creuzer has any founda-
tion for some of his conjectures. Even the divisions which I
have adopted are adopted only for the sake of convenience. The
great point at which I aimed was to set forth the underlying
Monotheism, and this I think is evident, whatever may be our
mistakes concerning Hinduism. On this subject the tracts of
Romahun Roy were of great service. He has shown that the
foundation of the Indian religion, like that of all other religions
is a belief in one Supreme God. Mr. Maurice, in the preface to
his Boyle Lectures, partly objects to Romahun Roy's conclusion
because of the character of the Monotheism at which ho arrives.
* It was,' says Mr. Maurice, ^ a Monotheism , which made it im-
possible to distinguish the object worshipped from the mind of
the worshipper, and, ^Aere/b^-e, which implicitly contained, and
out of which was inevitably developed the later Polytheism.'
But the character of Monotheism, of all Monotheism, is just what
we have to determine. The same objection might have been
INTRODUCTION. XXI
made to S. Paul when he argued against the Polytheism of the
Greeks appealing to their Monotheism, which was not only im-
plied, but plainly expressed. We might suppose an objector
saying to S. Paul, ' You appeal to the Monotheism of Aratus,
quote the whole passage, the Deity of Aratus was that Zeus
who is all things.' The theology of the Hindus was essen-
tially that of the Greeks. They both had different stages and
various forms corresponding to the different character of the people
and their progress in refinement and civilization.
On Budhism, the authorities are more uncertain than on
Brahmanism. The evidence is great, and yet surely it is
incredible, that the Budhists are Atheists. A religion without
a Deity to be worshipped must be impossible. In the
present state of our knowledge of Budhism I think it reasonable
that it should be interpreted by Brahmanism, in which it had
its origin. What are the real doctrines of the Budhists is one
of the most pressing questions that have to be answered con-
cerning the theologies of the Eastern world.
It was not till I had nearly finished this Essay, that I dis-
covered how the subject was connected with Sir William
Hamilton's Philosophy, Professor Mansel's celebrated Bampton
Lectures, and the controversies to which they gave rise. After
what I had written on this subject was printed, I had doubts if
I had really understood the question when I agreed with Mr.
Calderwood in opposition to the interpretation of Mr. Mans el.
If, in what Sir William Hamilton says of creation, he is simply
showing the impotence of thought, then he must mean that
reason has no right to be heard in theology, that we have no
right to exercise our faculties as to the mode of creation ; it is
really inconceivable by us. And this accords with the general
principles of his system. Mr. Mansel, in a note appended to
the second of his Bampton Lectures, seems to admit that Sir
William Hamilton, in his doctrine of creation and causation, has
spoken inconsistently with his own philosophy, and, as it appears
XX ii INTRODXJCTION.
to me, virtually to allow that there was a real ground for Mr.
Calderwoocl's criticism.
I could have wished that I had been able to enter more at
leno-th into the theologies of the Fathers and the Schoolmen. I
was not aware that the former at all approached my subject till
I had read Dorner on the Person of Christ, and it was then too
late to go into the reading necessary for so extensive an inquiry
I satisfied myself with what I had time to read of Origen and
Syrifesius, S. Augustine and S. Athanasius, taking Dorner's
authority for the theology of the others. As to the Schoolmen,
the chapter on them in this volume was merely an outline
written years ago which I intended to fill up when I had an
opportunity, but that opportunity has not come. What, how-
ever, is here written is sufficient for my argument. Those who
dispute the interpretation of the Schoolmen which I have given,
must dispute not with me but with Dean Milman and Bishop
Hampden.
A work of this kind ought to have been written by one who
had a good knowledge of Plato, with the Greek and Alexandrian
philosophies as his capital to begin with. Instead of this I have
been writing backwards, and not till I had made considerable
proo-ress did I know that Plato had anything to do with the
subject. When I discovered this I was perplexed with the ex-
tent and indefiniteness of Plato's writings, and the conflicting
views of his interpreters. I found it necessary to fall back
on an authority. Such an authority I found in the Editor ^ of
Archer Butler's Lectures on Philosophy, whose clear and definite
notes on the Greek philosophies are of greatly more value than
the difi"use and rather wordy lectures to which they are appended.
Certain views may be disputed whether or not they are Plato's,
but this does not afi'ect my argument. It is enough for me that
they have been ascribed to Plato.
The plan of this Essay the reader can see for himself. It is
simply an enquiry. It is written to answer the question which
is the heading of the last chapter. In going over so vast a
* William Hepworth Thompson, Regius Professor of Greek in the Univer-
sity of Cambridge, now Master of Trinity.
INTRODUCTION. Xxiii
field it is possible that I may have misunderstood some of the
authors and some of the systems. I have tried in every case to
put the best, that is, the most orthodox construction upon them.
I have tried to put myself in the position of each writer, to give
his views as I apprehended he would give them himself, to
say what I have supposed he meant when he is obscure
or seems to contradict himself. It is much to be reo-ret-
o
ted that I have not been able to give the references for the
verifying of the quotations. This was entirely impossible-, as
only a very small number of the books which were read or
consulted ever belonged to me. The majority of them were
read in the British Museum, where the extracts were generally
made. I shall be giad if no serious mistakes are found in the
translations from foreign languages, which were often made in
haste. Sometimes the original was copied out so hurriedly that
it was read afterwards with difficulty. I believe, that I am rarely
wrong in the sense, however free the translations may be found.
I am well aware of the danger to which every man exposes
himself when he writes and enquires freely on any great subject
of theology. There is still intolerance in science, but that is
nothing to the intolerance that proverbially clings to theology.
Many will be offended that I have given a fair hearing to
theologians and philosophers who have long by universal consent
been placed without the pale of the Church. Some will be
dissatisfied with the conclusions to which I have come. I
have been guided by no motive but a desire to make a full and
free examination ; to receive what seemed to be true, or as con-
taining truth, and to regret what seemed false. I have made
it altogether a question of reason. A believer in the impotence
of thought has no business anywhere but in the infallible church.
There let him rest. We have another vocation. We acknow-
ledge no blind submission to authority. To the earnest man there
is no reward but the truth itself. The external reward in
theology is not to the truth seeker or the truth finder, hut to
those who tread its beaten track, and who pledge themselves even
to the phraseology of a party. Truly does Richard Baxter de-
Xxiv INTRODUCTION.
scribe the condition of tlie earnest inquirer in theology, wliere he
says : — '' And when I have found the truth, I have found but an
exposed naked orphan that hath cost me much to take in and
clothe and keep ; which, though of noble birth — yea, a Divine
offspring, and amiable in mine eyes, and worthy, I confess, of
better entertainment, yet from men that know not its descent,
hath drawn upon me their envy and furious opposition, and so
the increase of knowledge hath been the increase of sorrow. My
heart, indeed, is ravished with the beauty of naked truth, and I
am ready to cry out, * I have found it ! ' but when I have found
it, I know not what to do with it. If I confine it to my own
breast, and keep it secret to myself, it is as a consuming fire
shut up in my heart and bones. I am as the lepers without
Samaria, or as those that were forbidden to tell any man of the
works of Christ. I am weary of forbearing ; I cannot stay. If
I reveal it to the world, I can expect but an unwelcome enter-
tainment and an ungrateful return, for they have taken up their
standing in religious knowledge already, as if they were at
Hercules' pillars, and had no further to go nor any more to
learn. The most precious truth not apprehended doth seem to
be error and fantastic novelty. Every one that readeth what I
write will not be at the pains of those tedious studies to find out
the truth, as I have been, but think it should meet their eyes at
the very reading, so that if I did see more than others, to reveal
it to the lazy prejudiced world, would but make my frienjds turn
enemies, or look upon me with a strange and jealous eye."
Yet I know that there are thousands of earnest men in the
Church of England at the present hour who know the necessities
of the age, and the need for deep and searching enquiry into all
great subjects, men who know that if Christianity is to be
allowed to make its own way in the world, it must not be afraid
of the light, it must use no cowardly devices, it must be set
forth as what it is and what it professes to be, and not converted
into something which it is not and which it does not profess
to be. I have written in the interests of truth, and with a
sincere intention, and I am not afraid to submit what I have
written to the judgment of wise men.
CHAPTER I.
BRAHMANISM AND BUDHISM.
OF the word Pantheism we have no accurate definition.
The most opposite beliefs are sometimes called by this
name ; and systems which, in the judgment of some, are
notoriously Pantheistic are defended by others as compatible
with the received doctrines of Christianity. The popular
definition does not go beyond the etymology of the word,*
God is All, or the All is God. But this defines nothing until
we know either what God is, or what the All is. If the uni-
verse is material, taking matter in its ordinary sense, then
according to this definition God is matter, or, what is the
same thing, there is no God. If, on the other hand, the uni-
verse is spiritual, then God is a spirit and matter is only an
illusion — there is no material universe — what we call matter is
only an appearance — the image or shadow of the Lifinite Being.
Hence two classes of Pantheists wholly distinct from each
other, the material and the spiritual : the one is without a
real God, the other is without a real world. To call the first
by any name which at all implies that they are Theists is a
contradiction in terms. The second is the class which are
chiefly intended when we speak of Pantheists. Since we
neither know what is matter nor what is spirit, it being
impossible to demonstrate the existence of the one apai't from
the other, the indefinite meaning of Pantheism necessarily
remains. Between these two kinds of Pantheism, that
which denies a real God and that which denies a real imiverse,
are a multitude of intermediary views approaching more or
less to either of these. It is conceivable that mind may be
eternally associated with matter, and thus the relation between
God and the universe may correspond to that of the human
soul with the human body. It is again conceivable that
* llav All, Otog God.
2 INDIAN ORIGIN OF PANTHEISM.
matter may be the mere external manifestation of mind, having
reahty only from its connection with mind, or there may be
an essence of which mind and matter are both but manifesta-
tions. In this essence they may find their reality, and this
reality or essence may be that All which is identical with
God. It is evident the question of Pantheism cannot
bo discussed till we have examined the beliefs that have
been called Pantheistic.
1. Brahmanism. — Nearly all writers on Pantheism trace
its origin to India. The Abbe Maret reaches the climax of
his argument against the French Socialists in declaring that
their doctrines come from India — " the mother of supersti-
tions." Pierre Leroux admits the fact of his agreement on
many subjects with the Lidian sages, and answers with an
air of triumph that " all religions, and all philosophies have
their root in India, and that had Pantheism not been found
in India that would have been a strong argument against its
truth, for then humanity would have erred in its begimiing."
In Lidia the creed of modern intellect is combined with
the worship of an infinity of gods. This is the problem of
Brahmanism; this is the puzzle on every Hindu temple.
When this problem is solved for Brahmanism there will be
light shed on a similar problem that presents itself in nearly
aU religions. M, Leroux again truly says : "the religion of
India does not concern India alone : it concerns humanity."
Though beginning with Brahmanism we do not thereby
intend any inference to be drawn of its prior antiquity to
some other ancient religions. We take it simply as the best
representative of the great Aryan family — the branch which
has grown to the most gigantic proportions, and that one in
the light of which the others may be miderstood.*
We cannot reach the beginnings of humanity. The first
races probably had no literature and no religious books ; we
must therefore begin with the oldest religious books in our
possession, which are those of the Hindus. In saying this
we do not raise any question of the relative antiquity of the
* It is found only in India ; yet recent discoveries seem to show that
India is not its birth place. There are tribes in India — scattered remnants
of conquered races, dwelling on mountains and in border lands — who have
no priests, and give no reverence to Brahmans. These are the Khonds, the
Koles, and the Sourahs, supposed to be the aborigines of Hindostan. They
differ greatly from the Hindus in their character and mode of Ufe, as well as
in their religion. Their principal deities are Bxira Pennu, and Tari Pennu.
The first is their chief god, and the second a malignant female deity — the
author and promoter of all the evil in the world.
HINDU LITERATURE. 3
Vedas and the Bible. Some of the Brahmanical books were
written many centuries before the Christian era, and others
perhaps as many centuries after it. And though we speak
of them as one set of books, we do not forget that they are
many ; and though we come to them in search of only one
class of doctrines, which indeed are the most prominent and
the most characteristic of their general spirit, we do not
forget that other doctrines will also be found in them. The
Vedas contain traces of many phases of religion and germs
of many different philosophies.*
To find a complete harmony of sentiments in a mass of
literature so varied as the Indian is more than we have any
right to expect, yet there is a predominant characteristic
reigning generally through it all. In it is reflected the mind
* The Vedas as they now stand are four in number : the Rig- Veda, the
Sama, the Yagur, and the Atharva Veda. Originally there were only three ;
the last being of a much more recent date than the others. In the estimation
of modem Hindus they are all eternal. The books themselves claim this dura-
tion of existence as containing the very words which were spoken by Him who
is Eternal. They are distributed among the four classes into which Hindu
society is divided : the first to the Brahmans, the second to the Warrior caste,
the third to the Merchant caste, and the fourth to the Soudras. This agrees,
too, with the estimation in which they are held ; for, though all inspired, the
first takes the highest place. The Rig- Veda is indeed the most important of
the Hindu books. It is a collection of hjonns and prayers in verse and prose.
It is the nucleus around which all the others have gathered — the authority to
which all subsequent teachers appeal. That it is the oldest is not disputed —
its age being generally fixed at about 3,000 years. — The Yagur Veda, also
consisting of hymns and prayers, is divided into two parts : the White Yagur
and the Black Yagur. It is more modern than the Rig- Veda, but formed in
imitation of it. The Sama Veda consists for the most part of extracts from
the other two. In early times when the Vedas were only three in number,
the second and third were considered as simply the attendants of the first.
The knowledge of the Vedas was called the threefold knowledge, or literally
the threefold Veda, "which," says Max Miiller, "again presupposes one
Veda, and that the Rig- Veda." The Atharva is the most modem of these
four books. Its use indeed is whoUy different, for while the priests performed
their regvdar sacrifices with the other three Vedas, the fourth contained only
the formulas of consecration — how to appease our enemies and how to curse
them. The foiir Vedas were reduced to their present form by the sage Vyasa
— the Indian Ezra, who lived about 400 years before the Christian era. He
added e:iposition8 of the text which form what is called the Vedanta. These
are known as Brahmanas and Upanishads, which profess to explain the origin
of the rituals, and to set forth the religious philosophy of the Vedas. There
is also a voluminous work called Puranas, which has been ascribed to Vyasa,
but has probably had many authors. The Puranas are translated into the
vulgar languages of India, and may be read by women and Soudras. Con-
cerning the age of these different books there is great uncertainty, and no
agreement either among Brahmans or Europeans. The laws of Menu were
written, probably, about 600 years before Christ. They present a picture of
the Social life of the Indians at a time when they had reached a high degree
of civilisation.
B 2
4 HINDUS, POLYTHEISTS OR MONOTHEISTS ?
of the people in different states of civilization and different
eras of development. In the early books there is manifested
a strong love of nature, and a high appreciation of the life
that now is ; and this spirit appears at intervals, not only in
little episodes of family life, but sometimes in the very acts
and prescriptions of religious worship. But it is not^ the
spirit that prevails — it is not the character of the old Hindu
people. They were not satisfied with this transitory existence :
their thoughts were on things unseen ; they ^ were seeking
a world without change. The character which the Greek
historian* gives them is fidly confirmed ; "they considered this
life as the life of an embryo in the womb, but death as the
birth to a real and happy life for those who had thought, and
had prepared themselves to die." Weary of the life of nature,
because of its brevity and its uncertainty, the Indian dis-
regarded it and strove after indifference, both as to its
pleasures and its sorrows. It was not his rest. He felt
within him a spirit greater than the transient and the finite ;
he sought the Eternal and the Infinite.
We have already raised a question wdiich must be con-
sidered at the threshold of Brahmanism, that is, the co-exist-
ence of a species of Theism with Polytheism. Are the
Hindus, Polytheists or Monotheists ? Ask a Brahman of the
present day " How many gods he worships?" and he will
answer •' Millions ; " by which he means that their number is
not to be numbered ; for all the vast accumulations of deities
in the mythology, and of idols in the Hindu temples, are but
efforts to express the Infinite One.
Every Brahman may not be able to give the reason for
the multitude of objects he worships, but from our point
of view this is the rationale of his worship. When we turn
to the old Hindu books the same principle serves to guide us
through the labyrinth. In the Rig- Veda we have a simple
worship of nature : the elements and powers of nature per-
sonified are the first gods of the Aryaji race.f But of these,
chiefly the heavens, hence the worship of fire, of the sun, the
moon, and the stars ; and yet it is not these objects themselves
that are worshipped, but the power which is in them — the
manifestations, so to speak, of a mind in them which is some-
times identified with them. We have instances of this in the
* Mej^sthencs.
t Plato thinks th;it the sxm, moon, and stsrs were the only objects of
worship in Greece in the enrly ages. Caesar says that the Germans worshipped
the sun, moon, and fire.
WORSHIP OF NATURE. O
names of deities passinoj to the objects. Thus Df/aus the old
deity of the Rig-Yeda came to mean the sky, in the same
way as the name of Jupiter auK ag the Romans. Fire was
called Agni, and the eiements Indra, from their being origin-
ally the names respectively of the god of fire and the god
of' the elements. But though the deities in the Hindu Pan-
theon are numerous, and though many of them may be
explained as mere personifications of the mighty powers in
natm-e, there is yet ever in the Hindu mind a passing beyond
the external, and a reaching out after something which is not
finite. Their Polytheism is but a phase of their religion, and
one more apparent than real. The spiritual effort of the
Hindu is not limited to the worship of the powers of nature
but strives to embrace nature infinite, and there to adore the
One who is present in all nature, and who nourishes nature
in Himself*
Crmzer divides Hinduism into three eras, which have
three different phases corresponding to them. The first is
that of simple nature worship, where no distinction is made
between the Creator and creation. The second he calls that
of reflection and devotion when this distinction is made, but
only in a confiised way. The third is that of philosophy,
when reason seeks to explain how God and nature are one,
Creuzer here applies to Hinduism the general law of the
religious sentiment. In youth, whether that of a nation or
an individual, religion is a feeling full of poetry. To this suc-
ceeds an age of enquiry wlien reason begins to be exercised ;
hence arises, as the result, a religious philosophy. By
examining in succession these three phases we shall best be
able to judge of the general character of the Hindu religion,
considered as a consistent whole. The first era is represented
by the Vedas, the se<^;ond by the Vedic Commentaries, and the
third by the schools of philosophy. That Hinduism was at
first a simple worship of natm-e is evident from almost every
page of the Vedas. Two hymns that have been translated
into most European languages will be sufficient for our present
object. The first is " The Gaytri, or holiest verse of the
Vedas." It begins, '' Let us adore the supremacy of that
divine Sun : the God-head who illuminates all, who re-creates
all, from whom all proceed, to whom all must return, whom
we invoke to direct our understandings aright in our progress
towards His holy seat What the sun and light are
to this visible world, that are the supreme good and truth to
the intellectual and invisible universe ; and, as the corporeal
6 BRAHM, OR HE THAT IS.
eyes have a distinct perception of objects enlightened by the
sun, thus our souls acquire certain knowledge by meditating
on the light of truth which emanates from the Being of
beings — that is the light by which alone om' minds can be
directed in the path to blessedness." The other hjTim is from
the Yagur Veda. The Deity is called by the name That, as
we find frequently in this Veda. He is simply Essence, or
Being.
" Fire is That, the sun is That;
The air, the moon — so also that pure Brahm.
Waters, and the lord of creatures.
* * « *
" He, prior to whom nothing was bom,
And who became all beings.
Produced the sun, moon, and fire.
To what God should we offer oblations,
But to Him who made the fluid sky and the solid earth —
Who fixed the solar orb, and formed the drops of rain.
To what Grod should we offer sacrifice.
But to Him whom heaven and earth contemplate mentally.
" The wise man views that mysterious Being
In whom the universe perpetually exists,
Resting upon that sole support,
In Him is the world absorbed,
From Him it issues.
In creatures is He twined, and wove in various forms.
Let the wise man, versed in Holy Writ,
Promptly celebrate that immortal Being,
Who is the mysteriously existing various abode."
We have chosen these two hymns, not simply because
they set forth the Hindu worship of nature, but, also, at the
same time, the peculiar characteristics of that worship. It is
not the sun itself that is worshipped, but the sun as the
emblem, yea, the abode of that Being towards whom the
hearts of the worshippers are filled with reverence. And the
same of the moon, the fire, the waters. They are that Being
because that Being is in all, and is the being of all. We have
here an intimation of the Pantheism, the Polytheism, and
the Monotheism of Hinduism ; how they are related to each
other, and how the one is to be interpreted by the other.
Brahm, the supreme, is impersonal. His name is mystery,
or He That Is. Placed at the summit of all thought, and
beyond all tliought. He is called by the name of all the gods
and of all things, that He may be excluded from none. Again
He is the One mysterious and nameless, that He may be
distinguished from all things. He is pre-eminently One, ever-
lasting, without body, parts, or passions. His power, wisdom,
and goodness, are infinite. , He is the Maker and Preserver
BEING AND NON-BEING. 7
of all things, both visible and invisible. " May that soul of
mine," says a prayer in the Rig- Veda, " which mounts aloft
in my waking hours as an etherial spark, and which, even in
my slumber has a like ascent, soaring to a great distance, as
an emanation from the Light of lights, be miited by devout
meditation with the Spirit supremely blest and supremely
intelligent." And th^ hymn on creation, from the same Veda,
thus speaks of that Infinite Spirit :
" Tten there was no entity, nor non-entity,
Nor world, nor sky, nor ought above it —
Nothing anywhere.
Nor water, deep and dangerous —
Death was not.
Nor then was immortality.
Nor distinction of the day or night.
But That breathed without afiSation —
Darkness then was."
" This universe was enveloped in darkness.
And was undistinguishable water.
Who knows, and shall declare when and why
This creation (ever) took place.
The gods are subsequent to the production of the world —
Who then can know from whence
This varied world comes ?
He, who in highest heaven is Ruler, does know ;
But not another can possess that knowledge."
Tlie Yagur Veda speaks of the primordial soul as ineffable.
*' He is neither great nor small, large nor long. He is with-
out color, shadow, smell, or taste ; without youth or age,
beginning or end, limits or bounds. Before Him there was
no one ; after Him comes no one. He is unspeakably pure,
living in eternal repose, and in eternal joy, stable amid all
change — in His grandeur free. He sees without eyes, and
hears without ears. He sees all, hears all, understands all ;
but is seen by no one, is comprehended by no one." Brahm is
pre-eminently Being; but lest that term should seem to
exhaust His infinitude, He is also said to be Non-Being — not,
however, in the sense that material forms are non-being, not
because He is less than being, but greater than all being.
Our thoughts of existence are too mean to be applied to Him.
We must declare their insufhcieney so as it may be under-
stood that when we, the finite, affirm anything of God, it is
but our finite effort to express Him, and therefore imperfect,
for no number of finites can make up the Infinite ; no accu-
mulations of being can express Him who is the source of all
being, therefore it is said that Brahm is both Being and Non-
Being. This verbal contradiction pervades the whole of
8 THE ALL PERVADING SOUL.
Hindu Tlieology. " The Polytheism of the Vedas," says
Creuzer^ " is dissolved into Monotheism,* and all the names
of the gods may be reduced to three. These are chiefly
physical powers : fire, smi, and air ; and these again go into
the great soul. This great soul is sometimes called the sun,
because it animates all which moves and is. It is the physical
unity in all. There are many names sometimes for the
same god, and of some gods nothing is affirmed, their name
and nature is mystery. Such is the terrible Deva and the
mysterious Om, which name belongs to all the gods, and is
yet so sacred that no Hindu pronounces it. There are besides
deities, which are portions of other deities, and sometimes the
same god becomes many by the multitude of his incarnations
or manifestations." The very vastness of the Hindu Mytho-
logy obliges it to be inconsistent. It is an effort to represent
a Being who can only be grasped by an infinite thought.
Were it consistent its failure would be still more signal, the
many being but fractions of the One, and this One an Infinite
Spirit. It therefore takes refuge in poetry, and struggles to
utter by luxm'iant similitudes, what language cannot with
accuracy express, f The great soul animates and pervades all
things. He speaks in the thunder, flashes in the lightning,
roars in the cataract, glances in the sun, smiles in the moon,
glitters in the stars, rolls in the ocean, sparkles in the fountain,
reposes on the sleeping lake. He is imaged in the mountain.
He whispers in the zephyrs, and murmurs among the leaves
of the forest trees. He is one, and yet He is manifold. As
the One no tongue can truly name Him — no thought worthily
conceive Him. As the many He peoples the heavens, the
earth, the air, and the waters, so that every region is full of
gods, and everything that lives, and moves, and is, becomes
* Professor Wilson comes to the same conclusion respecting the theology
of the Puranas. In the Introduction to his translation of the Vishnu
Purana he says : " The Pantheism of the Puranas is one of their invariable
characteristics, although the particular divinity, who is all things, from whom
all things proceed, and to whom all things return, be diversified according to
their individual sectarial bias. They seem to have derived the notion from
the Vedas ; but in them the one universal Being is of a higher order than a
personification of attributes or elements, and however imperfectly conceived
or unworthily described, is God. In the Puranas the one only Supreme
Being is supposed to be manifest in the person of Siva or Vishnu, either in
the way of illusion or of spirit, and one or other of these divinities is there-
fore, also, the cause of aU that is, and is Himself aU that exists."
t " That Divine Self is not to be grasped by tradition, nor by understand-
ing, nor by all revelation ; by him whom He, Himself, chooses, by him alone
is He to be grasped — that Self chooses his body as His own." — UrANiSHAD,
QtTOTED BY Max Muller.
GOD NAMELESS, YET HAVING ALL NAMES. 9
a god. The fields are sacred, for Brahm is there ; the rivers
are worshipped, for Brahm Hves in them. Brahma-putra, as
its name impHes, is the river of Father Brahm. The Ganges
flowing down from the divine mountains, laden with the
richest blessings of the great God of nature, is worshipped
as itself divine. The beasts become sacred ; and the images
of the elephant, the ox, the goat, the hawk, the eagle, and
the raven are found side by side with the idol gods of the
Pantheon. Brahm is all things, and without Him things in
themselves are but illusions : matter has no real existence —
material forms are the forms of Brahm.
The Vedanta, or Vedic Commentaries mark the second era
of Hinduism, when the spirit of reflection begins to dis-
tinguish between God and nature. They give prominence
to the Monotheism of the Yedas, and at times protest against
Polytheism and the worship of the natural elements. " The
vulgar," says the Vedanta, ^' look for their gods in the water ;
men of more extended knowledge, in the celestial bodies ; the
ignorant, in wood, bricks, and stones ; but learned men, in the
universal soul." The soul of the universe now becomes the
single object of worship. The Vedas had declared God '' in-
comprehensible to reason, and inconceivable to imagination,
compassed by no description, beyond the limits of the explica-
tion of the Vedas ; " and again they had said " all that exists
is indeed God." On these and similar passages the author
of the Vedanta establishes his theology, commenting on the
texts, explaining what seemed inconsistent with his interpreta-
tion, and reducing the whole, so to speak, to an analogy of
faith. " God, he says, " is called by all names to denote the
diffusive spirit of the Supreme Being equally over all crea-
tures by means of extension, for in this way His omnipresence
is established ; " but yet " God is a Being more extensive
than all the extension of space. He sees everything, though
never seen ; hears everything, though never directly heard.
All material extension is clothed with His existence ; for He
is not only the efficient, but the material cause of the uni-
verse. He proceeds more swiftly than thought. He seems to
advance, leaving behind human intellect, which strives to
attain a knowledge of Him. He seems to move everywhere,
though in reality He has no motion. He is distant from
those who do not wish to know Him ; but He is near those
who earnestly seek Him. To know God is to feel that we
do not know Him, and to suppose that we understand Him
is to show our ignorance of Him. We see His works, and
10 MATTER IS IGNORANCE AND ILLUSION.
therefore infer His existence; but who can tell how or lohat
He is ? He is something distinct from the universe, yet in
some way the being of the universe is involved in His being.
It is He that is the Eternal, the imchangeable, the ever-present.
He applies vision and hearing to their respective objects. He
is the splendor of splendors ; the sun shines not with respect
to Him, nor the moon, nor fire. As the illusive appearance
of water, produced by the reflection of rays in the mirage, so
the universe shines in Him — the real and intelligent spirit.
The universe had its birth in Him ; and as bubbles burst in
the water, so shall it find its destruction in Him." * "As from
a blazing fire," says the Atharva Veda, " proceed thousands
of sparks of the same nature, so from the eternal Supreme
Being various souls come forth, and again return to Him.
He is immortal without form and figure, omnipresent and
all pervading, unborn, without breath, or individual mind."
Matter is called ignorance, because we know nothing
about it ; and illusion, because it professes to be something,
while it is nothing. Creation is not, when considered as a
thing. It is only when regarded as a manifestation of Brahm,
its existence is due to emanation ; it is the Eternal Being
coming out of Himself. When He thinks. He becomes an
object as well as a subject — that which is thought of, as
well as that which thinks — as a man beholding himself in a
mirror becomes the subject seeing, and the object seen, so is
Brahm and creation : He projects His thought, and in it
sees Himself as in a glass. That reflection of His being is
one to Him; but to human beings the embodiment of His
thought presents itself under a thousand modifications ; hence
we call the universe what it really is, an appearance; and
this appearance is the out-shadowing of the Eternal Brahm.
Creation is not so much illusive in itself, as it is illusive to
us. It has a real side which is divine : it is the thought of
the Eternal Spirit — it is His speech — His word going forth.
The Rig-Veda calls this Vach, or speech, the daughter of
the primeval spmt — eternal, and yet transitory. " I uphold,"
she says, "both the sun and the ocean, the firmament and the
fire, both day and night. Me the gods render imiversaUy
present ever3rwhere : pervader of all beings ; even I declare
this myself, who am worshipped by gods and men. I make
strong whom I choose — originating all beings — I pass like
the breeze, I am above the heavens, beyond the earth, and
* Quoted by Romahun Roy.
THE WORD OF BRAHM, 1%
what is the great One that am I ? " * She lives eternally in
Brahm, she is the instrument of creation, she presents herself
throughout the universe as illusion ; so that whatever we see
is the voice of the creating God, and this voice is the thought
of the eternal Spirit. The appearance of creation is the voice
of the Creator, and that again is the volition of the Eternal.
Aromid this doctrine of creation are clustered, not only the
most abstruse of Hindu philosophies, but innumerable legends.
There is not, however, on this subject, any more than on some
others, a perfect agreement. Sometimes creation is the act
of Brahm ; at other times of the gods. Sometimes Brahm is
represented as willing the creation ; at other times it flows
unconsciously from Him. In setting forth one view as the
most prominent, we do not forget that others are also to be
found. In the Yedanta we read that a point was reached
in endless duration, when creation emanated from Brahm ;
in other places we read that Brahm resolved to create :
probably the difference is only apparent. We do not expect
the most exact language in hymns and legends ; yet they all
agree generally in this : that the things which Brahm created.
He formed out of His own substance ; and the reason given
is, because there was no other substance from which He could
form them. As the spider weaves its web fi'om its own
bowels, or as the tortoise protrudes its legs from the shell ; so
did Brahm weave or protrude creation. As milk curdles, as
water freezes, as vapour condenses; so was the miiverse
formed from the coagulation of the divine substance. These
comparisons being derived from objects of sense have an air
of materialism, which is not intended by the Brahmans who
use them. They express nothing concerning the nature of
substance, and must not be taken as exhaustive of the idea
of creation. We have already seen that, though Brahm and
creation are thus identified, the nature of Brahm is absolutely
spiritual. In the hymn quoted above from the Rig- Veda the
gods are said to be created after the world. This we may
regard as the orthodox view ; but, as the gods are the powers
of Brahm manifested in nature, we can miderstand how the
Brahmans often apparently reverse the order, and make the
gods Brahm's agents, creators, and world-makers. The gods
and the miiverse are thus one ; and these again are Brahm
in His objective being. To this meaning we may reduce the
majority of the Brahmanical legends of creation. " In the
* Quoted by Dr. Williams — " Hinduism and Christianity Compared."
12 ' BRAHMA.
beginning of all things the universe clothed with water rested
in the bosom of eternal Brahm. The world-creating power,
or person of the Godhead, swam over the Avaters upon
the leaf of a lotus, and saw with the eyes of his four heads
nothing but water and darkness. Hence his self contempla-
tion, " Whence am I ? Who am I ? " He continued a hun-
dred years of the gods in this self-contemplation without
profit, and without enlightening the darkness, which gave
him great uneasiness. Then a voice reached His ear, ^' Direct
thy prayer to Baghavat, the Eternal Being." Brahma (this
was the name of the person of the godhead), raised himself,
and placed himself on the lotus in a contemplative position,
and thought over the Eternal Being. Baghavat appears as a
man with a thousand heads ; Brahma prays : This pleases the
Eternal — He disperses the darkness, and opens Brahma's
understanding. But after the darkness had been dispersed
Brahma saw in the exhibition of the Eternal, all infinite forms
of the earthly world, as buried in a deep sleep. Thereupon
the Eternal commands him again, " Brahma retiu-n to con-
templation, and since, through penitence and absolution,
thou hast desired the knowledge of my omnipotence, then
will I give thee power to bring forth, and to develop the world,
out of the life concealed, in my bosom. In another place
Brahm is described as surrounding Himself with Maya
(illusion) ; that is, joyful self- forge tfulness. He clothes Him-
self with it — it becomes, as it were, His garment. In this
Maya, wherewith Brahm has encircled Himself, is desire —
desire of creating ; but in desire is love, and so far beauty.
In relation to itself the Maya has true being ; but, in relation
to the Being of beings to the self-existent, to Brahm, it is
only appearance : deception — illusion. World making is the
sport of Brahm ; creation is the play of the godhead, while
God Himself is eternally at rest. The world, considered by
itself, is a beautiful world, a choice form of art ; but, placed
over against the Eternal, it is nothing. We have here the
first being, who is above all, and before all ; and then we
have love, which again has its existence in the Maya. Hence
God is divided into the loving and the loved. And this
separation is the original condition of all things. They are,
and they are not. They exist only in and through separation.
On the standing ground above separation they are not. Love
is the world mother; but what she has brought forth is
form only in appearance. Material things are but semblance
forms, wizard gardens, which, with the wands of conjuration,
THE TRIMURTI. 13
sink back into themselves. The One, that which is Being
remains. The productions of the Maya, which are only
appearance, change and vanish. So far as creation is Brahm,
it has true being ; without Him it is illusion, and non-being.
In this relation of the Supreme God and the gods — of
Brahm, and tlie universe, we have the true explanation of the
Indian Trimurti, which plays so distinguished a part in the
later stages of Hindu worship. The early gods of the ele-
ments disappear before Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; which
at once represent Brahm, in His objectivity, as the creating,
preserving, and destroying powers of natm'e. Brahm becomes
Bramha ; the universal soul becomes a person ; the pervading
spirit, a creator. This means that the universe emanates from
Brahm, and becomes the first of the gods ; hence the many
passages in the Vedic Commentaries, which identify the uni-
verse with the body of Brahma, and the legend which refers
the origin of the castes to four emanations of Brahma : the
priests from his head, the warriors from his shoulders, the
merchants from his belly, and the Soudras from his thighs.
From him was born the spirit, the understanding, and all
the senses ; from him was produced the heaven, the light,
the wind and water. His head is fire, his eyes the sun
and the moon ; the regions of heaven are his ears, his voice
is the open Vedas. The world is his breath, at his feet is the
earth; he is the internal spirit of all creatures.* Brahma is
the Macrocosm ; man is the Microcosm. The creating power
of God is sometimes set forth by Brahma and Vishnu together.
Two powers are placed in Brahm ; the one centripetal, and
the other centrifugal. The first is Vishnu. Whilst the god-
head gives itself forth, the emanation seeks to return again to
that from which it came. Its desires are towards the centre
of being. The other power is Brahma, which is the spring
of emanation. God by Brahma goes out of Himself. Li
creation He places Himself outside of God. There is a
tendency in Brahm to turn from Himself — to step out of
Himself, to deprive Himself; and every such deprivation is
already a minus of God. This idea which evidently belongs
to the Vishnu period, elevates Vishnu above Brahma ; as the
work of returning to God is higher than that of departing
from Him — the reabsorbing power is deemed nobler than the
act of creation. Here too, Brahma is a man, the prototype
of men ; but Vishnu is a God. In the older Vedic writings
* Quoted by Creuzer.
14 THREE ERAS OF HINDU WORSHIP.
we only read of Brahma. Creuzer supposes that each person
of the Hindu Trinity marks an era in Hindu worship. Tlie
first was that of pure Brahmanism, when men Kved in holy
innocence, and worshipped none but the creating god. He
was an incarnate deity, the teacher of men, the first lawgiver,
author of the immortal Yedas. He was worshipped with
bloodless offerings — the fruits of the earth, and the milk of
cows. But this primitive worship was soon swept from the
earth ; no traces can now be found of the temples of Brahma.
To Brahmanism succeeded the worship of Siva. This was
the reign of terror, when the worshippers performed cruel
rites, and sought to appease the destroyer with blood. The
era of Vishnu was a reformation of the worship of Siva, which
was completed by Budhism.
Each person of this Trimurti appears as the Supreme
God, yet there are never wanting some traces of their relation
to the powers and elements of nature. Tlieir syml^ols hinted
at this. To Brahma the earth was sacred, to Siva the fire,
and to Yishnu the water. Of the being and work of each of
these three gods, the Hindu writings are full. In the laws
of Menu, we read that the invisible God created the five
elements. First He created water, and gave it the power of
moving. Tlu'ough this power arose a golden egg which shone
hke a thousand suns, and in this was bom Brahma, the self-
existent — the great father of all reasonable beings. At this
date we do not read of the Trinity, and Brahma is scarcely
distinguished from Brahm. In another part of the " Laws of
Menu" it is Brahm Himself who creates and manifests
Himself in creatures. This imiverse was only darkness
incomprehensible, invisible, unknown, and as if plmiged in
a profomid sleep. Then the self-existent God impenetrable
yet penetrating all things, reuniting the vital elements,
suddenly dissipated the darkness. The spiritual, infinite,
incomprehensible, and eternal Being — mysterious principle of
all creation, revealed Himself in all His splendor.
It is in the Vedanta we must look to find the Trimurti,
and there we find innumerable legends of their birth, life, and
works. One gives them a mother named Bhagavad, who, ex-
pressing her joy at her own creation, dropped from her bosom
three eggs, from which the three deities were produced.*
Another legend says, " Brahm existed from all eternity in a
* Vans Kennedy says that Creuzer took this from Madame Poller, and
that it is not found in the Vedanta. He also disputes the existence of some
other legends cited by Creuzer.
BRAHMA CREATES. 15
form of infinite dimensions. When it pleased Him to create
the world he said : ' Rise up 0 Brahma.' Immediately a spirit
of the color of flame issued forth, having fom* heads and four
hands. Brahma gazing round and seeing nothing but the
immense image out of which he had proceeded, travelled a
thousand years to understand its dimensions. But after all
his toil he found himself as much at a loss as before. Lost
in amazement Brahma gave over his journey, he fell prostrate
and praised what he saw with his four mouths. The Almighty
then in a voice like ten thousand thunders, was pleased to say
' Thou hast done well, 0 Brahma, for thou canst not com-
prehend me. Go and create the world.'" The legend then
describes how Brahma seeing the idea of things floating before
his eyes, said, " Let them be," and all that he saw became real
before him. Then Brahma was troubled lest creation should
be annihilated, and addressing immortal Brahm, asked, "Who
shall preserve these things which I behold." Then from Brahm's
mouth issued a spirit of a blue color, and said aloud, "I will."
This was Vishnu, the preserver. Brahma then commanded
him to go and make animals and vegetables. When this was
done, man was wanted to have dominion over the new made
creation. Vishnu made some men, but they were such idiots
that Brahma destroyed them. He then created four men from
his own breath, but they could do notliing except praise Brahm,
and therefore they likewise were destroyed. With this work
of destruction Siva appeared. Thus Brahma, Vishnu, and
Siva, together began to create, to preserve, and to destroy.
The following dialogue, also from the Vedanta,* gives
nearly the same account of creation, besides touching on some
other points of Hindu Divinity. The speakers are Brahma,
who is called the wisdom of God, and Narud his son. Narud
is reason, or the first of men, who according to one accomit of
creation were created by the Trirnurti. '' Narud : ' 0 Father,
thou first of God, thou art said to have created the world, and
thy son Namd astonished at what he beholds, is desirous to be
instructed how all these things were made.' — Brahma: ^ Be
not deceived my son. Do not imagine that I was the creator
of this world, independent of the Divine Mover, who is the
great original Essence and Creator of all things. Look there-
fore upon me only as the instrument of the Great Will and a
part of His being, whom He called forth to execute His
eternal designs.' — Namd: ^ What shall we think of God?'
* Quoted by Colonel Dow.
16 VISHNU CREATES, PRESEKVES, AND DESTROYS.
Brahma : ' Being immaterial, He is above conception ; being
invisible. He can have no form : but, from what we behold in
His works, we may conclude that He is eternal, and omnipo-
tent— knowing all things and present everywhere.' — Narud :
' How did God create the world ? ' — Brahma : ' Affection
dwelt with God from all eternity. It was of three kinds :
the creative, the preserving, and the destructive. The first
is represented by Brahma ; the second, by Vishnu ; and the
third, by Shiblah (Siva). You, 0 Narud, are taught to worship
all the three in various shapes and likenesses as the creator,
preserver, and destroyer.' — Narud: ' What dost thou
mean, 0 Father, by intellect ? ' — Brahma : ' It is a portion of
the great soul of the universe, breathed into all creatures to
animate them for a certain time.' — Narud: ^ What becomes
of it after death.' — Brahma : ' It animates other bodies, and
returns like a drop to that mibounded ocean from which it
just arises.' — Narud: What is the nature of that absorbed
state, which the souls of good men enjoy after death?' —
Brahma : ' It is a participation of the divine nature where
all passions are utterly unknown and where consciousness is
absorbed in bliss.' — Narud : ' What is time ? ' — Brahma :
^ Time existed fi'om all eternity with God.' — Narud: ^ How
long shall the world remain ?' — Brahma : ' Until the four
jugs shall have revolved. Then Rudi'a (Siva) shall roll a
comet under the moon, and shall involve all things in fire and
reduce the world to ashes. God shall then exist alone, for
matter will be totally annihilated.' "
In the Puranas, the doctrines of the Vedanta are repeated,
but in many different forms. Tlie essential and characteristic
doctrines of the Vedas concerning the Divine Being reappear
in all prayers, hymns, and legends. The One Supreme is
everywhere acknowledged, but chiefly as manifested in one or
other of the three persons in the trimurti. Brahma is all
things, comprehending in his own nature the spiritual and the
natural. In the Vishnu Pm-ana, Vishnu is all things, all gods,
and all persons of the godhead. He is Creator, Preserver,
and Destroyer. As lord of the elements. He creates, pre-
serves, and destroys Himself. His form is infinite. He is
the giver of all good, and the fomitain of all happiness. He
is the sacrifice and the sacrificial fires, the oblations and the
mystic Om* the Vedas and Hari, the object of all worship,
* " Om, or Omkara, is well known as a combination of letters in^'ested by
Hindu mysticism with pecidiar sanctity. In the Vedas it is said to compre-
hend all the gods." — PRorESSOK Wilson.
VISHNU IS ALL THINGS. 17
the sun, the planets, the whole universe, the formed and the
formless, the visible and the invisible. As the widespreading
fig-tree is compressed in a small seed, so, at the time of dis-
solution, the whole universe will be compressed in Vishnu, as
in its germ. As the fig-tree germinates from the seed, and
becomes fii'st a shoot, and then rises into loftiness ; so the
created world proceeds from Vishnu. As the bark and the
leaves of the plantain tree may be seen in its stem ; so may
all things be seen in Vishnu, the stem of the universe. He is
the essence of the gods and of the Vedas — of everything,
and of nothing. He is night and day ; He is time made up
of moments, hours, and years ; He is earth, sky, air, water,
and fire ; He is mind, intellect, individuality ; He is gods
and men, beasts, reptiles, trees, shrubs, and grasses ; He is
all things, great and small, all bodies, composed of atoms,
and all souls that animate bodies.
Brahma having addressed the deities, proceeded along
with them to the northen shores of the sea of milk, and with
reverential words, thus prayed to the supreme Hari :
" We glorify Him who is all things, the Lord supreme
over all, the miperceived, the smallest of the smallest, the
largest of the largest of the elements, in whom are all things,
from whom are all things, who was before existence, this god
who is all beings, who is the end of ultimate objects, who is
beyond final spirit, who is one with supreme Soul, who is con-
templated as the cause of final liberation by sages anxious to
be free. To Him whose faculty to create the universe abides
in but a part of but the ten millioneth part of Him ; to Him
who is one with the inexhaustible supreme Spirit I bow, and
to the glorious natm^e of the supreme Vishnu, wdiich nor gods,
nor sages, nor I, nor Sankara apprehend ; that which the
Vogis, after incessant effort, effacing both moral merit and
demerit, behold, to be contemplated in the mystical mono-
syllable Om — the supreme glory of Vishnu, who is the first
of all, of whom only one god the triple energy is the same
with Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva.
" Thou art evening, night, and day ; earth, sky, air,
water, and fire ; mind, intellect, and individuality. Tliou
art the agent of creation, duration, and dissolution ; the
master over the agent, in Tliy forms, which are called
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Thou art gods, men, animals,
deer, elephants, reptiles, trees, shrubs, creepers, climbers, and
grasses : all things, large, middling, and small, immense or
minute. Thou art all bodies whatsoever composed of aggre-
18 SIVA IS ALL THINGS.
gated atoms. This, Tliy illusion, beguiles all who are ignorant
of Thy true nature ; the fools who imagine soul to be in that
which is not spirit. The notions, ' I am,' ' This is mine,'
which influence mankind are but the delusion of the mother
of the world, originating in Thy active energy."*
This universality of existence, which is ascribed to Brahma
and Vishnu, is also ascribed to Siva. " The gods," says the
Rudra Upanishad, "proceeded to the celestial abode of
Rudra, and enquired ^Who art Thou?' He replied, ^ am,
the fount and sole essence. I am and shall be, and there is
nothing which is distinct from me.' Having thus spoken He
disappeared, and then an unseen voice was heard saying, ' I
am He who causeth transitoriness and yet remalneth for ever.
I am Brahm ; I am the east and the w^est, the north and the
south ; I am space and vacuum ; I am masculine, feminine,
and neuter ; I am Savitri, the Gayatri, and all sacred verse ;
I am the three fires ; I am the most ancient, the most excel-
lent, the most venerable, and the mightiest; I am the splendor
of the four Vedas, and the mystic syllable ; I am imperish-
able and mysterious, but the revealer of mysteries; I^am all
that is, and all space is comprehended in my essence.' " In
the Devi Upanishad the same attributes are ascribed to the
terrible goddess.
The third era, according to Creuzer, is that of philoso-
phy, when reason seeks to exi^laln how God and natm^e are
one. We have confined ourselves hitherto to the religious
books of the Hindus, strictly so called, but there yet remains a
large field of Hindu thinking in what is properly their philo-
sophy. The history of mind in India corresponds to the same
history in Europe. Every system that has appeared in the
West has had its counterpart in Hinduism. There we have
dogmatism, mysticism, materialism, idealism, and scepticism,
in all their manifestations, and in all their stages of develop-
ment. M. Martin even finds " Positivism,"! In the Rig- Veda.
Sir William Jones compared the six leading philosophies of
India, with the principal systems of the Greeks. The two^ of
Nyaya have their counterpart in the Peripatetic and Ionian
schools. The two of Mimansa correspond to the Platonic,
and the two of Sankya to those of the Italics and Stoics.
* Wilson's " Yishnu Purana."
t Epicureanism would be a more appropriate name. The passage quoted
by M. Martin is this : " Life and death follow each other. Let the invocation
which to dfiy we address to the gods be propitious to us. Let us give our-
selves up to laughter, and the "pleasures of the dance, and prolong o\ir
<?xistenee."
MATERIALISM. 19
We noticed in the beginning that if God and the universe
are one, if the universe be material, and that v^hich we call
matter has any reality in itself, the conclusion is, that the
Deity is matter. There is no escape from this alternative
but by declaring our ignorance of what matter is, or our
conviction that it is not any true being. And this, in the
majority of cases, is the declaration of Hinduism : yet the
Indians like ourselves have their systems of materialism. The
chief of these is the Sankya of Kapila, who has been reckoned
an atheist. This is peculiarly the system of Hindu Rationalism.
Setting aside the authority of the Vedas, Kapila substitutes for
Vedic sacrifices, knowledge of the imperceptible One. We
are to free ourselves from the present servitude and degrada-
tion, not by following the prescriptions of holy books, but by
being delivered from our individuality, by ceasing to know
ourselves as distinct from other things, and other things as
distinct from us. Kapila did not mean to be an Atheist, but
it has been inferred that he was one, from his making some
indefinite principle which he called Prakriti, or nature, the
first of things. What he meant by this principle may be open
to many answers. It was the undefined eternal existence
without parts or forms which produced all which we see and
know. There is an intelligence indeed in nature, for natm'e
lives, we see its presence in all thinking and sentient beings ;
but that intelligence is not the producing cause, it is itself
produced. Budlia^ or intelligence, is not the first, but
the second principle in nature ; it depends on the organi-
zation of material particles. What is true of this world soul,
is also true of the soul of man : it originates with the body,
and with the body vanishes. Kapila describes the soul as the
result of seventeen anterior principles. He places it in the
brain, extending below the skull, like a flame which is elevated
above the wick. It is the result of material elements, in the
same way as an intoxicating drink is the result of chemical
combination of its ingredients. *
The other Sankya bears the name of Patanjali, a disciple
of Kapila. He agrees with his master in making knowledge,
t The Atheism of the Sankya of Kapila, has been disputed. He makes
the great One to proceed from nature or matter, but it does not necessarily
follow that this matter is ^'isible or divisible. It may, as Professor Wilson
conjectures, find its counterpart in the first principle of the P}i;hagoreans
of the Platonists, and of Aristotle ; and this Intellectual One, who proceeds
from the first principle, does it not correspond to the "Mind" of Plato, and the
" Intellect" of Aristotle ? In Hesiod and Aristophanes the immortal gods are
said to be produced from chaos : there is first matter as an indefinite first
principle, then mind.
20 IDEALISM.
the means of clelkeraiice from this present bondage ; canymg
this principle to the extreme of mysticism, he inculcates an
entire abstraction from all objects of sense, and a pure con-
templation of the Deity alone. He exhorts all men to become
Yogis, meditators upon God. Patanjali departed entirely
from Kapila in his doctrines of matter and spirit. Kegarding
bodies as the residt of soul, he leaned to ideahsm : admitting
that matter exists as a reflection, an illusion, an appearance.
The soul, he says, is placed above sensibility; intelligence,
above the soul ; being, above intelligence. This is that non-
being without attributes, which is most truly Being, one and
all things.
The i^yaya is divided into two schools : the physical and
metaphysical. The author of the first is Kanada, Being a
doctrine of atoms, it has been compared with the system of
Democritus ; but the agreement is only in appearance. The
atoms of Kanada were abstractions — mathematical or meta-
physical points that had neither length, breadth, nor thickness.
Though a physical system, it ended in idealism. Kanada
judged that material substances had no reality but that
derived from their qualities ; and these, again, were derived
from the mind perceiving, and v/ere not to be found in the
object perceived. The Author of the second Nyaya was
Gotama. He does not concern himself much with matter,
but discourses chiefly of inind. His great question is, "What
is soul? " He concludes that it is a principle entirely distinct
from the body, and does not depend for its existence on any
combination of elements. The treatise of Gotama is pm-ely
dialectical, and rivals in abstruseness and subtilty anything
that is to be found in the Metaphysics of the West.
The third system is the Vedanta, which has two schools :
the Parva Mimansa, and the Uttara Mimansa. The first,
which is attributed to Jamini, is entirely practical, and seems
to have no characteristic beyond the commendation of a
virtuous life. The second was taught by Vyasa, and is the
one chiefly intended when we speak of the Vedanta. Tliis
is, properly, the orthodox philosophy — the generally received
exposition of Vedic doctrine. Here Brahm is the axis, the
centre, the root, the origin of all phenomena. Mind is
not here made a product of natm-e ; but natm-e is declared
to be a product, or rather a mere manifestation, of mind.
The true absorption of man is declared to be not into nature,
but into the bosom of eternal Brahm. In the Vedanta
Sara, or essence of the Vedanta, Brahm is called the universal
KRISHNA AND ARJUNA. 21
soul of which all human souls are a part. These are likened
to a succession of sheaths which envelop each other like the
coats of an onion. The human soul frees itself by knowledge
from the sheath. But what is this knowledge ? To know
that the human intellect and all its faculties are ignorance and
delusion. This is to take away the sheath, and to find that
God is All. Whatever is not Brahm is nothing. So long as
man perceives himself to be anything, he is in ignorance.
When he discovers that his supposed individuality is no indi-
viduality, then he has knowledge. Brahm is the substance, we
are his image, and the countenance of Brahm alone remains.
Man must strive to rid himself of himself as an object of
thought. He must be only a subject, a thought, a joy, an
existence ; as subject he is Brahm, while the objective world
is mere phenomena — the garment or vesture of God.
In the Bhagavat Gita we have a beautiful illustration of
the idealist philosophy of the Hindus. The Bhagavat Gita is
an episode in the great national poem called the Mahabharatta.
The subject of this poem is the quarrel of two branches of one
great family. The hero, Arjuna, looks on his kinsmen whom
he is about to slay, and his courage fails him. Krishna, an
incarnation of Vishnu appears, and exhorts him not to fear to
slay his kinsmen. The arguments addressed to Aijuna, are
derived from the illusive nature of all existences except the
divine, which being eternal none can injure. Krishna tells
Aijuna that kinsmen, friends, men, beasts, and stones, are all
one ; that which to-day is a man, was formerly a vegetable,
and may be a vegetable again. The principle of everything
is eternal and indestructible ; what then matters the rest ?
All else is illusion. If Arjuna will not meet his friends in
battle, Krishna shows that he is deceived by appearances :
he mistakes the shadow for the reality. At last Krishna
reveals Himself and tells Aijuna that He appears not only in
this form, but in all forms ; for He is in everything and is
everything. He is Creator, Preserver, Destroyer. He is
matter, mind, and spirit. There is nothing greater than He
is, and everything depends on Him, as the pearls depend upon
the string which holds them. He is the vapour in the water,
and the light in the sun and moon. He is the sound in the
air, and the perfume in the earth. He is the brightness in
the flame, the life in animals, the fervor in zeal — the eter-
nal seed in nature — the beginning, the middle, and the end of
all things. Among the gods He is Vishnu, and the sun among
the stars. Among the sacr@d books He is the Canticles. Among
22 LIYSTICAL UNION WITH BRAHM.
rivers He is the Ganges. In the body He is the soul^ and in
the soul He is intelKgence. Among letters He is Alpha, and
in words combined He is the bond of union. He is time eter-
nal. He is that preserver whose face is turned to all sides.
He is death which swallows up all, and He is the germ of
those who do not yet exist. In this manner to show that He
is all things, Krishna calls Himself by the chief names of all
things.
The mystical knowledge of God whereby we become
one with Him, is said to be a later introduction into Brahman-
ism ; but it is as old as the oldest philosophies, and makes an
essential part in them all. The ever repeated doctrine con-
tinually meets us, that so far as we exist we are Brahm, and
so far as we are not Brahm, our existence is only apparent.
To know God is to know ourselves ; to be ignorant of Him is
to live the illusive life. What then is om- duty and destiny ?
To be united to Brahm, in other words, to realise that we ai-e
one with him. To contemplate merely the world of forms
and the apparent existence, is to contemplate nothingness, to
gaze upon delusion — to remain in vanity, yea to be vanity
itself. We must soar above phenomena — above the brute
instincts — above the doubts of reason — above intelligence.
We must separate oui'selves from . all which is subject to
change, enter into our own being, unite ourselves to pure
being, which is Brahm, the Eternal. He that hath reached
this state is free from the bondage of individuality. He no
more unites himself to anything. He has no more passions —
consciousness is absorbed in bliss. He has neither fear, nor
joy, nor desire, nor activity, nor will, nor thought. For him
is neither day nor night, nor I, nor thou, nor known, nor
knowing — all is gone. Tliere remains only the universal soul;
separated from the world, delivered from the illusions of Maya ;
he is one with the Eternal. He has found the object of
his search, and is one with the object of his knowledge. He
knows himself in the truth of his being. To reach this
elevation is the end and object of all religion and all philosophy.
To know om-selves in our true being is to know Brahm.
To lose ourselves as to om' illusory being is to find Brahm.
Every man has a foretaste of this union in dreamless sleep,
when the life spirit is simple and free ; then speech with all its
names, the eye with all its forms, the ear with all its tones, the
understanding with all its images, returns to Brahm. Then
those who at death are not prepared for this union must re-
tm-n to earth, some for one, and others for several times, tiU
BUDHISM. ^^
the soul is sufficiently purified for the final absorption. Yes,
the final absorption — for this is the blessed consummation of
all things. Their coming forth from the Eternal is accounted
for in many ways. The general burden of all is, that by
creation came imperfection and evil,* and therefore we long
for deliverance from creation, we long for that existence which
was before creation was. That in all things which is real,
being eternal, will remain united to Him who is eternal ; that
which is illusory will pass : Brahm will change His form, as
a man changes his garment As the tides return to the
ocean, as the bubbles burst in the w^ater, as the snow flakes
mingle in the stream, so will all things be finally lost in the
universe of being. Creator and creation are sleep plus a
dream. The dream shall vanish, but the sleep shall remain.
Individual life will mingle in that shoreless ocean of Being,
that abyssal Infinite which no intellect can comprehend, and
even Vedic lan^uao^e fails to describe — the eternal and
unchangeable Brahm. f
2. BuDHiSM. — The most widely received religion in the
world is Budhism. It originated about six centuries before
Clu'ist and claims to be a reformation of Brahmanism, a con-
tinuation, as we have already hinted, of the reformation of the
Siva worship. The Budhists do not receive the Vedas, but
follow their own sacred books which they call Banas, and
which they say were written before the age of inspiration
ceased. Tliat was the time following the advent of their great
* Though all things proceed from Brahm, yet the Hindus admit, by a
kind of contradiction, that they are not the same as Brahm. The human
soul, for instance, is not of the same perfect purity as the supreme Soul ; for
when God willed to manifest Himself, then His nature was, in a certain degree,
changed fi'om its real and original state by the production of three essential
qualities, which combining together gave rise to a consciousness of individual
existence. It is this consciousness which is combined with the human soul,
and which suffers pain and joy in the world, and is subject to reward and
punishment in a future state : consequently the supreme Being, after willing
the manifestation of this universe, becomes unconscious. The increment of
consciousness which accrued to Him from creation forms no part of His essence,
and it necessarily follows that whatever the human soul suffers from being
united to it cannot affect the supreme Soiil, The foiTner is also supposed to
be excluded from actual union with the latter, by being enclosed in a subtle
vehicle, as air in a vessel, and it is not until the walls of the vehicle are
dissolved that the human soul becomes homogeneous with the supreme Soul.
— See Vans Kennedy.
t Vans Kennedy says that, in Hinduism an evil principle distinct fi'om
the Divine essence is utterly unl^nown. Perfection consists in complete
quiescence, and the mere volition of the supreme Being to manifest Himself,
being a change from this state was necessarily evil, and consequently com-
municated its natiu'e to the effects produced by this volition, and hence it was
that evil originated.
24 SAKYA MUNI.
teacher, Sakya Muni, tlie historical Biidha. Brahmanism
and Budhism part here. The Hindus admit a Budha, who
was the ninth incarnation of Vishnu, but they reject the
claims of Sakya Muni to be this Budha. There are many
Budhas, some of celestial origin who are called by a name
which means parentless, others are men who have been eleva-
ted to Budha-hood. But the greatest of all is this Sakya
Muni, who is regarded as the founder of Budhism. H;g
history is overgrown with legends, yet a few things are re-
garded as facts. He was a prince who early saw the vanity
of all that belongs to earth, of even what falls to a prince. He
turned his thoughts from the visible world to the invisible.
This transitory life appeared worthless when compared with
the unending life of which his highest thought was only a
negation of all that is. He renounced the world and became
a Brahman. By a long course of study and severe mortifica-
tion in the time of his noviciate, he sought that knowledge,
which according to Brahmanical teaching, would free his soul
from the finite and the personal. When he had reached the
absorbed state he declared that knowledge was not enough,
that we must add to it a sense of right, and a love of what is
good and true. He saw, too, the inconsistency of Brahmanism
in denying that the Soudi'as could rise to the absorbed state,
while it made all human souls portions of the miiversal soul.
Like all great reformers, Sakya Muni pushed the popular
doctrines of his times to their legitimate conclusions, and thus
swept away inconsistencies that others did not ventm^e even
to look in the face. The Divinity of man was a part of
Brahmanism, why then should there be Soudras ? If man is
divine he is capable of divine thoughts, so reasoned Budha,
and went forth to break down all distinctions of caste, to hold
forth eternal blessedness as offered to all conditions of men,
to proclaim a gospel to the poor Soudra as well as to the twice
born Brahman. This gospel was a declaration of the ^vretch-
edness of life and a belief in something that was better than
life ; at its foundation was the doctrine of transmigration.
Our sufferings, which he said sprang from om' passions, were
declared to be punishments for sins committed in former
states of being. We are troubled, restless, tossed about on
the sea of life. Our aim then should be to extinguish our
passions, to free ourselves from their bondage, to find rest,
but where shall we find it ? In annihilation, in non-existence,
in being free from that existence which is itself a punishment
for sin.
NIRVANA AND SANSARA. 25
Tlie feeling in which Budhism originates is not peculiar
to India. It is found wherever men are found. There is no
man who has not at some moment felt it. We hear it in the
sad exclamation of Solomon : " Vanity of vanities ; all is
vanity ; " in the words of the Grreek poet, who said : " the
best is not to be born ; " and of a modern poet who, lament-
ing the condition of the poor, addressed death as " the poor
man's dearest friend." The soliloquy of Hamlet was the essence
of Budhism ; *"' Oh that this too, too solid flesh would molt."
Though the feeling of the vanity of life be universal, the
Budhist's mode of deliverance is peculiar. The Brahman did
call his God Being, and the final absorption was into the
eternal and unchangeable Essence ; but the Budhist looks
and longs for pure nothingness. To other men non-existence
is the most terrible of all things — the loss of being that from
which we naturally shrink, except in moments of the deepest
sorrow ; but to the Budhist annihilation is the consummation
of blessedness. Men die, but that is not their end ; so long as
sins are unatoned for, they must be re-born into existence.
Nirvana is the full deliverance when the soul is destined no
longer to he. It is that death which is followed by no birth
and after which there is no renewing of the miseries of exist-
ence. Nirvana is beyond sensation and the world of change.
What is in Sansara, or the transient world, is not in Nirvana ;
and what is in Nirvana is not in Sansara. In Sansara is com-
ing and going, change and motion, fullness and manifoldness,
combination and individuality. In Nirvana is rest and still-
ness, simplicity and unity. In the one is birth, sickness, age,
and death, virtue and vice, merit and demerit ; in the other
complete deliverance fi'om all conditions of existence. Nir-
vana is the bank of deliverance nodding to him who drinks in
the stream of Sansara — the sure haven to which all souls are
directing their course who are seeking deliverance from the
ocean of sorrows — the free state which fm^nishes an asylum
to those who have broken the chains of existence, and snapped
the fetters that bind to the transient life. The soul goes
through its transitory existences till the som'ce of re-birth is
exhausted — till it can no longer be re-born, and therefore no
longer die. The I is extinguished as plants no longer watered,
as trees whose roots have been dug up from the earth, or as
the light fades when the oil of the lamp fails.
This imiverse, though called being, is less than non-being ;
for the one is nothing while it professes to be a reality, the
other is what it professes to be. Being is but the image of
26 BEING IS ETERNAL.
non-being. The one is the shadow, the other the substance.
Sansara is transient — it is in truth nothing ; and, more than
that, it is a nothing of phenomena — a deception. But Nir-
vana is the unchangeable, the consistent, the true nothing.
Sansara has no being — its form is illusion — its reality may
be destroyed. Nirvana has indeed no being, but it annihil-
ates all decejition, and liberates from all evil. But whence is
this universe — this existence — which is the cause of all sorrow ?
We do not know — Budha alone knows — probably it has always
been. We only know the round of existence — the circle of
phenomena. We plant a seed, from it springs a tree ; the
tree bears fruit, the fruit bears a seed ; fi'om the seed springs
again a tree; or a bird lays an egg, from it arises another bird,
this bird lays another egg, from it arises again a bird : and so
it is with the world, and with all worlds. They have come from
earlier worlds, and these from others that were earlier still.
Existence unfolds itself, forms appear and disappear, but being
remains unchanged. Life succeeds life, but nothing is lost and
nothing is gained. Being is a circle that has neither begin-
ning nor end. As the moisture is drawn up into the clouds,
and pom-ed down upon the earth, to be drawn up again by
the sun's rays ; so being undergoes its perpetual and manifold
evolutions in the midst of which it remains imchanged. One
individual falls here, and one there ; but others rise to replace
these, and thus the procession advances in a circle which
never ends. We say " never ends," but if it were asked if
these worlds are to roll on for ever, the true Budhist would
decline to answer. He does not know if this succession will
be eternal, any more than if it has been eternal ; but he
recognizes a necessity in the world which comiects existence
with the merit and demerit of animated souls. Every deed, be
it good or bad, continues to work through infinite space, and
brings with it its inevitable fruit mitil the effect be removed
through perfect fi'eedom from sin. The present destiny of
every individual- — his happmess or misery, sorrow or joy,
birth, death, or condition in life — is but the ripe fruit of all
his actions which he has committed in his many previous lives.
This same power moves the miiverse : its destruction and
renewal is but the workmg of the merit and demerit of ani-
mated beings.
Brahmanism has often an atheistical sound, but Budh-
ism more. If we examine only the sm^face, or if we confine
oiu'selves to the mere positive teaching of Sakya Mmii,
we might be led to the conclusion that Budhism is a simple
BUDHISM NOT ATHEISM. 27
iitheism, and indeed this is the judgment of some learned
Europeans wlio have spent long years in the study of Budh-
ism. But looking at it as we *do, after analysing Brahmanism
and finding there its roots and germs, we have a guide with
which om' present knowledge of Budhism in itself could not
supply us. That Nirvana,* or state of annihilation for which
the Budhist longs, is to him annihilation only so far as it is
opposed to the present existence. It is non-existence, in the
sense that it is the only real existence. The Budhist re-
nounces the life of sense, passion, and consciousness, for that
of pure bliss, where he becomes a Budha, and lives the life of
intelligence. He receives Budha-hood, or, as it is otherwise
expressed, he becomes one with Adi-Budha. — that is Intelli-
gence freed from all limits — the human intellect in its infinity.
All Budhas are in reality but one, and the great object of the
Budhist's austerities is to lose himself in this one Budha ; the
very meaning of the word is intelligence. It is the soul of
the universe, the one only substance beside which all else is
phenomena. We have here a repetition of thoughts pre-
eminently Brahmanical, but under new forms and with
new names, f
* Budhism, in spite of its apparent hopelessness, is by no means a gospel
of despair. Its general teaching is universally practical. Those who have
become Budhas and are themselves freed fi-om existence, are labouring to
free others, which shows that their Nirvana is not annihilation as we under-
stand that word ; and though little or no worship is directed to the supreme
God, those men who have reached Budha-hood are objects of worship. Of
all Heathen religions the moral precepts of Budhism come nearest to Christi-
anity. Some of these concerning riches, and the difficulty of the rich
entering Nirvana, are almost in the words of Christ. The following
precepts have something of Christianity in them : "To honour father and
mother is better than to serve the gods of heaven and earth." "Brahm is
with that family in which father and mother will be perfectly honoured by
their sons." " To wait a moment silently with one's self is better than to
bring offerings every year for hundreds of months."
t There are two kinds of Budhists : those of Ava and Ceylon, and the
Budhists of Nepaul. The latter only are considered Theists ; their God
is Adi Budha. Their worship approaches nearer to Brahmanism. They
have also a Trinity of persons in the Divine Nature : Budha, pure light, or
intelligence ; Dharma, matter ; and Sanga, the mediating influence between
Budha and Dharma. The Jaines are also reckoned a sect of Brahmanical
Budhists. Though most writers on Budhism have peremptorily affirmed that
it is a system of Atheism, it is probable that a better acquaintance with Budh-
ism will show their mistake. Sakya Muni renounced the externals of Brahm-
anism, but he did not renounce its spirit ; and it is generally admitted [that
the later Budhists admitted a supreme Deity. "The educated Lamas say,
that Budha is the independent Being, the principle and end of all things.
The earth, the stars, the moon — all that exists is a partial and temporary
manifestation of Budha. All has been created by Budha in this sense, that
all comes fi'om Him, as light from the sun." — Hug and Gubet's" Travels
IN Tartary."
28 IMMATERIAL MATTEK.
The schools of philosophy so far as doctrines are con-
cerned are common to Brahmans and Bndhists. They are
the heirlooms that ancient Ifidia has handed down from
generation to generation. Forms of rehgion, yea, religions
themselves may cliange, yet there are thoughts belonging to
nations which reappear in all religions. The Budhists have
their materialists, who, like Kapila, ascribe intelligence to
matter ; who see in the beauty of the world, not the wisdom
of God, but the wisdom of the inherent powers of nature
which they call God. They have also the representatives of
Epicurus, who admit that God is an immaterial Being, and
yet deny that He either rules the world or cares for it. Some
believe Him to be alone eternal and the sole cause of all things ;
others add a co-equal and co-eternal principle of matter,
and derive all things from the joint co-operation of these
two eternal principles ; but the cmTent of Budhist philosophy
is idealistic*
For subtility of thought and extravagance of speculation
the Budliists sm-pass even the Brahmans. What is a body ?
a Budhist will ask; and he will answer by showing that
a body is a spirit, or perhaps only an illusion of tlie mind
which thinks, or the senses which perceive. He will argue
that, as we can only know that any external object exists by
perception, if perception ceases, how know we but the sup-
posed existence of the object ceases with it? A body is
composed of atoms ; when these change the body changes,
wdien the body is reduced to atoms it has ceased to exist.
What then is a body ? At the foundation of all existence
* Koeppen says, the Budliists have no cosmogony, only a cosmology.
They do not relegate the world to a first cause, for outside the Becoming is
the Nothing, There is no causal nexus between the actual visible world and
the first Actor, Four things, say the Budhists, are immeasurable : the word
of Budha, space, the multitude of animate beings, and the number of worlds.
Numberless worlds move in eternal space. The world system is divided into
three worlds : that of desire, that of form, and the formless ; and these
worlds, in all their degrees, from the highest heaven to the lowest hell, are
peopled with animated beings, whose first creation is not explained. Is the
soul something eternal, and does it keep its identity in its wanderings ? Yes
-—at least this is the doctrine received by the North Budhists, Nirvana
is for the disciples of Budha the highest good, the last goal, the eternal
safety. How can man reach deliverance is the first question of all Indian
philosophy ? When man returns to Brahm, answer the orthodox Brahmans
— when the soul, knowing itself, is separated from nature, answer the Sankya
philosophers— when man goes to Nirvana, says the Budhist.
Koeppen, also maintains that the Budhists are Atheists, and translates
Dharma as doctrine, denying that the Trinity of tlie Budhist has any affinity
to the Trinity of the Braraans, the Christians, or the Philosophers. It is
simply Budha and his doctrine with the relation between them.
BUDHA IS ALL. 29
there must be a something. When we see a tree, we infer
a root ; so when we see a body, we infer a substratum. What
is it ? We do not know, and therefore the Budhist philo-
sopher calls it ignorance. This ignorance is that other
co-eternal principle of which all things are formed, Dharma
or matter. But it vacillates between something and nothing,
Avith a close approach to the latter, even if it be a something.
The Budhist leaves it under the significant appellation of the
unknown something. In the universe there is obviously the
manifestation of a mind — this mind is Budha. We see an
animating power making itself visible, but of its origin we
know no more than we know of the other miknown. Hence
the conclusion that they are co-existent and co-eternal, for if
matter is anything it must have existed always, it being im-
possible for the aggregate of being ever to have been less than
it is. Budha is then the reality of matter — the substratum
of all existence.
The materials of this Chapter have heen gathered from the translations
of parts of the Vedas in the " Oriental Translation Society's " Publications,
Professor Wilson's translation of the Vishnu Purana, an English version of
the Baghavat Gita, a French translation of the "Laws of Menu," and the
English tracts of Eomahun Eoy, with the works of Maurice, Colehroke,
Moore, Coleman, and Sir William Jones. The Author has chiefly followed
Creuzer, but he has been largely indebted to Vans Kennedy on Indian
Mythology, to Mrs. Spier's "Life in Ancient India," and to the admirable
work of Dr. Eowland Williams. On the special subject of Budhism the
authorities chiefly followed are Spence Hardy's Manual, S. Hilaire's "Budha
et le Budhisme," and Koeppen's " Die Eeligion des Budha."
CHAPTER 11
PERSIAN, EGYPTIAN, AND GREEK RELIGIONS.
IN the light of the Indian rehgions we may interpret all the
religions of antiquity. They differ, and yet they are
alike. We cannot determine if the one sprang from the other,
or if each is a natm^al growth of the religiousness of man ;
but they have all a fundamental likeness. Worship of the
powers of nature is the origin of them all, and as the mind
expands worship of nature in its infinitude, including con-
sciously or unconsciously, the whole conceivable assemblage
of being as shadowing forth a Being infinite and inconceivable,
w^hom we can neither know nor name ; hence on the one hand
a Polytheism, and on the other, alongside of it, a Mono-
theism. The Chaldeans and the Syrians worshipped the smi
aud moon. They had their gods and idols, their images, and
amulets ; yet the higher minds worshipped the one God.
While the philosophers contemplated the Infinite, the multi-
tude idolized the finite. After Brahmanism, the chief religions
of the ancient world are those of Persia, Egypt, and Greece.
1. The Persian Religion. — Of the antiquity of the
religion of the Persians we cannot speak with certainty f The
sacred books called the Zend Avesta, are the chief sources of
information ; but these are only a fragment of the original
scriptm'es — part of one of the twenty-one divisions into which
* Nearly two thousand families of the fixe worshippers are still found in
Persia where they are called Guebres, In India, whither they were driven
by the followers of Mahomet in the seventh century, they are still a numerous
sect. In Bombay they have three magnificent temples in which the sacred
flame burns day and night. "The Parsees," says Niebvihr, "followers of
Zerdusht or Zoroaster, adore one God only, eternal and almighty. They
pay, however, a certain worship to the sun, the moon, the stars, and fire, as
visible images of the invisible Divinity. Their veneration for the element of
fire induces them to keep a sacred fire constantly burning, which they feed
with odoriferous wood, both in the temples and in the houses of private
persons."
ZERUANE AKERNE 31
they were divided. The Zend Avesta was written or collected
by Zoroaster, the great prophet of Persia, who may have been
contemporary with Budha five or six centuries before the
Christian era. It is, however, generally admitted that por-
tions of the Zend Avesta writings are of much more ancient
date than the time of Zoroaster.
The Parsees both from their language and mythology are
classed with the Indians as members of the great Aryan
family, and as they inhabited the birth place of the human
race it is probable that the religion of Persia is the oldest in
the world. When we compare it with Brahmanism we find
each possessing a sufficiently distinct individuality of its own.
The ingenious mythologer will find many points of resemblance,
but the 2:eneral student will be more struck with their differ-
ence.
Brahmanism is more metaphysical ; Parseeism more ^ ^r
ethical. The spirit of the one is contemplation ; that of the
other, activity. The Lidian is passive and specidatiye ; the
Persian is not without a speculative tendency, but he is more
concerned to oppose the forces of evil which are in the world,
and to subdue which he feels to be the vocation of man. To
the degree that Parseeism is ethically strong, it is removed
from what is called Pantheism, but the speculative side claims
our attention, both for its own sake, and for its subsequent
history and its connection with other systems of rehgion
and philosophy.
Much has been written, not only in France and Germany,
but in England, on the infinite and impersonal God of the ^
old Persian religion. His name is Zeruane Akerne, time
without bomids, or beginningless time. The idea of His
existence is simultaneous in the mind with the ideas of infinite
time and infinite space. He is the Being that must constitute
eternity and infinity. That the Persian had this idea of an
inexpressible Being who is above all the gods, as Brahm is
above the Trimurti, may be considered as settled. But it
appears that the name by which this Being is known to
European Mythologers is a mere mistranslation of a sentence
in the Zend Avesta. Zeruane Akerne is not a name as recent ,
Persian scholars have shown : it simply means infinite time.*
The infinite Being of the Persians was nameless, but some-
times called by the names of all the gods. He becomes \
* The passage is, " Spento-Mainjnis (Ormuzd) created, and He created in
infinite time (zeruane akerne).
32 OPvMUZD, OR THE PERSONAL DElTY.
. personal. He is Ormuzd, god of light ; * Mithras, the recon-
I ciler between light and darkness ; Honover, the Word of
• Him who is eternal wisdom, and whose speech is an eternal
creation. HesycUuH calls Mithras the first God among the
Persians. Li his conference with Themistocles, Artabanus
describes Mithras as that god who covers all things. Porphyry,
qnoting from Enbulns, concerning the origin of the Persian
religion, speaks of a cave which Zoroaster consecrated in
hononr of Mithras, the Maker and Father of all things. It
was adorned by flowers, and w^atered with fomitains, and w^as
intended as an image, or symbol, of the w^orld as created by
Mithras. Tlie same Porphyry records that Pythagoras
exhorted men cliiefly to the love of truth, for that alone could
make them resemble God. He had learned, he said, from
the Magi that God, whom they called Ormuzd, as to his body
resembled light, and as to his soul, truth. Eusehius quotes
from an old Persian book as the words of Zoroaster, that
" God is the first Being incorruptible and eternal, mnnade
and indivisible, altogether milike to all His works, the princi-
ple and author of all good. Gifts cannot move Him, He is the
best of the good, and the w^isest of the w^ise. From Him
proceed law and justice." The Chaldean oracles, ascribed to
Zoroaster, call God ^Hhe One from whom all beings sprmg."
On this passage Psellus, the scholiast, says, '' All things
whether perceived by the mmd or by the senses, derive their
existence from God alone, and return to Him, so that this
oracle cannot be condemned, for it is frill of our doctrine."
This original impersonal miity created Ormuzd, who thus
becomes the chief of gods. He is the living personal Deity,
first begotten of all beings, the resplendent image of Infinitude
the being in whose existence is imaged the frJness of eternal
time and mfinite space. As the manifestation of the imper-
sonal, He is infinite — none can measure Him, none can set
bounds to His will or His omnipotence. He is pre-eminently
Will, altogether perfect, almighty, infinitely pure and holy.
Of all things in heaven, He is supreme ; of all things, He is
* "The Persians invoked the whole ' circle of the sky,' as Zeus Patroiis
(probably Ormuzd). It has been assumed that the general names which
figure at the head of the old theogonies, such as Uranus, were refinements
placed by specvilation before the gods of popular belief; yet the arrangement
is justified by the consideration that nothing but a general idea could have
answered the emotions of the first men : nature was deified before man.
' These,' says Philo, 'are the real objects of Greek worship : they call the earth
Ceres ; the sea, Poseidon ; the air, Here ; the fire, Hephaistos ; the sun,
Apollo.'" — Mackay's "Progress ©f the Intellect."
DOMAIN OF ORMUZD. 33
the ground and centre. The sun is His symbol, yet the sun
is but a spark of the unspeakable splendor in which He dwells.
Whatever the original One is, that is Ormuzd— infinite in light,
in purity, in wisdom. But as the first begotten of the Eternal,
his duration is limited to 12,000 years. As a personal deity,
he is finite — he is a king, and has a kingdom which is not uni-
versal, for it is opposed by the kingdom of Ahriman.
It has been commonly believed that the Persians w^or-
shipped two gods. This is the account given by Mahome-
tan and Christian writers, but the Persians themselves have
always denied it. They are not Dualists, but Monotheists on
the one side and Polytheists on the other. Ormuzd alone is
worshipped as the supreme God. His kingdom is co-exten-
sive with light and goodness. It embraces all pure existences
in earth and heaven.
Ormuzd's domain has three orders. The first is the
Amshaspandsj or seven immortal spirits, of which Ormuzd is
himself one. He created the other six, and rules over them.
The second order is the twenty -eight Izeds, and the third an
innumerable number of inferior spirits called the Fereurs.
The Izeds are the spiritual guardians of the earth. By them
it is blessed and made fruitful. They are also judges of the
world and protectors of the pious. Every month and every
day of the month is under the guardianship of one of the
Amshaspands or Izeds. Even every hour of the day has an
I zed for its protector; they are the watchers of the elements.
The winds and the waters are subject to them. The Fereurs
are without number, because Being is without bounds.
They are co-extensive with existence ; sparks as it were of
the universal Being, who, through them, makes Himself pre-
sent always and eveiy where. The Fereurs are the ideals —
prototypes or patterns of things visible. They come from
Ormuzd, and take form in the material universe. By them
the one and all of nature lives. They perform sacred offices
in the great temple of the universe. As high priests they
present the prayers and offerings of Ormuzd. They watch
over the pious in life, receive their departing spirits at death,
and conduct them over the bridge that passes from earth to
heaven. The Fereurs constitute the ideal world, so that
everything has its Fereur, from Ormuzd down to the meanest
existence. The Eternal or Self-existent expresses Himself in
the almighty Word, and this expression of universal being is
the FereuT of Ormuzd. The law has its Fereur, which is its
S4 KINGDOM OF AHRIMAN.
Spirit. It is that which is thought by the Word as God. Tn
the judgment of Ormuzd, Zoroaster's Fereur is one of the
most beautiful ideals, because Zoroaster prepared the law.
But there is another kingdom besides that of Ormuzd, king
of light. There is the kingdom of Ahriman, Lord of darkness.
He is not worshipped as a god, but he is in great power in the
world. The effort of the Persian to solve the problem of evil
is seen in his idea of the kingdom of darkness. It emerges
face to face with the kingdom of hght. There is not the hope-
lessness of human existence which we find in Budhism ; but
there is the declaration that evil is inseparable from finite
being. The old question had been asked " What is evil ? "
How did He who created light also create darkness ? If He
were good and rejoiced to make the kingdom of goodness, how
has he also made the kingdom of evil ? The answer is : — It
did not come from the will of the eternal. The creation of the
kingdom of evil and darkness was the inevitable result of the
creation of the kingdom of light and goodness. As a shadow
accompanies a body, so did the kingdom of Ahriman accom-
pany that of Ormuzd. The two kingdoms, though opposed to
each other, have yet a similar organization. The one is the
counterpart of the other. At the head is Ahriman. Then
seven iJrz-Detvs, and then an innumerable multitude of Deivs.
These were all created by Ahriman, whose great and only
object was opposition to the kingdom of Ormuzd. When light
was created, then Ahriman came from the south and mingled
with the planets. He penetrated through the fixed stars and
created the first Brz-deiu, the demon of envy. This Erz-dew
declared war against Ormuzd, and then the long strife began.
As on earth beast fights with beast, so spirit warred with spirit.
Each of the seven Erz-dews has his special antagonist among
the Amshaspands. They come from the north and are chained
to the planets ; but as powers and dignities in the kingdom of
Ahriman they receive the homage of the inferior Dews, and are
served by them as the Izeds are served by the Fereurs. The
existence of the kingdom of darkness is an accident in creation ;
a circumstance arising from the Infinite positing Himself in
the finite. He permits evil to continue ; not because it is too
strong for Him, but that out of it He may educe a greater good.
The limitation will be finally removed. The discord between
light and darkness will cease. The reconciler will appear, and
then shall begin an eternal kingdom of light without shadow,
and purity without spot. The spirits of Ahriman shall be
MITHRAS. 35
annihilated. According to some representations, their chief shall
be annihilated with them ; but others think he shall continue to
reign without a kingdom. Now, the Izeds wait for departing
souls and preserve them for the final day. Thej shall then be
brought forth to be purified with fire. They shall pass through
mountains of burning lava, and come forth without sin or stain.
Ahriman shall be cast into darkness, and the fire of the burn-
ing metals shall consume him. All nature shall be renewed.
Hades shall flee away. Ahriman is gone. Ormuzd rules. The
kingdom of hght is one and all. But, who is the reconciler ?
Mithras, the human god. He is God, and yet he is in the form
of man. All the attributes of Ormuzd are gathered up into a
human form and make Mithras. He is fire — He is light — He
is intelligence — the light of Heaven. To the Persian, the end
of all religion is to become light. In all nature he strives for
the victory of the good over the evil. He craves light for the
body and light for the soul — light to guide his household — light
to rule the state. As the symbol of all that is good in creation,
his cry is, light ! light ! more light !
Mithras is the giver of light. But how is he to be distin-
guished from Ormuzd, who rules over the kingdom of light ?
This is not so easy to answer. It would perplex the mythologer
to find the place of Mithras in the Persian Pantheon ; yea, to
find a place for him at all, without giving him some of the attri-
butes of Ornjuzd, just as Ormuzd had to get some of the attri-
butes of the inefiable One. But the perplexity of the mytho-
loger matters nothing. It is enough for the Persian that
Mithras is the mediator — the human god or the human side of
God. It is enough that He is light ; the Creator of light ; the
grand wrestler for light against darkness, and that he will
finally win the victory, for which the disciple of Zoroaster waits
and longs. The sun must be His image. He has kindled that
globe of fire ; it is a reflection of His splendor. He is the
heavenly light that came forth from the Eternal, and he is the
principle of material light and material fire ; therefore the Per-
sian says in his offerings to the sacred flame, " Let us worship
Mithras." ^
When the finite world was created, the darkness placed itself
in opposition to Mithras, but this opposition is nosited only in
time. It is the strife of day and ni2;ht ; the light side of the
year striving with the dark side ; piety struggling with impiety ;
virtue with vice. The Eternal only willed the light, but the
darkness arose, and as the world emanated from Him, He cannot
D 2
36 THE SUN IS MITHRAS.
leave it. As Mitliras, He mediates and works to hasten tlie
victory. We see the great sun fighting and wrestling ; every
vear, yea, every day he obtains a fresh victory, and purifies
himself from the spots of darkness. Is not this Mithras ? What
other power is in that sun but the intelligible light which is
fighting against darkness ? There the mighty principle of right
is" struggling for victory ; there glow sparks of that eternal
splendol' which is too strong for darkness, and before which all
spots must disappear, and all shadows flee away. The kingdom
of darkness shall itself be lightened with heaven's light. The
Eternal will receive the world back again into Himself. The
impure shall be purified, and the evil made good through the
mediation of Mithras the reconciler of Ormuzd and Ahriman.
jNIithras is the good, his name is love. In relation to the Eternal
he is the source of grace ; in relation to man he is the life-giver
and mediator. He brings the word as Brahma brings the Yedas,
from the mouth of the Eternal. It is he that speaks in the
prophets ; he that consecrates in priests ; he is the life of the
sacrifice and the spirit of the books of the law. In heroes he
is that which is heroic ; in kings that which is kingly ; in men
he is man. *
* Crenzer gives a represcntion of Mithras from old Persian sculpture. It is
a young man about to plunge a knife into the equinoctial bull. The young
man islhe god Mithras. God when condescended to the limits of time and
space, becomes incorporated in the world, identifies Himself wi^h its perishable
nature. Thus by a sort of self-sacrifice, originating life, year after year, the
life of nature falls a victim to the seasons.
In India the notion of cosmogony was annually commemorated in the
Asicammedha, or horse-sacrifice. The horse being a general oflrering to the
sun-god among the natives of upper Asia, and in this instance emblematic of
the universe or of universal life embodied in creation. Its members repre-
sented the parts of nature ; its blood, the in-inciple of life, poured out from the
beginning. Tlie idea of sacrifice, which in its primal ty])e was the outpom-ing
of *the universal into the particular, was the resolution of the partial into the
universal. The Sanscrit name for sacrifice means union with heaven. The
union might be either the original outpouring of the Di^ane Spirit into the
world, or the return of these emanations to their source. The commemorative
sacrifices of the Magi, in Avhich the life alone was considered as the appropri-
ate oblation to the source of all existence, were symbolical imitations of the
Divine procedm-e, in which death is ever the antecedent and condition of life,
as the seed perishes within the ground, and the gloom of winter precedes the
flowers of spring. Each year Mithras kills the bull afresh ; thus restonng
nature to her prime, and liberating the imprisoned germs of fertility. But
the annual revolution of the seasons is only a type of the great cosmical
revolution of time. He is the sun physically; and morally intelligence. He
dispels the darkness. This warfare is carried on through the instrmnentality
of the " Word," that ever living emanation of the Deity, by virtue of which
the worid exists, and of which the revealed formularies incessantly repeated in
the liturgies of the Magi, are but the expression. Ormuzd is himself the
HONOVER. 37
Creation is sometimes ascribed to Mitliras, and sometimes to
Ormuzd. God rises and speaks the word " Ilonover." Through
this word all beings are created. The progress of creation ad-
vances as Ormuzd continues to pronounce the word, and the more
audibly he speaks the more creation comes into being. From
the invisible heaven which he inhabits he created the surround-
ing heaven in the space of forty-five days. In the middle of
the world, under the dwelling of Ormuzd, the sun is placed.
Then the moon arises, and shines with her own light. A region
is assigned to her, in which she is to produce verdure, and give
warmth, life, and joy. Above this is placed the heaven of the
fixed stars, according to the signs of the zodiac. Then the
mighty high spirits were created — the Amshaspands and the
Izeds. In seventy days the creation of man is completed, and
in three hundred and seventy-five days all which is, is created
by Ormuzd and Ahriman.
Honover, the creative word, " I am," or '' Let it be," is the
bond which makes the all one. It unites earth to heaven — the
visible to the invisible — the ideal to the real. A period
may be assigned for creation, but in truth creation is eternal.
Ormuzd has been always creating. From moment to moment
in eternal ages the word was spoken by the Infinite, by the
Amshaspands, by the Izeds, by the Fereurs, by all spirits
throughout nature. It is the mystery in and by which the ideal
world has its existence. It is the ground of all beings — the
centre of all life — the source of all prosperity. Zoroaster's law
is the embodiment of the law of Ormuzd; hence the Zend
Avesta is itself called the living word.
In this mysterious Honover, the originals and patterns of
visible things existed eternally. Here we catch a glimpse of the
meaning of the symbolic worship of Persia. Regarding all
living Word. He is called first-born of all things ; express linage of the
Eternal — very light of very light — the Creator, Avho by the power of the word
which he never ceases to pronounce, makes in 365 days, i\\G heavens and the
earth. Mithras is the Ormuzd-descended hero appointed to speak the word in
heaven and announce it to men. Between life and death, sunshine and shade,
he is the present exemplification of the primal unity, from which all beings
arose, and into which, through his mediation, all contraries will be absorbed.
His annual sacrifice is the passover of the Magi — a symbolical atonement — a
pledge of moral and physical regeneration. He created the world in the begin-
ning, and as at the close of each successive year he sets free the current of life
to invigorate a fresh circle of being, so in the end of all things. He will bring
the weary sum of all ages as a hecatomb before God ; releasing by a final
sacrifice the soul of nature from her perishable flame, to commence a brighter
and purer existence.
38 FIRE WOESHIP.
visible things as copies of the invisible, the ideal was Avor-
shipped through the sensible. Prayers were addressed to fire
and light, to air and water, because the originals of these were in
the word of Ormuzd. But chiefly to fire — temples were erected
for iU consecration, liturgies framed for its worship; sacred fire
was carried before the king; it burned religiously in all houses and
on all mountains. Not that adoration was directed to the mere
material element, but to that divine and heavenly existence of
which fire was the copy, the symbol, the visible representation.
What is fire ? Manifested spirit ; matter in its passage to the
unseen. What is light ? Who can describe that splendor
which irradiates the world ? Is it not the outbeaming of the
majesty of Ormuzd, the efiulgence of the intellect of the infinite,
all-embracing One. This symbolism was seen in all nature, and
in all forms of the social and civil life of the Persian. The
Iranian monarchy was a copy of the monarchy of the uni-
verse. It had its seven orders, corresponding to the seven
Amshaspands. It had ranks and gradations, which all blended
into one. As with the state, so with the family; it too was
fashioned after the pattern of things heavenly. On the same
principle all animals were divided between Ormuzd and Ahri-
man. They w^ere classed as useful and injurious, clean and
■unclean. As the kingdoms of light and darkness had their
chiefs, so had the animal kingdoms their protectors and leaders.
The unicorn represented the pure beasts of Ormuzd, while the
symbol representative of the animal kingdom of Ahriman was
a monster — in part a man, in part a lion, and in part a scorpion.
The watching and far-seeing spirits were symbolized by birds.
These belonged to the pure creation, and w^ere enemies to Ahri-
man. Ormuzd was represented by the hawk and the eagle,
whose heads were supposed to be images of eternal time. The
dragon- serpent is Ahriman ; his spirits are dews, and their
symbols the grifiin, inhabiting the clefts of the desolate rocks.
In this way of difference and intelligible unity, the Persian
placed the being as well as the origin of all things in the im-
personal One.*
* Bunsen maintains that Bactria, and not Persia, was the original seat of
Zoroaster and his doctrine. The Fargard, or first book of the Zend Avesta,
gives an account of the emigration of the Aryans to India through Bactria.
Now the language of the oldest portion of the'Zend Avesta is High Bactrian,
and approaches very near to the Vedic language, that is, the old East Iranian
which is preserved in the Punjab. Another argument is derived fnim a com-
parison of Zoroastrianism with Brahmanism. The old Vedic worship was a
worship of nature, but the Zoroastrian books place a supreme God above
EGYPTIAN DARKNESS. 39
2. The Egyptian Religion. — The gods of a nation take
their character from the climate of the country, and from the
condition and character of the people. So true is this, that
where foreign deities are adopted they become as it were
naturalized; and however great the affinities between the
gods of different nations, every country has its own peculiar
deities. We notice first the difterence ; but when we pass from
the mere outward features to the inner reality we find the like-
ness becoming closer, until we discover the principle in which
they have a common origin.
The great systems of religion that prevailed in the East, all
have their foundation in the doctrine of emanation. On the one
side they are the worship of a Being infinitely great ; on the
other side, the worship of the attributes of that Being as these
are seen or symbolized in nature. They are difierent forms of
the God-consciousness in man, and often when the form is most
different the substance is most alike. The supreme Deity of the
Persians dwelt in light; but the supreme God of the Egyptians
dwells in thick darkness."^ There is a sphinx at the temple gate ;
it speaks a riddle — it proclaims a mystery. Inside the temple
are the statues of young men, who intimate, with suppressed
speech, that the name of God is secret, pointing with their fing-
ers, they admonish us to beware that we profane not the Divine
stillness. The incomprehensible Deity must be adored in silence ;
we may not speak of Him but in words of the most awful rever-
ence. It is permitted us to feel and to know the truth of His
presence ; but the amulet of Isis^ the voice of nature, is alone
the true speech of God. f
nature. " We may assume," says Bunsen, " that the original Zorathustra
founded a new religion before the migration to India as a mere counterpoise to
the earliest Bactrian naturalism, and that the Aryans, when they migrated,
carried with them the primitive Zoroastrian religion on their great conquering
expedition, the last scene of which was the Indian country. The Agni, or
fire worship, of which mention is made in the Vedic hymns, must be considered
as a remnant of the pre-Zoroastrian doctrine."
* According to Herodotus, the shrew mouse was sacred to Buto (Mut), this
animal passed for being blind and was therefore dedicated to the mother of the
god, because " darkness is older than light," as Plutarch says.
f Chaeremon (as cited by Porphyry) explained the Egyptian religion as
ignoring a supreme cause ; Eusebius followed this interpretation, rejoicing to
show the absurdity of Paganism. Depuis extolled it, expecting to prove that
the idea of an intelligent spiritual cause is an invention of modern times, and
too absurd for the wise men of antiquity. lamblichus refuted Chaeremon. This
interpretation of the Egyptian religion is of the same kind with the interpret
tation which makes Budhism atheistic, and thus charges with Atheism the
most religious nations of the world.
40 AMMON, THE CONCEALED GOD.
What then is He ? None can tell. His symbol is a globe or
sphere, for He has neither beginning nor end. His duration is
eternal — His Being infinite. He is present in all things — His
centre here ; His circumference nowhere. We may call Him
Ammon, but this only means that He is hidden or veiled."^ We
can call Him by no true name, for no name can express Him.
" Call Him then by all names," said Hermes Tresmegistus, for
as much as He is one and all things ; so that, of necessity, all
things must be called by His name, or He by the name of all
things." We cannot see Him, but, says Plutarch, " He sees all
things ; Himself being unseen." Material things are the forms
of which He is the substance ; the garment with which He
clothes Himself, and by which He is made manifest to men.
The workmanship of nature, like the web of Arachne, is wonder-
ful ; and by it we can see that there is an intelligence at work,
veiled indeed, yet visible in its productions. The work manifests
the Worker.
The writings that bear the name of Hermes Tresmegistus con-
tain a full exposition of Egyptian theology, f In them, the iden-
* The Greeks, rightly considerecT Ammon as Zeus and the highest God :
according to Manethos' interpretation, which is deserving of attention, His name
signifies, " the concealed God " " concealment." We have also the root Amn "to
veil," " to conceal," now actually before us in the hieroglyphics. The manner
of writing Men, instead of Amen for Ammon is new ; we do not therefore at all
events import a modern Philosophical idea into Egyptian Mythology, by con-
sidering him as the "hidden or not yet revealed God." He stands incontest-
ably in the Egyptian system at the head of the great cosmogonic development.
Bunsen.
The gods of the first order possessed one general attribute, that of reveal-
ing themselves ; in other words, the creative power or principle. The mytho-
logical system obviously proceeded from the concealed god Ammon to the
creating god.
f Our knowledge of Hermes is chiefly through the Neo-Platonists, The
books which bear his name are supposed to have been written about the 4th
century after Christ, and must only be received as the Neo-Platonic interpretation
of Egyptian theology. Their Pantheistic character may be learned from the
following quotation from the 8th book : — " There is nothing in the Avhole
world which God is not." He is being and non-being ; he has manifested
being, but He has non-being in Himself. He is not manifest, and yet He is
the most manifest of all. He is whatever may be contemplated by the mind,
or is visible to the eye. He is incorporeal and multi-corporeal. There is
nothing of any body which He is not, for He is all things. Therefore has He
all names, because He is one Father, and, therefore, has He no name in Him-
self, because He is the Father of all things. Who, therefore, can worthily
speak of Thee, or to Thee. Whither turning, shall I praise Thee ? Above,
below, within, without ? Neither mode nor place belong to Thee, nor anything
besides. All things are in Thee, all are fi'om Thee ? Thou givest all things
and Thou receivest nothing, for Thou hast all things, and there is nothing
which Thou hast not. When O Father shall I praise Thee ? For what shall
HERMES TRISMEOISTUS. 41
tity of God and nature is distinctly taught. Among the infant
nations of the world, this identity seems to have been always as-
sumed, not perhaps that they consciously made God and nature
one, but that they had not yet learned to separate between
matter and the power which works in matter. The ancient
Egyptians may not have been philosophers, but Hermes Tris-
megistus undertook to expound the philosophy which was under-
lying their religious belief. How far he reads his philosophy
into their religion, or how much of it he found already there,
we cannot now enquire. For the identity of all things with God
he adduced the favorite argument, that they must have existed
as ideas in the divine mind. The reality of things, he says, must
be eternal, for that cannot be which has not been before. Created
things he calls ';parts and meinhers of 0-ocL' * These words
sound like materialism ; but Hermes Trismegistus was no materi-
alist ; God is not matter, but the power which quickens matter.
The sensuous world is strictly His creation ; by His will it ex-
ists. It is the receptacle of the forms which He endows with
life. All creation is from Him and by Him, but it is also in
Him.
This idea is repeated in all Eastern religions. It is felt that
the highest Being must in some way descend through all
spheres and circles, and forms of existence. No order is con-
ceivable if God be not conceived as everywhere conditioning the
most conditioned. And this presence is not merely passive, but
active. Nor is it merely a presence ; it is also a connection.
'J he Creator is in some way united to His works. The Hindus
used the simple illustration of a spider and its web, or a tortoise
I praise Thee ? For those things which Thou hast done, or those which Thou
hast manifested, or those which Thou hast concealed ? But why will I praise
Thee ? As being of myself, as my own, or as if I Avere another? For Thou
art w^hat I am ; Thou art what I do ; Thou art what I say ; Thou art all
which is produced, and which is not produced. Thou art an intelligent miud
an efficient Father, a God at work; good, doing all things well. The most
attenuated part of matter is air; that of air, soul; that of soul, mind; that of
mind, God.' When Patricius edited the works of Hermes Trismegistus in
the I6tli centur}% the Catholic authorities obliged him to add Scholia, explain-
ing that some things, such as the doctrine of creation and the existence of
the gods were not according to the Catholic faith, but the essence of the
theology ; such as that God is intellect ; that He made the world in imitation
of the Word ; that perhaps God has no essence — that He brings forth mind as
a father generates a son ; that God is masculo-feminine, and that man is made
from life and light were to be understood in an orthodox sense — sano modo.
*Plutarch, quoting from Hecataeus, says that the Egyptians considered the
primitive Deity and the universe as one and identical ; and Eusebius, citing the
Genica or old Hermaic books, asks, "Have you not been informed, by the
Genica, that all individual souls are emanations from the one great Soul ? *
42 GOD AND TEE WORLD.
protruding its limbs The Persian made God the light of crea^
tion, and darkness the necessary shadow of the light : so that light
and darkness had been one, and would ultimately be one again.
} Sometimes creation was called God's garment, but Hermes
j changed the figure, and made God the garment of the world.
"He embraces it in His bosom ; He covers it with His being ;.
He takes it into Himself as the universe includes in its existene
every world of which it is composed." God is the supreme
World. The constutition of nature is not merely the work of
God, but God is its compages — the power which by its presence
and being constitutes nature. And thus God is every thing, one
and yet all things — things which are, for He has manifested
them ; and things which are not, for their ideals and patterns
are in Him. He is incorporeal, but He is also omnicorporeal,
for there is nothing in any body which He is not. He is all
that is, and therefore He has all names. He is the Father of
all things, and therefore He has no name. He did not receive
things from without, but sent them forth from His own beings
The world is His conception, visible things are His incarnated
thoughts. ' Is God invisible ? ' says Hermes ; ' speak worthily
of Him, for who is more manifest than He ? For this very cause
did He make all things, that in all things thou mightest see
Him. As the mind is seen in thinking, so is God seen in
working.' Hermes avoids materialism, but he is not afraid of
an apparent contradiction. He feels that the truth concerning
God, must be a contradiction to man. In the spirit of Egypt
among sphinxes and beings grotesque and indefinite — after
showing how God is the Lord and Maker of all things, yea, and
is all things, he concludes, ' that all being parts of God and He
the Maker of all, He, as it were, makes Himself.'
The deities of the Egyptians are arranged into three orders
This was the division made by Herodotus. In the first order
three are twelve gods ; in the second eight; and according to
Bunsen, in the third seven. The only deities that were wor-
shipped throughout Egypt, belonged to the third order, these
were Osiris and Isis.* Ammon, the concealed God, was doubtless
* Isis and Osiris are of the third order ; ' they are,' says Herodotus * the only
gods worshipped in the whole of Egypt.' Temples and cities of Isis, which
boasted of having the tomb of Osiris, and sacred animals dedicated to him, are
found from Elephantina, to the mouth of the Nile. Isis, according to Plutarch
was called Myrionymous, and * the prayers of the dead ' contain a countless
multitude ofj names, by which Osms is invoked. Isis and Osiris have, accord-
ing to Herodotus, and the genealogies on the monuments, their roots in the
Birstj.liks the deiti«s of the second order j but according to the whole testimony
OSIRIS AND ISIS. 43
worshipped everywhere, for to Him all worship was iiltim;vtely
referred. He was the supreme God. As the Persian One became
Ormuzd, or Brahm became Brahma so did the concealed God
of Egypt become the revealed. But there weve others beside
Ammon who stood for the supreme God, the chief of these was
the ram-headed god of the Thebaid, the patron deity of Egypt :
Ptah,* the creator of the world, and the Lord of truth, with
Neith, the goddess of wisdom, all of the first order, but chiefly
Oiiris, Isis, and their son Horus, of the third order. Osiris
and Isis are the most familiar of the Egyptian gods. They
represent singly, or together, the whole of nature, and that
Being whose power and presence are everywhere manifest in
nature. The Egyptians have many legends of Osiris and Isis,
of the time when they once reigned in Egypt, of the murder
of Osiris by the treachery of Typhon, and of the sorro\ys and
lamentations of Isis -.f how much of history there may be in this
we cannot determine. The interpretation most like the truth
of the monuments, they are, in a word, the first and second order itself:
so that some peculiar forms of Isis or Osiris, or both of them almost invariably
con-espond to each development, split up as it were into many different per-
sonifications. Isis, Osiris, and Horus combined, can be shown to comprise in
themselves the whole system of Egyptian Mythology, with the excei)tion, per-
haps, of Ammon and Kneph, the concealed God, and the creative power. In
them all the attributes are concentrated. Isis is the sister, wife, daughter, and
mother of Osiris ; in her cosmogonic property she is like Neith ; in the Papyrus
she is called the Neith of Lower Egypt. Plutarch speaks of an Egyptian tradi-
tion, according to which Zeus was originally unable to walk — his legs were
grown together ; Isis loosed his legs. Isis-Neith is nature, through the
medium of which, God became manifest and revealed. — Bunsen.
Plutarch tells us, that Osiris was sometimes pictured as an eye ; this is a
natural conception. In children's books we sometimes see God pictured as an
eye ; it was the favorite symbol with the Jewish Cabbalists.
* Ptah is the Creator of the world, Neith belongs to Ptah, and is found by
his side -, the name is said to signify, " I came from myself." She is the
creative principle, considered as feminine ; her titles are, " the great mother,"
" the mother of Helios her first-born ;" she is also called the cow which has
produced the sun ; as mother of the living she appears nursing two crocodiles.
In Ptah and Neith the Deity completes His manifestation as the soul of the
world.
t The Osiris of history was king of Egypt; he was killed by his brother Ty-
phon, who shut him up in a coffer, and threw him into the Nile; Isis went in
search of the body of her husband, and found it cast up on the shores of Phoe-
nicia. Osiris has some relation to the Greek Adonis, and is perhaps connected
with Thammuz, in the Phoenician mythology.
" ThammuK came next behind,
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allm-ed
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate,
In amorousu ditties all a summer's day,
44 THE VEIL OP ISIS.
•
is that which regards them as personifications of the operations
of nature. Osiris is the deity unveiled, he is sometimes Kneph
or Athor, and this Athor is again united to Isis as the hidden
principle of the universe, the creative wisdom of the Deity.
She had a temple at Sais, on which was written the famous
inscription preserved by Plutarch, " I am all that hath been, is,
t and shall be, and no mortal has uncovered ray veil." But
Osiris and Isis could only manifest the highest Being to the
extent that nature reveals Him.
While smooth Adonis from his native rock
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood
Of Thanmiuz yearly wounded : the love tale
Infected Sion's daughters with like heat ;
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah."
Milton's Paradise Lost.
" The (hjing god.'' The unseen Mover of the universe, was rashly identified
with its obvious fluctuations, and since the lessons of eternal experience in-
fluence the fancy long before they reach the understanding, an ordinary Pan-
theist, who contemplated " one" all-pervading Spirit adorable even in the animal
world, would not be inconsistent, in the idea that God is liable to death in that
as dwelling in all forms. He might in ages past have been more originally
manifested in one, though it were a human and perishable one. The specula-
lative deity suggested by the drama of nature was worshipped with imitative
and svmpathetic rites. A period of mourning about the autumnal equinox and
of joy'at the return of spring was almost universal. Phrygian and Paphlagonian,
Bactian and even Athenian were more or less attached to such observances.
The Syrian damsels sat Aveeping for Thammuz or Adonis mysteriously wounded
by the tooth of winter, and the priests of Attys—- an analogous incarnation of
solar power — emasculated themselves and danced in female attire, in devotional
mimicry of the temporary enfeeblemeut of then- god. Their rites were evi-
dently suggested by the arrest of vegetation, when the sun, descending from
its altitude, appears deprived of its generative power, and those ceremonies of
passionate lamentation, which in the East were commonly off'ered to the dead,
Avere adopted in the periodical observances of religion. Mourning, mutilation,
self-immolation, and even the wide-spread custom of sacrifice, were mainly
symbolical, either expressive of devotion to the all-generating and devouring
nature, or of sympathy with the being Pantheistically incorporated in its
changes. The recurrence of these annual solemnities was more marked
among agricultural races, whose ordinary life and customs were immediately
dependent on corresponding phenomena. The Greeks pay divine honour to
heroes, but in Egypt a deity is said to die. Osiris is a being analogous to the
Syrian Adonis, and the "sacred legend" is a narrative form of the popular
religion of Egypt, of which the hero is the sun, and the agricultural calendar
the moral. The moist valley of the Nile, which contrasted with the surround-
ing desert, appeared like life in the midst of death, owed its fertility to the annual
inundation, itself in evident dependence on the sun. The Nile was called ' the
antimime of heaven,' and Egypt, environed with arid deserts, like a 'heart
within a burning censer' (Creuzer) was the female power dependent on the
mfluence personified in its god." — Mackay's Progress of the Intellect.
HARPOCRATES. 45
" Osiris and Isis," says Dr. Prichard, " are tlie universal
Being — the soul of nature corresponding to the Pantheistic or
masculo-feminine Jupiter of the Orphic verses. Typhon re-
presents physical evil. To him are attributed eclipses, tempests,
and irregular seasons. He is the sea which swallows up the
good Nile and produces drought and famine. He is the enemy
of Osiris, and his wife Nephthys is the enemy of Isis. Neph-
thys is represented by the desert ; and the inundation of the
Nile is the Deity leaving his garland in her bed. Typhon is
the south wind of the desert, and to him all hideous beasts are
sacred. Another Deity is Horus, the brother of Osiris ; he too
is the sun, the world, the all of nature. He is supposed to be
identical with Harpocrates, who is sometimes called the son of
Isis. Harpocrates was the god of silence — the emblem of nature
in her silent progress. When the buds opened in spring time,
and the tender shoots burst silently from the earth, then was
Harpocrates born. Every spring was the festival of his birth.
The young god died, but his everlasting mother lived and repro-
duced him as the seasons changed." Apuleius, an Egyptian
priest of the third century, represents Isis as thus addressing
him after he had been initiated into the Egyptian mysteries,"! am
she that is the natural mother of all things — mistress and gov-
ernor of all the elements — the initial progeny of worlds — chief
of divine powers — queen of heaven — the principal of the gods
celestial — the light of the godesses — at my will are disposed
the planets of the air — the wholesome winds of the seas ; and
the silences of the unseen world — my divinity is adored through
all the world, in divers manners, with various rites, and by
many names. The Phrygians call me the mother of the gods ;
the Athenians call me Minerva; the Cyprians, Yenus; the
Candians, Diana ; the Sicilians, Proserpina ; some call me
Ceres, Juno, Bellona, Hecate; the Ethiopians and the Egypt-
ians worship me as Queen Isis."*
What was said of Isis was said also of Kneph. The Egypt-
ians, according to Porphyry, acknowledged one intellectual
author and creator of the world under the name of Kneph.
They worshipped him in a statue of human form, with a dark
blue complexion, holding in his hand a girdle or sceptre, wear-
ing upon his head a royal plume, and thrusting an egg from his
mouth. lamblichus, quoting from the Hermaic books teaches
nearly the same concerning Kneph. " This god is placed as the
* Fable of the Golden Ass.
46 HERMES.
ruler of the celestial gods. He is a self-intelligent mind ab-
sorbed in his own contemplations. Before Kneph, is a Being
without parts, the first occult power, and by Hermes called
Eikton. He is worshipped only in silence. After these, are the
powers that preside over the formation of the visible world.
The creative mind which forms the universe is called Ammon
Ptah, or Osiris, according to the character it may assume."
There was another deity to speak the wisdom of God, this
was Hermes, the wisdom of Ammon, the teacher of wisdom
among men."^ Osiris was the great body of nature, Hermes the
incarnation of the divine intellect; he was called by other
names, Anubis " the golden," that which shines in the sun, the
leader of the stars, the dog star. He was also called Thoth the
pillar, because a pillar is the bearer of all the Egyptian wisdom
which was preserved by the priests — Hermes is speech and
w^isdom ; he is the discoverer of astronomy, the teacher of
science, the inventor of arts. Among the gods he is pre-emi-
nently the good spirit, the giver of gifts intellectual and spiritual.
Osiris and Isis are the good king and queen, Hermes the wise
priest. As 8irius in the highest part of the firmament overlooks
the other planets, and protects the fiery animals of heaven, so
does Hermes protect and care for all creatures ; the whole of
nature is revealed before him, his wise mind rules the world.
He is physician, lawyer, judge ; he teaches immortality, he
guides souls in their wanderings, by imparting wisdom he makes
men one with himself — the wise priest becomes Hermes. If all
nature be as w^e have seen the exteriority of God, the exhibition
to the senses of the invisible Ammon, it must then be all divine,
and, if divine, why may it not be worshipped ? How indeed can
we worship the " veiled God," but through His works which declare
His wisdom and His power? So perhaps the Egyptians reasoned,
or rather more probably concluded without reasoning, and con-
secrated the visible world as an object of worship.
The Persian, with his clear and ever jadiant sky, saw God in
the light. The Arabian, with his thoughts directed to the starry
heavens, saw God in the planets ; the Egyptian, too, saw God
both in the daylight and in the stars, but much more in that
♦ Kneph forms the limbs of Osiris in contradistinction to Ptah, who, as the
strictly Demiurgic principle, forms the visible world. The second order are
children of the first : Hermes or Thoth is of this order ; his sign is the ibis and
his name is connected with the Egyptian root for " word ;" he is the gcribe of
the Gods, and is called " Lord of the divine words and scribe of truth " " the
guardian of the pure souls in the hall of the two truths."
FATHER NILUS. 47
abundant fertility which came he knew not whence, with the
overflowing of the Nile, without which Egypt would have been
a desert. How sacred then, above all things, the river Nile !"^
How it must have connected itself with the life and thought
and religion of every Egyptian ! It was the father of the
country, on it depended the strength of Pharoah. But the
Nile is only an inanimate object — true, all things may have
come from sand and water originally created by the Unknoum
Darkness. From these has sprung the lotus with which the Nile
abounds, but the Nile has higher developments of existence
than sand or water, higher forms of life than the vegetable
lotus. It has beasts innumerable, the true children of father
Nikis, cherished in his bosom, and abundantly provided for.
They are very terrible, they are stronger than men and ap-
parently wiser. They are the genii of that bountiful river, the
gods of the stream, why may they not be worshipped if only for
their terribleness ?
But Egypt is peculiarly a land of beasts. It is prolific in
animal life, the lion comes from the desert, the ibis gaihers its
food on the river's banks, the crocodile basks among the rushes.
The Egyptian sees all forms of brute life everywhere abundant,
he sees them guided by a wisdom which is above human wisdom,
he sees a regularity in their movements which is equa'led only
by the regularity in the works of nature. As the fruitful Nile
ebbs and flows, as summer, winter, spring, and autumn, come
and go, by the same law do the brutes live ; they have their
part in the same order. In some respects man is superior to
these creatures ; they build no tents, they plough no fields,
neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, yet in many
respects they are superior to man. Without his cares and dis-
appointments, they lead a joyful life. The law of nature holds
its dominion in them, they are determined by a high wisdom.
*' The stork in the heavens knows her appointed season." They
live the universal life, and, as the Egyptian would call it the
highest life, they are unconsciously one with the being of the
universe. How natural for the Egyptian to worship the brute
creation: to see in the wisdom which guided them a high
reflection of that wisdom which is manifest in all nature, f
* The Nile, like the Ganges, is a deity — " The father of the father of the
gods," the terrestrial and material representation of the Di-v-ine purpose. —
Bunsen.
f The Egyptian priests, says Porphyry, ha^'ing profited hy their diligent study
of philsophy, and their intimate acquantance with the nature of the gods, have
48 WORSHIP OF ANIMALS.
Animal worship is usually the lowest form of idolatry and the
mark of a low degree of civilization, but in Egypt it prevailed
among a people famed in antiquity for cultivation and learning,
and had its roots in a philosophy of being. "^ We must distin-
guish between the worship of animals, and the worship of them
as symbols : the latter was that of the Egyptians, it did not
obscure the worship of the gods, but was rather connected with
it. Their deities were mostly represented in the forms of
beasts, even Hermes had a dog's head because of his connection
with the dog star : Kneph f was a good deity, and therefore was
represented as a harmless serpent. Osiris had the hawk for
his symbol, and his image was usually formed with a hawk's
head ; this bird was symbolic of the soul, the crocodile was
sacred to the highest God ; Plutarch assigns as the cause of
this, that it is the only animal living in water which has its
eyes covered with a transparent membrane falling down over
them, by means of which it sees and is not seen, which is a thing
that belongs to the supreme God, '^ to see all things. Himself
being unseen," Plutarch says in another place, " Neither were
the Egyptians without a plausible reason for worshipping God
symbolically in the crocodile, it being said to be an imitation of
of God in this, that it is the only animal without a tongue, for
learnt that tlie divinity permeates not only human beings — that man is
not the only creature on the earth possessed of soul, but that nearly the same
spiritual essence pervades all the tribes of living creatures. On this account
in fashioning the miages of the gods, they have adopted the forms of all ani-
mals, and have sometimes joined the human figure with that of beasts. They
adore, vmder these semblances, the universal power which the gods have secret-
ly displayed, in the various forms of living nature.
* The following Pantheistic description of Serapis was given by an oracle
of the god : — "My divinity shall be described in the words, 1 shall now
utter. " The canopy of heaven is my head, the sea is my belly, the earth is my
feet, my ears are in the ethereal regions, and my eye is the resplendent and
far-ahming sun. — Macrobius. "
t Kneph as creator appears under the figure of a potter with a wheel. In
Philae, a work of the Ptolemaic epoch, he is represented making a figure of
Osiris with the inscription Num, who forms on a wheel the limbs of Osiris,
who is enthroned in the great hall of life. He is likewise called Num-ra, " who
forms the mother, the genetrix of the gods." In a representation of the time
of the Roman Emperors he is called " the sculptor of all men. " In a monu-
ment at Esneh, of the same date, he is said to have made mankind on his
wheel, and fashioned the gods, and is called the god who has made the sun
and moon to revolve under the heavens and above ttie world and all things on
it.
According to Plutarch and Diodorus, the name of the Egyptian Zeus sig-
nifies " a spirit," which can only refer to Kneph. At Esneh he is said to be
" the breath of those who are in the firmament."
GOD IN NATURE. 49
the Divine Logos or Reason does not stand in need of speech,
but going on through a silent path of justice in the world with-
out noise, righteously governs and dispenses all human
affairs." Horus Apollo in the hieroglyphics says the Egyptians
acknowledged a superior Being who was Governor of the world,
that they represented Him symbolically by a serpent, and that
they also " pictured a great house or palace within its circum-
ference, because the world is the royal palace of the Deity," and
again he says " that the serpent as it were, feeding upon itself,
fitly represents that all things produced in the world by Divine
Providence are resolved into it again." " The serpent," says Philo
Byblius quoting from Sanchoniathon, *' was deified by the
Egyptian Hermes, because it is immortal and is resolved into
itself." Sometimes the symbol of the Deity was a serpent with a
hawk's head, and sometimes the hawk alone. In the temple of
Sais there was a hieroglyphic which consisted of an old man, a
young man, and a hawk, to make up the meaning, says Plutarch,
*' that both the beginning and the end of human life depends on
God." We need not suppose that the multitudes of Egypt who
paid their devotions to the sacred beasts had any conscious
conception, that in so doing they were worshipping the One
and All of nature. They saw God in nature and therefore
they worshipped all the parts of nature as parts of the Divine.*
God soul, the world, to primal man Avere one —
In shapely stone, in picture, and in song.
They worshipped Him who was both one and all ;
God-like to them was human kind. God dwelt
In the piled mountain rock, the veined plant,
And pulsing brute, and where the planets wheel
Through the blue skies God-head moved in them.
Bunsen's Egypt.
* Anchises, in the sixth book of the ^Eneid, explaining to ^Eneas the law of
the transmigration of souls, says, " The spirit within nourishes heaven and earth
and the watery plains, and the enlightened orb of the moon, and the shining
stars ; and diffused through the parts, a mind, actuates the whole fabric, and
mingles itself with the large body : hence the races of men and cattle, and the
lives of bu'ds and monsters, which the sea produces iindcr its marble plain."
" This," says Bishop "Warbm'ton, " was the doctrine of the old Egyptians, as
we learn from Plato, who says, ' they taught that Jupiter is the spirit Avhicli
perA^ades all things.' " He adds that " the Greek philosophy corrupted this
principle into Spinozism, of which Ave have an instance in the fom-tli Georgic
— " Some have said that bees haA^e a part of the Divine mind and ethereal
draughts, for that God pervades all lands and tracts of the sea and the lofty
heavens. Hence flocks, herds, men, all the race of Avild beasts, each at birth
deriA'e their slender liA^es," This might pass for simple Egyptian doctrine,
without supposing that it has undergone the corrupting (?) influence of Greek
philosophy.
50 GREEK MYTHOLOGY.
3. The Greek Religion. — ^'To understand," says Mr.
Maurice, " the difference between the Egyptian and Greek faith,
it is not necessary to study a great many volumes or to
visit different lands, our own British Museum will bring the
contrast before us in all its strength. If we pass from the
hall of Egyptian Antiquities, into the room which contains
the Elgin Marbles, we feel at once that we are in another
world. The oppression of huge animal forms, the perplexity
of grotesque devices has passed away, you are in the midst
of human forms, each individually natural and graceful, linked
together in harmonious groups, expressing perfect animal beauty
yet still more the dominion of human intelligence over the
animal." No truer contrast could have been made between
the gods of Egypt and those of Greece. The former are rarely
human, the latter rarely anything but human. Yet here the
contrast ends. We have passed apparently from the indefinite
to the definite, from the infinite to the finite, but it is only ap-
parently, it is only as regards the external form of the mytho-
logies.^ In the inner spirit, we are surrounded by the infinite
still, the Greek may be enjoying nature more than the Egyp-
tian, but he still stands in awe of it. He may feel the
dominion of man over nature, and be conscious that the life of
human freedom is higher than that of brute instinct, but he is
not without thoughts of the Infinite ; he is not without a deep
feeling that there is a something, or some Being above, and
beyond all his thoughts and all his conceptions — a Being but
feebly and imperfectly imaged by these human deities which he
creates, and which he worships for their w^isdom, their power,
and their forms of beauty. The Greek, as well as the Egyp-
tian, worshipped nature. -j- The names of the old deities in the
Theogony are a sufficient evidence of this. Kronos J and Chaos,
Erebus and Nyx, with Gaea, Ether, and Hermes testify
to their own origin and meaning. An element of history
* The gods of Greece are so fixed and personified in its poetry as almost
entirely to conceal their essential generality of character ; but in proportion as
"we approach the Asiatic sources of Greek ideas, or in any way extend our
view beyond the limits of the Epic circle, the gods, or the human beings repre-
senting them, become more complex, multiform, and independent, imtil at last
all the mysteries and contradictions of genealogies sink into the one mystery of
Pantheism. — Mackaifs Progress.
f Bryant says, that the worship on mountains, in caves, in forests, and undei
green tree=:, all show that nature is ever the object worshipped.
X Pherccydes says, " Zeus and time are the same, and the eai'th always
existed."
WORSHIP OF NATURE. 6l
doubtless mingles itself with the legends of the gods ; mysteri-
ous and even foreign deities may have been introduced from
other nations, but the evidence is overwhelming that Greek
worship was essentially a worship of nature. The heavens, the
ocean, the unseen world was each made a kingdom, and had each
a divine king, or ruler placed over it. All mountains, rivers,
lakes, woods, and forests had their presiding deities. The spirit
of poetry could not go further. An abundant harvest was Ceres
rejoicing; when the wine-press was trodden, it was Bacchus in
the revel ; the tempest tossing the ships was Neptune raging
in the deep ; conscience tormenting the evil doer was the furies
seeking revenge ; all virtues and all vices, all endowments, in-
tellectual and moral, became gods. War was Mars, and beauty
was Venus ; eloquence was Mercury ; prudence, Minerva ; and
Echo, no more a sound reverberated by the air, but a nymph in
tears bemoaning her Narcissus. They were beautiful human
gods, but they owed their existence to Greek imagination,
giving life and form to the manifested powers of nature. Tliey
were all created ; Pindar knew them, and spoke of them when
he said—" There is one kind both of gods and men, and we both
breathe from the same mother, and spring from the same origi-
nal." Hesiod knew them when he gave their history and
origin, and showed how each was produced from each.
Nor are we without traces of a transition period, when the
Greek mind was passing from the Egyptian reverence of gro-
tesque forms to the worship of humanized deities. The early
Greek gods were monsters. The children of Uranos and G-aea
were Titans and Cyclops, and hundred-headed giants. Even
the deities that w^ere afterwards the most famous of the Pan-
theon were originally of monstrous forms. Pausanias mentions
a statue of, Jupiter, which, in addition to its two eyes, had an
eye in the forehead. We read also of a four-handed Apollo,
and a two-headed Silenus, with a three-handed and three-
headed Hermes, reminding us of similar stages in the develop-
ment of Hindu mythology.
But the Greeks were Monotheists as well as Polytheists.
They worshipped one God as well as many. We know this from
Greek philosophy, also from S. Paul, who found the Athenians
worshipping " the unknown God," whom he had come to declare
to them. That they were inconsistent some of the philosophers
felt and thought, and this inconsistency S. Paul made the
ground of his argument, why they should turn from idols to
E 2
52 ZEUS IS ALL THINGS.
the living God.^ That they did worship the one God, who is
unlike all the others, is manifest even from their mythology.
Homer makes all beings gods, as well as men, come forth from
Oceanus, except Him who is pre-eminently God, the Father
of gods and men. Hesiod, too, gives to all beings a beginning
except Zeus. Sophocles says, " There is in truth but one God,
who made heaven and earth," and Euripides addresses Zeus as
the self-existent — as He who unfolds all things in His arms,
who is resplendent with light, and yet who, because of our
weak vision, is veiled in darkness. Pindar distinguished be-
tween the created gods and Him who is the most powerful of all
the gods, the Lord of all things, and the Maker of the universe.
This one God was like the Brahm of the Indians, the impersonal
and the unknown. In the mythology He is represented by the
greatest of the deities. Zeus bears some of His highest attri-
butes. Zeus corresponds to Brahma and Ormuzd. His name
is the name of the highest One : He is nature in its infinitude.
This is the character of Zeus in the Orphic verses. In later
times He became famous as the King of gods and men, but at
first he was a prodigious Being, the One and yet all things,
the Father, yea the Mother of the world, for Zeus was
neither masculine nor feminine, but both genders in one. The
universe is created in Him, and by His presence He con-
stitutes the height of the heavens, the breadth of the earth and
the deep sea. He is the vast ocean — profound Tartarus —
the rivers, fountains and all other things — the immortal gods
and goddesses. Whatsoever shall be, is contained in the womb
of Zeus. He is the first and the last, the head and the middle
of all things. He is the breath of all things — the force of the
untameable fire — the bottom of the sea, the sun, the moon, and
the stars, the King of the universe ; the one power and the one
God that rules over all; the great body of Zeus is identical
with the great body of nature. The antiquity of the Orphic
verses may be disputed, but what they say of Zeus agrees with
what we read in other poems. In the famous hymn of Cleanthes
we are called " the ofispring of Zeus." The universe is there
said, to emanate from Him, and to obey His sovereign will.
He is immanent in creation — present at all times — filling all
places. Heaven, earth, and ocean present Him to our eyes.
S. Augustine adopted the same argument against the philosophical Pagans.
]n the " City of God" he asks—" II Jupiter be all, why is Juno added, and
the other gods ?" And again he savs, "If Jupiter and Janus are both 'the
universe,' they should not be two god's, but only one."
APOLLO IS ALL THINGS. 53
The verses of Aratus from which S. Paul quoted when he ad-
dressed the Athenians on the " unknown God," have the same
meaning, while they show us how Zeus stood for Him who was
omnipotent and omnipresent. '^ Let us begin with Zeus. That
name should never be forgotten, for all is full of Zeus— all ways,
public places and all harbours, as well as all seas ; He is present
always everywhere ; all we who breathe do not breathe without
Zeus, for we are all His offspring."
Nor was Zeus the only universal Deity. The Alexandrian
commentators, with some show of reason, brought forward other
deities, to whom were ascribed the high attributes of Him who
is infinite. Such were Kronos and Minerva, Necessity and
Fortune, and even Venus and her son Eros,"^ according to the
saying of Zeno, that " God is called by as many names as there
are different powers and virtues." The chief of these deities was
Apollo. Under the image of this youthful god — the bearer of
light and joy to the creation, the Greeks adored that majesty
which, as Euripides said, was veiled in light. As the sun re-
joices the earth, giving health to the sick and strength to the
weak, so Apollo, the god of medicine, comes forth with his heal-
ing beams radiant with light. The earth owes the comeliness
of her fields, the music of her groves, and the sparkling of her
streams and fountains, to the glorious king of day. Therefore
Apollo is the god of beauty, the emblem of wisdom, and the
author of harmony. On his temple at Delphi was inscribed the
word Ei — " Thou art ;" in which Plutarch read the true name
of God.f We are but the creatures of a day placed between
birth and death : as soon may we retain the flowing fountain as
our fleeting existence ; being does not belong to us — " God alone
" The mysterious physical phenomena," says Mr. Mackay,
"were throughout ancient mythology made prolific of moral
and mental lessons. The story of Dionysus was profoundly
significant : he was not only creator of the world, but guardian
liberator, and savioui'. The toys which occupied him when
* In the " Argonauts " of Orpheus, Eros is represented as producing Chaos ;
and lironus also, in an Orphic fragment preseryed by Prochis, is represented
as coeveal with ancient night.
f " This title," Plutarch says, " is not only proper but peculiar to God,
because He alone is Being ; for mortals have no participation of true being,
because that which begins and ends and is continually changing, is never one
nor the same, nor in the same state. The Deity, in whose temple this word
was inscribed, was called Apollo, which means " not many," because God is
one — His nature is simple— His essence uucompounded.
64 PAN IS ALL THIXGS.
surprised by the Titans — the top, the wheel, the distaff, the
golden Hesperian apples — were preminently cosmogonic. An
emblem of a similar class was the magic mirror or face of
nature, in which, according to the Platonic notion, but which
probably existed long before Plato, the Creator beholds Him-
self imperfectly reflected, and the bowl or ' womb' of being, in
which matter became pregnant with life, or wherein the
Pantheistic deity became mingled with the world. Dionysus,
god of the many-coloured mantle, is the resulting manifes-
tation personified. He is the polyonymous — the all in the
many, the varied year, life passing into innumerable forms.
But, according to the dogma of antiquity, the thronging forms
of life are a series of purifying migrations, through which the
divine principle re-ascends to the unity of its som-ce. Inebriated
in the bowl of Dionysus, and dazzled in the mirror of existence
the souls, these fragments and spnrks of the universal intelli-
gence forgot their nativity, and passed into the terrestrial forms
they coveted — Dionysus, the god of this world, the changing
side of Deity."
The shepherd god Pan occupied, even in the judgment of
Socrates, the place of the supreme God, and this because, as his
name implies, he was the all-God, the personification of infinite
all-embracing nature. Pan was the nature side of the Greek
divinities. He ruled over the woods and dwelt in desolate and
solitary places. He was nature as it appeared to herdsmen and
shepherds, in its wilder and grander and more savage aspects,
but he is not without gleams of gentleness, and by no means
destitute of joy. Every school boy knows that he was a merry
deity, making music on his pipe of seven reeds, with the glad
nymphs dancing to his rustic tunes. His body was rough like
the luxuriant earth, but his face beamed with intelligence, which
showed the Ammon concealed. As the heavens are radiant with
light, so smiled the countenance of Pan. He had horns like
the sun and moon, and his garment of leopard's skin was a
picture of the varied beauties of the world ; but he was not all
beautiful. As nature veils some of her secrets, so must we
veil the deformities of Pan. In the Orphic verses he is
called the All of the universe — heaven and sea, the ruler of the
earth, and immortal fire ; for all these are but the garments of
Pan.^
* The attribute of prophecy deputed to Apollo -jvas not founded solely on
Ills representing the all-seeing, all hearing Zeus, hut upon the higher notion of
Pantheistic omniscience, which may have been inherited from the forest of
JUPITER IS ALL THINGS. 55
What has been said of the gods of the Greeks may be also said-
of the deities of Rome. The Romans, too, made God and nature
one — finite on the human side, infinite on the divine side. Their
mythology, like their literature, was but a feeble echo of the
Greek. Their poets and philosophers only repeat what was said
before. Their Jupiter is the Greek Zeus ; he is primarily the
heavens, or that portion of the visible universe which appears to
us. This truth is petrified into the Roman language. Bad
weather is " bad Jupiter;" to be in the open air is to be "under
Jupiter ;" and to be out in the cold is to be under '' frigid
Jupiter." *' Behold," says Ennius, "the clear sky, which all
men invoke as Jupiter." And Cato says, " His seat is heaven,
earth, and ocean. Wheresoever we move, wheresoever we go,
whatever we see, that is Jupiter." Virgil, in imitation of the
Greek poet, says, "Let us begin with Jupiter; all things are
full of Jupiter." In another place he describes " the prone
descending showers," as the omnipotent Father coming down
into the bosom of His glad spouse. The powers of nature per-
sonified ; that is Greek Polytheism. Nature in its infinitude,
embracing the whole conceivable assemblage of being in which
mind is pre-eminently manifest ; that is Greek Monotheism.
Epirus, or transplanted from the shrines of Asia. Poetry and philosophy
served only to give different forms of expression to the same immemorial
sentiment, which, through the treatment of art receding from it, universally
lost in intellectual compass what it gained in distinctness. The comprehensive-
ness of the original feeling was preserved only in the most ancient symbols,
such as the Scarabaeus pointing to the great Dodon^an parent and artificer,
as the all-generating ungenerated cause, and the triform or triophthalmic
statues of Argolis and Corinth exhibiting his triple dominion over time and
space. And if Zeus Avas Triopian or Triophthalmic, so also was his son or
coi-relative, Apollo. Apollo, again, was akin to Nomian Pan the companion of
Khea and foster brother of Zeus. In the praise of Zeus every element and every
deity are united. His mythical brethren the autocrats of the sun and shade
were felt to be repetitions of himself. It is not without reason that Arcadia
and many other places disputed with Crete the honor of his birth for the
seemingly new deity was only a reproduction of the Pelasgic or Lycaean Pan-
theism in a new form. — Mackay^s Progress.
The chief authorities for this chapter are Creuzer and Bunsen. On the
Persian religion ; the Latin work of Hyde ; Spiegels' translation of the Zend
Avesta, and Framjee's volume, " The Parsees, &c." On the Egyptian religion
some things are taken from Dr. Prichard, and several passages on mythology
in general, and its interpretation are from Cudworth.
CHAPTER III.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
ALL philosophy is a seekiDg after God — a reiteration of the
cry of the patriarch, " 0 that I knew where I might find
Him." And the all but universal answer has been, " He is not
far from any one of us." This is pre-eminently true of the
philosophy of the Greeks in all its stages, and in nearly all its
schools.
As to the early Greek philosophers, there are two great diffi-
culties. First, their own writings are not extant, so that the
materials are both scanty and uncertain. Secondly, these ma-
terials have been used for the most opposite interpretations.
Cicero, the Neo-Platonists, and the Christian Fathers hold the
early Greek philosophers to have been pure Theists. They as-
sumed rightly, unconscious indeed that it was an assumption ;
that the fact of these old enquirers after truth, being philosophers,
was no argument, for their being irreligious, some of them be-
lieved in the gods of the Mythology, and some of them did not ;
but they were seeking after the One who was yet greater than
all the gods. Aristotle, to whom we are chiefly indebted for the
materials respecting them, refers their speculations to the old
" Theologies," intimating that these are to guide us in the inter-
pretation of their cosmogonies. And this is in the order
of things: religion comes before philosophy, men bow in
reverence before the unseen, long before it becomes the subject
of reason. The view which makes the early Greek philosophers
advocates of positive science, without reference to religion,
is an anachronism in the history of philosophy. It places them
in another age of the world than that in which they lived, and
ignores the natural religiousness of man."^
The Ionics — In the fifth century, before the Christian era,
lived Thales of Miletus, a lover of knowledge, and a seeker after
* This is the view taken by Mr. Lewes in his Biographical History of Phi-
losophy, but it is contradicted by all we know of the history of mind. Man
has religious feelings about nature long before he studies it scientifically.
THALES OF MILETUS. 57
wisdom. lie visited Egypt, at that time the sacred dwelling of
science — sacred indeed, for out of religion Egyptian wisdom had
arisen. The priests' lips kept knowledge — knowledge of all kinds.
Thales probably learned there of the " unknown Darkness " which
produced the '' water and sand" from which all things were made.
He may have compared this with what we read in Homer and
Hesiod about the origin of all things from Oceanus and Tethys
and hence the thought arose " water is the first principle of
creation."* Perhaps he made experiments on matter. A rude
chemist he must indeed have been, yet it was within his reach to
know that material forms are fleeting and unsubstantial. He
felt that at the foundation of nature there was a unity in which
all things were one, a substance of which all partook — a
material capable of being formed into suns and stars, and
worlds, trees, animals, and men, an original element in which
all the elements had their beginning ; and what more likely
than water to be this original element? It is the blood of
nature, by it all things live, without it all die. He took a
material element for the original unity, what he meant more we
cannot tell. Did he find that he could go no farther ? Did he
make no distinction between the material and the spiritual ? —
We cannot answer. Aristotle says that Thales believed '' all
things w^ere full of gods." Laertius, that he called God " the
oldest of all things, because He was uncreated," and Cicero, that
he held '' water to be the beginning of things, but that God was
the mind which created things out of the water."
* Water is a Protean quality, and therefore was thought the original Hyle ;
mythically Thetis, Nereus, Proteus . Tradition emanates from the centre of
the alluvial plains of Babylon and Egyj^t. The opinion of the Ionian sage is
from the EgyiDtians^who recognized a deity in moisture and identified the great
and good Osii'is with the Nile. — Mackaifs Progress of the Intellect.
The inherent life with which the Ionics endowed the universal element
was but the ensouled -world of Pantheism — a re-union of the elements which
poetry had parted and personified. — Ibid.
The reason why Thales concluded that water was the first of all things is
thus given by Plutarch : — First, because natural seed, the principle of all things,
is moist ; whence it is highly probable that moisture is also the principle of
all other things. Secondly, because all kinds of plants are nourished by moist-
m-e, without which they wither and decay. And thirdly, because fire, even
the pim itself aud the stars, are noiu'ished and supported by vapours proceeding
from water, and, consequently, the whole world consists of the same.
According to Diogenes Laertius, Musaeus was the first who taught that all
things were created of one matter, and would be dissolved into the same
matter again.
" Our ancestors " says Aristotle, " and men of great antiquity have left us
a tradition, involved in fable, that these first essences are gods, and that the
Divinity comprehends the whole of nature.**
58 ANAXIMANDER AND ANAXIMENES.
" But why, " asked Thales' disciple Anaximander, " should
the preference be given to water over the other elements ? That
which you assume to be the ground of all things is finite. By
thus placing it above the others, by making it the one thing
of the universe, you make it infinite. It then ceases to be
water. Why not at once call the one substance ' the infinite,'
that which is unlimited, eternal, unconditioned." A universe
of opinion has arisen about the meaning of Anaximander's
*' infinite." Was it material ? was it incorporeal ? — we only
know that He believed in an "infinite " in which all beings
have their being. "^
Anaximander's successor, Anaximenes, thought it might be
determined what that is which is infinite. It was not water,
that was too gross, too material. Was there no existence
conceivable in thought, nor perceptible by sense, that appeared
infinite — no essence that is in all things — and yet is not any
one of them ? There is that which we call breath, life, soul.
It pervades all. It permeates all. It penetrates all. Is not
that '' the infinite ?" We breathe it. We live in it. It is
the universal soul. This may have been what Anaximenes
meant ; we do not know for certainty. But this is the inter-
pretation of the " air " by Anaximenes' disciple, Diogenes of
Apollonia. He thought the Deity a divine breath, air, or spirit,
endowed with the attributes of wisdom and intelligence, and
pervading the miiverse of being. These philosophers begin with
enquiries that belong apparently to natural philosophy, but they
do not stop there ; they cannot — they go beyond the bounds
of the finite and the phenomenal.
The Italics. — The Ionics began their search for the truth
of the universe from external nature. The Italics began with
mathematics. The former declared that all was one — one some-
thing, one infinite ; they could not explain it further. Pythagoras
said it is simply one. What he meant is not easy to determine.
In Persia f he may have learned of the nameless One, who created
Ormuzd and Ahriman. Was not this a Monad creating a Dyad ?
* Aristotle and Plutarch suppose Anaximander's " infinite ; " to have been
material — the original or first matter out of which all things were made.
Ritter on the other hand says, that Anaximander's " infinite " was not a mere
multiplicity of primary material elements but an immortal and imperishable
unity — an ever producing energy.
t It is only conjecture that Pythagoras ever was in Persia. There is no con-
temporary evidence that the early Greek philosophers learned anything from
the East. j i r : &
PYTHAGORAS. 69
Did not One tlius become the father of the world, and two its
mother ? What can be the essence of all things but nmnbers ?
Do not all come from the original Unity ? As the number
one is the foundation of the manifold operations of arithmetic
and geometry, so the divine One — the universal Soul — is the
foundation of the world's manifoldness. The universe is a re-
flection of the Divine. It is a " living arithmetic, a realized
geometry." Because of its beauty, and harmony, and ever-
lasting order, it is called the Kosmos.
But the Monad of Pythagoras ; was it a mind or simply an
original something, out of which the all was evolved ? If the
Monad was not the active principle, it is identical with Chaos, and
the Dyad contained in it becomes the active power which causes
the harmonious world-development to arise from the Chaos. On
this supposition the Pythagorean doctrine of the Deity could
have risen no higher than that of an evolution or emanation out
of Chaos — an original substance from which has proceeded the
divine world-soul. But if, as Tenneman thinks, the Pytha-
gorean Monad was the active principle, the divine Being, then
God is above and before Chaos.. He is mind, and the producer,
not the product of the material; while matter is only God
posited on one side, and subject to Him. That the latter was
the true Pythagorean doctrine is probable from its agreement
with the fragments ot Philolaus, an old philosopher of the school
of Pythagoras. The essence of things is regarded as arising^
out of two grand elements— the limiting or limit, and the un-
limited. Philolaus shows how this takes place through the
the opposition of the one and the many. The one was unity
to many, and the many, as such was the indefinite Dyad,
through the limitation given by the unity, and through the
participation in the unity. But now that the essences of
things consist of these two original elements, consequently the
principles, or original elements of numbers, must be also the
principles of things themselves. The Pythagoreans found the
reason of the necessity in this, that only under this con-
ditio!? could things be an object of human knowledge ; for
neither the one nor the many, in the abstract, can be known
by man. The produced alone is cognizable to the human
understanding. The union of the limited and the unhmited
form a Kosmo3. This Kosmos implies a principle of harmony,
and this harmony a first cause or author, who is truly and
simply God. '* Were there not," says Professor Bockh, '' above
the original one and many, the limit and the unlimited, a
60 THE ELEATICS.
highest absolute Unity, in which, as in the original ground of
all things, these opposites and their harmonious union consti-
tute a Kosmos, then in the system of the most religious
Pythagoreans would be no trace of the Godhead, since neither
the limited nor the unlimited appears in this system as God.
But now that such a trace exists, and that in the Pythagorean
system God is recognised and represented under the idea of
the highest Absolute outside of and beyond these opposites,
expressly as the first or original cause of harmony, we find
established through undisputed testimony of many of the
ancients." According to Aristotle, Philolaus acknowledged
one Original as the cause of the two principles — as the absolute
Reality of all, and thus God as the highest Unity yet posited
above that other unity as difierent from it. The Pythagor-
eans regarded this first cause as an intellect; this we may
consider as certain. But the' limit, the unlimited, and the
Kosmos were all clearly allied to the first cause. The Kosmos
consists of Decades, each of which has ten bodies. These re-
volve round a common centre. This centre is the most resplen-
dent part of the universe. It is the seat of the Supreme Deity.
From it proceeds that light which gives life and gladness to
creation. The stars in the resplendent heavens, outside the
centre of light, are dwellings of the gods ; if not themselves,
divinities. Beneath them in rank are demons or good spirits;
then men ; and lastly, the brute creation. Through all ranks
goes the divine essence of the One. All are in some wa y allied
to God ; all are divine.*
Tub Eleatics. — The first genuine metaphysicians among the
Greeks were the Eleatics. They first doubted the reality of
matter, and felt the difiiculty of distinguishing between knowing
and being, thought and existence. The Ionics evidently as-
sumed the reality of phenomena. The Pythagoreans, the reahty
of a mind or thought, as the substance of matter. The Eleatics
annihilated the Duality, conceiving the identity of thought and
existence.
The transition from Pythagoras to the Eleatics was easy.
The reality of phenomena is in some sense admitted, but we are
* The Pythagoreans were of opinion that the infinite existence and the one
itself are the essence of those things of which they are predicated, and hence
they asserted that number is the essence of all things. — Aristotle.
The one is the foraial principle and cause of all things. As in all men is
man itself— in all animals, the animal — in all beings, the being. — Alexander on
the Pythagorean Doctrine.
XENOPHANES. 61
without a certain criterion for a knowledge of its existence.
Reason tells us of the One, and this must be absolute and
eternal. Xenophanes the founder of Eleaticism, did not deny,
scarcely perhaps doubted the reality of matter. He saw the
contradiction between the verdict of reason and the teachings of
experience. The one resolved all existence into a unity — an
essence eternal, impenetrable, and unchangeable — yet the senses
proclaimed the existence of the manifold. The reality of both
he admitted, though the mode of their reconciliation could
neither be miderstood nor explained. " Casting his eyes upwards
at the immensity of heaven," says Aristotle ; " Xenoph anes de-
clared that the One is Crod^ But he asked if the One be
God, what mean the gods of Homer and Hesiod ? If God is
an infinite Being, how base to ascribe to Him the foolish actions
of men ; how unwise to suppose that He is like themselves,
that He has their voice, and shape, and figure. If an ox or
a lion were to conceive God, they would conceive Him as like
themselves. If they had hands and fingers like ours, they
would give Him an image and a shape like their own. But this
is only God finitely conceived ; God so to speak as created by
the mind. He that is God must be a Being not created by us.
He is not anything finite. He is the Infinite ; not the infinite .
as an abstraction, for that, like the finite, may be only a form )
of our minds ; He is an infinite Being, independent of all our I
thoughts and all our conceptions of finity or infinitude. Unlike '
to men in outward shape ; unlike, too, in mind and thought.
He is without parts or organs, but He is all sight, all ear, and
all intelligence. He is pre-eminently Being, and the only true
Being. Whatever really exists He is in Himself and all that
does exist is eternal and immutable. Nothing can come from
nothing. Whatever is must have come from Him. The pro-
duced is then identical with that which produces. If not, some-
thing has arisen which was not in the cause from which it arose.
This is absurd, and therefore, said Xenophanes, all that is really
being is God. He is One and all things."^
Parmenides did not lift his eyes to the immensity of heaven
to see the One. He did not believe in the representations
♦Professor Thompson says that Xenophanes carefully distingmshed the Deity
from the outward universe on the one liand, and fi'om the Non-Ens on the other.
It was Parmenides who first imagined the necessity of identifying plurality
with the Non-Ens, in other words, of denying reality to the outward phenom-
enal world ; so that there seems no ground for qualifying the theology of ^
Xenophanes with the epithet " Pantheistic."
Vf/
62 PAUMENIDES.
of the senses. All that is merely appearance, delusion. Be-
coming and departing, being and non-being, change of place
and vicissitude of circumstance — all which men generally re-
gard as realities, are merely names. Whatever is is, there
cannot then be anything produced. It cannot he in part and
in part produced. If it has once been, or is yet to be, then
it is not. An existence only to come, or a becoming which im-
plies a previous non-existence takes away all idea of being, so that
being must be always or never. There is a reason in man by which
he knows that pure Being is that which is free from change of
time, or of place. The senses reveal the manifold, but that is only
deception. Thought acquaints us with pure being, and is
itself identical with that being. It is opposed to the manifold,
and the changeable which indeed do not exist, and therefore
cannot be objects of thought. All things which really exist are
one, and this existence is without change. It pervades all space.
This one is not the collected manifold as revealed by the senses,
but the one substratum which is the foundation and reality of
all apparent existence. Parmenides does not call it God. His
philosophy is a science of being and knowing. He denies the
existence of the many : yet he is compelled to regard it as in
some way existing. It exists in the sensuous representation.
All men so perceive it to exist. Parmenides must, therefore,
make an effort to explain how the world of phemonema has this
apparent existence. Being and non-being set themselves as it
were over against each other in ppite of the philosopher. He
denies that the latter is anything, and yet he must treat it as if
it were a something. There must be a One prior to the multi-
tude of beings. Every thing which is participated subsists in
others which participate it. It has then a progression into
being from that which cannot be participated. That which is
most profoundly united, or simply being is one and many;
but in the order of beings this multitude is occult and charac-
terized by the nature of the One. Since there is then every-
where a monad prior to the multitude we must suspend all
beings from the proper Monad. In souls the Monad of souls
is established in an order more ancient than the multitude of
souls, and about this as a centre all souls converge ; divine souls
in the first rank ; their attendants next, and after these the co-
attendants, as Socrates says in the Phaedrus, Therefore the
Monad of all beings is prior to all beings, and so Parmenides
calls it the 0/ie.^
* " This truth alone it now remains to tell,
ZBNO AND MELISSUS. 63
The work of Zeno and Melissus was to annihilate completely
this lingering duality. They did this by showing that no know-
ledge could be derived from the senses ; that from the very con-
ception of being the manifold could not exist, and, therefore,
belief in its existence was contradictory and absurd. "We
cannot," says Melissus, " determine the quantity of anything
without taking for granted its existence. But that which is real
cannot be finite, it must be infinite, not in s])ace but in time.''^
It fills all time, and must always be the same. The multiplicity
of changeable things which the senses reveal, can only be
deception. The appearance is in us. The reality is nowhere.
If the apparent things actually existed, they could not change.
A that would remain what it is in the reality of its being
whatever be the representation to our senses or whatever the
subjective condition and circumstances of the representation.
Zeno maintained the non-existence of the phenomenal. His
argument was that in dividing matter, we must in thought reach
a stage where divisibility ceases to be possible — where the sub-
ject of division becomes a mathematical point, whicii has no
real existence, and as all experience is found to be contradictory,
no objective reahty can be deduced from it. The only way to
certainty of knowledge is to establish the conclusions of the
pure reason and to explain phenomena for a mere illusion of the
senses.
Heraclitus. — TheEleatics tried to end the Dualism between
the permanent and the changing by denying reality to the latter.
But the phenomena remain as that which is given in the experi-
ence of the senses. There was still the one and the many. The
That in this path One Being we shall find,
As numerous tokens manifestly show ;
And there its character, without decay ;
And unbeg'otten, stable without end —
Only begotten, whole, nor once it was,
Nor will hereafter be, since now 'tis all ;
At once collected, a continued one.
From whence its source or growth could you explain ?
Not from non-being Avhich no mind can see,
Nor speech reveal ; since as of being void,
Tis not an object of the mental eye,
But, as from no one it derived its birth,
Say, why in time posterior, it begun.
Rather in some prior time to be ?
Then must it wholly be or wholly not.
For never will the power of faith permit
That aught should ever into being rise."
Parmenides, Translated by Thomas Taylor.
64 HERACLITUS.
unity of reason and the sensuous multiplicity. Heraclitus
undertook to reconcile tlienij and to show how both existed
in a perfect monism ; the one in the many and the many in
the one; so that true being vras neither the one nor the
many, but the union — the flux and reflux — the Becoming. Hera-
clitus's doctrine is generally acknowledged to be obscure. Cud-
worth calls him a " confounded philosopher," and Socrates, with
gentle irony, said of his book concerning nature, that what
he understood of it was excellent, and he had no doubt that
what he did not understand was equally good. Regarding him
as coming after Parmenides and engaged w^ith the same problems
as the Eleatics, we may conceive him as asking the question,
"What is the universe?" Is it being or non-being ? and he
answers, " It is neither because it is both." All is and all is not ;
while it comes into being it is, yet fortliwith it ceases to be.
There is r<o continuance of anything ; the only reality is an
eternal Becoming. Into the same strejim we descend, and jet it
is not the same stream. We are, and at the same time we are
not. We cannot possibly descend twice into the same stream,
for it is always scattering and collecting itself again, or rather
it at the same time flows to us and flows from us. The reality
of being is not an eternal rest, but a ceaseless change. Hera-
clihis does not, like the Eleatics, distrust the senses, he holds
them for true sources of knowledge, channels whereby we
drink in the universal intelligence, and become partakers of the
common reason. We arrive at truth in proportion as we partake of
this reason. Whatever is particular as opposed to it is false ;
" Inhaling through the breath the universal Ether, which is
the Divine Beason, we become conscious. In sleep we are
unconscious, but on waking we again become intelligent, for in
sleep, when the organs of the sense are closed, the mind within
is shut out from aU sympathy with the surrounding ether, the
universal reason ; and the only connecting medium is the breath,
as it were, a root. By this separation the mind loses the power
of recollection. Nevertheless, on awakening, the mind repairs
its memory through the senses, as it were through inlets, thus
coming into contact with the surrounding ether, it resumes its
intelligence. As fuel, when brought near the fire, is altered,
and becomes fiery, but on being removed again, becomes extin-
guished; so too the portion of the all-embracing, which sojourns
in our body, becomes more irrational when separated from it,
but, on the restoration of this connection through its many
HERACLITUS AND THE FIRE WORSHIPPERS. 65
pores and inlets, it again becomes similar to the whole."'^*
This doctrine, as here announced, may be contrasted with
Eleaticism, which found certitude only in pure reason, while
HcracUtus finds the senses to be means of communication
between the mind and the universal reason ; yet, after the
contrast the doctrine of the unity of being is the same. With
the one, reality is only in the permanent ; with the other, it
is in the Becoming. In both cases the One is all. Heraclitus
w^as originally of the Ionic school, but some call him a disciple
of Xenophanes. Aristotle says that he took fire as the first prin-
ciple in the same way as Thales took water and Anaximenes
air. " The universe," said Heraclitus, *' always was, is, and ever
will be a hving fire, unchanged, and at the same time endowed
with the power of thinking and knowing." f The relation be-
tween this fire and the Becoming we do not know, and can
only conjecture. Had Heraclitus been in Persia ? J Was he
a worshipper of fire ? Had he learned of Ormuzd — the fountain
of light — -the all-embracing element whence all things flow?
And did he, like the Persians with an indifferential difference,
call it now the symbol of the first principle of creation, and
again the principle itself? By this fire Heraclitus illustrates
the eternal transformation and transposition of the Becoming.
He makes it the substratum of movement, the origin and energy
of existence. In the strife of hght and darkness the universe
arose. " Strife," he says " is the parent of all things. The one,
by separating itself from itself, unites itself again." In another
place he says, ^' Unite the whole and the not- whole, the coal-
escing and the not-coalescing, the harmonious and the discordant,
and thus we have the one Becoming from the All, and the all
from the One."
Empedocles. — To what school Empedocles belonged, is a
* The human soul, says Heraclitus, as it is endowed with reason is an
emanation from the universal mind ; but it is united to an animal nature in
common with the inferior orders of creation. Man breathes the universal soul
or mind, and readily unites with creature intelligence in a state of watching ;
sleep being an immediate and temporary suspension of this communication.
f The fire of Heraclitus is endowed with spiritual attributes ; Aristotle calls
it " soul " and " incorporeal." It is the common ground of the phenomena,
both of mind and matter. It is not only the anunating, but also the intelligent
and regulative principle of the universe : the universal word or reason which
it behoves all men to follow. This interpretation seems to materialize mind,
but it also spu'itualizes matter and makes the moveable one of Heraclitus, the
Becoming, as immaterial as the resting One of the Eleatics, which is Being.—
Professor Thompson's Notes to Archer Butler's Lectures on Philosophj.
X Professor Thompson is of opinion that Heraclitus never was in Persia*
66 EMPEDOCLES.
question left undecided by Aristotle. With the Eleatics, he
distrusted the senses. Regarding human and divine reason as
one, he found in reason, the source of knowledge. In placing
the origin of the universe in material elements, he seems
allied to the Ionic school ; but he separates from them in assum-
ing four original or root elements instead of one."^ Of these he
makes fire the most important, and thus seems to approach
Heraclitus. These elements are each original and eternal.
They are mingled again by the working of two powers — strife
and friendship. Men call these changes, birth and death, but
in reality there is neither birth nor death. Nothing can be
produced which has not always existed, and nothing which has
once existed can ever cease to be. This indeed is the funda-
mental doctrine of the philosophy of Empedocles. It is truly
Eleatic. But to his doctrine of separating and co-mingling
elements, he seems to have added the Becoming of Heraclitus,
not however purely, for in Empodocles' belief the elements do
not change in themselves, but only in their relations. The four
elements are eternal, yet not as material elements, but as ideal
existences in the Divine mind. The world as revealed to the
senses is but a copy. The world intellectual is the type. The
latter, being the ideal, is the reality of the former, which is
only phenomenal. The root elements exist eternally in the One.
The separating and uniting which we see incessantly at work
are caused by discord and friendship. As these root-elements
are the original thoughts of the Supreme, and as these undergo
continual transformations, so the being of the supreme One is
interfused throughout the universe. His essence pervades all.
All life and intelhgence are the manifestations of the Divine
Mind. God is not like anything which can be seen or touched,
or imaged by human intellect. He is an Infinite Mind. Here
Empedocles joined with Xenophanes in opposition to the popular
deities of the mythology. He was a great enemy to the gods
of Homer. Karsten describes Empedocles' theology as an apoth-
eosis of nature aud pre-eminently Pantheistic, that is, in the
sense of merely worshipping external nature. But the verses of
Empedocles evidently mean more than this. Polytheism was an
^ apotheosis of Nature ; but the Pantheism of Empedocles was
\ the worship of Being. His God is not the phenomenal, but the
* Empedocles called the original uncreated universe a sphere or globe. It
contained in its bosom the four elements — a syncretism of the primajval chaos.
His love and hatred are evidently suggested by the eternal strife, the Heracli-
teau father of all things. — Professor Thompson's Notes.
ANAXAGORAS. 67
real, and is allied to the One of Parmenides. Only on this
ground could he have opposed the worship of the popular
deities. But we have seen in another place that this worship of
Being had nearly the same origin as the worship of natural
powers and objects. The one was the goal of reason, the other
was the result of imagination. The one made the theology of the
philosopher, the other that of the multitude. Reason protested
against Polytheism, which Empedocles could not have done had
his theology been merely a deification of phenomenal nature.
Tradition says that Empedocles proclaimed himself divine, and
to prove it, leaped into the crater of Mount Etna. The moun-
tain disproved his divinity by casting up his sandal. This may
be true or it may be only the popular interpretation of his
identification of the human and the divine Reason.
Anaxagoras. — To understand fully the development of the
theological sentiment among the Greeks, it is necessary to notice
Anaxagoras, the great father of all Anti-Pantheistic theologians.
What men are saying to day against Pantheism was said with
equal force by Anaxagoras, and the more vulnerable parts of
his theology are as ill defended by church doctors as they were
by this old Greek. He was no metaphysician, but a man who
believed his senses, and had never made sufficient enquiries into
the nature of reason to be troubled with the questions that
perplexed Zeno or Parmenides. Why should he doubt the
reality of the visible world ? Was it not there before his eyes ?
and why should he suppose any hidden relationship between
mind and matter ? Was not mind the active principle, and
matter the passive reality. Why should some material element
be the first being, and not that mind which is the ruling power
over matter ? God is mind, and matter is something arranged
by Him. What theology can be more simple ? No questions
of the co-existence of a material finite and an immaterial in-
finite stood in the way of Anaxagoras. Speculations on the at-
tributes of time and space did not concern him. Why should an
infinite Being differ from a finite, except in being greater, and
why otherwise should an infinite Mind not be the same as a
finite mind ? G od made the world as a man makes a machine.
He gave it laws and left it to the operation of laws, interfering
only when it needs repair. In His far off dwelling place be-
yond the boundaries of the universe He beheld His workman-
ship, and was present to it as a man is present to the objects
perceived by his sense of sight.
Compared with the other philosophers of the Ionic school,
F 2
68 SOCRATES AND THE SCEPTICS.
Aristotle said " the philosopher of Clazomenae was like a sober
man." Socrates, however, did not estimate him so highly.
" Having one day," says that philosopher, " read a book of
Anaxagoras, who said the divine mind was the cause of all
things, and drew them up in their proper ranks and classes, I
was ravished with joy. I perceived there was nothing more cer-
tain than this principle that mind was the cause of all things."^
Socrates purchased the books of Anaxagoras, and began to
read them with avidity, but he had not proceeded far till he
found his hopes disappointed. The author, he said, *' makes no
further use of this mind, but assigns as the cause of the order
and beauty that prevailed in the world, the air, water, whirl-
wind, and other agencies of nature."
Aristotle, too, on further study was less pleased with Anaxa-
goras, and corrected his own views by coming nearer Parmenides.
In after times the theology of Anaxagoras developed into the
schools of Democritus and Epicurus, who dispensed with the
hypothesis of a world maker, or rather left Him in His far dis-
tant home, reposing in silent dignity, and regarding the world
as unworthy of His interference.
SocEATES AND THE SCEPTICS. — For the Same reason that we
notice Anaxagoras, a few words are required for Socrates and
the Sceptics. The Eleatics had questioned the objective reality
of the phenomenal world on the ground of the uncertainty of
sense knowledge ; but if the objects of sense are denied reality,
why, said the Sceptics, should it be granted to the subjects of
reason. Knowledge is only relative. Our perceptions are differ-
ent at different times and in different states. How do we know
that truth is not beyond the reach of the human mind? *'Man,"
said Protagoras, " is the measure of all things : what he per-
ceives is, but its existence is only subjective — it exists only
for him. The universal application of this principle ended in
universal scepticism. In the light of it, knowledge is a dream,
religion is superstition, might is right, and laws, but the con-
ventional regulations of governments and states.
Socrates occupied himself solely with Ethics.f He tried to
* Anaxagoras says that all things at the beginning arose, and then came
the world's Intelligence and shaped and embellished every individual species,
wherefore it was called the great Intelligence. — Diogenes Laertius.
t Socrates employed himself about Ethics, and entu-ely neglected the specu-
lation respecting the whole of nature, in morals indeed investigating the
universals and applying himself to definitions. Plato approving this, his in-
vestigation of morals, adopted this much of his doctiine, that these definitions
respect other things and ai'e not conversant with anything sensible. — Aristotle.
PLATO. 69
find in reason a certain foundation for morals. The Sceptic
Said " What I perceive to be true is true only to me ; my
knowledge is not merely subjective, but it is individual, and
therefore empiricaL" " That," Socrates would have said, " may
be so with you as an individual, but not as 41 partaker of the
universal reason. Human knowledge is not merely relative and
empirical, for the measure of all things is not the individual, but
the universal man. Morality has a basis in universal reason.
It is something eternal, immutable, absolute.
Consistently with his purely ethical studies, Socrates sought
in God a Being who answered to the moral necessities of the
heart. From his youth he felt himself drawn towards the
'' pure and unchangeable mind." His God w^as the " mind" of
Anaxagoras ; but Socrates did not introduce Him as simply
making the world. He also preserves it, He is the God of provi-
dence as well as of creation. He takes care of all. Nothing-
is unworthy of His regard — nothing too mean for Him to be
indifferent to it. He is at once the author and king of the
world.
Plato. — Socrates sought to establish a foundation for moral
truth. He found it in absolute reason.^ In the same reason
Plato found a basis for the truth of our knowledge of the reality
of being. It comes not from the senses, but from the intercourse
of our reason with the Divine. There can be no science
derived from the perceptions of sense. They cannot reach
that which is. They never go beyond phenomena. All their
intercourse is with the apparent. But the mind has reminis-
cences of its former knowledge. Though now imprisoned in
the body, it has its home in the bosom of the Eternal. It
remembers the truth it once knew when it stood face to face
with real existence. Truth belongs to the mind. Thoughts
* This connection between Socrates and Plato is only inferential, and may
be disputed. His '* Knowledge," according to Professor Thompson, Avas
a] knowledge of consequences generalized from experience. On this ground
Grote claims Socrates for a " Utilitarian,"
According to Xenophon, Socrates regarded the soul of man as allied to the
Divine mind, not by its essence but by its nature elevated by reason above
the rank of the mere animal creation.
It appears from the Pkaedo that Socrates had the Budhist notion of the
'«Tetchedness of the present existence. He looks upon the union of a body
with the soul as a penalty. By the pre-existenco of the soul he seems to
mean its identity with the divine Being. He calls the soul " That which w."
In the Gorgias again, he says, " I should not wonder if Em'ipides speaks the
the truth when he says ' Who knows 'v\hcthcr to live is not death, and to
die, life.' "
70 IS PLATO'S GOD A PEKSON ?
are verities. To limit the reality of existence to the Oue^
Parmenides denied it to the ynanifold, and Heraclitus denied it
to both the One and the many that he might ascribe it to the
Becoming. But Plato saw in the One* the thinker, and in the
manifold his thoughts. And who shall separate between the
mind and its tlit)ughts ? Both are one. Both are realities,
and therefore we ascribe real existence both to the one and the
manifold. Objects of sense have an existence so far as they
participate in the ideal. Thus, man, house, table, exist but
only because the ideas, man, house, table, are real existences.
Our conceptions become perceptions. The manifold has thus
a double existence. One in its ideals, another in phenomena.
The latter is the world of sense, what men call the material,
and what the vulgar suppose to be reality. But its existence is
only borrowed. It is a shadow — a copy of that which is real,
the reaUties are the ideas, the architypes. The manifold then
is at once bemg, and the semblance of being.
But these ideas, are they identical with God or distinct from
God ? Plato answers sometimes that they are identical, and at
other times that they are distinct from God. This lies at the root
of Plato's theology, and leaves an uncertainty whether God in
his system is merely abstract Being or a personal creative Deity.
* This is only an interpretation of Plato. He does not call God the One,
he calls Him Being. " Plato's one," says Professor Thompson, " is relation, a
thought as against a thing or perception, a genus as opposed to individuals, &c.,
he rejects the absolute One of Parmenides at least under that name. Mind
is with him the giver of the limit not the limit itself ; the efficient rather than
the formal cause ; that cause which blends the limit with the unlimited ; in
short, a creative energy, if we may not say, conscious Creator."
Warbm-ton ascribes the notion of the derivation of the souls of 'men from
the Divine essence, and their final resolution into it to all the philosophers of
antiquity, without exception. Archer Butler thiixks this opinion unsup-
ported in the case of Platonism, as it came from the hands of Plato ; yet he says,
" Plato may in the last analysis have embraced all things in some mysterious
unity ; an idea which in some vague sense it is impossible for himaan reason
to avoid."
According to the Timaeus the universe was generated, it was modelled after
an eternal pattern. It is a blessed god, having its soul fixed in the centre, yet
existing throughout the whole. The soul was made before the body. Between
soul and body there is an intermediate, made up of the indivisible and divisible
essence. The three are mingled into one. The eternal universe was a living
existence. ; so the deity tried to make the sensible universe, as far as he could,
similarly perfect. Time was generated with the universe. Eternity is a unity.
The stars are generated gods, li-\dng existences endowed with souls. Fire,
water, &c., should not be called " this " or " that" not being " things." Before
the creation of the universe there were being, place, and generation. The charge
of producing mortal natm-es was committed by the Creator to his offspring the
junior gods.
IDEAS AND PHENOMENA. 71
In the one case the ideas are the being of God ; in the other
God is a Being who creates the universe after the pattern of the
ideas. But where is the phenomenal world ? Do the ideas
create the phenomenal or is it eternal ? When God made the
world, He made it after the ideal pattern, but on what did he
impress the idea ? Here Plato ascribes eternity to that which
is non-existent, matter. This shadowy sdmblance of being
existed. It was that in which the idea took shape and form,
and yet it is nothing.^ It has the capacity to receive any
variety of form, yet it is undetermined, shapeless, and invisible.
It receives and preserves being, only as it has in itself the ideal
form. The visible universe is the result of ideas with this
substratum of non-existence. The universal mind is God. He
is the highest of our ideas, and the source of all thinking and
knowing. Re is *' the Good.^'^ In this supreme Idea all ideas
have their ground and centre. Though itself exalted above -
division, yet in it the perceiver and the perceived, the subject
and the object, the ideal and the real, are all one.
In returning to the Socratic faith in the capacity of the mind
to know the truth, and applying it to the nature of essence,
Plato in reality returned to Eleatic ground, and in following out
his method, he arrived at the absolute reality in the same way as
Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno, had done before him. 'Ilie
God of reason was Being absolute.f God must be this, and yet
Plato recoiled from the immoveable Deity of the Eleatics. God
is this, but He is something else even if it it be something in-
consistent with this. He is moveable ; He is intelligent ; He
is mind ; the king of the world ; the father of the universe ;
God who according to reason must be entirely unlike man, must
yet again have attributes corresponding to those of men.
Aristotle. — At the point where Plato took up the ground
of Socrates, Aristotle differed from Plato. He said that Plato
* Plato, says Archer Butler, calls matter the unlimited ; intelligence, the
the lijuit — one and many — single and multiple — indivisible and divisible —
unchangeable and changeable — absolute and relative — exami^le and copy —
the good and the manifestation of the good — the object of science, eternal being
and the object of opinions. Professor Thompson adds, " Bare matter lis
scarcely distinguished from place."
f Plato dedicated [his mature powers to the task of reconciling the Epheslan
doctrine of a flux, and becoming with- the Eleatic principle of Parmenides. — ■
Professor Thompson's Notes.
Plato, like most philosophers after Anaxagoras, made the supreme Being
to be Intelligence, but in other respects left His nature undefined or rather
indefinite though the variety of definition, a conception floating vaguely be- ^x
tween Theism and Pantheism. — Macka?/'s Progress.
<^ ARISTOTLE.
had never proved liow ideas have an objective reality, nor had
he even rationally explained how objects of sense participate in
the ideal. Socrates proclaimed the universal as the essence of
the individual — and so far he was right. Plato raised the con-
ception of a universal to the rank of being, independent of the
individual, and there, said Aristotle, Plato was wrong. Aris-
totle's method differed so much from Plato's that these two
philosophers have come to be regarded as the respective re-
presentatives of the two great classes of minds into which all
men may be divided. But their conclusions differ less than
their methods.
Aristotle began with observations on the external world, but he
found that in this way he could never get beyond the external.
Sense acquunts us only with individual existence. We must
get beyond this. We do get beyond this, for we have the
knowledge of the universals. We have abstract ideas of things.
Whence are these ? From reason. The universal and the
individual are then co-existent. We cannot separate a thing
from our conception of it. The universal is immanent in the
individual. It is as Plato said, the essence of the individual, but
it is not itself independent of the individual. It is like form to
the material in which form has its existence, yet only by means
of the universal can we know the essence of any one particular
thing. Though not independent, it is yet that which is actual,
while the individual is only the potential. The absolute actuality
is mind, and matter is the same essence in its potential being.
There are four first causes, or first principles. Matter, form,
moving cause, and end. As in a house there is the matter, the
conception, the worker, and the actual house. These four
determinations of all being resolve themselves into the funda-
mental ones of matter and form. The moving cause, form and
end, stand together as opposed to matter. The last is that
abiding something which lies at the basis of all becoming, and
yet in its o^vn being it is different from anything which has be-
come. Whatever is, has been before potentially. Individual
beings are produced by the coalescing of potential being and
pure form. Every " That " is a meeting of potential and
actual being. But there is a guiding power superintending
these processes of progression, ^hat power is a prime activity,
a pure actuality, a first Mover. That Mover is God. The re-
lation of the Divine to that of the world is left by Aristotle
undertermined. In some places he seems to meet Plato, but in
others he separates God from all being and becoming, con-
THE STOICS. 78
templating Him as absolutely mind, not dwelling in the universe
and moving it as the soul moves the body; but moving it
externally, Himself unmoved and free from nature. The world
has a soul, but it is not God. God is maker of the world soul,
which is the movable mover outside of the immoveable Mover.
" Aristotle's leaning was, seemingly, to a personal God, not a
being of parts and passions, but a substantial head of all the
categories of being. The doctrine of Anaxagoras revived out
of a more elaborate and profound analysis of nature. Soon,
however, the vision of personality is withdrawn. We have,
in fact, reached that culminating point in thought where the
real blends with the ideal ; moral action and objective thought
as well as material body are excluded. The Divine action on
the world retains its veil of impenetrable mystery, and to the
utmost ingenuity of research presents but a contradiction. God
becomes the formal, efficient, final cause. He is the one Form
comprising all forms. Acting and working is denied him, only
activity of thought is ascribed to Him. The object of the
absolute thought is the absolute good. In contemplating it the
supreme Finality can but contemplate itself. Its immutable
action is as the uniform self-circling revolution of the stellar
heavens, and as all thought consists in contact and combinatioij.
wdth the things thought, so all material inference being here
excluded, the distinction of subject and object vanishes in
complete identification, and the Divine thought is the thinking
of thought. The energy of mind is life, and God is that
energy in its purity and perfection. He is therefore life itself,
eternal and perfect. This indeed seems all that is meant by
the term God. ' Such,' says Aristotle, ' is the principle on
which nature and the world depend.' If it be asked how these
transcendent things came to be a part of a professedly empirical
philosophy, and whence our knowledge of them, he replies that
there is a faculty in the soul bearing the same relation to its
proper objects as sensation does to phenomena, a faculty by
which we recognize the object with certainty."
The Stoics. — Plato and most of his predecessors endeavored
to reduce all being to unity by denying reality to matter. As
he admitted only reason for a channel of knowledge, he was
consistent in regarding matter as non -being. But Aristotle,
believing his senses as well as his reason, left the dualism mind
and matter unreconciled. With Plato God was One and all
things. With Aristotle God was One, and the universe a
distinct existence. But as nothing can be which has not been
74 SENSE ANS REASON.
before. As there can be no addition to the totality of existence,
Aristotle made two eternals, the one Form, the other Matter.
God and the material from which the universe was made. The
Stoics were not satisfied with the duality. They felt with Plato,
that all must be one ; that an infinite cannot leave a finite
standing over against it. They were willing to trust the
testimony of sense, and to admit that logically mind and matter
God and the world are separate and distinct, yet the Stoics
contended that actually they must be one. To show how God
and the universe were distinct, and yet one was the problem of
Zeno and his disciples. They did this by a philosophy of
common sense, in which they acknowledged the truth both of
our conceptions and our perceptions. The sensuous impression
of an external object they looked upon as a revelation to the
mind of the object itself. Sense furnished the materials of
knowledge. Reason compared them and formed ideas. But
if in this way all ideas came from the senses, how can we have
an idea of pure spirit ? The Stoics were consistent, they
denied that we have such an idea, and with that they denied
the existence of anything incorporeal. That every existence
must have a body was the doctrine which moulded the whole
of the theology of the Stoics. They did not define what a
body was, that was impossible, bodies, beings of all kinds from
the spiritual to the grossly material. But the very indefiniteness
in which they left the idea of the corporeal, showed that they
were far removed from the school of Epicurus. Their great
enquiry was concerning the world — whence it is. Evidently it
is not eternal as Aristotle supposed, since it is something pro-
duced. What we know of the world producer must be learned
from the world itself. Being is evidently divisible into the
active and the passive. A producing and a produced are the
two obvious principles in the actual world. There must then
be a similar two-foldness in the Original of the world, an active
principle and a passive — the one a living power, the other a
passive potentiality — the one that from which everything is, the
other that through which everything is. The passive is the
original matter — a lifeless and inert substance. The active is
the efficient cause or producing power. But this cause must
be corporeal, and yet how can we conceive of it under any
known form of body. The Stoics tried to separate the living
power which creates the universe from every idea of gross
matter, and at the same time they felt that to have a definite
conception of that power we must clothe it with some material
WORLD ORDER. 75
form. The active principle was therefore conceived as having for
its substratum the nature of external fire, but to protect this
representation from the misconception of ordinary minds, they
also called it spirit.
The first expression of the working of the active principle is
in forming the primary elements from the original matter ; the
second, in forming bodies. The active principle thus working
externally in unorganized nature Chrysippus calls the binding
power, and supposes the air to be its substratum or substance.
This power acting in its higher operations producing the life of
nature, and animating all forms of organism from the humblest
plant to the highest spirit-life he calls the ether, but though
the one active principle has many powers and functions, it is
still but one, as the human mind with all its faculties is an
undivided unity. This active principle is again considered as
the original source of all right :and morality — the principle of
law-giving — the world order. The moral order is therefore of
the essence of God, or in other words, this moral order is our
divinest conception of the nature of God, for in this God ap-
pears as the unchangeable and the eternal, the absolute Being
whose existence implies the highest rectitude, wisdom, and per-
fection. Tiedemann says of the Stoics — " Among all the phi-
losophers of antiquity, none defended the existence of God with
so warm a zeal or so many and so powerful arguments.'' The
chief of these was the undeniable existence of right in the world.
This shows a relationship between man and God, and the exist-
ence of a Deity as a moral Being, as the principle of moral law-
giving and ^world order, that is, of right and morality. ^ In
the last analysis there is in reality but one Being existing.
We may call Him God, or we may call Him the universe.
The one is God active, the other is God passive. The one is
the life, the other is the body which is animated by the life.
The one is the creative energy, the other is the ground or sub-
stratum in which this energy is at work, and to which it is
united. God is the soul of the great animal world. He is the
universal Reason which rules over all, and permeates all. He
is that gracious providence which cares for the individual as
well as for the all. He is infinitely wise. His nature is the
basis of law, forbidding evil and commanding good. By the
very order of creation He punishes them that do evil, and
rewards them that do well, being in Himself perfectly just and
righteous. He is not a spirit, for that is nothing ; as we have
no idea corresponding to such an existence, but He is the
7G GOD THE ONLY REAL BEING.
subtlest element of matter. He is in the world as those wonder-
working powers and ever-creating energies which we see in
all nature, but whose essence baffles our reason to penetrate.
He is the most mysterious of all things we know, and more
mysterious than all mysteries. He is the divine Ether. He
is the breath that passes through all nature; He is the fire
that kindles the universe. From Him issues forth that stream
of divine life in which nature lives, and which flowing forth into
all her channels makes her rejoice to live. Seneca, the Roman
representative of the philosophers of the porch, calls God the
Maker of the universe, the Judge and Preserver of the world
the Being upon whom all things depend — the spirit of the
world; and then he adds, "Every name belongs to Him — all
things spring from Him. We live by His breath ; He is all,
in all EUs parts ; He sustains Himself by His own might. His
divine breath is diffused through all things small and great.
His power ^nd his presence extend to all. He is the God of
heaven and of all the gods. The divine powers which we
worship singly are all subject to Him."
That the ground of all things is one reality, and that that
reality is God, is the burden of nearly all the speculations of
the Greeks, and the end of all their enquiries. They deny
reality to created things lest two realities existing together
might imply two everlasting beings, which is contradictory to
the utterances of reason concerning being. The individual
things proceed from God, and so far as they are real they are
of God, but in their individuality they are distinct from God,
what that reality of things is, each school has tried to express,
but all the expressions involve a contradiction as they express
something definite, while God is beyond definition — the undefin-
ed and the infinite.
The Materials of this Chapter are gathered from Schweglers's History of
Philosophy, Mr. Lewes' Biographical History, Mr. Maurice's volumes on Greek
Philosophy in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, Archer Butler's Lectures on
Philosophy, Mackay's Progress of the Intellect among the Greeks ; the His-
tories of Brucker, Eitter, and Tennemann ; with the Translations of Plato in
Bohn's Library, and Thomas Taylor's Translations of Aristotle.
CHAPTER IV.
PHILOSOPHY OF THE JEWS.
THE Hebrew Scriptures begin with the creation of the world.
The creating God or gods is called Mohwi, " a name," says
Gesenius, "retained from Polytheism and which means the
higher powers or intelligences.""^ That the sacred writer should
use a word borrowed from Polytheism will not surprise those who
understand the nature of language, but that the writer himself
had passed from Polytheism to the belief of the One God is
evident from the whole of the record of creation, and confirmed
by the succeeding history. To Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the
name of God was M Sliaddai. To Moses God revealed Himself
by the new name Jehovah or I AM. The God of Moses was
pure Being. It was the name Jehovah which kept the Jews from
idolatry. In proportion as they ceased to think of their Deliver-
er as the unspeakable Being they were in danger of worship-
ping the gods of the nations. " This new name," as Dean Stanley
says," though itself penetrating into the most abstract metaphysi-
cal idea of God, yet in its effect was the very opposite of a mere
abstraction." The old Jews did not speculate about the Essence
of God, though they had reached the highest conception of that
Essence. Guarded by the declaration once for all that the nature
of God was mysterious and His name ineffable, they were free to
make Him a person — to ascribe to Him attributes and to repre-
sent Him as made in the image of man. He has hands and feet.
He rules as a king, dwelling with Israel in Canaan, protecting
them with His mighty arm, and watching over them with ever
open eyes, which are in every place, beholding the evil and the
good. All the mighty objects of nature are summoned to ex-
press God. The great mountains are the mountains of God ; the
* Hebrew grammarians find a similar plurality in the Godhead indicated by
the title Jehovah Sabaoth, Lord of hosts. Jehovah is not here in the constnict
state, so thatthe proper translation should be without the " of." The words
are in apposition, and the meaning is, that in Jehovah, all hosts are comprized.
He is all in all. By the Eabbinical wiiters, God is called Makom, place,
because He is the place of everything.
78 GOD AND NATURE.
tall trees are the trees of God ; and the mighty rivers the rivers
of God. He is the Rock of safety, whose way is perfect. He
maketh Lebanon and Sirion to skip like a young unicorn. It is
His voice that roars in the raging of the waters ; His majesty
that speaks in the thunder ; and when the storm and tempest
break down the mighty cedars, it is the voice of the Lord, yea,
it is the Lord who breaketh the cedars of Libanus. This psalm^
expresses the full extent to which the old Hebrews went in the
identification of God and nature. They never surpassed this
even in poetry ; and never forgot that the Lord sitteth above the
water floods, and that the Lord is king for ever. The personify-
ing tendency natural to a race of men who had to fight for their
own national existence, as well as for the doctrine of the divine
Unity, interfered with all speculation concerning the divine Es-
sence. It exposed them however to the idolatry against which
their national existence was meant to be a continual witness.
The search for symbols led them to liken God to things in heaven
and earth and the waters under the earth. The world, according
to Josephus, is " the purple temple of God," and to imitate
this temple, the Jews built the tabernacle, and afterwards the
great temple of God at Jerusalem. The symbols permitted
them by Moses and David and Solomon became objects of w^or-
ship. The images borrowed from nature to express God pre-
pared them for the worship of Baal and Ashteroth, the sun,
moon, and stars, the gods of the Sidonians, of Chaldea, and
the nations round about them.
We may perhaps fairly date the origin of Jewish philosophy
from the time of the Captivity. The metaphysical idea in-
volved in the name of Jehovah becomes prominent and acts its
part as the personifying idea had done before it. The sin of
the Jews is no longer idolatry. They are henceforth without
TerapJiim.-\ The unity of God w^as not unknown either to the
Chaldeans or the Persians. Abraham only conserved a
doctrine well-known to his ancestors of Chaldea, but in his day
almost hidden by the prevailing idolatry. When the Jews went
into Babylon and Persia, did they hear again from the sages
the philosophical notion of God, or did the idea implied in the
name I AM come naturally to its proper development ? The
answer is immaterial. The Jewish Rabbis who prosecuted the
metaphysical idea of God, maintained that their speculations
were familiar to learned Jews, and that though the Scriptures
* Psalm xxix. f Hosea iii, 4.
JUDAISM AND GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 79
Speak of God as a person, which was a necessity of the popular
mind, yet we are to distinguish between the popular aspect of
Jewish theology and that theology itself. The latter was the
Esoteric teaching, the former simply Exoteric. To the Rabbis
was confided the hidden philosophy which the multitude could
not receive. Hoav far Rabbinical philosophy agreed with the
Scriptures or difiered from them must be left for the present an
open question. The Hellenist Jews may have borrowed from
the Greeks and Orientals, or the Greeks and Orientals may have
borrowed from the Jews. Or, again, it may have been that the
philosophies of each were natural developments. Some thoughts
belong universally to the soil of the human intellect, and have
an independent growth among nations that have no intercourse
with each other. But even when a doctrine is borrowed, there
must be previously a disposition to receive, for a borrower will
only borrow what is congenial to his own mind. Religious teach-
ers, as Schleiermacher says, do not choose their disciples, their
disciples choose them. The many points of agreement between
Judaism and the philosophies of the Greeks and Orientals,
leave it open for us to say either that the Heathen got their
wisdom from the Jews or that the roots and germs of Christian
doctrines are revealed to the universal reason. The speculative
Jews have maintained that the philosophy of Judaism as they
understand it was the source and beginning of all philosophies.
Plato is with them but an Attic Moses, and Pythagoras a Greek
philosopher who borrowed the mysteries of Monads and Tetrads
from the chosen people.
We have supposed that from the time of the Captivity, the
Jews had a philosophy of religion ; but of this philosophy the
traces are few, and the authorites uncertain, until near the be-
ginning of the christian era. Eusebius has preserved some
fragments of Aristobulus supposed to be the Alexandrian Jew
mentioned in the Maccabees as King Ptolemy's instructor. In
these fragments Aristobulus clearly distinguishes between God
Himself, as the first God, the inefi*able and invisible, and God
as manifested in the phenomenal world. And in the letter as-
cribed to Aristeas, librarian to Ptolemy Philadelphus, we see
Judaism and Hellenism forming so near an alliance that each
regards the other as but a different form of itself. Aristeas
informs Ptolemy that the same God who gave him his kingdom
gave the Jews their laws. " They worship Him," says Aristeas,
" who created all, provides for all, and is prayed to by all, and
especially by us, only under another name." And Eleazar, the
80 GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND THE APOCRYPHA.
high priest of Jerusalem, when asked by Aristeas if it was not
unworthy of God to give laws concerning meats, such as those
given to the Jews, answered '' that they were indeed insignificant;
and though they served to keep the Jews as a distinct people,
yet they had beyond this a deep allegorical meaning. " The
great doctrine of Moses," said Eleazar, " is, that the power
of this one God is through all things ; " words in which the
students of Alexandrian philosophy have seen an intimation of
that Spirit which is through all and in all. It has been thought,
too, that in the Greek version of the Scriptures made at Alex-
andria, there are evident marks of the influence of Greek thought
on the minds of the translators, who seem often to have chosen
such words as left the ground clear for a Platonic interpretation,
and sometimes, even to suggest it. Some of the most remark-
able of these are the translation of the name of God. " I am
that I AM," which the Seventy render '' I am He that IS ; "
and the second verse of the first chapter of Genesis, where the
Hebrew words which simply mean that the earth was confusion,
are translated " The earth was invisible and unformed," pointing
it has been supposed, to the ideal or typical creation of Plato,
which preceeded the material. " The Lord of hosts " is usually
translated " the Lord of the powers," or, " the Lord of the
powers of heaven," the Greek name for the inferior gods.
The Books of the Apocrypha, which were mostly written by
Hellenist Jews, have also been pressed into this service, but the
evidence they furnish is uncertain. Solomon is made to speak of
himself as good coming undefiled^ into a body; which seems to be
allied to the Platonic idea of the body being the cause of sin.
He is also made to speak of the incorruptible Spiritf of God be-
ino- in all things. But the verses supposed to be most conclusive
are those which speak of wisdom as the creative power of God;
''A pure influence flowing from the glory of the Ahnighty.
She is the brightness of the everlasting light — the unspotted
mirror of the power of God — the image of his goodness ; and
being but one she can do all things, and remaining in herself
she createth all things new and in all ages ; entering into holy
souls she maketh them friends of God and prophets. She pre-
served the first formed father of the world, who was created,
alone, and brought him out of his fall."
* Wisdom of Solomon — viii, 20.
f Wisdom of Solomon — xii, 1.
J Wisdom of Solomon — vii, 25, 6 7, and x, 1.
PIIILO JUDAEUS. 81
Again, the son of Sirach makes wisdom thus praise herself: —
I came out of the mouth of the most High,
And covered the earth as a cloud.
I dwelt in high places,
And my throne is in a cloudy pillar.
I alone compassed the circuit of heaven,
And walked in the bottom of the deep.
In the waves of the sea, and in all the earth,
And in every people and nation, I got a possession.
With all these I sought rest :
And in whose inheritance shall I abide ?
So the Creator of all things gave me a commandment.
And He that made me, caused my tabernacle to rest.
And said, Let thy dwelling be in Jacob,
And thine inheritance in Israel.
He created me from the beginning before the world,
And I shall never fail.
In the holy tabernacle I served before him :
And so was I established in Sion.
Likewise in the beloved city he gave me rest,
And in Jerusalem was my power.
And I took root in an lionorable people,
Even in the portion of the Lord's inheritance.*
* * * * *
I am the mother of fiiir love,
And fear, and knowledge, and holy hope,
I therefore being eternal, am given to all my children,
Which are named of Hun..
That these verses speak of wisdom as the creative power of
God in much the same way as w^isdom is spoken of in heathen
philosophies, is not to be denied. It is also true that they
were composed in Greek, and in a heathen city ; but their like-
ness to the words of wisdom in the book of Proverbs, forbids us
to say that they were borrowed from heathen philosophy. The
writer may indeed have felt the harmony between the thoughts
of the Alexandrians and those of the Jews, and may have de-
lighted to show the Heathen that his nation was already in
possession of a philosophy not inferior to theirs.
But if the influence of Greek philosophy is only imperfectly
discerned in the Apocrypha, or the fragmentary writings of the
Hellenist Jews, all doubt is removed by the works of Philo
Judaeus — the proper representative of Alexandrian Judaism.
We have not indeed any treatise of Philo's on a subject purely
speculative, and consequently, no complete or carefully defined
system of speculation ; but the ideas scattered through his prac-
* Ecclesiasticus xxiv, 3 — 18.
S2 "l AM*' OR BEING,
tical and expository writings, and his unceasing efforts to bring
the teaching of the Old Testament into harmony with these
ideas wherever it seemed to differ from them, sufficiently evi-
dence his obligations to the Greek philosophers.
But how could the Old Testament be made to teach Greek
Philosophy ? The history of a practical nation like the Jews
might be supposed beforehand to have but little relation to the
thoughts of philosophers, who spent their lives in the study of
causes and essences. Often indeed the connection between
thought and action, philosophy and daily life, is closer than we
imagine, and the Old Testament writers may have had metaphysi-
cal thoughts, though they wrote no books on metaphysics. It
is, however, impossible in reading Philo, notwithstanding the
advantage he had in using the Greek version of the Seventy,
not to feel that his interpretations are more frequently read into
the Scriptures than found there. But this need not concern us
here ; we come to Philo's writings neither to refute his doctrines
nor to approve them, but only to trace the character of that
philosophy which manifested itself among the Jews of -Alex-
andria.
The Greek translation of ''I AM "as ''He that IS" at once
allied the Jewish theology to that of Plato ; for, " the Being "
was pre-eminently the name of Plato's supreme Deity. From
this Philo could at once speak of the God of the Jews as the
Eleatics and Platonists had done of the Being without attributes,
of whom nothing:; could be truly affirmed; of whom no likeness
could be made, for He is unlike anything in heaven or earth ;
He is infinite, immutable, and incomprehensible; but these
predicates do not 'say what He is ; only what he is not. Quali-
ties belong to finite beings, not to God. He is wiser than wis-
dom ; fairer than beauty ; stronger than strength. By reason
we know that He is ; but we have no faculty whereby to know
what He is. We aid our feebler thoughts by metaphors and
illustrations from things material. We call Him the primitive
light, from which all light emanates ; the life, from which all life
proceeds; the infinite Intelligence; but of Him, as He is in Him-
self, we only know that He is one, simple, and incapable of des-
truction. He has no name. To Moses He revealed Himself as
" I AM THAT I AM," which, says Philo, is equivalent to
saying "It is my nature to be; not to be described ; but in order
that the human race may not be wholly destitute of any appel-
ation which they may give to the most excellent of beings, I allow
you to use the word Lord as a name." '' So indescribable is the
GOD HAS NO TRUE NAME. 83
living God," he sajs again, '' that even those powers which
minister to Him do not announce to us His proper name." ^' After
the wrestling with the Angel, Jacob said to the invisible Master,
* Tell me Thy name ; ' but He answered, ' Why askest thou my
name ? ' "And so He does not tell him His peculiar and proper
name, for," says He, " it is sufficient for thee to be taught by
ordinary explanations ; but as for names which are the symbols
of created things, do not seek to find them among immortal
natures." " A name can only designate something that is known ;
it brings it into connection with something else. Now, absolute
Being cannot come into relation with something else. It fills
itself; it is sufficient for itself. As before the existence of the
world, so after it, Being is the all. Therefore, God who is ab-
soiute'Being, can have no name." " Indeed," says Philo, '' the
name God does not worthily express the highest Being. It
does not declare Him as He is, it only expresses a relation of
the highest first Principle to the created. In reference to the
universe, God is " the Good," but He is more than that ; He is
more than God. It is enough for the Divine nature to be and
not to be known. He must be unchangeable, because He is per-
fectly simple ; and the most perfect of all beings can be united
with no other." " God docs not mingle with anything else, for
what is mingled with Him must be either better than He is, or
worse, or equal; but there is nothing better or equal; and
nothing worse can be mingled with Him, for then He would be-
come worse, or perhaps annihilated, which it is wrong to suppose."
Without attributes, without names, incomprehensible to the
intellect of man, God is the One, the Monad, Being ; " and
yet," adds Philo, making a still higher effort to express
the ineffable, " the Therapeutse reverence God worthily, for
they consider Him simpler than unity, and more original
than the monad." He is more than life, for " He is the source
of life itself."
'J he necessity of again connecting the divine Being with the
created world and things conceivable and sensuous, after entire-
ly separ.iting between Him and them, involved a contradiction
perhaps more than verbal. But each is a truth distinct by itself,
and both are to be acknowledged as such, even if we cannot see
the possibility of harmonizing them. God, though a simple
essence and unlike things which proceed from each other, is yet
the Cause of all the created universe. The unchangeable Being
thus becomes the Cause, and being the ground essence of all
becoming, that is, the phenomenal, must in some way bo re-
G 2
84 THE DIVINITY OF MAN.
lilted to it. It may be admitted that the universe did not owe
its origin directly to the first Being; for, indeed, the most
beautiful of the sensuous world is unworthy of God ; to say
nothing of the more unworthy part, which to ascribe directly to
God would be blasphemy ; and yet without Him it could not be ;
so that He must be recognized, at least, as the Cause of causes.
The unknowable thus becomes known, though known only as the
unknowable. Thus to be ignorant of Him is truly to know Him.
" Therefore," says Philo, "we, disciples and friends of the prophet
Moses, do not leave off the inquiry concerning that which really
is ; holding fast that to knoAV this, is the goal of fortune, is an
unbroken, life whilst the law also says, ' That those who are
near God, live.' Then indeed, those who are separated^ from
God are dead in soul. An important doctrine, dear to a wise
man ; but those who have taken their place with God live an
immortal life again." '' The goal of this life is the knowledge
and science of God." He is incomprehensible, and yet com-
prehensible. Incomprehensible to us men, and yet comprehen-
sible to us so far as we are divine,^ for there is in us a germ of
the Deity, which may be developed to a divine existence ; and
though God cannot enter into the circle of the human. We may
yet be raised to equality with Him, and then we shall both see
Him and know Him. Tliis is the goal which we have before us.
Now we know God imperfectly through his works. He is a God
afar off; an Essence whose existence is demonstrable by reason ;
though indeed this knowledge of God is only negative. But we
rise to a true knowledge of Him as our being becomes assimi-
lated to His being. We have visions of God, a pure and per-
fect knowledge, by intuition, phantasy, or whatever other name
be given to that revelation by which God is revealed to the soul.
" It is such as was given in part to Moses when transcending the
created he received a representation of the uncreated; and
through this comprehended both God and His creation."
The supreme Being is not then the immediate maker of the
worlds. Beginning with the sensuous, which is the first step of
the celestial ladder we ascend to the spiritual ; for, the visible
evidently reveals the working of the Invisible. But we cannot
here infer only one Being ; there are, evidently, more than one,
at least, two, an original first Cause and an intelligent Being,
who is the proximate cause. The latter, Philo says, is subjected
* Man was not made of the dust alone, but also of the divine Spirit.— PA«7o.
Quoted by John of Damascus.-
THE DIVINE LOGOS. 85
to the first, and is the mediating power between it and the dead
unformed matter.
This mediating power is the Logos^ or VYord of God, the world
maker. Philo gives the Logos a variety of names : He is the
mediator between mortal and immortal races ; He is God's
name, God's interpreter, God's vicar ; to man He is God ; but
on the divine side, the second God, or the image of God. The
spirit world is the divine thought; the sensuous world, the
divine speech ; and the Logos, the capacity of God to think and
speak. As thought, He is the Logos immanent ; as speech, the
Logos transient. Philo identifies the Logos with that wisdom
which God is said to have created as the first of His works, and
established before the Eons, the spouse of God, who is the father
and the Mother of the all. Sometimes the Logos is plural, not
only the Word, but the words of God ; and these are identical
with the divine powers or attributes. The two Cherabim in
Genesis are the two highest powers of God ; His goodness and
His might. By the one He has created all, by the other he
preserves all. Between these as a uniting bond, is the Logos,
which embraces both ; for, by the Logos, God rules, and creates,
and shews mercy. The Cherubim were the symbols of these
powers, and the flaming sword that turned either way was the
divine Logos. In the same way the Logos is identified with
other attributes, and distributed into different potencies of the
divine Being ; and as all these potencies are consubstantial,
having their substratum in God, the Logos is identical now with
the potencies, and now with the first Cause or supreme God ; so
that Philo ends in ascribing to the first Cause, through the Logos^
those qualities, works and attributes, which he had otherwise
denied Him ; considering them unworthy of the first God. The
Deity could not pervade matter, nor come into any relation to it ;
but through the Logos He is the maker and preserver of the world.
By the Logos, God is restored to the world, and the oneness of
the created and the uncreated becomes manifest through the
mediating power or powers, for those powers are identical with
God ; they are also the spiritual world-plan, the perfect world
after which this sensuous world is formed ; and even it, so far
as it is well formed, is itself the Logos or word of God. I'he
spirit worlds are God's first begotten, and the sensuous His
younger sons. " Ideas," " demons," " heroes," " angels," " the
higher powers," have the same relation to the lower that God has
to the higher. The necessity of personification may cause them
to appear as distinct beings : but they have all. in their degrees
»6 GOD FILLS ALL SPACE.
a divine existence. Angels and spirits are tLe divine thought,
and not separate from Him who thinks. lie is the God of gods.
The Chaldeans said " Either the visible world is itself a god or
God contained in Himself is the soul of all things." From this
view% says Philo, Moses differs, for he maintains either that the
world-soul is the first God, or that the stars and their host cause
what happens to man ; but that all this universe is held together
by invisible powers, which the world maker has extended from
the uttermost pnrt of the heavens to the end of the earth." Philo
intended to differ from the Chaldeans by means of the Logos, word,
words, or invisible powers distinct from God and yet identi-
cal with Him ; but he differed only in intention, for Philo's
chief God filled all things and w^ent through them all, and left
no place void or empty of Himself.* All the inferior Gods, the
divine mediating powers, as well as the world, are all parts of
the first God. He is the place of all things — that which em-
braces all things, but is Himself embraced by none. He extends
Himself to all visible things, and fills the all with Himself. He
is original light ; matter is the darkness ; the circles of being
are light circles about the first Being. The Logos is a brilliant
far-shining light, most like to God. The individual powers are
rays which spread wider and wider the light they receive. The
entire creation is an enlightened becoming of matter through
the first light. It is the one God who is working always and in
all. *' 1 he Lord looked down to see the city and the tower,"
" after the manner of men," says Philo, " Moses speaks ; since
who does not know that he who looks do^yn, necessarily leaves
one place and takes another. But all is full of God. He em-
braces, but is not embraced ; and to Him alone it happens to be
everywhere, and yet now^here. Nowhere, because he created
space and things corporeal ; and it is not becoming to say that
the Creator is contained in others, the things created, but evei y-
ivkere, because He leaves no part of the world void ; since by
His presence He holds together the earth and water, and the
wide heaven, and all things."
The Logos made the world. The ideal of creation, according
to Plato, existed in the mind of God. Philo said that the Logos
created the world after the pattern set forth in the ideal. But
we must take care that the necessity of personifying does not
mislead us. We have already seen that the ideal was itself the
Logos. God's thought was His image, and as the thought was
* TLe soul of the imirerse, is, according to our definition, God.— Philo.
CREATION IDEAL AND VISIBLE. 87
the likeness of God, so raan was the likeness of the Logos.
Creation may thus be regarded either as flowing forth from God,
or, as being willed by Him. It is in reality an emanation ; but
as we personify God in the Logos., we must consider it as an act
of the will. " Moses," says Philo, '' taught that the material
or younger creation was formed on the model of the archetypal
or elder creation. As a plan exists in the mind of an architect,
so did creation exist ideally in the mind of God. In the be-
ginning, that is, out of time, God created the incorporeal heaven
and the incorporeal earth, after the model perceptible by the
mind. He created also the form of air and of empty space. He
called the air darkness, and the space ^ the deep.' He then
made the incorporeal substances of the elements, and at last the
ideal man; after forming the invisible heaven and earth with
their inhabitants, the Creator formed the visible. But He could
not be entirely responsible for the creation of mixed natures ; so he
called in others. — ' Let iis make man.'^ " The creation of Adam
was the creation of human reason not yet united to a body.
Through its union with the sensuous came the fall of man. The
fall, in Philo's judgment, was a necessity, the natural result
of creation ; but it was a step in the divine proceedure. Man
shall rise through the Logos, through the working of the divine
Reason within him ; for the mind of man is a fragment of the
Deity ; his immortal nature is no other than the Spirit of God.
It shall yet subdue the body, and rise to the purely divine."^
* To make out for Philo something like a congruouis system, it has been
thought desirable to pass by his inconsistencies, and especially his allegorical
trifling with the Scriptures. " It* is no easy matter," says Diihne, " to deter-
mine the qualities which Philo give^ to matter, since he, like all his philo-
sophical predecessors, in order to lead over all imperfection to this which he
did not know how to separate in any other way from the most perfect God,
placed matter along aside of God as a second principle, which was naturally
bound up with Him ; but with this the national faith was at war ; and as the
faith of the people forbade its entrance, it was kept in the back ground ; some-
times he seems to forget it, and sometimes he goes from one school to another.
The same with all the Alexandrians, Heathen and Christian, and the same
too with the Gnostic Heretics. Philo calls matter ' the void/ ' that which ia
empty ; ' and, like Plato's evil world-soul, he makes it the cause of evil. He
seems to admit its existence as a something ; and though he receives the axiom
that nothing from nothing comes, he speaks, at times, of matter as if it had
been created, having had no previous existence. And though he has spoken in
full, concerning creation and the first existence of the sensuous world, he yet
Bays that ' It is the most absurd of all ideas, to fancy that there ever was a time
when the world did not exist, for its nature is without any beginning and with-
out any end.' " God eternally creates. There was no time before the world.
It is constituted by the movement of the heavens. Eternity has no past or
future, it is now. There is no time in God. The days of creation are merely th*
88 THE CABBAL.^.
The CabB/\la. — T}ie Cabbala is the secret tradition of the
Jews, which explains the hidden meaning of the Scriptures,
and contains the true exoteric doctrine of Rabbinical Judaism.
The origin of the Cabbala is unknown. The preseiit collection
of books which profess to unfold it are supposed to have origin-
ated about the first or second century of the Christian era ; but
concerning the age of the doctrines contained in them we know
nothing. The mystical Rabbis ascribe the Cabbala to the
Angel Razael, the reputed teacher of Adam, and say that the
Angel gave Adam the Cabbala as his lesson book in paradise.
From him it descended to generation after generation. Noah
read it in the ark ; Abraham treasured it up in his tent ; and
through Jacob it was bequeathed to the chosen people. It was
the charter of the national wisdom ; their secret masonic
order of succession. God speaks, and it is done. " When God spoke to Moses,
all the people saw the voice. The voice of man is audible, but the voice of
God is visible in truth. What God speaks is not His word, but His works,
Avhich eyes and not ears perceive." It would be a sign of great simplicity, Philo
thinks, for a man to suppose that the world was created in six days ; or, indeed,
created at all in time ; but naked truth can only be received by very wise men ;
it must be put in the form of lies before the multitude can profit by it. The
creation of Eve is manifestly a fable. God had put Adam, or human reason
into an ecstacy (the Greek word), and the spiritual came in contact with the
sensuous. In Genesis iii, 15, God says to the serpent, " It shall bruise thy
head ; " Who ? Evidently the woman, says Philo ; yet the Greek word is
He. It cannot refer, grammatically, to the woman, who is feminine ; nor to
seed, which is neuter ; it must then refer to the mind of man that shall bruise
the head of the serpent, which is the cause of union between the mind and the
sense. Eve bare Cain — possession ;— the Avorst state of the soul is self-love,
the love of individuality. Abel, or, vanity, was next conceived, in which the
soul found out the vanity of possession. Cain slevv- Abel in a field, which is
the man in whom the two opposite principles contended. Erom Cain siDrung
a wicked race ; the evil consequences flowing from Cain's A-ictory, Avhen every
desire after God was destroyed. Another interpretation of Cain killing Abel,
is, that Cain killed himself ; showing that the evil-doer naturally reaps the
reward of his evil deeds. Abraham leaving Chaldea was his leaving the
sensuous. The Babylonian Talmud complained that the Seventy had trans-
lated Gen. i, 27, " Male and Eemale created he him." Philo vindicated this
translation, because the ideal man v>'as masculo-feminine. " Of every tree of
the garden thou mayest freely eat ; but of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil, thou shalt not eat of it ; and in the day thou eatest thereof, "^/iow
shalt surely die." The S*?venty make the pronoun in the first verse singular ;
but in the other two, the pronouns are plural, because, says Philo, the reason-
able soul is alone required for the practice of virtue ; but to enjoy the for-
bidden fruit, there is need not only of the soul but of the body and of sense.
"Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but a body hast thou prepared:"
the body is given to man for sacrifice. It is to be renounced. When the high
priest entered the Holy of Holies he became God. Where we read " There
shall be no man in the tabernacle," Philo interprets, — When the high priest
shall enter into the Holy of Holies, he shall be no more a man, until he comes
forth again.
EN-SOPH. 81^
symbol. By its instruction Moses brought the Jews out of
Egypt, and by its cunning wisdom Solomon built the temple
without the sound of a hammer. That the collection of books
which we possess is the original Cabbala may be true, though its
wisdom much resembles that of the schools of Alexandria.
The likeness of the Cabbalistic theology in some points to that
of Zoroastrianism, has suggested the time of the captivity as
the probable date of the origin of its earlier parts ; but a like-
ness of this kind proves nothing. Its nearest kindred is the
writings of Philo, and it is of nearly the same intrinsic worth.
The whole conceivable universe of being, spiritual and materi-
al, is one. It proceeded from (Mie, and the process of this pro-
cession is the subject of the metaphysics of the Cabbala. It
shows how all spirits and spirit worlds are on the one side blend-
ed with God, and how on the other they flow out into the visible
world, and are connected with it. The first of beings, the chief
Being, is En-soph ; eternal and necessary, the everlasting or the
oldest of existences. He is the absolute Unity, the Essence of
essences, pre-eminently Being. But that He may not be con-
sidered as any one of the things that are. He is also called
Non-being. He is separated from all that is, because He is the
substance of all that is, the principle of all things, both as
potential and as actual. Before creation, He is God concealed,
dwelling in the thick darkness ; but by creation, He is God
revealed, with His light filling space infinite. Unrevealed He is
the unopened fountain of spirit, life, and light ; with His self-
manifestation, these flow forth to all beings. He opened His
eye, according to the Cabbalistic hieroglyphic, and light, spirit,
and life streamed forth to all worlds.
This self-manifesting of God concealed, was creation or
emanation. The power of the Infinite flowed forth in its three-
fold form. The first act of unfolding, that which proceeded
creation, was called the word or speech of God. It is not dis-
tinct from God and the world. Priority or antecedence merely
expresses the order of sequence. The Cabbalists, like Philo, knoAv
nothing of tnne, but as existing for the human mind. God and
His manifestations are eternal. This Word was the first ray,
the original, in which the principles of conception and pro-
duction were united ; the father and mother principle of the
actual universe ; the alpha and omega, the universe of forms ;
the first-born of God, and the creator of all things ; at once
the image of the inefl"able God, and the form or pattern of the
visible worlds, through which it proceeds as a divine ray in all
90 THE SBPHIROTHS.
degrees of light, life, and spirit. At the head of this grada-
tion is the celestial man, Adam Kadmon, the old or first Adam,
who is united to the Infinite in and through the first ray, and is
identical with that ray or word of God. He is the Macrocosm
or great world, the archetype of the Microcosm or little world.
In the celestial Adam we eternally exist. He is that wisdom, of
whom it is said, that of old His delights were with the sons
of men.
From En-soph emanate ten Sephiroths, or luminous circles.
These represent the divine attributes. They manifest His wis-
dom, perfection and power. They are His vesture : " He clothes
Himself with light as with a garment." By these He reveals
Himself. They are also called the instruments which the su-
preme Architect employs in the operations of His ceaseless
activity. They are not however instruments like the tools of an
artizan, which may be taken up or laid down at pleasure. They
are as the flame from the burning coal. They come from the
essence of the Infinite. They are united to Him. As the
flame discovers force which before lay concealed in the coal, so
do these resplendent circles of light reveal the glory and the
majesty of God. They are from Him, and of Him, as heat
from the fire, and as rays from the sun ; but they are not dis-
tinct from His Being. He suff'ers neither trouble nor sorrow
when He gives them existence. They are no deprivation of His
being ; but as one flame kindles another without loss or violence,
so the infinite Light sends forth His emanating Sephiroths.
When the primordial ray, the first-born of God, willed to create
the universe. He found two great difficulties. — First, all space
w-as full of this brilliant and subtle light, which poured forth
from the divine Essence. The creative Word must therefore
form a void in which to place the universe. For this end He
pressed the light which surrounded Him, and this compressed
light withdrew to the sides and left a vacuum in the centre.
The second difficulty arose from the nature of the hght. It
was too abundant, and too subtle for the creation to be formed
of it. The creative Word therefore made ten circles, each of
which became less luminous in proportion as it was removed
from Himself. In this way, from En-soph to the meanest ex-
istence, we have a connected universe of being. The infinite
light or emanation of the darkness is the All God. In His
infinitude are placed all ranks and orders of existence. Around
Him, in what we are compelled by the imperfection of thought
and speech to call His immediate presence, are the pure spirits
MATTER NOT A REAL EXISTENCE. 91
of the highest sphere. Then spiritual substances less perfect.
After these are angels or spirits clothed with bodies of light,
which serve both as a covering and as chariots to convey tliem
whither they will. Then follow spirits imprisoned in matter,
subject to the perpetual changes of birth and death. Last of
all gross matter itself, that of which human bodies and the
world are composed, the corruption of the pure divine substance
deprived of the perfections of spirit, and light, and life, — divinity
obscured.
The Cabbalists believe in creation, but only in the sense of
emanation. They do not find in Scripture that God made the
world out of nothing. ^' From nothing, nothing comes " is
with them an established doctrine. No one thing, they say,
can be drawn from nothing. Non-existence cannot become ex-
istence. Either all things are eternal, which, they say is atheism,
or they have emanated from the divine Essence. If it is object-
ed how matter could emanate from God, they answer, that
matter is not an actual existence, and in its logical annihilation
they are not less successful than other philosophers. The
efficient Cause being spirit, must, they say, produce what is like
itself. Its effect must be a spiritual substance. True, indeed,
there exists something gross, palpable, and material, but its ex-
istence is only negative — a privation of existence. As darkness
is a privation of life, as evil is a privation of good, so is
matter a privation of spirit. As well say that God made dark-
ness, sin, and death, as say that He made the substances which
we call sensible and material. The sum is — all is a manifestation
of God. The divine Word is manifesting itself always, and
in all places. Angels and men, beasts of the field and fowls of
the air, animated insects, grains of sand on the sea-shore, atoms
in the sunshine — all, so far as they do exist, have their existence
in that which is Divine.
Authm-itics :— Mimgey's Edition of the Works of Pbilo ; the Translation
of Philo in Bohn's Library ; Diihne's Geschichtliche Darstellung der Jiidisch-
Alcxandrischen Religions-Philosophie ; Cabbala Denudata.
CHAPTER V.
NEO-PLATONISM.
IT is only Ammonius the porter, — said some Alexandrians to
each other. " He professes to teach the philosophy of
Plato ; " and they laughed contemptuously, thinking how much
better it would suit him to be making his day's wages at the
harbour instead of troubling his mind about essences and first
principles, entelechies, potentialities, and actualities. But the
Alexandrians were earnest truth seekers, and when Ammonius
Saccas intimated that he was to lecture on philosophy, an
audience was soon collected. Among this audience was a young
man with a look of unusual earnestness. He had listened to
many philosophers. He had questioned many sages. His search
for truth had been deep and earnest, long and ardent ; now he
is about to abandon it as hopeless. The abyss of scepticism lies
before him. He knows no alternative but to go onward to it ;
and yet his spirit pleads that there must be such a thing as truth
w^ithin the reach of man. The universe cannot be a lie. On
the verge of despair he listens to Ammonius, and ere many
words had been spoken, he exclaims. " This is the man I am
seeking." That pale, eager youth was the great Plotinus, the
mystical spirit of Alexandria, who, with Plato in his hand,
was destined to influence the rehgious philosophy of all succeed-
ing ages. With the devotion of a true philosopher, Plotinus
sat for eleven years at the feet of the Alexandrian porter. He
then visited the East, that he might learn the philosophies of
India and Persia. Rich in Asiatic speculation, he returned to
Rome, and opened a school of philosophy. Charmed by his
eloquence, multitudes of all ranks gathered around him. Men
of science, physicians, senators, lawyers, Roman ladies, enrolled
themselves as his disciples ; nobles dying, left their children to
the charge of the philosopher; bequeathing to him their property,
to be expended for their children's benefit. Galienus wished to
re-build Campania, and place him over it, that he might form a
new society on the principles of Plato's republic. Strange and
GOD THE TEACHER OF MAN. 93
wonderful was the power over men possessed by this mystical phil-
osopher. He discoursed of the invisible ; and even the Romans
listened. As he himself had been in earnest, so were men in
earnest with him. What had he to tell them ? What was the
secret of his power ?
There was a new element in Plotinus which was not found in
the old Greek philosophers. He was religious, he wished to be
saved. Indeed, this word was used by the Neo-Platonists in the
same sense as it was used by the church ; only, the way of
salvation for them was through philosophy. They sought to
know God, and what revelation of truth God made to the human
mind. Aristotle could pass with indifference from theology to
mathematics, his sole object being to improve his intellectual
powers ; but Plotinus regarded philosophical speculation as a
true prayer to God. He had, as he explains it, embraced the
philosophical life, and it was the life of an angel in a human
body. The object of knowledge was the object of love ; perfect
knowledge was perfect happiness, for, necessarily, from the right
use of reason would follow the practice of virtue.
Neo-Platonism has been called Eclectic, and this rightly. It
not only borrowed from other systems, but with some of them it
sought to be identified ; and on many points the identity is not to
be disputed. That the senses alone could not be trusted had been
abundantly proved, and individual reason only led to scepticism.
The one remaining hope was in the universal reason. But
between reason individual and reason universal, there is a great
breach : the former has but a partial participation in the latter,
and is therefore defective. Common sense is the judgment of
an aggregate of individuals, and is to be trusted to the extent
that, that aggregate partakes of the universal reason. Beyond
this no school of Greek philosophy had as yet advanced. A
further step had been indicated by Parmenides and Plato, and
is now consistently and logically made by Plotinus. That step
Avas to identify the individual reason with the universal ; but
this could only be done by the individual losing itself in the
universal. There is truth for man just in proportion as he is
himself true. Let man rise to God, and God will reveal Himself
to him. Let man be still before the awful majesty, and
a voice will speak. In this divine teaching, inspiration or
breath of God passing over us, is the only ground of truth.
And the reason is, that our home from which we have strayed
is in the bosom of the Infinite. He is near us at all times,
but we do not feel His presence because we love self. Let
94 REVELATION MADE TO REASON.
US put aside what holds us back from Him ; all that weighs
us down and prevents us ascending to the heights of divine
contemplation. Let us come alone, and in solitude seek com-
munion with the Spirit of the universe, and then shall we
know Him who is the true and the Good. When we become
what we were before our departure from Him, then shall we
be able truly to contemplate Him, for in our reason He will
then contemplate Himself. In this ecstacj, this enthusiasm,
this intoxication of the soul, the object contemplated becomes
one with the subject contemplating. The individual soul no
longer lives. It is exalted above life. It thinks not, for it is
above thought. It thus becomes one with that which it con-
templates ; which then is neither life nor thought, for it is above
both. It is not correct to say that Plotinus abandoned reason
for faith ; he holds fast to reason, but it is human reason, at
one with the Divine. To the mind thus true, thus united to
universal reason, truth carries with it its own evidence.
Our knowledge begins with the sensuous world. The mani-
fold is, at first, alone accessible to us. We cannot see that which
is eternal till purified by long labours, prayers, and this particular
illuminating grace of God. At first our weakness is complete ;
We must penetrate the nature of the world to learn to despise
it, or, if it embraces any spark of true good, to seize it and use
it to exalt our souls and lead them back to God. As Plato in-
structed by Heraclitus not to name a river, not even to point to
it with his finger, yet fixed his eyes on the fleeting waters before
contemplating the eternal Essence, so Plotinus stops for a mo-
ment among the phenomenal ; seeing in sensation, not the
foundation, but the occasion of science. The order of being is
not disturbed by the changes in the sensuous world. That order
must be the proper object of knowledge, and not those many
individuals which are ever changing. There can only be a
science of the universal, for that alone is permanent. We quit
the phenomenal world for another ; the eternal, immutable, and
intellifi'ible. There spirits alone penetrate, and there thought di-
rectly seizes essences. True knowledge is that which teaches
us the nature of things, penetrates directly the nature of objects,
and is not limited merely to the perception of images of them.
This much had been established by Plato, and some think by
Aristotle too ; but Plotinus was carried beyond through this
rational knowledge to a revelation or vision of the Infinite,
granted to the soul that had been purified by mental and spirit-
ual exercises.
95
The theology of Plotinus was a combination of the theologies
of Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Parmenides and
his followers had carried Dialectics to their last consequence,
and the result was that God was the immoveable One. Socrates
rebelled against the Eleatic deity, and, taking up the " mind " of
Anaxagoras, which created the world, he ascribed to it also the
preservation and moral government of the universe. Plato was
partly faithful to his master Socrates. He too contended for
the moveability of God, though had he followed out consistently
the Dialectical method which he received from the Eleatics, he
would have come to the same conclusion as they did ; but he
recoiled from the theology of Eleaticism, and made God a Cre-
ator. Aristotle combatted the God of Plato as being too much
related to the sensuous world, and substituted a mover, who
was moveable ; and above him in another sphere, an immove-
able Mover, who alone is God. Plotinus did not regard these
theologies as contradictory. Each contained a truth of its own.
He could not reconcile them by reason, but he could receive them
and see their harmony by an intuition which was above reason.
He admitted Plato's method, and Plato's God. He admitted, ^
too, Aristotle's doctrine of the first principle, which must be
immoveable, and his interpretation of the Dialectical method,
that it could stop only at simple Unity ; yet, he said, God must
be a cause, hence a threefold God — a God in three hypostases,
the Unity of Parmenides, the immoveable Mover of Aristotle,
and the Demiurgus of Plato.
The Demiurgus, world maker, or world-soul, is the third
hypostasis of the Trinity of Plotinus. It produces things move-
able, and is itself moveable; but it is nevertheless universal,
excluding from its bosom all particularity, and all phenomena ; it
is unlike our souls which are but " souls in part." The Demiur-
gus is God, but not the whole of God ; it is entirely disengaged
from matter, being the immediate product and the most perfect
image of *' mind." It does not desire that which is beneath it,
but is intimately united to God, and derives from Him all its
reality, and brings back to Him all its activity and all its
power ; or rather it is one with Him, though existing as a dis-
tinct hypostasis ; it is the aU of life in whose essence all things live.
Plants and animals, — yea, minerals, stones, and pebbles, are
all animated by it ; for it is the only true element in nature.
But, whatever its manifestations, it is still one and the same.
We may see it manifested as the divine Socrates ; or as a simple
brute, leading the mere insect life ; as one of the deities of the
yb THE TRINITY OF PLOTINUS.
mythology, as a blade of grass or as a grain of dust. It is at
once everywhere, and yet nowhere ; for, as spirit, it has not
any where. It proceeds from " mind" as the ray from the radi-
ating centre, the heat from fire, or the discursive from the
pure reason. This " mind '' from which it proceeds, is the second
hypostasis ; Plato identified the two. Mind was the Demiur-
gus, or world-maker, and not different from the archetypal
world. Plotinus made the distinction that he might separate
God more from the w^orld, and at the same time unite Him
\ more closely to it. Mind is the divine Logos, God knowable
and conceivable by man ; but God is above human knowledge
and finite conception ; therefore, said Plotinus, repeating Plato,
^' 0 man, that mind which you suppose, is not the first God ;
He is another, more ancient and divine." This is the first
hypostasis, the simple primordial Unity ; the Being without acts
and attributes, immutable, ineffable, without any relation to
generation or change. We call Him Being, but we cannot stop
at this ; He is more than Being ; He is above all that which
our minds or senses reveal to us of being. In this sense He is
above Being; He is Non- Being. The laws of reason cannot
be applied to Him. We cannot declare the mode of His exist-
ence. He is the super- essential Unity ; the only original and
positive Reality ; the source whence all reality emanates. What
more can we say ? In this Unity, by means of the Logos or
mind, and the Demiurgus, all things exist. It is the universal
bond, which folds in its bosom the germs of all existence. It is
the enchained Saturn of mythology ; the father of gods and men ;
superior to mind and being, thought and will ; the absolute ;
the unconditioned; the unknown. The three persons of this
Trinity are co-eternal and consubstantial ; the second proceeding
from the first, and the third from the first and second. Duality
originates with mind, for mind only exists because it thinks
existence ; and existence being thought, causes mind to stand
over against it as existing and thinking. Between the supreme
God or first person of the Trinity, and the Demiurgus, there is
the same connection as between him who sows and him who
cultivates. The super-essential One being the seed of all souls,
casts the germs into all things, which participate of Him. The
Demiurgus cultivates, distributes, and transports into each the
seeds which come from the supreme God. He creates and com-
prehends all true existences, so that all being is but the varieties
of mind ; and this being is the universal Soul, or third person
in the Trinity. Thus all things exist in a triune God. The
MATTER A THANTOM. 97
supreme One is everywhere, by means of mind and soul, mind
is in God, and in virtue of its relation to the things that pro-
ceed from it, it is everywhere. Soul is in mind,, and in God,
and by its relation to the material, it too is everywhere. The
material is in the soul, and, consequently, in God. All things
which possess being, or do not possess being, proceed from God,
are of God, and in God.
The material world presented the same difficulty to Plotinus
that it had done to other philosophers. It floAved necessarily
from God, and being necessary, it could have had no beginning,
and can have no end. Yet it was created by the Demiurgus,
that is, it existed in the Demiurgus ; for creation was out of
time, it was in eternity, and, consequently eternal.'^'
Eefore the creation, according to Plato, there eidsted God the
Creator, the idea of creation, and the matter from which to
create. These three are eternal and co -existent. But the ex-
istence of matter is a non-existence ; for, being a thing of
change, it is next to nothing, if it is anything ; but more prob-
ably it is nothing. The real existences then are God and His
thoughts, the Creator and the ideas of things. And as these
thoughts existed always in the mind of the Deity, creation is
eternal ; for the things which we see, are but images of those
which are not seen. If Plato left any doubt about the nothing-
ness of matter, Plotinus expelled it. Like a true chemist, he
reduces matter to a viewless state. He deprives it of the quali-
ties with which our minds endow it, which we commonly suppose
to be its properties, and when deprived of these it evanishes.
It is found to be nothing, having neither soul, intelligence, nor
life. It is unformed, changeable, indeterminate, and without
power. It is therefore non-being. Not in the sense in which
motion is non-being, but truly non-being. It is the image and
phantom of extension. To the senses, it seems to include in
itself, contraries — the large and the small, the least and the
greatest, deficiency and excess ; but this is all illusion, for it
lacks all being, and is only a becoming. Often when it appears
great, it is small. As a phantom, it is, and then it is not. It
" The Alexandrians did not make the phenomenal v/orld eternal. Eternity
meant with them the plenitude of being. Now the world is divisible and move-
able ; it is therefore not perfect, and, consequently, not eternal. It has a
cause, and that cause is God." This is M. Simon's judgment ; bnt all Pla-
tonists, including Plato, contradict themselves when- they speak about creation.
Even S. Augustine, in his " City of God," makes creation eternal ; he likens it
to an impress on the sand. The impress and the hand that made it are both
eternal. The onpress is the eternal effect of an eternal Cause.
98 THE BURDEN OF THE FLESH.
becomes nothing, not by change of place, but because it lacks
reality. The images in matter are above matter. It is the
mirror or image in which objects present divine appearances,
according to the position in which they are placed : a mirror
which seems full, and appears to be all things, though in reality
it possesses nothing, and has no reality except as non-being.
God and His thoughts are the only true existences. Material
things are, only in so far as they exist relatively to true beings.
Subtract the true existences, and they are not. God and His
thoughts or emanations, in their totality, embrace all existences
throughout the universe. God is so far separated from His
emanations, that we must not confound Him with any one of
them ; but they are all in and by Him. There are grades of
being from that which is everywhere and yet nowhere, to that
which must be somewhere ; from God who is pure spirit, to that
which has a finite material form, and occupies a definite space.
Plotinus found the germs, at least, of all his doctrines, in Plato.
The supreme Good he identified with the absolute Unity ; and
though in some places Plato calls God a soul, and ascribes to
Him the creation of the world, yet in the Timaeus he evidently
regards mind as the Demiurgus ; and this Demiurgus produces
the soul of the world. Plotinus thus sums up Plato's doctrine :
" All is outside of the King of all; He is the cause of all beauty.
That which is of the second order, is outside of the second
principle ; and that which is of the third order, is outside of
the third principle. Plato has also said that the cause of all
had a Father, and that the cause or Demiurgus produced the
soul in the vase in which he makes the mingling of the like and
the unlike. The cause is mind, and its Father the Good, that
which is above mind and essence. Thus Plato knew that the
Good engendered Mind, and that Mind engendered Soul."
Matter being the non-existent or the deprivation of existence,
by coming into relation with it, the human soul was so far
alienated from God ; therefore Plotinus despised the material.
Our bodies are that from which we should strive to be freed,
for they keep us from a complete union with the Divine. We
ought then to mortify the flesh, and live an ascetic life, that
we may be delivered from the participation of the body. Plo-
tinus practised what he taught ; his mind fixed on the invisible,
and foretasting the joys of the divine union, he lived indifferent to
sensuous pleasures ; wishing to attenuate his body into spirit.
Regarding it as a calamity that he had ever been born into
this world, he refused to tell his friends his birthday, lest they
PORPHYRY. 99
should celebrate an event so sad. When asked for his portrait,
he said it was surely enough for us to bear the image with which
nature had veiled us, without committing the folly of leaving
to posterity a copy of that image ; and when dying, he took
leave of his friends with joy, saying, That he was about to lead
back the divine within him to that God who is all in all.
Porphyry. — To follow the other Neo-Platonists is but to
follow the copyists of Plotinus. His most ardent and most dis-
tinguished disciple was the celebrated Porphyry. When Porphyry
differs from his master, the difiference is only in details. His
supreme God is the same super-essential Unity in three hypos-
tases which, if diflferently named, are yet the counterpart of the
Plotinian Trinity. We have the same expressions of the Unity
being everywhere, and yet nowhere ; all being, and yet no
being; called by no names, and yet the eternal source of all beings
that have names ; outside of whom there is neither thought nor
idea, nor existence ; before whom the totality of the world is
as nothing, but because He is pure Unity, and superior to all
things called by pre-eminence, God. With Porphyry Neo-
Platonism made a closer alliance with religion. Philosophy, which
had formerly banished the popular deities, now re-called them to
its aid. The ancient rehgion, about to expire, once more glowed
with life. At the root of Polytheism there had been a Mono-
theism, but their harmonious co- existence had hitherto been ap-
parently impossible. Now they shake hands ; the philosopher sees
his philosophy in the popular worship ; and the devout worship-
par sees his religion sanctioned by the speculations of philosophy.
Plato had conjectured that there was a chain of being from the
throne of God to the meanest existence. To make up the links
of this chain was the favorite work of the Neo-Platonists of
Alexandria, both Heathen and Christian, Porphyry undertook
it, and for this purpose he required all the gods, heroes, and
demons of antiquity, with all the essences, substances, emana-
tions that had been cogitated by all the schools of all the philcs-
ophers. He erected a pyramid of being. First : God, or the
One in three hypostases. Next the soul of the world. Here
Porphyry differed from Plotinus, who made the world-soul the
same as the third person of the Trinity. Porphyry admitted
it to be a being — the first of creatures but begotten — the great
intermedial between God and man. It consists of the world, the
fixed stars, the planets, the intelligible gods, all of which
are children and servants of the Supreme. Under these were
demons, and genii, principalities and powers, archangels, angels,
H 2
100 lAMBLICHUS.
personifications of the forces of nature, and otlier heavenly
messengers ; all helping in some way to bridge the distance by
constituting grades of being from the Trinity to man.
Iambliciius. — While Porphyry was expounding Plotinianism
at Rome, lamblichus and Hierocles were continuing the succession
at Alexandria, but not without some change. The theory of the
Triad, as we have seen, was born at Alexandria, through the
necessity of reconciling the absolute, immoveable God of Dialectics
with the necessarily moveable Demiurgus. Plotinus and Porphyry
could not give movement to the absolute God, nor immoveability
to the creative god ; nor could they admit many gods, so they
believed in a God, who, without coming out from Himself, trans-
forms Himself eternally into an inferior order, and thus renders
Himself by a kind of self diminution, capable of producing the
manifold. To preserve the immoveability of the first God, and the
moveability of the third or manifold, they introduce an interme-
diary. The doctrine of a Trinity served to preserve the unity,
while the hypostases remained distinct. lamblichus thought to
remove the contradiction, by multiplying the intermediaries. In
the first rank he put absolute Unity, which enveloped in its
bosom the first monads. These are the universal monads which
do not sufier any division or diminution of their unity and sim-
plicity. The first God is simple, indivisible, immutable. He
possesses all the attributes which accord with the plenitude of
perfection ; the second god possesses the power which engenders
the inferior gods ; the plenitude of power ; the source of the
divine life ; the principle of all efficacy ; the first cause of all
good. The third god is the producer of the world. He gives
the generative virtue which produces the emanations and makes
of them the first vital forces, from which the other forces are
derived. All Being, that is, God, and the universe are thus
embraced in this Triad of gods. Porphyry had began to
make philosophy religious, but it was reserved for lam-
blichus, his disciple, to bring the work to completion. If
the gods of the poets and the people are true gods,
it must be proper, thought lamblichus, that temples be
dedicated to them, their oracles consulted and sacrifices daily
offered. What higher calling then could there be for a
philosopher, than to concern himself with that which concerned
the gods ? And if the world-soul is so near us that it constitutes
the reality of the world, may we not influence it, work upon it,
receive communications from it? Hence divination, theurgy,
wonders of magic. The soul of the philosopher drinking deep
PROCLUS. 101
into the mysteries of spirit, has intercourse with the spirit world.
He becomes the high priest of the miiverse, the prophet filled
with Deity — no longer a man, but a god having intercourse
with, yea, commanding the upper world. His nature is the
organ of the inspiring deities. To this sublime vocation lam-
blichus was called. He tells us, how communications can be
received from the various orders of the spiritual hierarchy. He
knows them all, as familiarly as the modern spiritualist knows
'' the spheres " of the spirits, with only this difference, that the
modern spiritualist evokes the spirits and they come to him; but
the philosopher more properly elevates himself to the spirits.
The descent of Divinity is only apparent, and is in reality the
ascent of humanity. The philosopher by his knowledge of rites,
symbols, and potent spells, and by the mysterious virtues of
plants and minerals, reaches that sublime elevation, which, ac-
cording to Plotinus, was reached by prayer and purification, a
clean heart and an intellect well exercised by Dialectics.
Proclus. — In the early part of the fifth century, late one
evening a young man, not yet twenty years of age, arrived at
Athens.^ He had come from Alexandria to complete his studies
under the care of some celebrated philosophers. Before enter-
ing the town, he sat down to rest by the temple of Socrates, and
refreshed himself with water from a fountain which was also
consecrated to the Athenian sage. He resumed his journey ;
and when he reached Athens, the porter addressing him, said
* The conversion of Constantine checked the progress of philosophy. It
was restored under Julian, who adhered to the theological school of lamblichus.
Julian was a lover of divination, always eager to read the will of the gods in the
entrails of the victims. He worshipped the sun as we may suppose the devout
Neo-Platonists were used to do, but it was the intelligible sun — God veiled
in light — the som-ce of essence, perfection, and harmony. *' When I was a
boy," he says, "I used to lift up my eyes to the ethereal splendor, and my mind,
struck with astonishment, seemed to be earned beyond itself. I not only de-
sired to behold it with fixed eyes, but even by night when I went outside under
a pure sky, forgetting everything besides, I gazed, so absorbed in the beauties
of the starry heavens that if anything was said to me I did not hear, nor did I
know what I was doing." The sun which so entranced him in his youth he
afterwards worshipped as God — the parent, as some philosophers had said, of
all animate things. Libanius says, " He received the rising sun with blood,
and again attended him with blood at his setting. And because he could not
go abroad so often as he wished, he made a temple of his palace and placed
altars in his garden which was purer than most chapels." "By frequent
devotions he engaged the gods to be his auxiliaries in war, worshipping Mer-
cury, Ceres, Mars, Calliope, Apollo, whom, he worshipped in his temple on the
hill and in the city." After Julian, philosophy revived at Athens, where it
flom-ished till 520, a.d,, when the schools were shut by the decree of Justinian.
The last of the Neo-Platonists was John of Damascus.
102 THE TRINITY OF PROCLUS.
" I was going to shut the gate if you had not come." The
words of the porter were in after-times interpreted as a prophecy,
that if Proclus had not come to Athens, philosophy would then
have ceased. He prolonged its existence for another generation.
Arrived at Athens he found Syrianus, who was then the master
of the school. Syrianus took him to Plutarch, who had been
his predecessor, but who had now retired from teaching, having
recommended his disciples to Syrianus. Plutarch, struck with
the genius and the ardor of young Proclus, wished to be his
teacher, and at once they began their studies. Plutarch had
written many commentaries on Plato, and to excite the ambition
of Proclus he engaged him to correct them, saying, " posterity
shall know these commentaries under your name." Syrianus
made him read Aristotle that he might be familiar with the in-
ferior departments of science ; he then opened to him the holy
of holies — the divine Plato. When he had mastered Plato, he
was initiated into the mysteries of magic and divination. In
time he became famous for his universal learning and his sweet
persuasive eloquence, which was made yet more attractive by
his solemn and earnest manner, added to great personal beauty.
Proclus combined all former philosophies, religions, and the-
ologies, into one eclectic amalgamation ; and brought them to
the illustration of Plato, as interpreted by Plotinus, and religion-
ized by Porphyry and lamblichus. In his hands the harp of
every school is vocal with the divine philosophy of Plotinus.
We still hear discourses of the One and the many ; the sterility
of the One without the many ; and the lifelessness of the many
without the One. We still hear how the all is both One and
many; and how existence springs from the multiplication
of unity. The universe, says Proclus, is constituted by har-
mony, and what is harmony but variety in unity. In the mind
of the great Architect, ideas exist as one and many. He Him-
self is the One — the highest Unity which embraces the three
divine unities, essence, identity, variety. This is the first Triad,
which Proclus repeats in all forms, and with which repeated he
fills all conceivable voids and vacuums in the universe of being.
^From this first Trinity proceed all others ; as simple being is
three in one, so are all other beings ; each having two extremes
and an intermediary. If we realize the Triad; essence, identity,
variety, the result is — being, life, mind. Every unity, which is
also a trinity, proceeds from the Trinity ; and each is of the
multiplicity which belongs to the supreme One, the prime Unity,
who is Non-Being, because He is above Being. But the necessities
THE PYRAMID OF BEING. 103^
and limitations of our reason require us to speak of Him as
Being. He is therefore called Being absolute, of whose divine
substance all things are full. Could we conceive a pyramid of
beings, of which, each is a trinity in unity, we might have a
conception of the favorite serial image of the brain of Proclus.
But as the pyramid of our imagination is finite, we must not
think that it truly represents all being, for that is infinite. One
moment we may say Non-Being is at the head of it, for the
primal One is above being, and nothing is at the base of it, for
beneath it is that which is below all being ; but the next mo-
ment we must declare that being has no bounds, nor boundary
walls, that there is no " beyond " outside the all of the universe ;
and therefore it is that God who is beyond being, whom we
cannot by reason understand, can yet be known as infinite.
Being. We must then think of a pyramid from the summit of
which supreme perfection descends to the lowest degree of being ;
constituting, preserving, adorning all things, and uniting them to
itself. First, we may think of it as descending to beings truly exist-
ing, then to divine genii, then to divinities which preside over
the human race, then to human spirits, at last to animals, plants,
and the lowest forms of matter — that which borders on nothing.
In such an image we may have an idea of the eternal procession
from Him who is super-essential, and therefore most truly
essence, to that which is non-essential and no kind of essence.
In the primordial One all things have their existence and unity.
They derive their multiplicity by a progression which originates
in the separating of the One in the same way that rays diverge
and proceed from a centre. So that though in nature there be
many forms, and in the universe there be many gods, and in
waste places many genii, and in heaven many spirits, and in
hades many heroes, there is but one essence to all. It is every-
where the same. That essence is in us ; God is all ; and we-
and all existence are but the expressions of the One ineffable
and supreme.
Proclus was a genuine Platonist. He began and ended with
God. He saw all things in God, and God in all things. The
world is before us a thing of change, its phenomena are ephem-
eral. We are spectators of the drama. Is our being only
phenomenal ? Are we but a part of the world, or is there in
us anything of the One, the Eternal ? Our feet are in the mire
and our heads among the cloads. Our first thoughts reveal to
us our greatness and our nothingness ; our exile and our native
land ; God who is our all ; and the world through which we
104 THE ONE AND THE MANY.
must pass and rise to God. This triad is tlie foundation of
T)hilosopliy, the indisputable data from which we must begin.
That the most perfect exists, Prockis did not stop to enquire.
Our reason proves, clearly and distinctly, that it does. As little
does he ask if the world exists, it is before us ; we can see it
and feel it. Man by his passions and the wants of his body, is
drawn to the earth ; by philosophy, inspiration and divination,
he is elevated to God.
I'he contradiction involved in the identity of the One and the
many was not less for Proclus than it had been for his predecess-
ors. The One is perfect, the many are imperfect. The One is
eternal, the many are temporal. The One existed alone, it is
necessary to His perfection that He be alone, and thus truly the
All before the imperfect was made ; but it is also necessary to
His perfection that He be not alone ; He must have thought, and
thought must have an object ; God must be the absolute Unity,
and yet God creating ; the One of Parmenides, the "immoveable
Mover" of Aristotle and yet the mind or Demiurgus of Plato ; the
one is God in Himself, the last sanctuary of the Divinity, the
other is the God of creation and providence, the Lord and ruler
of the world. Hence a Trinity Nvhich did not differ from that
of Plotinus. The super-essential One, mind or the most perfect
form of being and soul, which is necessary to the existence of
mind, and preserves its immoveability while it unites it to the
world. " From the hands of Proclus," says M Simon, " we re-
ceive the god of experience, and the god of speculation separately
studied by the ancient schools, reunited by the Alexandrians
in a Unity as absolute as the God of the Eleatics, and mind as
free, as full of life and fecundity as the Demiurgus of Plato."
* This Chapter is founded on the work of M. Jules Simon Hintoire de
VEcoh d'Alcxcindrie; with the help of Plotinus' Enneads, Porphyrv's life of
Plotinus, Proclus on the theology of Plato, his Commentary on theTimaeus,
liis Orphic Verses, and the Histories mentioned at the end 'of the Chapter on
Greek Philosophy.
CHAPTER VI.
THE CIIUECH.
The reader who remembers the first paragraph of this book,
will not be startled to find the Church in this connection. We
do not here enter into controversy, we only give the record of
beliefs. The Neo-Platonist school began with Philo the Jew,
and ended with Proclus. This is one account. Another is,
that it began in a very different quarter, and is not ended yet.
In reality, there Vy^ere three kinds of Neo-Platonism ; one allied
itself with the old Gentile religion, another with Judaism, and
a third with the new religion of the Crucified. It had formerly
been disputed whether Plato or Moses was the founder of Greek
philosophy, and now it is disputed if the Neo-Platonic philo-
sophy was borrowed from Christianity, or if the philosophical
Alexandrian fathers borrowed their philoso|)hy from the Pao-an
Neo-Platonists.
The New Testament authors in whose writings w^e find definite
manifestations of acquaintance Avith Greek philosophy, are S. John
and S. Paul ; indeed John's gospel is so marked by Greek
doctrine and philosophical speech, as to have led to the supposi-
tion that it could not have been m^itten by the fisherman of
Galilee. This hypothesis loses its ground when we remember
that John lived to a great age, and that the latter years of his
life were spent in Asia Minor, where he must have come in con-
tact with every form of philosophy then known in the Greek
world. It may be true that he did not find the Lo^^os in
Plato, but we know from Philo Judaeus, and some of his con-
temporaries, that the Logos in a sense nearly allied to that of S.
John's was in common use among the Alexandrian Jews.
The Logos was in the beginning. It was at once with God, and
it was God. John's Logos had the same relation to God as
in Plato's theology " Mind" had to "Being," only S.John's went
beyond the philosopher. He said that the Logos was incar-
nnte in Jesus of Nazareth, thus elevating Jesus to equality with
God.
S. Paul's writings have more of a Hebrew than a Greek cha-
racter. His illustrations, his logic, his rhetoric, are all Jewish,
But S. Paul, confessedly, was familiar with Greek hterature.
lOG CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY.
That he had many thoughts in common with Philo is evident
from such passages as that in the Epistle to the Colossians, where
he speaks of the Son as *' the image of the invisible God," and
that in the Hebrews, where it is said that the Father made the
worlds by the Son, who is " the brightness of His glory, and the
express image of His person," and that S. Paul did not regard
heathen philosophy as purely darkness is manifest from his
address to the Athenians, where he quotes and endorses the
favorite doctrine of the Greeks, that we are the offspring of God.
The relation of Christianity to heathen philosophy is more
distinctly traceable in the writings of the Christian fathers, and
especially those who were educated where philosophy flourished.
The oldest and perhaps most remarkable of these writings, is
the Apology of Justin Martyr, where Christ is called '' the only
begotten of God, the very Logos or universal Season of which all
men are partakers," and on this ground the author maintains
that all those were Christians who lived by reason, even though
they were esteemed Atheists. It is well known that Justin took
for models the Apologies of Quadratus and Aristides, as men-
tioned by Dionysius, of Corinth, in his letter to the Athenian?.
Quadratus was bishop of Athens and successor of S. Paul's
philosophical convert Dionysius, the Areopagite. In his Apology
which he presented to Hadrian, he calls Christianity a philoso-
phy, thus clinging to the cloak of the philosopher, even when a
Christian Bishop."^
Tatian, who was Justin's disciple, participates in his master's
spirit. Before creation, he says, that in a certain sense the
Father was alone, but since He had all power, and was Himself
the essential Essence of the visible and invisible. He w^as not alone,
but there was with Him the universe, existing by the power of
reason. God Himself, and the Logos which was in Him, was
the All.
Irenseus says God is wholly reason, and the Son is this rea-
son, mind, or Logos. When we receive Christ we bear God in
us, and ere we can see God, we must be " within God." In say-
ing that God is the entire Logos, or the Logos is entire God^
L^enseus wished to protest against the higher speculations oF
* Dorner says that Justin Martyr was the first of the fathers who used the
term Logos in the sense of its being the divine Reason. Hitherto it was simply
the creative Word. The seed of reason is in all men ; but the all of reason
was in Jesus. The soul of man has a natural and essential relation to the
Logos. ^ But Jesus is the Logos, the primal reason itself ; so that Christianity
is a divine philosophy.
IREN^US AND TUE PATEIPASSIAN HERESY. 107
pliilosoplij. His complaint against the Gnostics was, that in
seeking after the Bythos they float into the Infinite, which is
above God. Now, in the Logos we have God. The Gnostics
said that the One could not be known. Irenoeus said God is-
perfectly known in the Logos. Irenoeus had perhaps as little
of the spirit of the Greek philosophers as any of the Christian
Fathers ; but when he sets forth the unity of the Church with
itself and with God, he seems to have something of the mystical
feelings which possessed the graver spirits of Neo-platonism.
Christ,he says, is in the Church as God-man. The Church is
one with Him, as He is one with the Father. Christ is the
animating and vivifying principle of the Church; it is His
flesh. Again, it is a unity of flesh and spirit, in which the
Bishop who is the impersonation of the united will of the congre-
gation, is the animating spirit. In both, Christ lives, and they
bear a God-man character ; they are ^ bearers of Christ and
bearers of God ' This relation is further illustrated by that
of a Bishop to his presbyters, ' They are fitted to him as strings
to the lyre.'
The natural development of the doctrine of Iren^eus was
the Patripassian heresy ; for if the Logos is entire God, either
there is no God the Father, or if there is, He suffers ; and thus
God becomes a being subject to suffering and death, conse-
quently to change — an identification of God with the world, more
fearful than had been made by any philosophical speculation
on the divine Essence. Tertullian refuted the Patripassians,
and explained with the help of philosophy, how ^ God was the
Logos and yet was not the Logos. God, he says', as the object
of His own thought is pre-eminently the Son of God as soon as
He attains positive reality in the actual world. He has first a
mere ideal existence in the essence of God. He is God's
thought — the idea of the world or the sum of the thoughts of
the world. In this world-idea is involved, that when it arrives
at actuality it will still have the God who was incorporated with
its idea, that is, the Word. Thus the manifestation of God
Himself is interwoven with the idea of the world, and all the
divine thoughts become realities ; so that the world is a pro-
gressive actualization of the thought to which God gives object-
ive existence over against Himself. Through the incarnation
of Christ, is completed the full realization of the world-ideal.
The Logos is thus God immoveable and infinite ; and yet it
is God associated with the world, God moveable and finite.
Tertullian had recourse to Aristotle and Plato to refute the
108 ORIQEN.
Patripassians, and Hippolytus had the same assistance for the
same work. * The fundamental idea of his theology ; ' says
]])orner, ^ is chargeable with approximating in another way to
Pantheism, through raising a too hasty opposition to Patri-
passianism. Hippolytus showed how God was once alone and
nothing with Him, and how He willed to create the world.
This was done by thinking, willing, and uttering the idea of the
world. But this solitary existence was not real, for He never
was without the Word and Wisdom. ' All was in Him, and He
was Himself the All.' ' The Father,' says Hippolytus, * is over
all ; the Son is through all ; and the Holy Ghost is in all.'
For the best representatives of Christian Neo-platonism, we
must turn to the Alexandrian Fathers. Among these the chief
is Origen. He was never regarded by the Church as entirely
orthodox, but he was in his day the great teacher of Christianity
at Alexandria. The Trinity, with Origen, is an eternal process
in God. In his time, first arose the question of the eternal
son-ship of Christ, and no marvel, for, it is a doctrine, purely
Alexandrian. Tertullian made the generation of the Son, a
divine act, thereby introducing multiplicity into God. Origen
made it an act, eternally completed, and yet, eternally continued.
' The Son, was not generated once for all, but is continually
generated by God in the eternal To-Bay!' The Father is the
Monad, absolutely indivisible, and infinitely exalted above all
that is divided, or multiplied. He is not truth nor wisdom, nor
spirit nor reason, but infinitely higher than all these. He is
not being nor substance, but far exalted above all being, and
all substance. He is the utterly ineffable and incomprehensible
One, the Absolute. All truth, goodness and power, are derived
from Him, but attributes do not adequately describe Him. We
cannot attribute to Him will or wisdom without also ascribing
to Him imperfection. The super-essential Monad is above all
qualities. The Son is Being, Energy, Soul. Origen wishes to
make the Son equal to the Father ; but his philosophy compels
him to make Him inferior to the Father as touching His God-
head. The Son is related to the manifold world. He cannot be
directly grounded in God the Father, because of the Father's
unity and unchangeableness. As Aristotle would say, the
Father is immoveable, and the Son moveable; only the Son
is not outside of God, but in God ; and in God that He may
be the medium by which the world outside of God, may be
brought into the Divine, for we cannot conceive the world ex-
isting independently of unity. Necessarily connected with the
109
eternal generation of the Son, is the eternal generation of the
world ; for the Son is its ideal, its eternal unity. He is the
world-principle, that which connects together the universe of
individuals in all their divergencies from each other. He is the
permeating substance of the world, its heart and reason, present
in every man, and in the whole world. The Son is the truth,
the life, the resurrection of all creatures ; the one which is at
the basis of the manifold, having objectively different modes of
existence for different beings, Avithout therefore ceasing to be
one Logos. The human race consists of those souls that through
sin have fallen from the union with the Son. He could not for-
get them, and to restore them. He became incarnate. His soul
and ours thus pre-existed together ; and as the Logos came upon
the man Jesus and united Him to itself, so shall the Logos
possess our souls and restore them to itself and God. Origen
rivalled Philo Judaeus in his subtle interpretations of the sacred
writings. *' The beginning," in S. John's Gospel, he takes for
" the supreme Being." Thus, the Word was in the beginning
will signify, it was in God the Father. " Christ is also the be-
ginning, being the wisdom of God and the beginning of His
w^ays.'' Li the first verse of Genesis, the beginning is the Lord
Jesus Christ. "In the beginning, that is, in the Word or
Reason, God made the heaven and the earth. God is in all
respects one, and undivided ; but Christ the Logos is many pro-
ceeding from the Father as well as from mind."
Clemens, of Alexandria, was not less a philosopher than Origen ;
nor less imbued with the theology that was taught in the
heathen schools. The Father, who is the first Cause of all
things, Clemens described as ineffable, not to be denoted by
any word or sound, but who is only to be thought, and with
silent reverence to be adored. But though God cannot be known or
manifested in Himself, it is otherwise with the Son. The Father
is being, the Son is ''the Idea of ideas in the ideal world, the
timeless and unbegun Beginning." Clemens openly defended
the truth of Greek philosophy. " I give," he says, " the name
philosophy to that which is really excellent in all the doctrines of
the Greek philosophers, and above all to that of Socrates, such
as Plato describes him to have been. The opinion of Plato
upon ideas, is the true Christian and orthodox philosophy. These
intellectual lights among the Greeks have been communicated
by God Himself."
Not only had the Christian fathers the Logos in common with
the philosophers, but the metaphysical questions concerning the
110 ARIUe, NO PANTHEIST.
Trinity, wliicli for centuries disturbed the Church, were kin-
dred to the Alexandrian questions on the divine Essence. Plo-
tinus believed one God in three hypostases ; but, as he made
hypostasis equivalent to nature ; he made three gods or three
natures in one God. This equivalency of hypostasis to nature,
developed in the fifth century into the heresy of Nestorius, who
maintained that since there are two natures in Christ there must
be two hypostases ; which again called forth the opposite heresy
of the Monophysites, that the two natures became one by a
hypostatical union. The indefinite word, hypostasis, had previ-
ously sheltered the heresy of Sabellius, who took it only in the
sense of an energy or emanation ; so that the three hypostases,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, were only three powers or modes
of the one God. The word, hypostasis, was finally, abandoned
by the Latin Church ; because, says Gregory of Nazianzen,
the L:itins could not distinguish hypostasis from essence. The
Western mind craved a definite dogma ; but had no love for
the speculative process concerned in the formation of dogmas.
For hypostasis the Latins substituted person ; making three'
persons in one God. This was clear and definite, though involv-
ing an irremediable contradiction, for a person is an individual
distinct from other individuals. A new heresy lurked under
the new word ; for if the unity of God is to be preserved, the
Son and the Spirit must be inferior to the Father. But the
heresy of Arius was not entirely excluded from the theology of
Origen. It was one side of it, but this stood corrected by the
other side. Arius, though an Alexandrian, had but little of
the philosophy of his age and country, he was an anti-speculative
common-sense theologian, without the remotest element of Pan-
theism ; the truest disciple of Anaxagoras that had yet appeared
in the Church ; one whom Aristotle would have pronounced
" a sober man." He distinguished broadly and at once between
the essence of God and that of creation. He cut down at
one stroke all the Alexandrian theories of eternal creation and
eternal generation. If, he said, the son is generated, generation
is an act ; and that implies time, a beginning of existence.
If the Son is produced from God, he must be a portion of God ;
but this cannot be ; the Son, therefore, like all created beings,
is produced from nothing, and therefore has an essence different
from God's.
The Alexandrian philosophy was powerful for the refutation
of Arius. Alexander^ replied that the Logos or wisdom of God
Bishop of Alexandria, the opponent of Arius.
ATIIANASIUS. Ill
must be eternal as God Himself ; otherwise there must have
been a period when God was without reason or wisdom. But
it is impossible that He who is reason itself should not know
the Father whose reason He is. The Son is indeed generated,
said Alexander, but it is impossible to place any interval
between Him and the Father ; but the generation of the Son
surpassed the understanding of the Evangelists, and, perhaps,
surpasses that of angels. The Arians said " There tvas, when
the Son was not ;" but this, said Alexander, involves the exist-
ence of time. Now time is created by Him, and comes into exist-
ence along with the world, so that the time, which is said
to have existed, must always have existed through Him ; which
supposes the effect to exist before the cause : and how then could
He be the first-born of every creature. The Father therefore
must always have been Father, and the Son through whom He
is Father must have existed always. " Alexander's aim," says
Dorner, " was to establish the closest possible connection between
the hypostasis of the Son and His eternal divine Essence. In
carrying out this design he decidedly posits a duality in God,
and if we may judge from the images employed by him, he
conceives the Logos of the Father to be objectified in the
Son. His images in themselves would warrant us in concluding
that he conceived the Father to have reason and power, not in
Himself, but in the Son ; and that consequently the Son was
the Father Himself under a determinate form or a determination
or attribute constituting part of the full conception of the
Father. The council of Alexandria, concurring in the doctrine
of Alexander, adopted the Neo-Platonic idea of time to reconcile
the Sonship of Christ with His eternity."
Athanasius was not less an Alexandrian than Alexander.
He refuted Arianism with the same arguments. He distinguish-
ed clearly between the Deity and the world ; but he did not
leave God in His transcendent existence as some of the Heathens
had done ; he made God also immanent in the world. The
Logos dwelt in a body, but the Deity was not shut up in that
body. He was at the same time in other places, and as He
moved the body with which He was united, so did He move the
universe. God in the Logos is in the entire creation, for He
is in all its powers, extending His providence to all, giving life
to all, and embracing the universe without being embraced by it.
He is in all, as well as beyond all ; in beaten, in hades, in hu-
manity, and on earth we may see the Deity of the Logos unfolded
before us, and at the same time embracing us. On this imman-
112 EISHOP SYNESIUS.
ency of the Logos, Athanasius grounded liis argument for the
divinity of Jesus Christ. If the Logos is in the whole world,
yea, in each individual, why could He not also dwell in a man
whom He moved, tlirough whom He manifested Himself, even
as He manifests Himself in the world. As He is in the sun
and moon, so also is He in humanity, which is part of the
universe.
Eusebius, of C?esarea, whose orthodoxy is somewhere between
that of Arius, and that of Athanasius is not free from the philo-
sophy of Alexandria. In His inmost essence, says Eusebius,
God is one, It is only with an eye to the world and God's rela-
tion to it that we can speak of the Trinity. The unity expresses
that which is inmost in God. It contains in it no plurality.
This one Being is the absolute, the primal Substance. This
Monad or Father cannot communicate His being. He cannot
enter into any relation with the world. He could not be a
Creator. To mediate between Him and the world there was need
of the Logos. The Son is grounded in God, and is a copy of
God. He connects the world with God, and makes it worthy of
Him. He is the bond that passes through the universe — the
world soul. The Son was always with the Father, generated out
of time, existing before the ^^ons, yet his existence was effected
by an ad of God.
But more singular than the Neo-Platonism, even of Origen,
w^as that of Synesius, Bishop of Pentapolis. Synesius, however,
scarcely professed to be a Christian in any other sense, but as
Christianity seemed to him a form of philosophy, nearly related
to what he had learned in the schools. "When the bishopric was
offered to him, " he declared candidly,'' says Neander, "that his
philosophical conviction did not, on many points, agree with the
doctrines of the church, and among these differences, he reckoned
many things which were classed along with the Origenistic here -
sies ; as for example, the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls,
his different views of the resurrection, on which point he proba-
bly departed far more widely, than Origen from the view taken
by the Church, inasmuch as he interpreted it, as being but
the symbol of a higher idea. A few quotations from the Hymns
of Synesius will show the character of his theology, and its
likeness to that of the schools.
Rejoicing in immortal glory,
God sits above the lofty heights of heaven ;
Holy Unity of unities ;
And first Monad of monads.
BYNEBIUS' HYMNS. 113
A fragment of the divine Parent
Descended into matter ;
A small portion indeed,
But it is everywhere the One in all —
All diffused through all.
It turns the vast circumference of the heayens,
Preserving the universe,
Distributed in diverse forms it is present ;
A part of it is the course of the stars,
A part in the Angelic choir ;
A part, with an heavy bond, found an earthly foim,
And disjoined from the Parent, drank dark oblivion.
God, beholding human things,
Is nevertheless present in them ;
* it^ *
Yet a light, a light there is, even in closed eyes,
There is present, even to those who have fallen hither
A certain power calling them back to heaven —
When having emerged from the billows of life,
They joyfully enter on the holy path
Which leads to the palace of the Parent.
* * j)f
But Thou art the root of things present, past, and future.
Thou art Father and Mother ;
Thou art masculine ;
Thou art feminine :
Hail 1 root of the world ;
Hail ! centre of things.
Unity of divine numbers.
* * *
Father of all fathers.
Father of Thyself ;
Fore-father, without father,
Son of Thyself;
Unity before Unity;
Seed of beings;
Centre of all.
Presubstantial, unsubstantial Mind,
Surpassing minds ;
Changing into different parts,
Parent Mind of minds ;
Producer of gods.
Maker of spirits,
Nourisher of souls,
Fountain of fountains,
Beginning of beginnings,
Root of roots,
Number of numbers.
Intelligence and intelligent ;
Both intelligible and before intelligible,
One and all things.
But the One of all things :
Root and highest branch.
• • *
Thou art what produces,
Thou art what is produced ;
Thou art what enlightens,
114 S. DIONYSIUS.
Thou art what is enlightenecT ;
Thou art what appears,
Thou art what is hidden,
By Thy ovm brightness.
One and all things,
One in thyself,
And through all things.
Produced after an ineffable niaiiii#
That Thou mightest produce a sort
(Who is) illustrious Wisdom,
(And) Maker of all things.
* * *
Thou art the Governor of the unseen world
Thou art the Nature of natures ;
Thou nourishest nature. —
The origin of the mortal,
The image of the immortal ;
So that the lowest part in the world
Might obtain the other life.
The most remarkable resemblance in any Christian writ-
ings, to the doctrines of the Platonists of Alexandria, is found
in the once famous works of S. Dionysius. This Saint was
the Areopagite who adhered to S. Paul after his discourse at
Athens. It was not known for three or four centuries after the
death of Dionysius that his works were extant, or even that he
had ever written any works. They appeared suddenly in the con-
troversy between the Church and the Monophysite heretics,
and were quoted in favor of the heretical side. They have never
been universally received as genuine, but their sublime specula-
tions and their sweet mystical piety have always procured them
admirers, and even advocates of their genuineness.
The favorite doctrine of three orders in the Church ; bishops,
priests, and deacons, as the copy and symbol of the three orders
in the celestial hierarchy, has always made them dear to church-
men. The Abbe Darboy, in a recent Introduction to the
works of S. Dionysius, has shown that their author was indeed
the Areopagite converted by S. Paul ; that he lived in the
days when S. John was well known as a theologian, apostle,
and evangelist in exile at Patmos ; when Timothy and Titus
were Bishops of Ephesus and Crete, and when Peter was Pope
at Rome. Furthermore that this Dionysius was certainly
present at the funeral obsequies of the Virgin Mary, that he
was made Bishop of Athens ; but having left his Greek Diocese
as a missionary to France, he became the veritable S. Denys,
who founded the Church of the Gauls. " He did not borrow
from Plotinus," says the Abbe Darboy, " but Plotinus borrowed
THE TRINITIES OF DIONYSIUS. 115
from him." Guizot, who is less interested in the advocacy of
the " three orders," and not concerned for the admission that
the Christian fathers drank of the streams of the Neo-Platonic
philosophy, takes a different view from that of the Abbe Darboy ;
" Neo-Platonism," he says " when forsaken and abandoned by
princes, decried and persecuted, had no other alternative than
to lose itself in the bosom of the enemy." Brucher^s opinion is
nearly the same. "The works of S. Dionysius introduced Alex-
andrian Platonism into the West, and laid the foundation of
that mystical system of theology, which afterwards so greatly
prevailed." He then describes it as " a philosophical enthusiasm,
born in the East, nourished by Plato, educated in Alexandria,
matured in Asia, and introduced under the pretence and authority
of an Apostolic man into the Western Chm^ch."
Before the Reformation the genuineness of these writings was
an open question in the Catholic Church, and to some extent it
is so still. At the Council of Trent they were appealed to as
genuine. From that time many Catholic theologians have con-
sidered their doctrines in harmony with the teaching of the
Church.
We have already seen how Plato's Alexandrian disciples con-
ceived a universe of being, in which were all grades of existence
from the primal One to that which was nothing. We have seen
how Porphyry and Proclus filled up the immediate spaces be-
tween that which was above and that which was below being,
with hypostases oi the Trinity, gods, genii, demons, heroes, men,
animals, vegetables and unformed matter ; all of which had, in
God whatever of true existence they possessed. S. Dionysius,
as a Christian, had to expel all the gods and demons from this
Pagan totality of being ; and, as a good churchman, to fill their
places with more orthodox existences. Instead of a chain, be-
ginning at God, or a pyramid of which the top was primal
Unity, S. Dionysius conceived a central and special dwelling of
the Eternal, around which were arranged, in consecutive circles,
all the orders of being from the highest to the meanest. First,
there were Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones. Behind them
Dominions, Virtues, Powers. Then Principalities, Archangels,
and Angels. Of the heavenly hierarchy, the ecclesiastical was a
copy; bishops, priests, deacons. The 'WArees " of Pagan Proclus,
were beautiful triads, with the Christian Dionysius. Were not
all things trinities in unity ? The supreme One was a Trinity.
Each grade was a trinity. The ecclesiastical hierarchy a trinity.
I 2
116 GOD NOT TO BE NAMED.
Outside^ of the heavenly that is, immediately behind the
angels, is the order of beings gifted with intellect such as men ;
then those which have feeling but not reason ; and lastly,
creatures that simply exist. Light and wisdom, grace and
knowledge, emanate from the Supreme, and spread through all
ranks of being. Divinity permeates all. The supreme One
has called them in their several degrees and according to their
several capacities to be sharers of His existence. His essence
is the being of all beings, so far as they exist. Even things
inanimate partake of Divinity. Those that merely live partake
of this naturally vital energy, which is superior to all life, be-
cause it embraces all life. Reasonable and intelligent beings
partake of the wisdom which surpasses all wisdom ; and which
is essentially and eternally perfect. Higher beings are united
to God by the transcendent contemplation of that divine Pat-
tern, and in reaching the source of light they obtain super-
abundant treasures of grace, and in a manner express the
majesty of the infinite Nature. All these orders gaze admir-
ingly upwards. Each is drawn to the Supreme, and each draws
towards itself the rank next below it ; and thus a continual pro-
gress of lower being towards that which is higher, and a continual
descent of the Divine, elevating all ranks and helping them in
their progress towards God. The Divinity surpasses all know-
ledge. He is above all thought and all substance. As the
sensible cannot understand the intelligible; as the multiple
cannot understand the simple and immaterial, as the corporeal
cannot understand the incorporeal, so the finite cannot under-
stand the Infinite. He remains superior to all being. — a Unity
which escapes all conception and all expression. He is an exist-
ence unlike all other existences ; the Author of all things, and
yet not any one thing ; for He surpasses all that is. We ought
therefore to think and speak of God only as the Holy Scriptures
have spoken, and they have declared Him unsearchable. Theo-
logians call Him infinite and incomprehensible, and yet they
vainly try to sound the abyss, as if they could fathom the
mysterious and infinite depths of Deity. We cannot understand
Him, yet He gives us a participation of his being. He draws
from His exhaustless treasures and over all things He diffuses
the riches of His divine splendors.
S. Dionysius anticipates an objection, that if God thus exceeds
words, thoughts, knowledge, and being, if He eternally em-
braces and penetrates all things, if He is absolutely incom-
prehensible, how can we speak of the Divine Names ? He
GOD TO BE CALLED BY ALL NAMES, 117
answers, first, that in order to extol the greatness of God and
to show that He is not to be identified with any particular being
He must be called by no name. And then, secondly, we must
call Him by all names. 1 AM, Life and Truth, God of gods,
Lord of lords. Wisdom, Being, Eternal, Ancient of Days. He
dwells in the heart, in the body, in the soul ; He is in heaven
and upon earth, and yet he never moves. He is in the world,
around it and beyond it. He is above the heaven and all being,
yet He is in the sun, the moon, the stars, the water, the wind
and the fire. He is the dew and the vapours. He is all that
is and yet nothing of it all. In the infinite riches and sim-
plicity of his nature. He has eternally seen and embraced all
things ; so that whatever reality is in anything may be affirmed
of Him As, by lines drawn from the centre of a circle to the
circumference, so are even the meanest existences united to God.
" The blessed JEierotlieos^' says S. Dionysius, *' has taught that the
Divinity of Jesus Christ is the cause and complement of all
things. It keeps all in harmony without being either all or a
part ; and yet it is all and every part, because it comprehends
all, and from all eternity has possessed all, and all parts. Aug-
just Substance ! it penetrates all substances, without defiling
its purity, and without descending from its sublime elevation.
It determines and classifies the principles of things, and yet
remains pre-eminently beyond all principle and all classification.
Its plenitude appears in that which creatures have not ; and its
superabundance shines in that which they have." *'As in
universal nature," says the Areopagite, " the different principles
of each particular nature are united in a perfect and harmonious
unity — as in the simplicity of the soul the multiplied faculties
which serve the wants of each part of the body are united, so
we may regard all things, all substances, even the most opposite
in themselves as united in the indivisible Unity." From it they
all proceed. The Eternal has produced this participation of
being. It has an existence which is com.prised in Ilim, but He
is not comprised in it. It partakes of Him, but He does not
partake of it ; for He precedes all being and all duration. From
His life flows all life. Whatever now exists has existed in its
faithful simplicity in Him. The Areopagite anticipated an
objection from the existence of evil. He obviated it, as all his
predecessors and successors who felt the same difficulty have
done, by denying its existence. Not that he said there was
no evil in the world, but that it was not a real being, and,
consequently, could not emanate from being. It is only an
accident of good, having an existence nowhere.
118 GOD UNSEARCHABLE.
On the impossibility of knowing the Infinite, S. Dionysius
and Plotinus entirely agree. All things speak of God, but
nothing speaks the fulness of His perfections. We hioiv both
by our knowledge and by our ignorance. God is accessible to
reason through all His works ; and we discern Him by imagin-
ation, by feeling, and by thought ; yet He is incomprehensible
and ineffable, to be named by no name. He is nothing of that
which is, and nothing of that which enables us to comprehend
Him. He is in all things and yet, essentially, He is not one of
them. All things reveal Him, but i 0113 sufficiently declare
Him. We may call Him by the names of all realities, for they
have some analogy with Him who produced them ; but the
perfect knowledge of God emerges from a sublime ignorance of
Him which we reach by an incomprehensible union with Him.
Then we feel how unsearchable He is ; then the soul forgets
itself and is plunged into the eternal ocean of Deity ; then does
it receive light amonaj the billows of the Divine glory, and is
radiated among the shining abysses of unfathomable wisdom. ^
The authorities for this chapter are Domer on the Person of Christ,
Neander's Church History, the works of Origen and Synesius, S. Dionysius on
the Divine Names and the Heavenly Hierarchies, with the Introduction of the
Abbe Darboy, and Bunsen's Hippolytus. The reader who is interested in the
relations of philosophy to Christianity in the fifth Century will not omit to
read Mr. Kingsley's charming Romance Hypatia.
* It is not necessary to our argument to follow the history of the Dionysian
writings. At the Council of Constantinople, in the year 533, where they were
first cited, the Orthodox at once refused their authority. In the seventh cen-
tury, a Presbyter, named Theodoras, composed a work in defence of their
genuineness ; but long before this their influence was widely spread, or to
speak more correctly, the influence in which they originated. Neander says,
" In the last times of the fifth century, a cloister at Edessa, in Mesopotamia,
had for its head, an abbot by the name of Bar Sudaili. who had busied him-
self in various ways with that mystic theology which always formed one of
the ground-tendencies of the Oriental Monachism, and from which had pro-
ceeded the writings fabricated in the name ot Dionysius th9 Areopagite ;
as in fact he appeals to the writings of a certain Hierotheos, whom the Pseudo-
Dionysius calls his teacher. He stood at first on intimate terms with the most
eminent Monophysite teachers, and was very highly esteemed by them. But,
as his mystic theology came into conflict with the church doctrine, he drew
upon himself the most violent attacks. Espousing the peculiar views of Mon-
ophysitism, and more particularly as they were apprehended by the party of
Xenayas, he maintained that as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are one divine
essence, and as the hiunanity formed one nature wdth the godhead in Christ,
and his body became of like essence to the divinity, (was deified) so through
Him all fallen beings should also be exalted to unity with God, in this way
would become one -with God ; so that God, as Paul expresses it, should be all
in all. If it is true, as it is related, that oq the walls of his cell were found
CHAPTER VII.
HERESY.
BY heresy we are to understand the doctrines of sects outside
of the Church ; or doctrines that the Church has openly
condemned. Catholic theologians say that Pantheism is the
written the words, ' All crccatures are of the same essence with God ;' we
must suppose that he extended this assertion so as to include not only all ra-
tional beings, but all creatures of every kind, and that his theory was— as all
existence proceeded by an original emanation from God, so by redemption all
existence, once more refined and enobled, would return back to Him. But the
question then arises, whether he understood this, after the Pantheistic manner,
as a return to the divine essence with the loss of all self-subsistent, individual
existence; (as it has often been observed, that mysticism runs into Pantheism;
or whether he supposed that, with the coming into existence of finite beings sin
also necessarily made its appearance, but that by the redemption this contra-
riety was removed, and now at lengtli the individual existence of the creature
should continue to subsist, as such" in union with God. Our information is
too scanty to enable us to decide this question." In another place speaking of
the development of doctrine in the Greek Church Neander says, •' The monk
Maximus, distinguished by his acvite and profound intellect, appeared in the
seventh century, as the representative of this dialectic contemplative disposition.
It appears from his works, that the writings of Gregory of Nyssa, and of ilia
pseudo-Dionysius, had exercised great influence on his theological views. We
may trace the main lineaments of a connected system in his writings. Chris-
tianity, as seen in the doctrine of the Trinity, seemed to him to form the right
medium between the too contracted view of the idea of God in Judaism, and
the too diffuse notion exhibited in the natm-e-deifying system of Heathenism.
He considered the highest aim of the whole creation to be the inward union
into which God enters with it through Christ ; whilst, without injury to His
unchangeableness He brings humanity into personal union with Himself in
order to deify man ; whence God becomes man without change of essence ;
and human nature is taken into union with Him without losing aught of its
peculiar character. To be able to keep a firm hold of these opinions, it was of
importance to hun to possess distinct notions on the union of the two natures,
still retaining their particular properties unaltered. The object of redemption
is not only to purify human nature from sin, but to exalt it to a higher state
than that which it originally enjoyed — to an unchangeable and divine life.
Thus the history of creation becomes divided into two great parts ; the one
exhibiting the prepan ti )n for the assumption of human nature Ijy God ; the
other, the progressively developed deification of man's nature, commencing with
that act, and carried on in those who are fitted for it by a right will, till the end
is attained in their perfect salvation. Hence he often speaks of a continued
humanizing of the Logos in believers, in so far as the human life is taken into
communion with Christ, and is imbued with his own divine ]n-incip]e of life ;
and he regards the soul of him who is the source of so divine a life ' a bearer
of God.'"
120 THE GNOSTICS.
nevitable goal of Protestantism, and therefore they find it
among all sects, ancient and modern. But as Catholic theolo-
gians are not agreed what Pantheism is, some finding it in books,
where others ^ cannot find it, we must, for the present, leave it
an open question to what extent and in what way it is the goal
either of Protestantism or of Catholicism.
But if the influence of the Greek philosophers and the Orient-
al religions was so marked among the Greek fathers, and since
even the writings of S. Dionysius have found so many admirers
in the Catholic church, it will not surprise us that the same or
similar doctrines are found in the writings of heretical teachers.
As in the first centuries of the Christian era, Judaism, Neo-
platonism, and Christianity were all struggling for pre-eminence
and mutually influencing each other, it was only to be expected
that the doctrines common to them all, would be found under
manifold forms. To so great an extent was this the case, that
some who wished to be considered Christians, were refused
that name, and regarded even by the Platonic fathers as corrupt-
ers of the Christian faith.
The heresies of the early church, especially those with which
we are concerned here, arose from the predominance of Greek or
Oriental speculation over the purely Christian element. Christi-
anity, as taught by Christ and His disciples, was not so much a
philosophy as a religion. It led the soul to God by intuition and
inspiration, without professing to satisfy the understanding on
questions relating to the essence of God, or His relation to the
universe. But did it forbid these enquiries ? Did it say that
they were not proper for man ? On this question the fathers
were divided ; some saying, that we have nothing to do with
philosophy, and that the Christian's only business is to learn the
doctrines of the Church, others who before their conversion,
had been philosophers of the schools, embraced Christianity
because it helped them to understand the questions which they
had long been studying ; and why should they give up the study
now?
The Gnostics. — From the speculative side of the Church,
sprang the philosophical heretics. The oldest of these were the
Gnostics, who are divided into many sects ; for Gnostic, which
means one that knows, seems to have been applied to all the
heretics whose speculations on nature and being did not agree
with the speculations approved of by the Church. Perhaps the
most marked distinction between the Gnostics and the Alexan-
drian fathers, is, that the former have more of the Oriental
THE SPECIAL HERESY OP THB GNOSTICS. 121
spirit, the latter more of the Greek. The Gnostics had more
theosophy ; the Alexandrians more phih)sophy. Plotinus, who
had imported into his system more of OrientaHsm than any
Greek before him, wrote against the Gnostics, charging them
with perverting the old philosophy of the Greeks.
The general character of Gnosticism does not differ widely
from that of contemporaneous philosophies in the Eastern world.
It is occupied with ihe same questions and comes to nearly the
same conclusions. The special heresy of the Gnostics, as pro-
fessed Christians, was the denial of the hum.anity of Christ ; and
this arose from the belief which, as philosophers, they enter-
tained, that matter was connected with evil, and that the body
was the dwelling place of sin ; and if sin was thu^in separably
connected with the material body, they concluded that Christ's
humanity must have been illusive — He was man in appearance
only. Some of them placed so wide an interval between the in-
visible and the visible, as to separate between the God of heaven
and the God of nature. This indeed had been done by some of
the old philosophers, for they would not admit the creating God
to be the same with Him who was the immoveable essence.
The Demiurgus was the " mind " of God with Plato, and the
second hypostasis of the Trinity with Plotinus ; but some of the
Gnostics went so far as to make the Demiurgus the enemy of
God, like the Ahriman of the Parsees, creating a kingdom
opposed to God's ; yet this dualism again in some way resolved
itself into monism ; the existence of the opposing god and hia
world *of nature being only a necessary result of the emanations
of the supreme God.
Matter, in his Critical History of Gnosticism, arranges the
Gnostic sects into six classes. The first, comprised of the small
primitive schools, which having at their head Cerinthus,
and Simon, allied to Christianity doctrines borrowed from Juda-
ism, Greek Polytheism, and the East. The second, consisting of
the schools of Syria, joined to Christianity some of the funda-
mental ideas of the East. The third class, which embraced,
the great schools of Egypt, was hostile to Judaism in some of
its divisions, but blended in its teaching the doctrines of
Asia, Egypt, and Greece. The fourth, that of the small schools
of Egypt, did not much difier from the great schools. The
fifth class was that of the Marcionites, which carried its hostility
to Judaism very far, but added to Christianity some ideas from
the East. Another class was composed of those who professed
the principles of the Clementines, which allied Judaism
and Orientalism to Christian doctrines.
122 THE FIRST GNO.VriCS.
Of Simon, the Magician, we know but little beyond the men-
tion of him in the Acts of the Apostles. He was called the
" great power of God ; " a designation which is supposed to
mean that he was an incarnation of God, or one of the divine
powers vhi^h surrounded the Eternal, and were, in reality, the
divine attributes. When he saw the works of the Apostles, he
joined himself with them as a disciple of Christianity. For
anything we know to the contrary, he may have been a Christian
to the end of his life. Tradition makes him an imposter and the
head of a Gnostic sect. He supposed that the Holy
Ghost could be bought with money ; but his answer to Peter,
says Matter, established his good faith and his deference for the
Apostles — " Pray God for me that none of these evils of which
you have spoken happen to me."
Cerinthus, as we learn from Theodoret, was a native of Judea.
He lived sometime in Egypt, and became familiar with the
allegorical system of Philo. He wished to preserve it in Christi-
anity, but was strenuously opposed by the disciples of S. John.
He believed the interval between the supreme Being and the
material world to be so great, that he was unwilling to attribute cre-
ation to the supreme God. The Creator of the world was an
inferior power, separated from the first principle by a long series
of ^ons, or inferior powers, who did not know God, or who,
at least, as Irenseus expressed it, had less knowledge of Him
than the Logos had. Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph and
Mary, in virtue of His great wisdom and goodness, was
united to Christ at his baptism in the Jordan, and the object of
this union was the manifestation of the supreme God to men.
Saturninus, who represents the first Syrian School, was
more related to the disciples of Zoroaster than any of the other
Gnostics ; that is to say, he was clearer in his enunciation
of the doctrine of the two principles. He identified the " I am "
of the Jews with the supreme Being of the Zendavesta ; call-
ing Him not only Father, as Christians had been taught to do,
but the " Unhioim Father.'" He calls Him also the source of
all that is pure; for the " powers of being " become weak in
proportion as they are distant from the first or primitive source.
On the last stage of the pure world are seven angels, which
represent what is least perfect in the intelligible world ; and these
seven angels are the creators of the world which is material and
visible. This differs, apparently, from the doctrine of Zoroaster.
But it is, probably, only another mode of expressing the same
thing, creation frequently being but another word for emanation.
The angels made the creature^ man ; but the breath of the su-
THE UNKNOWN FATHER. 123
preme power animated him and elevated him to his position as
man. He must be freed from the bondage of matter, and for
this work Christ came into the world. He was the first of the
heavenly powers. ; and on earth was without form, without
natural birth, and without any material body.
Bardesanes, was the founder of the second school of Syria.
He also admitted the two principles ; the one the '' Unknown
Father J"* or the supreme and eternal God, who lives in the bosom
of the light, blessed in the perfect purity of his being ; the
other eternal matter^ or that inertness, dark and uninformed,
which the East reckoned the source of all evil, the mother
and the seat of Satan. The eternal God, happy in the pleni-
tude of His life and His perfections, having resolved to spread
abroad this life and happiness beyond Himself, multiplied Him-
self or manifested Himself as many beings, partaking his nature
and bearing His name ; for the iEons were called .M, or God.
The first being, whom the Unknoiun Father produced, was
His syzygy, or companion, whom He placed in the celestial para-
dise ; and who there became, through Him, the mother of The
Son of the living God, Christ. This is an allegory which means
that the Eternal conceived, in the silence of His decrees, the
thought of revealing Himself by another Being, who was His
image or Son. After Christ, comes His sister or spouse, the
Holy Spirit, whom the Church itself calls the love of the Son
for the Father. Bardesanes admitted seven of these syzygies,
or seven emanations of mystical couples. With the help of the four
^ons, types of the elements, the Son and the Spirit made the
heaven and the earth and all that is visible. The soul of man,
in the last analysis, was itself an emanation of the supreme
Being ; one of the ^ons. It was the breath of God, the spirit
of the Spirit that formed the world.
The third class of Gnostics, that of Egypt or Alexandria,
is perhaps the most important of all, and the most marked by
Alexandrian doctrine. Basilides the head of this school, like
all other Gnostics, placed at the head of all, the unrevealed or
ineffable God. From Him proceeded emanations, which in
their turn were themselves God, for they were in reality but the
divine names and attributes hypostasised. With Basilides, the
manifoldness of God appears first as an Ogdoad, consisting of
seven divine powers, and the primal One. This is the first
Octave, the root of all existence. From them are evolved
other existences ; each rank being a copy of the preceeding
one and inferior to it. Every rank or series is composed of
124 THE BYTHOS.
seven intelligences, and the total of these three hundred and
sixty-five make the intelligible or celestial world. The soul of
man is a ray of the celestial, light which has been in a perpetual
migration since the beginning of the world. Its end is to be
separated from the material, that it may return to the source
whence it came ; and not only is this the destiny of the soul of
man, but of all life that is now imprisoned in matter. Christ
came to accomplish this deliverance, and for this end he was
united to Jesus of Nazareth.
The most significant, according to Baur, and that which
represents the first chief form of the Gnosis, is undoubtedly the
Valentinian, partly as it is set forth by Valentinus himself, and
partly as it is more fully expounded with different modifications
by his zealous disciples. Like the system of Basilides, that of
Valentinus has a double series of manifestations or of beings,
which are all united to a single first Cause. Of these, some are
the immediate manifestations of the plenitude of the divine
life ; others are emanations of a secondary kind. The head of
both series, who is the immediate head of the first only, is a
perfect Being the Bijthos or abyss, which no intellect can
fathom. No eye can behold the invisible and unspeakable
glory in which He dwells, we cannot comprehend the duration
of His existence. He has always been and He will always be.
The manifestation of His perfections gave existence to the
intelligible world. To this act we cannot apply the word cre-
ation, for it was not a production of that which did not exist.
The supreme Being put outside of Himself that which was con-
cealed ; that which was concentrated in the Pleroma ; and the
intelligences to which He gave existence, bore the name of
manifestations, powers, or ^ons. The Cabbalists gave to all
superior intelligences, and especially to the Sephiroth, the names
El, Jehovah, Elohim, and Adonai. They wished by this to
express that all that which emanates from Grod, still is God. The
Gnostics had the same thought, and gave to the intelligences the
name ^on, which means a world ; an age ; an eternity. The
most characteristic attribute for God was eternity ; and therefore
these emanations of God were called ^ons. The Valentinians
say, according to Irenaeus, that there is in the invisible and
unspeakable heights, an u^on of all perfection, who has been
before all things. They call Him also Bythos.
The Bythos having passed infinite ages in rest and silence,
resolved to manifest Himself; and for this He made use of
thought, which alone belonged to Him ; which is not a manifest-
*THB PLEROMA. 125
ation of His being, but which is the source of all perfection—
the mother which receives the germs of His creation. The first
manifestation which the thought of the Supreme Being produced
was mind. In the allegorical language of the Valentinians,
thought was impregnated by the Bythos, and thus was produced
mind the only begotten Son of the Supreme. Bythos is thus
masculine ; at other times masculo-feminine, as when re-
garded as in a state of unity with thought. Bythos and thought
have their counterpart in the Ammon and Neith of the Egypt-
ians. Mind is the first manifestation of the powers of God — the
first of the ^Eons, the beginning of all things. By it Divinity
is revealed ; for without the act which give it existence, ail
things would remain buried in the Bythos. The ^Eons are but
the more complete revelation of God. They are the forms of the
great Being, the names of Him, whose perfections no name
can express — the names of the nameless One. Of these -^ons,
some are masculine, and some are feminine. The feminine is
the analogue of the masculine ; so that the Ogdoad becomes a
Tetrad, and can be reduced to these : — Bythos, Mind, Word,
Man.
In the Bythos, all things are one. As it unfolds itself there
result antitheses, which are formed through all degrees of
existence. But these are antitheses of like kinds ; syzygies,
or unions; copies of Bythos and thought. The one is the
complement o^ the other. The first of the two is the male, the
active or forming principle ; the second, the feminine, or pas-
sive principle. From their union result other ^ons, which
are the images of these. The union of all -^ons forms the
Pleroma "^ or fulness of the divine nature, the plenitude of the
* The Tetrad, consists of the Bythos (abyss,) Nous (mind,) Logos (speech,)
Antkropos (man.) In the Bythos, a/Hs one, its manifestations constitute the
degrees of existence ; the four which make the Tetrad, with their syzygies^
make the Ogdoad. The syzygy of Bythos is Ennoia ( thought,) sometimes
call Sige ( silence,) and Arreton ( the unspeakable,) the syzygy of Nous is
Aletheia ( truth.) These four, make the first Tetrad of the Ogdoad, the
syzygy of Logos is Zoe (life,) and that of Anthropos, Ekklesia, (the Church.)
These' form the second Tetrad. From Bythos proceeds Horos (limitation,)
the JEon sent to teach the last of the ^ons, ( Sophia,) that she could not be
united to the Bythos. The desire to know the Bythos, and to return to it,
which had seized Sophia, possessed all the JEons, which troubled the harmonj
of the Pleroma. To finish the work begun by Horos, the Nous engendered
Christos, and His companion Pneuma ( spirit.) From Logos and Zoe emanate
a decade of ^ons ; Bythios (of the nature of Bythos,) Ageratos (the ageless,)
^i/fojaA^e*, (self-produced,) Ahinetos (the immoveable,) and Monogenes
(the only begotten,) with their syzygies, Mixis (alliance,) Ilenosis (union,)
Hedone (pleasui'e,) Synkrasi* (moderation,) Makaria (blessedness.) From
126 THE ^ONS.
attributes and perfections of Him, whom no man can know, save
the only begotten Son.
All the manifestations of God were pure, and reflected the
rays of His divine attributes. But the ^ons were not equal in
perfection. The more their rank separated them from God, the
less they knew Him and the nearer they were to imperfection ;
yea, they reached imperfection, and of necessity there was de-
generacy, or as it is otherwise called, a fall. The ^ons that
were distant from God, were animated by a vehement desire to
know Him ; but this was impossible. Eternal silence, which
means an impossibility in the nature of things, prevented their
attaining this knowledge. The harmony of the Pleroma was
troubled ; there was need of a restoration, of a deliverance
from the fall. This deliverance was wrought by Christ.
This Pleroma, this fall and deliverance, only concerned the
the celestial or intelligible world ; but the inferior or terrestial
world is a copy of the celestial; and though outside of the
Pleroma what took place in the celestial had its counterpart
in the terrestial. Jesus did for the inferior world what Christ
did for the Pleroma, as the only begotten. He was the first-
born of creation, and spread throughout all existence placed
outside of the Pleroma the germs of the divine life, which He
embraced in His own person.
There was a manifest contradiction in speaking of a Pleroma
or fulness, which contained the all of being, and then assum-
ing the existence of matter outside of the Pleroma. But the
Valentinianshad a ready answer. Though the Father of all things,
they said, contain all, and nothing is beyond the Pleroma, yet
" inside of" and " outside of " are only words adapted to our
knowledge or our ignorance, having no reference to space or
distance. And when they spoke of matter beyond the Ple-
roma, they explained matter as the pb'losophers had done before
them ; as not a real existence, but the necessary bounds between
being and non -being, a negative something between that which
is and that which is not. The existence of a purely divine, and
a divine mingled with matter, required Valentinus to acknowledge,
in the creative wisdom of God, a two-fold being, a higher and a
Anthropos and E kklesia emajiaie a duodecade ; Parakletos (comforter,) and
Pistis (faith,) Patrikos (paternal,) and Elpis (hope,) Metrikos (the metrical,)
and Agape (love,) Acinous (eternal mind,) and Synesis (intelligence,)
Ekklesiasticos (belonging to the church,) and Makariotes ( the blissful) Theletos
(will) and Sophia (wisdom,) last of all, the ^on Jesus, who united in him-
self, all the good of all the ^ons.
NATURE PANTHEISM. 127
lower wisdom. The latter is the soul of the world, the immature
^on in its progress to perfection. From the mingling of this
JEon with matter, spring all living existences, in gradations with-
out number ; higher in proportion as they are free from matter,
and lower the more they are in contact with it.
Tiie doctrines of Basilides and Valentinus, under different
modifications, were held by all the sects of Egyptian Gnostics,
both of the great and the small schools. Neander says " There
were some among this kind of Gnostics who carried their Pan-
theism through with more consistency. They held that the
same soul is difi'used through all living and inanimate nature ;
and that, consequently, all, wherever it is dispersed and confined
by the bonds of matter within the limits of individual exist-
ence, should at length be absorbed by the world-soul or wisdom,
the original source Avhence it flowed. Such Gnostics, said, ' when
we take things for food we absorb the soul, scattered and dis-
persed in them, into our own being, and with ourselves ca.ry
them upward to the original fountain.' Thus, eating and drink-
ing were for them a kind of w^orship." In an apocryphal gospel
of this sect ^ the w^orld-soul or supreme Being says to the initia-
ted, " Thou art I and I am thou ; where thou art I am, and I
am diffused through all. Where thou pleasest thou canst
gather me, but in gathering me thou gatherest thyself." Dorner
says, " Epiphanius relates of the Gnostics of Egypt, w^hat proves
that they were in part given to a Nature-Pantheism. They
called the quickening powers of nature, Christ. Those who
believed that they had measured the entire circle of nature-life,
and had collected and offered all power, said ' I am Christ.' " f
* The gospel of Ea^c — The sect, the Ophites.
t The Marcionites who in Matters classfication are the fifth group of
Gnostics belonged to Asia Minor and Italy. There in nothing in tlieir doc-
trines to require any particular notice here. The Clementines represented
rather the opinions of an individual than a sect. Their fundamental definition of God
is that He is a pure Being, rest, and out of Him, is only nothing. As Being
He is the all. The world including man stands over against Being as the
vacuum which is to be filled by Him who IS. God is good and especially
righteous. This imposes the nescessity of thinking God as personal. God
viewed in Himself is eternally united with wasdom as His spirit and His
effulgent body. But His manifestation is a movement of God Himself flowing
forth in the double act of expansion and contraction of Himself of which the
heart of man is the type, the wisdom, the spirit or word of God is the eternally
oustretched hand which completes the manifestation and forms the world. The
world of revelation is God unfolding Himself. There are six acts of self-
expansion which comprehend the six worla epochs which, in the seventh, find
their point of rest in God. God is the eternal Sabbath and the moveless
Centre. But though the world is a communication of His essence a
128 MANICH^EISM.
MANICHJ7JSM. — After Gnosticism, the other great philosophi-
cal heresy was the Church of the Manichees. Manes, the
founder of this sect, before he embraced Christianity, had lived
long fimong the Persian Magi, and had acquired a great repu-
tation for all kinds of learning. *' The idea," Matter says,
which governs all his system, is Pantheism ; which, more or
less, pervades all the schools of the Gnosis ; which he however
derived from other quarters ; doubtless, from its original source
in the regions of India and China, which he had visited,
in order to satisfy his ardor for theological speculation." Ac-
cording to Manes, the cause of all that which exists is in God ;
but in the last analysis, God is all. All souls are equal.
God is in all. This divine life is not limited to man and animals,
it is the same in plants. But the Pantheism of Manes was
modified by the dualism of Zoroaster. The kingdoms of light
and darkness, spirit and matter, had long contended. Each had
its ^ons or demons, under the leadership of their chief, as in the
kingdoms of Ormuzd and Ahriman. At one time, the kingdom
of darkness seemed likely to overcome ; but the chief of the
kingdom of light, seeing the danger, created a power which he
placed in the front of the heavens, to protect the ^ons, and to
destroy the kingdom of darkness or evil. This power was the
mother of life — the soul of the world — the divine principle,
which indirectly enters into relation with the material world, to
correct its evil nature. As a direct emanation of the Supreme,
it is too pure to come into contact with matter. It remains on
the bounds of the superior region. But the mother of life bore
a Son, who is her image ; this Son is the first or celestial man.
He fights with the powers of darkness, but he is in danger of
being conquered and of falling into the empire of darkness; but
the ruler of the light kingdom, sends the living spirit to deliver
him. He is delivered ; but part of his armour or light which,
in the Eastern allegory, is called his son, has been devoured by
the princes of the kingdom of darkness.
The succession, then, of the first beings of the empire of
light, is this ; — The good God, the mother of life, the first man
the son of man or Jesus Christ and the living spirit. The
Mother of life, who is the general principle of divine life, and
the first man are too elevated to be allied with the empire of
momentum of the Monad God in His inner Being remains unchanged. He is
personal but He is also Being. Christ, the eternal prophet of truth, is mani-
fested in Adam, Enoch, and Jesus.
JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA. 129
darkness. The Son of man is the germ of the divine life which
according to the language of the Gnosis enters the empire, and
ends by tempering it or purifying it from its savage nature.
The deliverance of the celestial ray which is in the empire of
matter and its return into the bosom of perfection constitute the
end and destiny of all visible existence. This end once
reached, the world will cease to be.
The visible Adam was created in the image of the first man.
His soul was light and his body matter and thus he belonged
to both kingdoms. Had he obeyed the commandment not to
eat of the forbidden fruit, he would have been freed ultimately
from the kingdom of darkness, but an angel of light tempted him
to disobey. The demons produced Eve whose personal charms
seduced him from the spiritual and plunged him into the sensual.
What happened at the creation of the world is repeated by the gene-
ration of every human being. The blind forces of matter and
darkness are confounded, and enchain the soul which seeks deli-
verance. Man is enchained of fate by this act which has given
him existence, and which always gives him up weaker to the
powers of sense and the charms of the terrestrial world.
John Scotus Erigena. — It is not with the full permission of
the Catholic Church, that we place among heretics the name of
John Scotus Erigena. Until the year 1583, both the French
and English martyrologers celebrated him as a holy martyr, and
since the republication of his works in Germany, many Catholic
theologians of that country claim him as a sound Catholic.
He certainly lived and died in the communion of the Church of
Rome — was perhaps on Abbot and therefore probably a priest,
though evidence is wanting to establish the certainty of this.
He first appears in history in a controversy on predestination.
Godescalcus a Saxon monk, had incurred the displeasure of the
Archbishop of Rheims, by teaching that God's predestination
was two-fold ; one of the good to eternal blessedness and the
other of the reprobate to eternal condemnation. Erigena
espoused the side of the Archbishop, maintaining that God out
of His everlasting love had predestined all men to eternal life.
The controversy became so important that an appeal was made
to Rome. Nicholas I. approved of the doctrine of Godescalcus
and tried to check the "poisonous" dogmas of Erigena; "never-
theless" adds his German Catholic biographer with a feeling of
triumph, "Erigena himself was not condemned." At the request of
Charles the Bald, Erigena translated into Latin, the works of
S. Dionysius the Areopagite. This again exposed him to the
130 THE DIVISION OF NATURE.
Papal displeasure ; Nicholas blamed liim for translating, with-
out the approbation of the Court of Rome, a book so liable to be
mis-interpreted. His work on the Eucharist, in reply to Radbertus
was condemned and burnt by the Council of Versailles in the
eleventh century, but his Catholic advocates in Germany say
this book was not written by Erigena, but by Ratramnus. His
great work "on the Division of Nature'' seems to have passed
without censure till the thirteenth century when Honorius
ni. findino; it had leavened the sect of the Albi^-enses who
boasted of their argeement with so great a man as Erigena,
ordered all his works to be collected and burnt. In the seven-
teenth century they were republished at Oxford, and immediately
after catalogued at Rome in the « index of books forbidden.
To what extent Erigena is a heretic the infallible Church has
not decided. He believed his speculative theology to be in per-
fect harmony with the theology of the Church. This has been
maintained by some modern Catholic theologians, but denied
by othf^rs. It is convenient here to place him among heretics,
and yet it is improper to separate him from the author of the
Dionysian writings."^^ Eri/^ena's great work, we have said, is " on
the Division of Nature." By " Nature" he understands not
only all being, but all non-being ; things which are, and things
which are not. These two are necessary to constitute absolute
Existence, for being is not the all so long as non-being stands
opposed to it, this however is but the ground of a further division
into four kinds.
* Of the history of this rcinarhable man, very little is known. To his name,
John Scotns, was added Eri.ucna or the Irish-born. Tradition brino-s him
from the Irish monastaries, where it is said philosophy and the Greek lan-
i;-uage floro-ished lonji; after they had fallen into neglect in other parts of
Europe ; hut Scotland and Wales dispute with Ireland the honor of being the
country of his liirth. Pie found a liberal patron in Charles the Bald, who made
him Director of the University of Paris. His rare acquaintance with the Greek
language ; his familiarity with the doctrines of Plato, and his Alexandrian dis-
ciples, seem to have constituted his chief claim to regal patronage and to Pa]:)al
censure. According to one account he died in France. According to ano-
ther, he found a second royal protector in Alfred the Great, who made him
teacher of Mathematics and Dialectics at Oxford, and then Abbot of INIalmes-
bury. He suffered death at the hands of his scholars. A wonderful light
shone over the place where his body lay, till it was buried near the altar in the
great church of Malmcsbury, He was henceforth enrolled in the list of saints
and martyrs. Like nearly all great metai)hysicians, he Avas little of stature,
and end(')wed Avith great subtlety of intellect. Dr. Christlieb enters at some
length into the question of Erigena's retm-n to England giving the evidence on
both sides, and he concludes that the probability is in favor of the belief that
Erigena did come to England. The authorities are Simeon of Durham ; Wil-
liam of Malmesbury, and Matthew of Westminster. The objection is, that
these authors confounded Erigena with some other Scotus,
GOD UNKNOWABLE. 131
1. Nature which creates and is not created.
2. Nature which creates and is created.
3. Nature which is created and does not create.
4. Nature which is not created and does not create.
These four divisions are purely speculative, starting with the
idea of existence in which being and non-being, subject and
object, God and the world are all one. The Dualism is only ap-
parent, the Monism is real. On the human side, that is, in our
subjective contemplation '' Nature'' is two-fold and manifold. On
the divine side, all is one. The four divisions are justly resolved
into two. The first is manifestly, God in the Word, as the
Original of all things. The second is things in their ideals,
which in Plato's sense are the reahties. The third is what some
would call the reality in the ideals but, in Platonic language, the
phenomenal world. The fourth is God in Himself as the source
of all things, and as the goal to which all things return. Reduced
to two, these four divi sions are God from whom all emanates and the
things emanating from Him ; but as the latter have no reality ex-
cept so far as they derive it from Him from whom they emanate,
we come back to the Pantheistic formula — God is one and all
things.
Erigena dwells much on the incomprehensibility of God.
He is so overwhelmed with the thought of the divine infinitude,
that he ^ does not imagine God to be known by any created
beings. Even to expect to know God as He is, is as unwise as
the demand of Philip " Shew us the Father." And Christ's
answer to Philip, is the only answer that will ever be given to our
expectations of seeing God. We shall behold Him in His the-
ophanies ; in the manifestations of Himself in creation, but above
all, shall we know Him in His Son. We know that God is, and
that He is the highest reality ; the essence of all which is, but
what that essence is, we know not. It remains above all human
thoughts and all human conceptions of being. God alone creates,
and is alone un-created, He is created by no other, because He
creates Himself. But if thus above us, how can we think of
Him? How can we speak of Him ? If we cannot know Him,
is t heology possible ? This is a question with which we are still
familiar. The different answers to it, and the conclusions from
these answers are interesting, when we compare them with the
answ ers and conclusions that were made in the days of Alfred
the Great. Erigena did not despair of theology, though he
declares God to be the absolutely unknowable and unknown. We
can think and speak of Him in two ways, negatively and posi-
k2
132 GOD THE ABSOLUTE NOTHING.
tively. We first deny that God is anything; any of those things
which can be spoken of, or understood. Then we predicate
of Him all things, but affirming that He is not any one of
them, and yet that all are by and through Him. We can say
of God that He is being, but that is not properly being to
which non-being stands opposed. He is therefore above
being. We can say. He is God. If we take the Greek
word for God, as derived from the Greek verb to see, then
darkness is opposed to vision, and God being more than
light, is above God ; if from the verb to run then not running
i3° opposed to running, and He is, in this sense too, more than
God. It is written '' His word runneth very swiftly," which
means that He runs through all things which are, in order that
they may be. In the same way He is more eternal than
eternity, wiser than wisdom, better than goodness, and truer than
truth. These attributes are transferred from the creature to the
Creator, from the finite to the Infinite. They exist in Him, but
in a manner so transcendent that we speak most reverently of Him
vfhen we deny Him all attributes, lest we should associate with
them anything that is human or finite. Only by predicating all
things of Gof^, and at the same time denying Him the possibility
of these predicates being applied to Him, can we speak truly
of God. There is more truth in the negation than the affirma-
tion. We know Him best, by feeling our ignorance of Him.
This is true divine knowledge to know that we do not know Him.
The highest name by which He can be called is to call Him by
no name, and our highest conception of Him is not as in reality
a being, but as the Ahsohde Nothing who is above all being.
But° Erigena cannot stop here. The dread of limitation
accompanying the knowledge of the divine Being, is thus
the ground of the denial of that knowledge. But another
question immediately arises. Does God know Himself?
If He does is not that a limitation, as well as human knowledge
of Him ? If He knows Himself, He must become an object
of His own knowledge, and as such He is no longer the Infinite
and the Inconceivable. Erigena comes boldly to the legitimate
conclusion of his rigid Dialectic. God does not know Himself.
He knows that He is, but He does not know what He is. If
He knows not Himself, how are we to know Him?
Wherefore need we ask His name since it is so wonderful ?
God cannot be known as anything determined, and yet this
divine ignorance is in truth the most inexpressible wisdom.
And so it is with God's unconsciousness of Himself. We
CREATION. 133
say He does not know Himself because if He did He would
be limited. This attribute like the others must be both affirmed
and denied of Him ; so as to express that His knowledge of
Himself is like Himself, above all that is being or essence, trans-
cendently divine.
Erigena divided nature, or the all of being and non-being,
into four divisions. These, as we have seen, were reducible to
two, and these again to one, in the identity of God and
creation. But this identity may be understood in two ways,
either that the essence of God goes out eniirely into the being of
the universe, or that though all things partake of His being, and
are manifestations of it, yet, He Himself transcends all. It is
in the latter sense, that we are here to understand the identity
of God and the universe. He creates all things, and His
essence is in all things. It is manifested in every creature,
and yet God remains One in Himself. He never gives up the
simplicity of His being. God moves and extends Himself,
and therefore the universe, as a visible phenomenon, appenrs.
All is His extension, because all arises from this, that
God extends Himself; but in this extension He does not give
up His being. He still exists, separate from all, just as
our spirits exist separate from our thoughts as expressed in
words or in writing. His presence in all things does not hinder
that He remains one in Himself. The universe has no exist-
ence independent of God's existence; it is therefore God, but
not the whole of God. He is more than the universe, yet the
divine nature is truly and properly in all things. l^Jothing
really is, in which the divine nature is not. God and the
creature then do not differ in their essential nature ; they are
both divine. The creature subsists in God; and God alter a
wonderful manner is created in the creature.
Erigena uses the word creation, and his Catholic advocates
plead this as a proof of his orthodoxy ; but we must not be mis-
led by words. Creation, with Erigena, is emanation. His ^
arguments lose their meaning the moment we forget this.
Emanation is the chain which unites the created to the un-
created ; the invisible bond which makes Creator and creature
one. As the second of the four divisions, we had " That which
creates and is created." This represents the ideals which
constitute the realities of all created things, which the Greeks
called prototypes, species or eternal forms according to which,
and in which, the visible universe was created. These ideals
are God's thoughts. His conceptions of things before the
134 IS THE PHENOMENAL ETERNAL?
beginning of time. They are identical with His spirit and
will. God cannot exist without creating, for creation is His
necessary work. The divine attributes of being, wisdom, good-
ness and truth require that God create — and these are them-
selves one with the ideal principles of creation. These ideals
thus become the bridge between the Infinite and the finite. As
God's attributes they participate in God, and at the same time
they are the realities of the phenomenal universe. To under-
stand this we must dismiss our ordinary conception of a thought,
as something in the mind distinct from the outward reality.
All God's thoughts, it is maintained, have a real objective
existence in the Logos, which, as Scripture teaches, existed in
the beginning or first principle, the primordial cause of the
heaven and earth. He formed in His VYord, wiiicli is His only
begotten Son, all the things which He wished to create, before
they came to phenomenal existence. The Word thus is the
unity of the ideals; the original form of all things, which in an
eternal and unchangeable manner are represented in Him, and
subsist by Him.
Whilst the ideals were regarded as the divine attributes, or
God's necessary thoughts, Erigena found it easy to identify these
with God through the Word. But how is he to bridge the sepa-
ration between the ideal and phenomenal universe — between the
second and third divisions'of nature — "That which creates and
is created;'' and " That which is created and does not create?''
The ideas are co-eternal with God. This is settled ; but could
they be objective realities until they passed into the pherio-
menal state ? In other words — can there be a cause until it
makes good its existence by an effect ? Is the phenomenal uni-
verse co-eternal w^ith the ideal ; or did it take its origin in time ?
If the latter, then creation was not eternal, unless there can be
a cause without an effect. But creation is eternal — the ideal
universe is eternal, the phenomenal being necessary to its com-
pletion, it too must be eternal. Logically, the efi'ect follows
the cause ; the creature must come after the creation ; so that
here we are compelled to distinguish between the eternity of
God who has His beginning in Himself, and the eternity of
things created, which have their beginning in Him. Yet,
when He was, they were ; the primordial causes are co-eternal
with Him, because they always subsisted in Him. What then
is matter, time, and space? As realities they disappear. Time
is but the continuance and motion of things mutable. The cog-
nition of it, precedes everything known or belonging to time.
man's place in nature. 135
Space is a limitation of sensible and intelligible objects. It is
not perceivable by sense. It can only be thought in the reason.
Time and space are merely subjective existences. Nearly the
same is said of matter. It comes to appearance within the
bounds of time and space, flowing out from tlie primordial causes.
So fur as it has form, it is corporeal, but so far as it is
formless it is incorporeal, and can be known only by
reason. Aristotle regarded matter as mere potentiality ; and
form as the actuality which brought the indefinite material to
be a S67nei]img. Erigena's doctrine does not much differ from
this. Matter is to him only the participation of form and
shape. Whatever wants these is nothing actual. Cut form
and shape are in themselves incorporeal, and can only be
known by the reason. It follows then that things formed as
well as things formless are originally and essentially incorporeal.
The latter, through the want of form, the former, not in them-
selves, but through the form. But that which is in itself incor-
poreal becomes corporeal by its participation with another
incorporeal : and thus bodies are produced by the coming toge-
ther of two incorporeals. If so, they can be again resolved into
their original states and cease to be bodies. What then is
matter ? Nothing — or something next to nothing ; the muta-
bihty of things mutable; the "without form and void;" the
nonentity of a body which remains when deprived of all its
qualities — the mere reflection, echo and shadow of true being.
Man visible has his place at the head of the '' nature Avhich
is created and does not create." As the essence of God is the
one substance of all beings, as the Logos is the unity of all the
primordial causes, so is man the mediating point of the oppo-
sites and differences of the phenomenal world. His being con-
tains all created natures in itself; since in the spirit and reast^n
of man God has created the invisible and intelligible world ; and
in his body, the visible and sensible. Man is contained in the
hidden original cause of nature according to which he was
created; and in him is contained the whole creation, so that he
has been called, not improperly, " the work-shop of all other
creatures." He understands as an angel ; reasons as a man ;
feels as an animal ; lives as a plant ; consists of body and soul ;
and is akin to every creature. He was created in God's image,
that in Him every creature, both intelligible and sensible, might
form an undivided unity. Need we marvel then, that if in his
suffering, creatures suffer, and that all creation is groaning and
travailing together with him, and with him waiting for de-
liverancey
136 PHILOSOPHY AND CHURCH THEOLOGY.
The fourth division of nature is, " That which does not create
and is not created." This, as we have already seen, is God in
Himself. The diiFerence is, that in the first, God is the Creator —
the Word — the Being from whom creation emanates. In this He is
the Being to whom creation returns. This is God in our
highest conception of Him; God without attributes; God in
His super-essential essence, neither creative nor created;
God as the original Monad, which not being any one thing, is
yet more than all things, and of whom we speak most reve-
rently and most truly, when we call Him the absolute
No n -being.
We have reserved hitherto the application of Erigena's philo-
sophy to the interpretation of Scripture and church dogmas.
This arrangement is of our own making. It has no place in
the " Division of Nature." There — Scripture, church doctrine
and philosophy are brought together to explain each other — the
perfect harmony of all these being previously assumed. Erigena
was a Christian and a Catholic. Let us see how he understood
Christianity.*
The Catholic faith is, that we worship one God in Trinity and
Trinity in Unity. This is a true doctrine. We may object to
the contradictory and hard dogmatic form which it takes in the
Latin phrases of the creed of S. Athanasius ; but in substance
it is true. There are not three persons in the Godhead ; but
substitute the Greek word, which we translate person, explain
that the Latin word means no more than is intended by the
Greek word, and then the creed of S. Athanasius may be
* The prevailing bent of the theological spirit of that age was to cling, as
Ave have remarked before, to the authorities of the church tradition : but he
was founding a system of truth, which should repose entirely on rational
insight, approve itself as true by an inner necessity of reason. Yet even
according to his apprehension, the rational and the church-traditional theology,
faith and knowledge by reason, philosophy and religion did not stand in con-
tradiction, but in perfect harmony with each other. For, said he, a man can
elevate himself to the knowledge of God, which is the end of true philosophy,
only by following the mode and manner in which God, who in His essence is
incomprehensible and unknowable, letting Himself down to the condition and
wants of humanity which is to be educated, has revealed Himself ; — God in His
forms of revelation, in His theophanies. After this manner God presents Him-
self in the historical development of religion, through the authority of the
church ; but true philosophy, which rises above the theophanies to the Abso-
lute itself, which soars beyond all conceptual apprehension, gives insight into
the laws according to which God must be known and worshipped. True
philosophy and true religion are therefoie one. Philosophy veiled in the form
of tradition, is religion ; religion unveiled from the form of tradition by
rational knowledge is philosophy. Philosophy is the theoretic side of religion,
religion the practical side of philosophy. — Neander.
THE TRINITY. 137
allowed to pass. The Trinity is not so much a God in three
persons, as God in three operations. God is one, and yet one
in three self-subsisting hypostases or existences. He is one
cause subsisting by itself, and yet in three self-subsisting
causes. The Father is the cause of the Son, not as to nature,
for both are of one essence ; but according to the relation of
him who begets, to him who is begotten, or of the cause that
precedes, to that which follows. The Holy Spirit proceeds from
the Father, not from but through the Son, for one cause cannot
have two causes. Light proceeds from fire by the medium of
a ray, but not from both, for the fire is the original cause both
of the light and the ray. The ray produces the light, but not
as if it were in itself a self-subsisting cause ; for it can never be
thought of, as separated from the fire from which the ray pro -
ceeds and which is incessantly present in the ray, and suffers
the light to go forth from itself. So also the Father is the pro-
ducing cause of the Son. And He is the essence of all causes
which are created in Him by the Father ; and the Father Him-
self is the cause of the Spirit proceeding from Him, but through
the Son. The Spirit again is the cause of all division, multi-
plication and distribution of all the things, which are made in
the Son by the Father, in the general and special workings both
in the kingdoms of nature and of grace. Thus the Holy Spirit
proceeds from the Father by the medium of the Son; and,
again, the Son is begotten of the Father through the grace of
the Holy Spirit. These forms and modes of representing the
Trinity were common among the Greek fathers. How far they
are orthodox is not our present business. With Erigena the
"three" that form the TrinityneverappearasperSons,but only as
powers, names, relations or operations of God. The Father is
essence; the Son is wisdom; the Spirit is life. The Father is
being; the vSon is might ; the Spirit is energy. The Father is
mind; the Son self-knowledge; the Spirit self-love. As
Abraham was not a father in himself, but in relation to Isaac,
nor Isaac a son but in relation to Abraham, so God is not a
father in Himself, nor Christ a son in himself; but the one
a father and the other a son in relation to each other ; the sub-
stance of both being the same. Though the operations are
different, it is one God who works through all. The Father
creates. Through the Son all is created. By the Spirit, as
the differential principle, the creation is wrought out into the
manifold. The Father wills ; the Son creates ; the Holy Spirit
brings the work to completion. But for the Father to will is
138 THE FALL OF MAN.
to do, SO that the working of the Son and the Spirit is but the
willing of the Father. The Father is the principle of the sub-
stance of things — the Son, of their ideal causes — the Spirit, of
their actual manifestation in time and space. The operations
of the triune three are different, and yet the Worker is One.
This great doctrine of the Church points to moments in the
becoming of nature. It is a theophany of the truth, nothing
more. God is neither a Triniiy nor a Unity. He is something
more than either three in one or one in three.
The creation of man too, like the being of God, is altogether
transcendental. Man existed in the divine mind from all
eternity. Of old "the delights of wisdom were with the sons
of men." The ideal Adam was completely happy in paradise ;
he had a spiritual body like that of the angels. S. Paul dis-
courses of glorified bodies and shows by his language that body
and spirit are essentially of one substance. This primordial
Adam was taught to love the spiritual and the invisible; but he
desired the visible and the sensual, and as a punishment he was
clothed with this present body of death. Then being subject to
passions and the viler affections he was driven from paradise —
that is, he was sent forth from the spiritual to the material
world ; he was no more like the angels. Eve was created. Mar-
riage was instituted, and man was doomed to perpetuate his race
in the same way as the beasts of the field. This may seem to
contradict the narrative in Genesis ; but in reality it does not,
for the ideal Eve previously existed in the ideal Adam, and
represented that principle of sense which seduced him from the
spiritual life. In this expulsion from Eden, and this separation
of the sexes, the phenomenal world, to speak humanly, has its
origin. Man passes from the ideal and spiritual to the pheno-
menal and material, andas in him are contained all forms and
ranks of creatures, these take their beginning as he begins his
material existence. In this fall we learn what sin is. It is no
real being, but only a privation of good — an accident of being.
It was nothing which happened to man in time, but an original
infirmity of his nature. The seed of sin or the possibility of
willing evil was always in man. It was suffered by God to be
in him. Indeed, the fall was predestined, that out of this seem-
ing evil might be brought a greater good. It is impossible that
God could be disappointed, or that any event should arise which
He had not pre-ordained. The fall of the ideal Adam, and the
creation of this phenomenal world, are but steps in the divine
procedure — parts of an eternal working which, in the end, shall
THE INCARNATION. 139
contribute to the greater glory of God, and the higher blessed-
ness of all the universe.
And the incarnation of Christ, that too is out of time. It
must be, for the thought of it is co-existent with the though of
infirmity in man. As he was predestined to pass the material
stage, so was he predestined to return to the spiritual or rather
to pass on to it, for the fall and the incarnation are together
processes in the history of the creature's progress towards the
Creator. The subject of the Incarnation is the eternal Logos ;
the first principle, in and by whom all things were made. In
the Logos, man had his being. He fell by the love of the
sensual. He participated in the material. It was necessary
that the Logos in order to restore man, should descend in like
manner and participate of the material, therefore He took upon
Him humanity in its fallen state ; a body of sense with soul and
spirit, and thereby He united in Himself the whole sensible
and intelligible creation. In taking man's nature He took all
the natures below man's for it includes them all, and thus He
is the Redeemer of the whole creation The Logos or eternal
cause of all, descended as in His Godhead into the effects of
wdiich He is the cause, that is into the sensuous world that He
might save according to His humanity the eflects of the causes,
w^hich he already had eternally in Himself. The Incarnation
was no matter of choice. It was necessary for the cause of all
things, thus to make good the efiects by descending into them.
This was done by the Logos, who in this incarnation became man,
and thereby manifested the eternal self-subsisting unity of the
spiritual and the phenomenal ; the infinite and the finite — the
eternal immanency of God in the universe. As man is the
content of all efiects produced by the ideal cause, so the Logos
is the unity or content of the causes themselves. In Scripture
the incarnation is necessarily represented as taking place in time,
but like the creation, and fall of man, it is in reality eternal.
The final and complete restitution of man, is the inevitable re-
sult of the incarnation of the Logos. The Universe has proceeded
from God. It is but the extension of His being ; the manifestation
of Himself; therefore must it return again to Him, not in part,
but as a whole. U he predestination of anything to destruction
is but a figure of speech. All men shall be saved. Their re-
turn to God is necessary, yea it is not a thing of time, not an
event of w^hich we can speak, as past or future. It is some-
thing actual. In the contemplation of God it is eternally
realized, but to man the Logos became incarnate in Jesus of
140
Nazareth, who by His death, resurrection and ascension com-
pleted the salvation of men, and angels.
Erigena's Disciples. — Erigena left no school, and if he
had any immediate followers, nothing is known of them. "' The
century," says Neander, "in which he lived was not prepared
for his system ; but the speculative spirit which passed over
from the twelvth to the thirteenth century prepared the way for
its acquiring an influence which it was unable to do on its first
appearance." We are without data for any suificient history of
the heresies of the thirteenth century ; but we have intimations
that they were numerous, and so widely spread as to alarm the
authorities of the church. The chief of these heresies were
various forms of what we call Pantheism. In the year 1204,
the University of Paris condemned the doctrines of Amalric de
Bena,"^ Professor of Theology in the University. As we have
none of Amalric's writings, we only know his doctrines from
passages preserved by other authors. These agree so entirely
with Erigena's doctrines, as to leave no doubt as to the source
from which they come. That God alone truly exists, — all else
being merely phenomena, — that God and the creature are one
and the same, and that all things will finally return to God, are
the chief points in the heresy with which he is charged. Then
we have in detail the Platonic doctrine of ideas and primordial
causes — the forms and patterns which, like the second divi-
sion of nature, create and are themselves created. They exist
in God, and what God is they are. As Abraham is not of one
nature and Isaac of another, but both one and the same, so all
things are one — all are divine, God being the essence of all
creatures. We have the repetition of Erigena's doctrine con-
corning the fall of man, and the result of that fall in the produc-
tion of the sensuous body, and the origin of the two sexes.
Amalric was removed from his professorship. He appealed to
Innocent III., but the sentence of the University was confirmed.
Thus condemned by the Roman See, he acknowledged his errors,
signed a recantation, and soon after died.
* Amalric of Bena, was so called from his birth-place in the diocese of
Chartrcs. In the beginning of the thirteenth century, he taught at Paris.
After gaining a high reputation by his lectures on dialectics, he passed over to
theology, and now created a great sensation by many of the o]»inious he ad-
vanced ; among which may be mentioned in particular, the following: "As
no man can be saved without believing in the sutTcriugs and resurrection of
Christ, so neither can he be saved without believing that he himself is a mem-
ber of Christ." — Neander.
AMALRIC DE BENA. 141
But Amalric's doctrines had taken deeper root than either
the Pope or the University of Paris was aware of. His disciple,
David of Dinanto, was not less formidable than Amalric had ,
been. To refute David of Dinanto was the work of the theo-
logians of this century, and to extirpate his followers the special
vocation of the church. David wrote a book " On Divisions,'^
which, from the portions of it preserved by Albert the Great,
seems to have been an imitation of Erigena " on the Division of
Nature." He is said to have gone beyond his master, in having
defined God as " the material principle of all things, which was
a substitution for Amalric's more idealistic phrase, " the formal
principle." But the difference appears to be in words more
than in meaning. What is " formal " in the Platonic philo-
sophy is essential, and perhaps " material " is but another name
for the same thing. Matter, as such, had no more existence for
him than it had for Erigena or Amalric. Whatever he meant,
we may safely conclude he did not think that God is material.
This distinction between the theology of Amalric and David of
Dinanto was first made by Thomas Aquinas, who describes the
latter as having taught that God was the first matter ; that is,
that God is the one substance, essence or matter which consti-
tutes the universe. He divides the "all" into *' three indi-
visibles ;" the substratum of the corporeal world ; then, that out
of which spirit proceeds ; and lastly, that of the ideas or eternal
substances. The first is called matter, the second spirit, and
the third God. But the three are one ; they are only different
designations of the divine Essence according as we consider it
in its relation to the corporeal, the spiritual, and the ideal
worlds. God alone is true being, the only substance, of which
all other beings are but the accidents.
So widely did this speculative theologyspread itself both among
the clergy and the lay people, that the University of Paris pro-
hibited the reading of all metaphysical books. Aristotle, and
books ascribed to Aristotle, which had hitherto been read in the
University were publicly condemned. The body of Amalric
was ordered to be dug up and burned, or at least cast out of
consecrated ground. The work of David of Dinanto was pro-
scribed, with the commentaries of the Arabian Averroes, and
the writings of some other Pantheistic heretic, who is called
" the Spanish Maurice ;" nor was the opposition of the church
confined to proscriptions of books, and anathemas against their
authors. The stake was kindled, and all metaphysical priests
and laymen who would not recant their faith in the doctrines of
142 THE ABBOT JOACHIM.
Aristotle and Amalric were consumed. " But you cannot burn
^ ^^ me," cried Bernard, a brave priest of the Pantheistic sect; " you
Cannot burn me, for I am God." This, however, did not over-
awe his enemies. They kindled the faggots which they had
gathered round him, and soon the phenomenal Bernard
disappeared.*
A leaven of the heresy of Erigena and Amah'ic is supposed
to have made considerable progress among the order of S.
Francis. Abbot Joachim, of S. Floris, a fervent advocate of
the speculative and mystical doctrines condemned by the Univer-
sity of Paris, was in great reverence among the Fraiiciscans.
Joachim had written a commentary on the Apocalypse. He
was a prophet, and an interpreter of prophecy. Among other
predictions, he foretold the great success of the order of S.
Francis ; and among his interpretations of prophecy, he
supposed that he had discovered the law of God's progressive
revelation of Himself in the world. There was first the age of
the Father. With the incarnation, was that of the ?on ; and
now the age of the Holy Ghost was about to begin. This age
was to be marked by such an increase of light and grace, as to
supersede the necessity of a church and priesthood such as then
existed. All men were to be equal, free from the cares of the
* Pantheism, with all the practical consequences that flow from it, was more
boldly and abruptly expressed than perhaps the original founders of this school
had intended. That distinction of the three ages which had attached itself to
the doctrine of the Trinity, and Avhich we noticed in the doctrines of the Abbot
Joachim, was employed by this sect also, after their own peculiar manner.
As the predominant revelation of God the Father, in the Old Testament, was
followed by the revelation of the Son, by which the forms of woi-ship under the
legal dispensation Avere done away ; so now the age of the Holy Ghost was at
hand, — the incarnation of the Holy Ghost in entire hinnanity, the being of
God under the form of the Holy Ghost after an equal measure in all the faith-
ful ; that is, the dependence of the religious consciousness upon any one indi-
vidual as a person in whom God is incarnate Avould cease, and the conscious-
ness of all alike, that God exists in them, has in them assumed human nature,
would come in place of it. The sacraments, under which the Son of God had
been worshipped, would then be done away ; religion would be made wholly
independent of ceremonies ; of everything positive. The members of this sect
are the ones in whom the incarnation of the Holy Ghost has begun, the fore-
runners of the above-described period of the Holy Spirit. Several other opi-
nions are charged upon members of this sect, which certainly accord with their
general mode of thinking ; as, for example, that God had spoken in Ovid
as well as in Augustine ; that the only heaven and the only hell are in the pre-
sent life ; that those who possess the true knowledge no longer need faith or
hope ; they have attained already to the true resmi-ection, the true paradise,
the real heaven ; that he who lives in mortal sin has hell in himself. These
people opposed the Avorship of saints as a species of idolatry. They called the
ruling church Babylon ; the pope, antichnat.—Neander.
ALBIGENSES. 143
world, and filled with the Spirit of God. This millennium of
blessedness was called " the eternal gospel," and the order of S.
Francis were to be the chief heralds of its approach."^
Nearly allied to these zealous Franciscans were the Albi-
genses who, as we have ah-eadj mentioned, claimed discipleship
from Erigena, and appealed to his works in vindication of their
doctrines. Of the tenets of the Albigenses we know nothing,
except from their enemies. They are represented as Mani-
chaeans and Arians. Many wild doctrines are charged upon
them, but with what amount of accuracy we cannot determine.
An affinity of doctrine has also been shown between the " Divi-
sion of Nature," and the book " on the Nine Rocks " which, it
is said, was the secret oracle of the " Brothers and Sisters
of the Free Spirit." There are, however, extravagances in
this book, which are not to be found in the works of Eri-
gena. The existence of the universe is denied because of
its identity with God. It is an emanation from Him,
and to Him it shall return. The soul of man is declared to be
uncreated and a part of the divine Being. To abstract ourselves
from the finite, is the way to realize our union with the Infinite —
to feel that we are God. What the Scripture says of Clirist is
true of every godly man — he is the son of God, and God.
* As the strict Eranciscans entertained a special reverence for the Abbot
Joachim, who had foretokt their order and the regeneration of the chiuTli, of
which they were to be the instrument, and occupied themselves a good deal
with the exidanation of his writings, the interpretation and application of the
current ideas in the same, so a great deal was said among them about a new
everlasting gospel. The idea of such a gospel l)clongpd really among the cha-
racteristic and peculiar notions of Joachim ; and we have seen, how by this
expression, borrowed from the 14th chapter of the Apocalypse, he had under-
stood, fallowing the view of Origen, a new spiritual apprehension of Chris-
tianity, as o]iposed to the sensuous Catholic point of view, and answering
to the age of the Holy Spirit. A great sensation was now created by a com-
mentary on the eternal gospel, Avhich, after the middle of the thirteenth cen-
tury, the Franciscan Gerhard, who, by his zeal for Joachim's doctrines,
iuA'olved himself in many persecutions, and incurred an eighteen years' impri-
sonment, published under the title of " Introductorius in Evangelium aeter-
nuin.^^ Many vague notions were entertained about the eternal gosjiel of the
Franciscans, ai'ising from superficial views, or a superficial understanding of
Joachim's writings, and the offspring of mere rumour or the heresy -hunting
spirit. Men spoke of the eternal gospel as of a book composed under this title
and circulated among the Franciscans. Occasionally, also, this eternal gospel
was confounded perhaps with the above-mentioned Introductorius. In realitv,
there was no book existing under this title of the Eternal Gospel ; but all that
is said about it relates simply to the writings of Joachim. The opponents of
the Franciscan oi'der objected to the preachers of the eternal gospel, that,
according to their opinion, Christianity was but a transient thing, and a new,
more perfect religion, the absolute form, destined to endure for ever, would
succeed it. — Neander.
144 BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF THE FREE SPIRIT.
Under the shelter of these doctrines, if history speaks what
is true, '' the Brothers and Sisters" justified practices which are
not considered commendable by Catholic Christendom. If, they
said, the; soul is one with God, then those acts which appear
sinful cease to be so, they are essentially acts of God. If God
wills that we sin, w^hy should we will not to sin ? And if we
have sinned a thousand times, why should we repent?
The sins we commit are parts of the divine plan, which
brings good out of evil and makes use of partial ill for
the universal well-being of the world. There is often but
a narrow line between truth and error, between a man's own
doctrines, and the sense in which others understand them and
yet that line is itself a world. S. Jude condemned those who by
apparently legitimate reasoning, turned the grace of God into
lasciviousness and so doubtless, if these things are true, would
John Scotus Erigena have rebuked and condemned the " Brothers
and Sisters of the Free Spirit."
* This account of the Gnostics and the Manichees, is chiefly from Matter^s]
Histoire Critique du Gnosticisme and Baur's Die Christliche Gnosis. The
Authorities for the rest of the chapter are Erigena, de Divisione Naturae ; Dr.
Christlieb's Lehen und Lehre des Johannes Scotus Erigena ; and Hahn's
Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter. The Gnostics and their Jiemains, by C.
W. King, is an interesting work on Gnostic Art.
CHAPTER VIII,
SCHOLASTICISM.
fpHS church doctors of the middle agog were called Scholastics,
i. either because they were the learned men of these ages, or
because of their connection with the schools that were established
bj Charlemagne. Philosophy found a home in Paris after its
course was run at Athens and Alexandria. Erigena may be
considered either as the forerunner of Scholasticism, or as the
first of the Scholastics. M. Rousselot speaks of him as
wandering on the mountains of Scotland, or by the banks of the
sea which w^ashes the Hebrides, embracing in himself all that the
solitary lona had been able to preserve of philosophical antiquity
from the ignorance of barbarians ; and, at the same time, con-
cealing in his bosom the fruitful germ of the future.^ The
discussions of the Scholastics were but a continuation of the
discussions of the philosophers. Two centuries had elapsed after
the death of Erigena, before the great controversies of the
middle ages ; but there is evidence that in these two centuries
the cultivation of philosophy was not neglected. M. Cousin
has shewn by a passage in the glosses of Raban Maur, who
wrote in the ninth century, that the diiference between Nomi-
nalist and Realist had already began. Idealism, as the doctrine
of Plato, had always been more or less the philosophy of the
church. The wisest, and as we now reckon the most orthodox
of the fathers, S. Augustine was an Idealist, believing that
ideas are realities — the original types of things and existing
before the things themselves. Realism was but another name
for Idealism, and as such had been inherited from Plato. The
first intimation of the rise of Nominalism in the church, is found
in this passage of Raban Maur. Boethius, in his Introduction
to Porphyry's Isagoge, had said — " The intention of Porphyry in
* M. Rousselot has no facts to support him in making Scotland the native
country of Erigena ; but he has many probabilities. It seems natural to believe
that so great a metaphysician belonged to the race which la pre-emiucntij
metaphysical.
146 ROSCELLm AND ANSELM.
this work, is to facilitate tlie understanding of the categories by
treating of five things or names — genus, species, difference,
property, accident." Porphyry was raising no ontological
question, nor expressing any doubt about the nature of the cate-
gories, whether they were names or things ; but his commen-
tators supposed he was raising such a question, and tried to
answer it. Raban Maur said they were only names, and that
Boethius had shewn this in his first commentary on the
catagories.
But Nominalism does not appear to have been much in favor
till the eleventh century, when Roscellin carried the Nominalist
principle so far as to come in collision apparently with the
doctrine of the church. Parts, qualities, relations, universals,
are they realities or names ? Names, said Roscellin. But the
Trinity is a universal. It is then merely a name, and the three
persons in the Trinity can only be three parts of one, said
Roscellin, and as parts, do not exist, such ideas as " a whole,"
or ** a part," not having any real existence. There is only one
person or there are three ; if one, only one God — if three, three
Gods ; or if the three be only one reality, then the Father
and the Holy Ghost must have become incarnate as well as the
Son. Abelard's argument against Roscellin, that when Christ
ate " part" of a fish. He could only have eaten a name, must
have been meant for a jest. It was just the existence of abstrac-
tions that Roscellin denied — not the existence of an individual
thinjT as a whole, or part of anything as a part. The doctrine
of Nominalism was but a renewal of the one substance of the
Ionics, confining reality to things perceived by the senses.
We do not know to what extent it was carried by Roscellin ;
but we do know that its spirit is alien to Christian theology.
Roscellin was condemned by the council of Soissons, 1093,
and was driven from France. He came to England, then under
the sway of the Normans. About the time of his arrival, his
great opponent, S. Anselm, arrived too — Roscellin comes as a
fugitive, quitting his native land to save his life — Anselm to have
placed on his head the mitre of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Roscellin is the more complete philosopher. Anselm has the
better philosophy. Roscellin teaches Nominalism at Cambridge. *
Anselm replies from Canterbury. Anselm had the better philo-
sophy, and he was by nature a better philosopher ; but the bent
* This is only a conjecture of M. Rousselot's. There is no clear evidence
that Iloscellin ever taught at Cambridge*
WILLIAM OF CHAMPEAUX. 147
of his mind was checked by the necessity of his being an orthodox
bishop. He was a profound metaphysician, essaying boldly the
most exalted questions, but he recoiled before the conclusions to
which philosophy led him. He made reason the servant of
faitli, but when reason asked concerning the ground of faith,
Anselm checked the enquiry. Belief should accord with reason,
and reason with belief. Only on this assumption is philosophy
possible in the church. But Anselm's philosophy was only
Erigena's restrained by the dogmas of the church, whenever
these dogmas seemed opposed to it. In his " Dialogue on Truth,"
says M. Eousselot, " he plunges into the metaphysical abyss ;
into what is true in itself, leading back all to unity. This unity
is for him reality. The true is that which is, and all that
which is, is good. Then the good and the true are identical,
and form only one and the same thing, whence it follows, that
in the ontological point of view, evil is not, it is only a negation.
It exists only in the acts of men, and in consequence of human
liberty. The true, or that which is truth, is being; then
beings or individuals are parts of being, as particular truths
are parts of truth."
The ontological argument for the being of God, which is
ascribed to Anselm, can only be understood by its connection
with his philosophy. '' It is impossible," he says, " to think
that God does not exist, for God is when defined, such a Being
that we cannot conceive one superior. Now, I can conceive a
Being whose existence it is impossible to disbelieve; and this
being is evidently superior to one whose non-existence I am
capable of imagining. Therefore, if we admit the possibility of
supposing that God does not exist, there must be a being supe-
rior to God, that is to say, a being superior to one than whom
we cannot conceive a greater, which is absurd." There cannot
be a question about the conclusiveness of this argument. It is
an absolute demonstration of the being of God. But what
God? The God of ontology; the One of Parmenides —
infinite Being. Plato, as we have seen, saved his theology
from this purely dialectical God, by adding the " mind" and
the " Demiurgus." Anselm, by adhering to the faith of the
Catholic church.
Roscellin's disciple, William of Champeaux, united with
Anselm in opposing the Nominalism of Koscellin, yet he barely
escaped the fate of his master. He was not indeed condemned
by the church, but if judged as some judge him, he might have
been. Bayle describes the Realism of William of Champeaux as
L 2
148 PETER ABELARD.
" a Spinozisai not yet developed ;" and even tlie Abbe Maret
says, " that fnjm this opinion to Pantheism there is but one
Btep." Nominalism denied the Trinity because it did not admit
the reality of the universal. Realism did not admit the reality
of the individual, and therefore involved the denial of
the distinction of the three persons. The conclusion was the
same ; unity of substance — with only this difference — the " sub-
stance " of the Nominalist was matter ; that of the Realist,
spirit. The Nominalists were Ionics, the Realists were Eleatics.
'j'he Nominalists were natural philosophers ; the Realists v;ere
metaphysicians.
Peter Abelard appeared as the opponent both of Nominalism
and Realism, but in no better hsumony with the Church than
Kosceilin or William of Ghampeaux. His condemnation at Rome
may have been unjust, having been made on the representation of
an open adversary, but though his philosophy was different from
the two antagonistic schools, his theology is reckoned equally
unsound. Abelard saw in Nominalism the negation of plii-
losophy. It limited knowledge to the senses, excluding even the
common sense of reason. In Realism he saw the other extreme,
the tendency to exclude the senses, and to find reality only in
abstractions of the mind. Speaking of his master William of
ChampeauXjhc says, '' I then returned to him to study rhetoric and
among other matters of dispute, I set myself to change, yea, to de-
stroy by clear arguments his old doctrine concerning universals.
He was of this opinion concerning the identity of substance
that the same thing, essentially and at the same time, was with
the individuals it produces. The difference between the indi-
viduals does not then come from their essence, but from variety
of phenomena." Abelard took up intermediate ground, allowing
reality both to universals, and to individuals. Gt-nus, species,
difference, property, accident, what are they ? Things, said the
Realist. Words, said the Nominalist. Roth, said Abelard.
Every individual has matter and form, the first from the uni-
versal, the latter is its individuality. Humanity, as Anselm said,
is a reality apart from the individuality, and yet the individuals
partake of it, and are themselves each a particular reality be-
sides. Between this theory and orthodox theology, there was
no necessary discord, but Abelard was a philosopher. He did
not depart from the principle of Anselm, that faith precedeg
reason, but unlike Anselm, he forgot the boundaries within which
the church wished to confine philosophy. Bishop Hampden,
while vindicating the orthodoxy of the Realists, refuses to do
ALBERTUS MAGNUS. 149
the same for Abelard. " His expressions in his Introduction to
theology" says Bishop Hampden, " are decidedly Panthcistio.
identifying the Holy Spirit with the AnimaMundioi the Stoics."
■ The later Schoolmen were more orthodox. They were not
consistent Realists, though they did not entirely forsake Plato.
A leaven of the experiment;)! philosophy of Aristotle guarded
them from the legitimate results of pure Realism ; yet in their
reasonings the Platonic element is predominant. By the a
priori method of tracing up all existences to the Being of God
they virtually admitted the material was only the phenomenal.
All power, wisdom and goodness in the universe, were emanations
of the power, wisdom and goodness of the divine Being. All
earthly relations are copies of archetypes in God. Fatherhood
and sonship were of heavenly origin. God is the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, and from UaiwhW fail lerl loo d'^' in heaven and
earth is named. The analogies of the physical universe were posi-
tive participations of the divine nature. The purified intellect,
that could see God in the manifestation of creation, knows Him
not in a figure, but in reality. All that was real in nature, was to
them truly God. Albertus ?dagnus is the first of the five, in
whom according to Dean Milman, the age of genuine
Scholasticism culminates. He undertook to reply to Amalric
de Bona, and yet he differs from him only in degree. He afiected
to reconcile Plato and Aristotle ; Philosophy and Christianity,
yet he leans more to Plato than to Aristotle. On most of the
peculiar doctrines of Christianity he is silent, some of them such
as creation a.nd redemption he expounds after the manner of
Erigona. Creation is God's eternal work, and Redemption is
the advancement of man to a higher state of being. Time and
space have no real existence. The ideas of them eternally in
the mind of God are their realities. Albertus was ever repeat-
ing the doctrine of the development of the Unity into the mani-
fold, and yet ever struggling to establish a real diiierence between
them, " liQ accepted," says Dean Milman, " a kind of Flatonic
emanation theory of all things from the Godhead ; yet he re-
pudiated as detestable or blasphemaus the absolute unity of the
divine Intelligence with the intelligence of man. He recoils
from Pantheism with religious horror.'' And yet as Dean
Milman further shows, in crying out against what he conceived
to be blasphemy he was but crying out against the doctrine
which in substance he was advocating and defending.
Latin, Pateinitas.
150 THOMAS AQUINAS.
Nor does Thomas Aquinas, " the angelic doctor," the greatest
of the Scholastics, the recognised interpreter of Catholic
theology entirely escape the danger of this *' blasphemy."
As if armed against it, he sets forth with all explicitness the abso-
luteness of God, and His entire separation from all that is created.
No Eastern Anti- Materialist ever guarded the primal Godhead
more zealously from any intrusive debasement. But this guard-
ing is no sure protection. If, as Aquinas asks, it is the essence
of God " to be," what is the essence of things created ? He
answers that it is not being. His world of angels and demons,
which corresponds to that of the Dionysian writings has no
being, it is finite. This must be the line which separates it
from the Godhead, and yet he admits it has being, and is on
one side infinite. The visible world was created according to
the ideas existing eternally in the Divine mind. These
ideas, as Plato and all his true disciples had taught, were the
types of the world that appears to our senses. They are parts
of God's infinite knowledge ; they are the essence of God —
they are God. Aquinas' theology was a compromise — an
eclectic gathering. His design was to separate God from His
creation; but the interests of theology demanded that the sepa-
ration be in some way abandoned — the chasm bridged over ;
and this Aquinas did, though contrary to his own design.
*' There have been," he says, " some, as the Manichees, who
said that spiritual and incorporeal things are subject to divine
power, but visible and corporeal things are subject to the power of
a contrary principle. Against these we must say that God is in
all things by H-s power. There have been others again who,
though they believed all things subject to divine power, still
did not extend divine Providence down to the lower parts, con-
cerning which it is said in Job, ' He walketh upon the hinges
of heaven, and considereth not our concerns.' And against
them it is necessary to say, that God is in all things by His pre-
sence. There have been again others, who, though they said all
things belonged to the Providence of God, still laid it down that
all things are not immediately created by God, but that He
immediately created the first, and these created others. And
against them it is necessary to say that He is in all things by
His essence." On the existence of evil, Aquinas made some
refined distinctions, the simple meaning of which is, that evil
has only a negative and not a positive existence. He did not
affirm the eternity of creation ; but he said it was impossible to
refute it, for a beginning of creation was so opposed to reason
that it could only be an object of faith.
PUNS SCOTUS. 151
Bonaventura, " the seraphic doctor," was the farthest removed
from philosophy of all the Schoolmen. For Plato and Aristotle ;
he substituted the life of S. Francis and apocryphal legends
of the history of Christ. He exchanged dialectics for
contemplation and meditation on the way of man's return to God.
Yet that thought of Plato's, that the being of God is the essence
of all created beings, lay at the basis of his aspirations after the
Divine. " His raptures," says Dean Milman, " tremble on the
borders of Pantheism,"
Nor can Duns Scotus, " the subtle doctor," the great antago-
nist of Aquinas, be excluded from the category that contains the
seraphic and the angelic doctors. The direction, says Ritter,
which he gave to philosophy was throughout ecclesiastical.
*' He is," says Dean Milman, " the most sternly orthodox of
theologians." And yet Duns Scotus is so much a Rationalist
as to have denied the necessity of revelation, because of the
abundance of knowledge attainable by natural reason. And
when he comes to discourse of the relation of God to creation,
he falls back on the ultra-Platonic argument ot Plotinus, that
matter is in its essence but another form of spirit. To call
matter immaterial may seem a paradox ; but with this defini-
tion, how easily does the orthodox Duns Scotus shake hands
with the heretical David of Dinanto, and agree to call God
the " material " principle of all things. God is indeed the
single Monad above all creation both in earth and heaven. To
this dogma of the church, as a churchman Duns Scotus was
pledged, but his philosophy cannot rest here. The primary
matter, Avhich is God, must in some way, be throughout all
things. This is accomplished by its being divided into three kinds.
The universal, which is in all things, the secondary which par-
takes both of the corruptible and the incorruptible ; and the
tertiary which is distributed among things subject to change.
The schoolmen repudiated the consequences which we draw from
their theology. They were the men pre-eminently orthodox —
the true sons of the church — the genuine defenders of the faith ;
but their history only adds a few more names to the large list of
theologians who destroyed what they sought to establish ; and
established what they sought to destroy. It is satisfying to
find the view of Scholastic Theology here advanced, sanctioned
by the great names of Dean Milman, and Bishop Hampden.
" In this system," says Bishop Hampden, " neither was the
Deity identified with the individual acted upon, nor was the
individual annihilated in the Deity. The distinctness of the
162 BISHOP HAMPDEN ON THE SCHOOLMEN.
divine Ageiit, and the human recipient, was maintained in
accordance with the Scripture revelation of God, as a sole Being;
separate in His nature from the works of Providence and grace.
Still, the notions of Him as an energy — as a moving power —
entered into all the explanations of the divine influence on the
soul. So far they were strictly Aristotelic; but with this
exception, the Platonic notion of a real 2^(^i'ticipation of Deity
m the soul of man pervaded their speculations. Aristotle's idea
of human improvement and happiness, was rather that of a
mechanical or material approach to the divine Principle — an
attainment of the Deity as our being's end and aim. We see a
great deal of this in the Scholastic designation of the progress
of man in virtue and happiness. Plato's view on the other hand,
was that of assimilation or association with the Divinity. This
notion more easily fell into the expressions of Scripture,
which speak of man as created in the image of God, and which
holds out to us an example of Divine holiness for our imitation.
The Pantheistic notion then, of a participation of Deity, or the
actual deification of our nature is the fundamental idea of the
co-operation of grace according to the Schoolmen. The Aristo-
telic idea of motion, of continual progress, of gradual attain-
ment of the complete form of perfection, is the law by which
this operation of grace is attempted to be explained. This
system, made up of Platonic and Aristotelic views, was regarded
as sanctioned by the Apostle, in his application of that text of
philosophy, ^ In Him we live, and move, and have our being.' "
The works referrerl to in this chapter nre M. lious.'ieJofs Etudes sur la
Philoftophie dans h Moyen Age. Bayh's Dictionary. Maret's Essai sur le
Panthetsme. Dean Mihnan's History of Latin Chriitiaiuty, and Bishop
Hampden's Bampton Lecturer.
CHAPTER IX.
THE ITALIAN REVIVAL.
WE have already seen how Aristotle agreed with Plato in the
transcendentalism of his theology, though he reached that
transcendentalism by an entirely different method. There
were in fact, as M. Kousselot says, two Aristotles in the middle
ages, Aristotle the logician, who narrowly escaped being canon-
ized, and without whom as an Italian Cardinal said " the church
would have wanted some of the articles of faith." The other
was Aristotle the metaphysician, pro:icribed and persecuted,
the author of all heresy.
The knowledge of Aristotle came to the schoolmen through a
Latin translation, * and the commentaries of the Arabian A ver-
roes. That these commentaries did not agree with the text is now
generally admitted, but what Averroeism.is, is a question as
wide as what Aristotelianism is. f At one time it is the bulwark
of heresy, at another time the refuge of the defenders of the
faith. The later schoolmen, particularly Albertus Magnus and
Thomas Aquinas, know no greater enemy of the church than
Averroes. The Medieval painters gave" him a place in In-
ferno with Mahomet and Antichrist. Dante is more tolerant,
having placed the philosopher among great men, in a region of
peace and melancholy repose. His works had been translat^ed into
Latin about the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the
thirteenth Century, and had found so many advocates in the Uni-
versity of Paris as to provoke a host of opponents, andtobrino-
down the censure of the church. In a former chapter we classed
Buch heretics as Amalric de Bena, with the Brothers and Sisters
• D'Herbelot says, that the Latin version used by the Scholastics was trans-
lated from the Arabian version of Averroes. This error is repeated bv all
writers since. — Renan. ^
t The printed editions of his works offer only a Latin translation of a
Hebrew translation of a Commentary made upon an Arabian translation
of A bynan translation of a Greek text. — IIexan,
154 AVERROEISM.
of the Free Spirit, as disciples of John Scotus Erigena. Three
centuries had intervened, all traces of genealogy were lost, yet
the similarity both of words and sentiments made the classifica-
tion reasonable. There was however at work a powerful and
living element, and it would be no idle enquiry to examine how
far they might be considered children of Averroes. It is cer-
tain that most of the heretics of the middle ages sprang from
the Franciscans, almost every great movement for reform, for
freedom of speech or thought, had its origin in the bosom of this
order. They were the preachers of the " Eternal Gospel," the
bold spirits that most rebelled against the Court of Rome, the
prophets who, not without a mingling of enthusiasm, pro-
claimed the approach of a spiritual reign. Now the leaders
of the Franciscan school favored the philosophy of Averroes.
*' Alexander of Hales" says M. Renan, " the founder of the
Franciscan school, is the first of the Scholastics who had accepted
and propagated the influence of the Arabian philosophy. John
of Rochelle his successor, follows the same tradition and adopts
for his own almost all the psychology of Avicenna. M. Haureau
has justly observed that most of the propositions condemned at
Paris by Stephen Templier in 1277, belonged to the Franciscan
school, and that they had been borrowed by the boldest of
Alexander de Hales' disciples, from the long ill-famed glosses of
Avicenna and Averroes. The same year the Dominican, Robert
of Kilwardby, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the council held
at Oxford, the centre of the Franciscan school, condemned pro-
positions almost identical, and in which the influence of Averroes
could not be ignored. "We may then believe that some of the
philosophers against whom William of Auvergne, Albert and S.
Thomas express themselves with so much severity, belonged to
the order of S. Francis."
But the history of Averroeism culminates at the University
of Padua. It appears there first as a kind of free belief, em-
braced chiefly by physicians and men devoted to natural studies.
From being in disgrace with the church, it comes into favor.
It then provokes opposition both from the side of philosophy
and orthodox theology. It mingles its influence with the
revival of letters, and then disappears as the morning star before
the sun. Plato comes backand Scholasticism vanishes. Aristotle
is read in Greek and his Arabian commentator seeks
the shade. Cardinal Bembo celebrates in verse the great
-event. The morning dawns and the shadows flee away.
Nearly all the great men of the Universities both of Padua
GIORDANO BRUNO. 155
and Florence in the time of the Revival are called Averroeists ;
but this only in a very wide sense. They all exhibit in some
way the influence of philosophy in its contact with the new
direction which had been given to the physical sciences. They
are all either metaphysicians or naturalists, or both combined.
Of those who are known as Pantheists, the most celebrated is
Giordano Bruno, whom we may take as the representative of the
Italian school proceeding from Averroes. It has been said above
that most of the heretics and Averroeists belonged to the
Franciscans, but Bruno was a monk of the order of S. Dominic.
His history is well known, h iving been frequently recorded as
that of one of the martyrs of philosophy and freedom of belief.
With the zeal of a propagandist he travelled through Europe
to disseminate his doctrines. Rome and Geneva expelled him
as a dangerous teacher, but England and Protestant Germany
permitted him to dispute in their Universities. He was favored
by Queen Elizabeth and her court, but as the extravagances of
his doctrine became better known he was compelled to leave our
hospitable shores. At Florence he fell a victim to the Inquisi-
tion. . After an imprisonment of six years, he expiated his
heresies at the stake in presence of the Cardinals and the most
illustrious Theologians of Rome. Bruno was wholly occupied
with what Erigena called the higher speculation. At Oxford he
declared himself the teacher of a more perfect theology and a
purer wisdom than was then taught there. Like Erigena he
essayed to harmonize this " more perfect theology," with the
popular theological teaching. " I define'' he says " the idea of
God, otherwise than the vulgar, but it is not for that reason
opposed to that of the vulgar. It is only more clear, more
developed." Judged merely by his theology Bruno's title to be
called a Christian is not less than Erigena's, but he is not so
reverent. The great ^nn-born never forgets that he is a Chris-
tian as well as a philosopher, but the NeopoHtan is simply a
speculator, aiming apparently at little more than the reputation
of ingenuity and making a parade of his learning.
The starting point of his philosophy is the infinitude of the
universe. A disciple of Copernicus, he denied the immobility
of the earth, and with that perished every thought of the
universe, having either a centre or a circumference. The say-
ing of Hermes Trismegistus sometimes applied to God and
sometimes to the world, is continually on his lips. " The centre
is here the circumference nowhere," Bruno applies it to God,
just because it is applicable to the universe. The Infinite is
156 THE EXISTENCE OF GOD A PRIMAL TRUTH.
realized in this visible creation in the immensity of celestial
spaces. Wherever we are, wherever we go we are surrounded
with the infinite, a boundless material is forced upon us. There
is a unity, but it cannot be the primitive Infinite. He cannot be
an eifect, He must be mind and a cause, yea, the Cause of causes.
Nature is but a shadow, a phantom, the mirror in which the
Infinite images Himself. The basis of all things is mind, not
matter. It is mind that pervades all. We om'selves are mind,
and what we meet in creation is a corresponding mind. Creation
does not present mere traces, or foot prints of the Deity, but the
Deity Himself in His omnipresence.
We are compelled to believe that God is. This is a primal
truth so obvious to reason, and so overwhelming in its evidence,
that wo cannot escape receiving it. The visible universe is au
effect, it must have a cause. These worlds are all composed,
and they can be dissolved. As they could not give themselves
existence there must be a first principle from whence they come.
This principle must be infinite, and yet one. Reason is impelled
to the conclusion that there is a God, but it cannot stop there. It
must ask what God is ? how He is ? and how He is related to the
visible infinite ? There are here two terms logically different, the
primitive Unity, and manifested nature, or the visible creation.
In popular speech these are pure spirit, and matter, but these
in their essence, so far as matter has an essence, are only one.
The interval between them is filled up by an intermediary.
This is the world-soul, which is God, and which yet mingles
with matter. As a voice that fills the sphere where it resounds
without being lost, so this world-soul becomes the essence of
matter without ceasing to be God. It is the source of the
general life of the world manifested in different degrees according
to the rank of the creatures, the highest form being that of mind
or soul. God transcends the world. To behold Him in His
transcendental character is the object of religion, but to find Him
in the forms and existences of the universe is the vocation
of philosophy. There He is reflected in all His perfection, so
that the contemplation of the infinite universe is of necessity
the contemplation of God.
To understand this fully we must enquire into the nature of
a principle and a cause. A principle is the intrinsical
foundation; the eternal reason of a thing — the only source of its
potential existence. Cause is the exterior basis the source of
the actual and present existence of an object. The principle
remains bound and inherent to the effect, and preserves the
THE INTERIOR ARTIST. 157
essence of the object. • For example, matter and form are united
together in the way of mutually sustaining each other. Cause
on the contrary is, exterior to the effect and determines the external
reality of the object. What an instrument is for a work, or
means for an end, that is a cause for its effect. Causes are of
three kinds, the efficient, the formal and the final. The
efficient cause of the universe is the Being which acts ever and
every V, here, the universal intelligence, or chief faculty of the
soul of the world. It is this inconceivable power which fills and
enlightens all, which guides nature in the productions of all her
works. What the faculty of thinking is in man to the genera-
tion of ideas, that is the world-soul to works of nature. It is
what Pythagoras called the Mover of the world ; Plato the
Architect of the universe ; the Magi the seed of seeds, that
which by its forms impregnates and fructifies matter. Orpheus
called it the Eye of the world because it penetrates all things,
and because its harmonies and skilful proportions are found on
all sides. Empedocles called it the Discerner because it
develops what is confused and enveloped in the bosom of matter
and death. For Plotinus it was a Father, a Generator, since it
distributes germs and dispenses the forms of which the field of
nature is full and by which it is animated. '' We," says Bruno,
"call it the interior Artist. It is He who from within gives
form to the matter. He sends out from the root and grain, the trunks
and shoots ; from the shoots, the branches ; from the branches, the
twigs. He disposes and finishes within, the tender tissue of the
leaves, the flowers and the fruit. Again from within He calls back
the juices from the fruits, the flowers, and the leaves to the branches,
from the branches to the trunks and from the trunks to the
roots. That which the interior Worker performs in the plants,
He does also in animals. The works of nature more manifestly
than ours are the works of intelligence. We practise upon the
surface of nature. We can produce any work or invention just
so far as there is a mind working within us. Now if for our works
w^e need intelligence, ho-.v much more is an intelligence needed,
for the living works of nature ?"
Intelligence is of three kinds. That of God which is every-
thing. That of the world-soul which does everything and that
of the particular intelligences which constitute everything.
Here are two extremes and a middle. The world-soul is the
truly effective cause of things purely natural at once external
and internal. It is the external cause since it must be considered
as external to these objects. It cannot see itself as a part or as
158 MIND OMNIPRESENT.
an element of anything that is composed, and yet it is the
internal cause since it neither acts upon matter nor outside of
matter, but from within, from the centre and the bosom of the
material. We have next, the formal cause. This is united
directly to the efficient, and cannot be separated from the final or
ideal. Every reasonable act supposes a design ; now design is
nothing more than the form of accomplishing the act. We con-
clude then, that the Intelligence which is capable of producing
all things, causes them in itself in virtue of the final reason
and its power of realizing the potentiality of matter. W e have
thus a double form ; cause which is not efiective and that which
really gives birth to material objects, which are the end of the
efficient cause. The end of the efficient cause is the final, the
perfection of the universe which consists in this, that all forms
in different regions of matter come to a real existence. The •
efficient cause is universally present in each particular being,
and in each of its parts, every being too has a formal and a
final cause, and since intelligence is the peculiar faculty of the
world-soul, that which creates all things, it is impossible that
the formal be absolutely distinct from the efficient. In the
interior principle they are one. The world- soul is then at once
interior and exterior, reason, principle, and cause at the same
time. A pilot in a ship follows the movements of the ship.
He is part of the mass which is in motion ; and yet as he is
able to change the movement he appears an agent who acts by
himself. So it is with the world-soul. It penetrates and
vivifies the universe. It constitutes the universal life. It ap-
pears but a part ; the interior and formal part of the universe.
But as it determines all forms and organisations with their
changing relations, it assumes 'the rank of a cause. Every form
is the effect of soul. It is the soul's living expression. We
cannot conceive anything which has no form. Mind alone is
in the state of forming. There is nothing so sensual, nor so
vile, that it does not contain mind. The spiritual substance in
order to become a plant or an animal needs only a proper rela-
tion. It does not however follow though soul is the essence of
all things, and though life permeates all, that everything is there-
fore a living creature. The product of our arts for instance
are not living forms. A table so far as it is a table is inanimate,
but since it derives its matter from nature, it is in consequence
composed of living parts. All material things have form in
them, which is the abiding essence, though they themselves are
subject to continual change.
MATTER AND FORM. 159^
" Democritus and the Epicureans,'^ says Bruno, " pretend that
form does not exist. They regard matter as the only reason or
principle of creation. They even call it the Ditine nature.
The Cyrenaic school, the Cynics and the Stoics also take forms
as accidental dispositions of matter, but Aristotle more correct
than they, believed in two kinds of substances, form and matter*
We must acknowledge sovereign power, the source of all energy.
We must also believe in the corresponding object, a something"
which may be acted upon. The one determines, the other suffers
itself to be determined."
The relation between matter and form may be understood by
works of art — the joiner operates on the wood — the smith on
the iron — the tailor on the cloth, and from these materials by
means of intellect they produce a variety of objects. The form,
species, character, and use of these objects, derive their nature^
and property from a given matter ; and do not exist by them-
selves nor merely by the intellect of the artist. So it is with
nature, making only this difference that art receives its matter
already formed ; the substance of this matter it has only to modify.
But nature acts from the centre of its object, which is unformed
matter. To this simple and unique matter, nature gives forms
and diversities. It may be objected that this matter being in-
visible, we have no right to assume its existence ; to which the
answer is that though it transcends the senses it is within the
cognisance of the eye of reason.
The relation which exists between the form of art and its
matter resembles the relation which unites the form of nature,
to its matter. Art accomplishes a multitude of transformations
upon the same material. From the trunk of a tree it produces
valuable furniture — the ornament of a magnificent palace.
Nature shows metamorphoses analagous to those of art. That
which at first is a seed, becomes an herb, then an ear, then bread,
chyle, blood, seed, embryo, man, corpse, then earth, stone or
some other body ; and thus the same round is repeated. Now we
have here in these objects something which changesand something
which yet remains unchanged — ^natural forms and a substratum.
How then are these related ? Many philosophers have held that the
substratum was matter, and that it alone deserved the title of
the first Principle ; the form being but its accidents and fortuitous
arrangements. If this be so, it is reasonable to deify matter^
and there is no escape but in admitting form to be necessary and
eternal. The source of the form is the world-soul, the all life
of the universe*
160 THE PRIMITIVE MATTER.
The first and absolute principle comprehends in itself all
existence. It can be all, and it is all, active force, possibility,
reality; everything in it is one and indivisible. There is then
doubtless no other substance which can be, and cannot be ; which
can be determined in such a way or such another way. Every man is
in each moment that which he can be in that moment but he is
not all that which he can be in general, and according to his
substance. The i3eing who is all that which He can be, const -
tutes only a single whole, embracing the all of His existence
in the actual and present existence. Other beings are only that
which they are and can be at each moment individually,
separately, and in a given order of succession.
Universal nature is equally all that which it can be in reality and
at the same time, because it embraces all matter at once as the
eternal and invariable form of all the changing forms. But in
its successive developments, in its different parts, in its accidents,
circumstances, paiticular substance and diverse movements, in a
-word in its exteriority, nature is no longer that which it is or
can be. It is then only a shadow, an image of the first prin-
ciple in which form potentiality and reality are one.
This matter — the common source of all things that are
material is a being both multiple and uniform. In itself it is
absolutely simple and indivisible ; but it embraces a multitude
of forms. It is all that which can be, and because it is all,
it is not any one particular being. Doubtless it is difficult for
us to conceive how anything can possess all properties, and yet
have no property — the formal reality of all and yet not any one
form. But we see continually that matter is all, and becomes
all, and yet we cannot give it the name of any particular
composition. We cannot say of it, that it is such a form.
If we descend to the last orders of the individual, and the simple
forms of art, it is air, fire, water ; but taken in the largest
conception matter affects all forms while it is represented by
none. It has no dimensions just that it may have all. It does
not affect this inifinity of forms by a foreign impulse from with
out, but it produces them from its own depth. It is not the prope-
nihil of certain philosophers whoso contradict themselevs. It is
not a pure void, naked power, without effect and without perfec-
tion. It may have no form by itself and yet it is not destitute
of form, for from itself it sends forth all forms.
We cannot indeed by this idea of matter rise to that of the
Supreme Being, for the latter idea is formed outside the reach
of our intelligence ; but we can arrive at comprehending in what
BRUNO AND ARISTOTLE. 161
way the world can be all and can produce all, and how the
infinity of particular things constitutes, in itself and by itself, only
one and the same being.
To know this unity is the end of all philosophy. Nature
produces, not only by retrenchment, by addition, by combination,
but in a way peculiar to itself, by distinction and separation,
by analysis and development ; such is the opinion of the sages
of Greece and of the East. Moses himself in relating the
origin of creation, introduces it by the words " Let the earth
bring forth," " Let the seas bring forth." Matter according to
Moses was a creative, producing power. The material principle of
all things for him was water, and the active intelligence, spirit.
This is that Spirit which brooded over the waters from whose
bosom all things insensibly came forth by means of separation.
This unity of all things is the result of the proof of the
identity of matter and form, cause and principle. The universe
is one, infinite and immovable. There is but one absolute
potentiality ; one reality ; one activity. Form and soul are
one ; matter and body are one. There is but one being ; one
unity, one perfection. Its character we cannot compre-
hend. It has no limit, no boand, no definite determination.
Being is one. It is infinite, and without measure ; and there-
fore it is immovable. It cannot change its position, for outside
of it is no place. It is not begotten, for all existence is its
existence. 3^ cannot perish, because it cannot suffer, nor can it be
transformed into anything. It cannot increase nor diminish,
because the infinite is not susceptible of increase or of dimi-
nution. It is subject to no alteration from without, for there
is nothing outside of it ; nor from within, for it is at once all
that which it can be. Its harmony is eternal, for it is unity
itself. It is not matter, for it has neither figure nor limit. It is
not form, for it is all isolated existences, as well as the whole of
existence. It cannot be measured, nor can it make use of
measure. Tt does not comprehend itself. It cannot grasp
itself, for it is not greater than itself, nor can it be grasped
or understood, for it is not less than itself. It neither com-
pares itself, nor can it be compared, not being such and such a
thing — neither a this nor a that — but a being, one, unique and
ever the same.
It is easy to see that Bruno only repeats Aristotle as he
had been interpreted by the Averroeists.* He opposed himself
* Bruno is geceraUy represented as the forerunner of Spinoza ; but there ia
M
162 eiSALPiNi.
to the professes! disciples of Aristotle in his time ; but these
were the disciples of Aristotle " the logician," not of Aristotle
" the metaphysician."
Other Italian Philosophers. — Bruno's doctrines were
received with more or less addition or modification by many
eminent Italians of the sixteenth century, especially in Padua
and Florence.! It is impossible to classify them as Averroeists,
or as opposed to Averroeism ; for some taught the Arabian philo-
sophy while they declared themselves opposed to it ; and others
avowed themselves Averroeists, meaning only that they were
students of the commentaries on Aristotle. M. Renan enume-
rates among those who were Averroeists in the wide sense of
sceptics or enemies of Christianity ; Cisalpini, Cardan, Bengard
and Vanini. Of the first, he says, " that his mind was too
original to be confounded with a school that wanted origi-
nality." In some points of his doctrine he is related to
Averroes ; but in his spirit and manner he in no way belongs to
Paduan Averroeism. Nicholas Taurel, his adversary, finds his
doctrine *'more absurd and more impious than that of Averroes."
Cisalpini says, ** there is but one life, which is the life of God,
or the universal soul. God is not the efficient, but the consti-
tuent cause of the universe. Divine intelligence is unique, but
human intelligence is multiplied according to the number of
the individuals, for human intelligence is not actual, but poten-
tial." Cisalpini was physician to the Pope, and was present at
the burning of Bruno. He escaped the Inquisition, not because
his doctrines were approved, but by the convenient method of
professing to renounce philosophy as dangerous. " I well
know," he said, *'that all these doctrines are full of errors
nothing in his works to entitle him to this distinction. A more just view is to
look upon him as a reviver of old doctrines, which he reproduces with vivacity —
and sometimes with eccentricity — but with little originality.
* Any classification of the eminent Italians of this period must be arbitrary.
They mostly wished to adhere to the Catholic church, yet many of them had
embraced opinions in entire opposition to Christianity. When Sabinus, a
friend of Melancthon's, was at Rome, he visited Cardinal Bembo, who asked
him what Melancthon thought of the resurrection of the body and the life
everlasting ? Sabinus answered, that it was evident from the Reformer's
writings, that he held these doctrines. " Ah," said the cardinal, " I should
have thought Philip a wise man if he had not believed these things." When
Vanini was in England, his zeal agamst the Reformation earned him a year's
imprisonment. The famous Campanella too, amid all his troubles, still tried to
cling to the church. But the church condemned most of them as Atheists, and
Protestantism approved the condemnation. "Modem Atheists," says Arch-
, bishop Tillotson, " came first from Italy. They crossed the Alps into France,
aad from thence they came into England."
VANINI. 163
against the faith, and these errors I regret ; but to refute them
is not my business. I leave that task to theologians more pro-
found than myself."
The doctrine of Cardan is not without analogy to that of
Cisalpini. All particular souls are virtually included in a uni-
versal Soul, as the worm in the plant by which it is nourished.
In one of the first treatises which he composed, Cardan admits,
without restriction, the Averroeist hypothesis of the unity of
intellect. In a later book he retracted his first sentiment, and
acknowledged expressly that there could not exist a single intel-
ligence for all animated beings, or for all men. He maintains
there that this intelligence is to us as personal as sensibility;
and that souls are distinct here below, and will be in another
life. In a third writing. Cardan undertook to reconcile these
two antagonistic opinions. Intelligence, he said, is single, but
can be regarded from two points of view — either in its relation
to eternal and absolute existence, or in relatioa to its mani-
festation in time. Single in its source, it is multiple in its
manifestation.
On the individuality of the human soul, Bengard is more
orthodox than either Cisalpini or Cardan. His claim to be
considered an Averroeist is limited to his being in some measure
an unbeliever in Christianity.*
To fix Vanini's place is not easy. Like Bruno, he was
eccentric, and not over-reverent in his discourse ; with a love of
paradox, and a talent for disputation, he had enemies every-
where, and was never anxious to make friends. In one of his
Dialogues he records an example of his preaching, which shows
at once his character and the theology in which he delighted.
Preaching on the subject — Why did God create man ? — he
resolved the question by that famous scale of Averroes, accord-
ing to which it is necessary that there be a kind of gradation
from the lowest of all beings to the most exalted, which is God,
or the ^rs^ matter. At Genoa, Vanini wished to teach according
to this doctrine ; but, says his biographer^ " the people there
were not prepossessed in favor of Averroes, and he was obliged
to depart." These intimations would justify us in classing
Vanini with Bruno. But his published works present some
• The want of the'spirit rf Christianity among the learned Italians of the
time of the Revival, was that which prevented them being among the great
Reformers of the church. It was seriously proposed ta the Pope that the best
way of putting down the Reformation in Germany was to circulate the writingi
of the Neo-Flatonists.
U 2
164 THE INQUISITION.
difficulties. He professed to refute the doctrines which it is
believed he adopted as his own creed. His Amphitheatrum was
a defence of Christianity and the Catholic church against ancient
philosophers, Atheists, Epicureans, Peripatetics and Stoics. As
such it was published with the approbation of the divines of the
Sorbonne.^ He expressly refutes the Averroeist theories of the
eternity of the world, of intelligence, providence, and the unity
of souls; but the Inquisition thought they discovered that he
had not used the best arguments in defence of the Christian
doctrines ; and they suspected too, perhaps not without cause,
* Vanini was surely the most unfortunate of men. No author seems to have
a word of sympathy for him ; and yet science has rarely had a more ardent
votary, or theology a more zealous student. When a young man at the Uni-
versity of Florence, though struggling with the hardships of poverty, he was
not content with -what learning was simply necessarj^ to obtain Orders, but
devoted himself to physic and the natural sciences. Before he was of age to be
admitted to the priesthood, he rejoiced in being " Doctor of both Laws." He
travelled through Europe, defending the Catholic faith against all " Atheists,
Infidels, Protestants, and other Heretics." But Vanini himself was at length
suspected of something worse than heresy. Though the Doctors of the Sorbonne
had pronounced his great M'ork " skilful in argxmient, and well worthy of
type," the inquisition condemned it. When the inquisitors examined his
property, they found among his i)ossessions a crystal glass containing a live
toad. This was proof to dcraonsti-ation, not only that he denied the existence
of God, but that he was in league with some other existence. Ko protestations
of orthodoxy ; no confessions of his faith could convince his enemies. They
loaded him with insult calling his confessions, hypocrisy. The judge asking
what he thcmglit concerning the existence of God, Vanini'answered -" I believe
with the church, one God in three persons and that nature evidently demon-
strates the existence of the Deity." Seeing a straw on the ground, he took it
up, and continuing to address the judge, he said-" This straw obi gcs me to
confess that there is a God ;" and, after a long and beautiful discourse on Pro-
vidence, he added— "The grain being cast into the earth, appears at first to be
destroyed ; but it quickens, then it becomes green and shoots forth, insensibly
growing out of the earth. The dew assists it springing up, and the rain gives
it yet a greater strength. It is furnished with ears, the points of which keep
oft" the birds._ The stalk rises and is covered with leaves. It becomes yellow,
and rises higher. Soon after it Avithers and dies. It is threshed, and the
straw being separated from the corn, the latter serves for the nourisliment of
man, and the former is given to animals created for man's use." It seems as
if those who write about Vanini, and profess to have read his books, are not yet
agreed as to their meaning. The following judgment, in an article on Vanini,
in the Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography, is in curious contrast m ith
M. Kenan's judgment. "He published at Lyons, in 1615, a work entitled—
Amphitheatrum aeternae providentiae adversus veteres Philosophos, Atheos,"
Sfc. ; and in the following year he published at Paris four Dialogues, De
admirandis Naturae, Reginae Deaeque Mortalium Arcanis. The first of
these works is quite unexceptionable in point of orthodoxy; but the latter is
decidedly materialistic in its philosophy, and Pantheistic in its theology."
This article was written by the late Professor Terrier, a man who generally
read the books he spoke about. The present writer found the Dialogues
quite as harmless as the Amphitheatrum.
THE STAKE. 165
that what he professed to refute was always the doctrine he
wished to inculcate. M. Renan, who is severe on Vanini,
thinks that in this interpretation of the AmphUheatrum, the
Inquisition were not wanting in discernment. They found him
guilty of the charge of Atheism, for which, like his brother
priest and philosopher, he was burnt at the stake.
The authorities are M. Renan' s Averroes et VAverroeisme ; M. Barthol-
mess' Giordano Bruno ; Bruno's works, especially De la Causa, Principio ed
Una, and De V Infinite, Universo e Mondi ; Vanini's chief work is the
Amphitheatrum : it is very scarce ; the ^NTiter found a copy of it in the King's
Library, in the British Museum.
CHAPTER X.
MYSTICAL DIVINITY AND PHILOSOPHY.
UNDER the head of Mystics, we might class many names that
have been already disposed of. All religion is more or less
mystical, that is to say, it is an inward intuition ; a cMvine
sentiment in the soul. The Brahmans ; the Budhists; the
Alexandrians, Jewish, Heathen, and Christian, were all Mystics.
In some, this spirit has been so largely developed that they have
been called pre-eminently Mystics, Such were Plotinus and
S. Dionysius ; his successor, Maximus, and his mediseval disciples.
Every great religious movement has been connected directly or
indirectly with some Mystic or some unusual manifestation of
the mystical spirit.
German Mystics. — The most important of modern Mystics
who have been called Pantheists, are those of Germany. Dr.
Ullmann traces their origin to the societies of the Beghards,
Beguines, and the Brethren of the Free Spirit. If this be correct,
and there seems no reason for doubting it, we have all the
links of the succession established from Dionysius and the early
Mystics, through John Scotus Erigena down to the Reformation.
" The basis of their doctrines (the Beghards)," says Dr. Ullmann,
" was Mystical Pantheism, as that is to be found principally
among the Brethren of the Free Spirit."
" Inasmuch however, as during the whole of the middle ages, the
chief object of interest was not nature, but more predominantly
man, contemplation was then directed less to the Divine Being
in the general universe, and almost exclusively to God in man-
kind ; the former being adduced merely as a consequence or
supplement of the latter. The great thing was God in the
mind, or the consciousness of man. Hence, the Pantheism of
these parties was not materialistic but idealistic. The creatures,
80 they supposed, are in and of themselves a pure nullity. God
alone is the true Being ; the real substance of all things. God,
however, is chiefly present where there is mind, and conse-
quently in man. In the human soul there is an uncreated
MAN TRANSUBSTANTIATED INTO GOD. 167
and eternal thing, namely, the intellect ; that is, the divine prin-
ciple in man, in virtue of which he resembles, and is one with
God. Indeed, in so far as he purely exists, he is God Himself ;
and it may be said, that whatever belongs to the divine nature
belongs likewise, and in a perfect way, to a good and righteous
man. Such a man works the same works as God. With God he
created the "heavens and the earth, and with God he begat the
Eternal Word ; and God without him can do nothing. Such a
man was Christ. In Christ, as a being both of divine and
human nature, there was nothing peculiar or singular. On the
contrary, what Scripture affirms of Him is likewise perfectly
true of every righteous and good man. The same divine things
which the Father gave to the Son, He has also given to us ;
for the good man is the only begotten Son of God, whom the
Father has begotten from all eternity. Man becomes like
Christ when he makes his will conformable in all respects to the
will of God, when forsaking all things and renouncing all
human wishes, desires, and endeavours, he so completely merges
himself in, and gives himself up to the Divine Being, as to be
wholly changed, and transubstantiated into God, as the bread
m the sacrament is into the body of Christ. To the man who is
thus united with God, or to speak more properly, who recollects
his primaeval unity, all the differences and contrarieties of life
are done away. In whatever he is or does, though to others it
may seem sin and evil, he is good and happy. For the essential
property of the divine nature is, that it excludes all differences.
God is neither good nor bad. To call Him good, would just be
like calling white black. His glory is equally revealed in all
things; yea, even in all evil, whether of guilt or penalty.
Hence, if it be His will that we should sin, whatever the sin may
be, we ought not to wish not to have committed it, and to be
sensible of this is the only true repentance. But the will of God
is manifested by the disposition which a man feels towards a
particular action. Hence, though he may have committed a
thousand mortal sins, still supposing him to have been disposed
for them, he ought not to wish not to have committed them.
Neither, to speak strictly, has God enjoined external acts. No
external act is good or godly ; and on such an act no influence
is exerted by God; but all depends upon the union of the mind
with Him. That being the case, man ought not to desire or
pray for anything, save what God ordains. Whoever prays to
God for a particular blessing, prays for a wrong thing, and in a
wrong way ; for he prays for a thing contrary to God'i nature.
168 THE BEGHARDS.
For this reason a man ought well to consider, whetlier he should
wish to receive any boon from God, because in that case he
would be His inferior, like a servant or slave ; and God, in
giving it, would be something apart from him. But this should
nol take place in the life eternal ; there we should rather reign
with Him. God is truly glorified, only in those who do not
strive after property ; honor or profit ; piety or holiness ; recom-
pense, or the kingdom of Heaven ; but who have wholly re-
nounced all such things."
This account of the doctrine of the Beghards, has the disad-
vantage of coming from enemies ; by whom it may have been
exaggerated, and perhaps the meaning perverted. The source
of it is the Bull of Pope John XXH., by whom the Beghards
were condemned. Dr. Ullmann has used the terms in which
the propositions ascribed to them were set forth, admitting their
general accuracy, yet willing to make allowance for the differ-
ence between a doctrine in itself and the representation of it by
an enemy. But whether the extravagances were in the Beg-
hards' teaching, or only in the Papal representations need not
concern us much ; for we can see in the general features the re-
appearance of doctrines which we have already met, clothed in
more moderate language, and in a more interesting form.
Buysbroek, who was himself a Mystic, gives a description of
the Beghards, which corresponds generally with that of the
Papal Bull. He divides them into four classes, ascribing a
peculiar form of heresy to each, while he accuses them all of
the fundamental error of making man's unity with God to be a
unity of nature and not of grace. The godly man, he admitted,
is united to God, not however in virtue of his essence, but by a
process of re-creation and regeneration. The first class he
calls heretics against the Holy Ghost, because they claimed a
perfect identity with the Absolute, which reposes in itself and is
without act or operation. They said that they themselves were
the Divine Essence, above the persons of the Godhead, and in
as absolute a state of repose as if they did not at all exist ;
inasmuch as the Godhead itself does not act, the Holy Ghost
being the sole operative power in it. The second class were
heretics against the Father, because they placed themselves
simply and directly on an equality with God ; contemplated the
I as entirely one with the Divinity so that from them all things
proceeded, and being themselves by nature God, they had come
into existence of their own free will. " If I had not so willed,"
one of them said, " neither I nor any other creature would ever
ECKART. 169
have existed at all. God knows, wills, and can do nothing without
me ; heaven and earth hang upon my head. The glory given
to God is also paid to me, for I am by nature essentially God.
There are no persons in God. But only one God exists, and
with Him I am the self-same one which He is." The third class
were heretics against Christ, because they said, that in respect
of their divinity they were begotten of the Father, and in
respect of their humanity begotten in time. What Christ was
they were ; and when He was elevated in the host, they too were
elevated with Him. The fourth class were heretics against the
church, for they despised not only all its ordinances, but set
themselves above knowledge, contemplation, and love. They
despised both the finite and the infinite ; the present life and the
eternal. They soared above themselves, and all created things ;
above God and the Godhead, maintaining that neither Gocl
nor themselves, neither action nor rest, neither good nor evil,
blessedness nor perdition has any existence. They considered
themselves so lost as to have become the Absolute Nothing which
they believed God to be. Dr. Ullmann, though far from sympa-
thising with the Beghards, considers even Ivuysbroek's deli-
neation as half apochryphal. Eckart,* the leader of the
German Mystics, is supposed to have been a Beghard ; but
there is no evidence beyond the likeness of his doctrines to the
propositions condemned by the Bull of John XXH., and the
fact that the Beghards, who were numerous in Germany in
his time, appealed to his writings as confirming their doctrines.
Eckart had been a professor in Paris, where the influence of
Abelard, William of Champeaux, and Amalric de Bena could
scarcely have been ended. He was familiar with the works of
the Areopagite and Scotus Erigena ; the Neo-Platonist philo-
* John Eckart, commonly called " Master Eckart," was a monk, of the order
of S. Dominic, In his youth he was a teacher or professor in the College of
S. Jaques, in PHris. He was afterwards made Doctor of Theology at Rome,
and was elected Provincial of his Order in Saxony. Three years later he was
appointed Vicar-General of Bohemia. Soon after he appears at Strasbm-g,
preaching in the convents of the nuns, and then in Frankfort-on-the-Maine, as
Prior of the Blackfriars of that city. He was suspected of heresy, and was
accused of being in communication with " the Brethren of the Free Spirit." In
1326, he was deposed from his office of Provincial of the Dominicans. As his
doctrine had spread widely ainong his order, the Archbishop of Cologne
accused the whole brotherhood of heresy. Eckart was summoned to appear .
before the Pope, at Avignon. He was condemned on the charge of heresy.
His doctrines were so widely spread through Germany, Switzerland, Tyrol
and Bohemia, that they required to be condemned a second time. This was .
in 1430, by the University ol Heidelberg,
170 SELF ANNIHILATION.
gophers ; and, above all, of Plato, whom he often quotes, and
whom he calls " the great clerk." He was not aware that he
taught anything different from the doctrines of the Catholic
church, supposing Platonism and Neo-Platonism to be compa-
tible with Christianity. In this belief he clung to the Catholic
faith to his last hour, though he had been condemned at Cologne
by the Archbishop, and though this condemnation was afterwards
confirmed by the Pope.
Of the writings of Eckart, we have little more than fragments,
but these are sufficient to acquaint us with the character of his theo-
logy.* "All thatisinthe Godhead," he says, "is one; thereof we
can say nothing. It is above all names and above all nature. The
essence of all creatures is eternally a divine life in Deity. God
works but not the Godhead. Therein are they distinguished in
working and not working. The end of all things is the hidden
darkness of the eternal Godhead ; unknown, and never to be
kno\vn." Here we have that hidden darkness which is the same
as the Dionysian Abysses of light ; and that Godhead, who is
above being, and only becomes God as He works, and creates. In
the Godhead, Creator and creature are one; but when the
creature becomes a creature, God becomes God. " In Him-
self," says Eckart in another place, " He is not God, in the
creature only doth he become God. I ask to be rid of God, that
is, that God by his grace, would bring me into the essence ; that
essence which is above God, and above distinction, I would enter
into that eternal Unity which was mine before all time, and
when I was what I would, and would what I was ; into that state
which is above all addition or diminution, into the Immobility
whereby all is moved."
To be rid of God, in order to blessedness is an expression ap-
parently in contradiction to the system which makes man one
with God ; but Eckart's meaning is never obscure. He longs
for a return to that fountain of the Godhead, when as yet God
was not separated from the creature. In another passage he
expresses the same doctrine with the opposite words, " In every
man," he says, " who hath utterly abandoned self, God must
communicate Himself according to all His power, so completely
that He retains nothing in Hislife, in His essence, in His Godhead
He must communicate all to the bringing forth of fruit." Again,
'* when the will is so united that it becometh a one in oneness,
* Professor Pfeiffer, in his work on the German Mystics, has collected one
hundred and ten sermons ; eighteen tracts, and seren-y single sayings, which
be ascribes to Eckart.
THE SUPER-ESSENTIAL ESSENCE. 171
then doth the heavenly Father produce His only begotten Son in
Himself and me, I am one with Him. He cannot exclude me.
In this self-same operation doth the Holy Ghost receive His
existence, and proceed from me, as from God. Wherefore ? I
am in God, and if the Holy Ghost deriveth not His being from
me, He deriveth it not from God. I am in no wise excluded."
In other places he declares his oneness with Deity, " God and I,
are one in knowing, God's essence is His knowing, and God's
knowing makes me to know Him. Therefore is His knowing
my knowing. The eye whereby I see God is the same eye
whereby He seeth me, mine eye and the eye of God are one eye,
one vision, one knowledge, and one love."
" There is something in the soul which is above the soul,
divine, simple, an absolute Nothing; rather unnamed than
named; unknown than known. So long as thoulookest on thy-
self as a something^ so long thou knowest as little what there is,
as my mouth knows what color is, or as my eye knows what taste
is. Of this I am wont to speak in my sermons, and sometimes have
called it a power, sometimes an uncreated light, sometimes a divine
spark. It is absolute and free from all names and forms, as God
is free and absolute in Himself. It is higher than knowledge
higher than love, higher than grace, for in all these there is
still distinction. In this power doth blossom and flourish God
with all His Godhead, and the Spirit flourisheth in God. In this
power doth the Father bring forth His only begotten Son, as es-
sentially as in Himself, and in this light ariseth the Holy Ghost.
This spark rejects all creatures, and will have only God, simply
as He is in Himself. It rests satisfied neither with the Father,
nor the Son, nor the Holy Ghost, nor with the three persons, so
far as each exists in its respective attributes. I will say what
will sound more marvellous still. This light is satisfied only
with the super-essential Essence. It is bent on entering into the
simple Ground, the still Waste wherein is no distinction neither
Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost ; into the Unity where no man
dwelleth. Then is it satisfied in the light, then it is one ; then
it is one in itself — as this ground is a simple stillness, in itself
immovable, and yet by this Immobility are all things moved."
** God is a pure good in Himself, and therefore will dwell
nowhere, save in a pure soul. There He may pour Himself out ;
into that He can wholly flow. What is purity? It is that
man should have turned himself away from all creatures, and
have set his heart so entirely on the pure good, that no creature is
to him a comfort; that he has no desire for aught creaturely,
172 GOD ALONE CAN
save as far as lie may apprehend therein, the pure good, which
is God. And as little as the bright eye can endure aught
foreign in it, any stain between it and God. To it all creatures
are pure to enjoy, for it enjoyeth all creatures in God, and God
in all creatures. Yea, so pure is that soul, that she seeth through
herself. She needeth not to seek God afar off, she finds Him in
herself when in her natural purity she hath flown out into the
supernatural of the pure Godhead. And thus is she in God,
and God in her ; and what she doeth she doeth in God, and God
doeth it in her."
" I have a power in my soul which enables me to perceive God.
I am as certain as- that 1 live, that nothing is so near to me as
God. He is nearer to me than I am to myself. It is a part of
His essence that He should be nigh and present to me.^ He is
also nigh to a stone or a tree, but they do not know it. If a
tree could know God and perceive His presence, as the highest
of the angels perceive it, the tree would be as blessed as the
highest angel. And it is because man is capable of perceiving
God, and knowing how nigh God is to him that he is better off
than a tree."
" The words / am none can truly speak but God alone. ^ He
has the substance of all creatures in Himself,'' "He is a
Being that has all being in Himself." " All things are in God,
and all things are God," " All creatures in themselves are
nothing ; all creatures are a speaking of God." " Dost thou ask
me what was the purpose of the Creator when He made the
creature. I answer, repose. Consciously, or unconsciously, all
creatures seek their proper state. The stone cannot cease
moving till it touch the earth ; the fire rises up to heaven ; thus
a loving soul can never rest but in God, and so we say God has
given to all things their proper place. To the fish, the water ;
to the bird, the air ; to the beast, the earth ; to the soul, the God-
head. Simple people suppose that we are to see God, as if He
stood on that side and we on this. It is not so — God and I are
one in the act of my perceiving Him." Concluding a sermon,
in a lofty flight of impassioned eloquence, Eckart cries, " 0
noble soul ! put on thou wings to thy feet, and rise above all
creatures, and above thine own reason ; and above the angelic
choirs ; and above the light that has given me strength, and
throw thyself upon the heart of God, there shalt thou be hidden
from all creatures."
Eckart might well ask his hearers, as it is said he used to do
at the end of his sermon, if they had understood him, telling
RUYSBROEK. 17B
those "who did not, not to trouble themselves, for only those who
were like the truth could know it. It was not something to be
thought out by the reason, but something to be received in the
soul's intuition, for " it came directly out of the heart of God.'^
When the Beghards had brought down upon themselves the
opposition of the church, their existence as societies was no
longer possible. At Cologne, their head quarters, many were
cast into the Rhine, and some burned at the stake ; while through-
out Germany and the Netherlands the church waged against
them a war of extermination. From their embers arose a new
fraternity, mystical as they had been, and like them also cele-
brated for their pious and benevolent labours. This was the fra-
ternity of the " Brethren of the Common Lot." But between
the Beghards and this new Brotherhood there was a famous
Mystic, whom Dr. Ullmann regards as "a transition link between
them." This was John Ruysbroek, who has been already
mentioned. He was by birth a Belgian, but in his mind and
character a German. He was destined to exercise a great
influence on the mystical writers who immediately preceded the
Reformation. Ruysbroek's first appearance was as an opponent
of the extravagances of the Beghards, from whom, as we have
already intimated, he differed materially. Eckart said that,
God and man were one *' by nature." Ruysbroek would not
admit this, but tried to show how man might become one with
God through contemplation and purification of the soul; but
this union, he continually repeated, was of such a character that
man did not lose his independent existence, or dissolve into
Deity. " God," he said, *' is the super-essential Essence of all
being, eternally reposing in Himself; and yet, at the same time,
the living and moving principle of all that He has created.
In respect of this substance He is everlasting rest, in which
there is neither time nor place, neither before nor after, neither
desire nor possession, neither light nor darkness. This God is
one in His nature and triune in His persons. The Father is the
eternal, essential, and personal principle. He begets eternal
wisdom — the Son ; His uncreated and personal image. From
the mutual intuition of the two, there flows an everlasting com-
placency, a fire of love, which burns for ever between the Father
and the Son ; this is the Holy Spirit, who continually proceeds
from the Father and the Son, and returns into ihe nature of
the Godhead. This triune Godhead is transfused in a threefold
way into the human soul, which is its image. The deepest root
and the proper essence of our soul, which is this eternal image
of God rests for ever in Him. We all possess it, as eternal life,
174 TAULBR.
without our own agency ; and prior to our creation in God.
After our creation however, three faculties take their rise in the
substance of our soul ; shapeless vacuity by which we receive
the Father ; the highest intellect, by which we receive the Son ;
and the spark of the soul, by which we receive the Holy
Ghost, and become one spirit and one love with God."
Man having proceeded from God, is destined to return and
become one with Him again. But this takes place in such a
way that God never ceases to be God, nor the creature a creature.
This is a sentiment often repeated ; but the intenseness with
which Ruysbroek expresses this union often leads him, as it
were unconsciously, into the language of the Beghards. He has
admitted, as we 'have seen above, that man has the root of his
being in God, and speaking of the return of the soul to the divine
fountain, he says, " The spirit becomes the very truth which it
apprehends. God is apprehended by God. We become one
with the same light with which we see, and which is both the
medium and object of our vision."
Dr. Ullmann, while admitting the doubtful meaning of some
passages like this, yet contends earnestly that Ruysbroek was no
Pantheist. The ground of his argument is, that Ruysbroek
while recognising the immanence of God in the world, never fails
to assert that He also transcends the world. He overflows into
the universe; dwells ever originally in all created minds, and
unites Himself in the closest manner to the pious soul ; yet He
rests eternally in his own essence, and, independently of the
world, possesses and enjoys Himself in His Godhead and its
persons.
To the practical side of Ruysbroek's Mysticism, Dr. Ullmann
traces the establishment of the " Brotherhood of the Common
Lot" and in the other side, the contemplative, he sees the
continuation of the Mysticism which had reached its culmi-
nating point in Eckart.
The mystical succession was continued at Cologne by John
Taulery a monk of the Dominican order.* Tauler was a great
* John Tauler was a native of Strasburg. He studied at the University of
Paris, and after his return to Strasburg he became acquainted with Master
Eckart. This part of Germany was then under the sentence of excommuni-
cation, but Tauler preached in spite of the Papal interdict, and great crowds of
people flocked to hear him. While the Black Death was raging in Strasburg,
Tauler and two other priests were the only ministers of religion who adminis-
tered the sacraments to the sick and the dying. He was finallj banished from
Strasburg for his bold words against the Pope. He repaired to Cologne, where
he preached for some years in the cloister of S. Gertrude. He afterwards
returned to his native town, where he died in 1361.
ECKART AND. TAULER. 175
favorite with the German Reformers. Luther and Melancthon
often speak of him. His sermons and religious discourses are
devoted chiefly to the points most dear to all Mystics — God in
His being ; our origin in and from Him, and our return to Him
again. His words have the ring of the often condemned specula-
tion, but it is urged for him as for Ruysbroek, that the union
with God of which he speaks, is rather religious and moral, than
a oneness of essence ; that while Eckart was a bold speculator,
*' rearing a system which, like the dome of the Cathedral of the
city in which he lived, towered aloft like a giant, or rather like
a Titan assaulting heaven'^ Tauler was more a man of sentiment,
expressing the deep feelings of an overflowing soul. There may
be truth in this distinction, but it may be urged on the other
side, that the difi'erence is less in the doctrines than in the
mental character of the men, which to the same doctrine gives
different forms. " Godly men,'' says Tauler, '* are called God-
like, for God lives, forms, ordains and works in them all His
works ; and doth, so to speak, use Himself in them." Here we
have God's immanency in man. Human life is God's life, for
God lives in man. He exists in the human soul, for he uses
Himself there. This, however, is spoken only of the godly, and
must be understood with this limitation. Other passages illus-
trate the advantages of the annihilation of self that God may
become all. " The created nothing," says Tauler, " sinks in
the uncreated, incomprehensibly, unspeakably. Herein is true
what is said in the Psalter — * Deep calleth unto Deep' for the
uncreated Deep calls the created, and these two Deeps become
entirely one. There hath the created spirit lost itself in the
Spirit of God ; yea, is drowned in the bottomless sea of God-
head." " God," he says again, " is a Spirit, and our created
spirit must be united to and lost in the uncreated, even as it
existed in God before creation. Every moment in which the
soul re-enters into God, a complete restoration takes place. If it
be done a thousand times in a day, there is each time a true
regeneration. As the Psalmist saith, * This day have I begot-
ten thee.' This is when the inmost of the spirit is sunk and
dissolved in the inmost of the divine nature ; and is thus new-
made and transformed. God thus pours Himself out into our
spirit, as the sun rays forth its material light, and fills the air
with sunshine, so that no eye can tell the difference between the
sunshine and air. If the union of the sun and air cannot be
distinguished, how far less this divine union of the uncreated
spirit. Our spirit is received and utterly swallowed up in th»
176 THE DIVINE DAiaK.
abyss which is its source. Then the spirit transcends itself
and all its powers, and mounts higher and higher towards the
Divine Dark, even as an eagle towards the sun." " Let man
simply yield himself to God ; ask nothing, desire nothing, love
and mean only God, yea, and such an unknown God. Let him
lovingly cast all his thoughts and cares, and his sins too, as it
were on that unknown Will. Some will ask what remains after
a man hath thus lost himself in God ? I answer, nothing but a
fathomless annihilation of himself; an absolute ignoring of all
reference to himself personally; of all aim of his own in will
and heart, in way, in purpose, or in use. For in this self-loss,
man sinks so deep, that if he could out of pure love and love-
liness sink deeper, yea, and become absolutely nothing, he would
do so right gladly. 0, dear child ! in the midst of all these
enmities and dangers, sink thou into thy ground and nothing-
ness, and let the tower with all its bells fall upon thee ; yea,
let all the devils in hell storm out upon thee ; let heaven and
earth and all their creatures assail thee, all shall but marvel-
lously serve thee ; sink thou only into thy nothingness, and the
better part shall be thine."
Tauler speaks of this ground of the soul as that which is in-
separable from the divine Essence, and wherein man has by
grace what God has by nature. He quotes Proclus, as saying,
" that while man is busied with images which are beneath us,
and clings to such, he cannot possibly return into his ground
and essence." "If," he says, " thou wilt know by experience
what such a ground truly is, thou must forsake all the manifold
and gaze thereon with intellectual eye alone. But wouldst thou
come nearer yet, turn thine intellectual eyes right therefrom,
for even the intellect is beneath thee, and become one with the
One, that is— unite thyself with the Unity. This unity,
Proclus calls ' the calm, silent, slumbering and incomprehensible
divine darkness.' To think, beloved in the Lord, that a heathen
should understand so much and so far, and we be so behind,
may well make us blush for shame. To this our Lord Jesus
Christ testifies, when He says ' the kingdom of God is within
you.' That is,this kingdom is born in the inmost ground of all,
apart from all that the powers of mind can eccomplish. In
this ground the eternal, heavenly Father doth bring forth His
only begotten Son, a hundred thousand times quicker than in
an instant, according to our apprehension, ever anew in the
light of eternity, in the glory and immutable brightness of His
own self. He who would experience this, must turn himself
HEINRICH SUSO. 177
inward, far away from all working of his outward and inward
powers and imagination — from all that ever cometh from with-
out, and then sink and dissolve himself in the ground. Then
cometh the power of the Father, and calls the man into Him-
self through the only begotten Son, and so the Son is born out
of the Father and returneth unto the Father, and such a man
is b;)rn, in the Son, of the Father, and floweth back with the
Son unto the Father again, and becomes one with them."
Dr. Ullmann says that Tauler, in respect of doctrine, kept
apparently within the limits assigned by the church, and though
he raised against him ecclesiastical opposition, it was less for
what he taught than for his inward piety and his zeal against
the sins of the clergy.
Heinrich Suso, a disciple of Master Eckart, was another
of the celebrated Mystics of Cologne. Dr. Ullmann says, that
though he embraced the principle of union with God by self-
nnuihilation, yet he never entirely occupied the ground of Pan-
theism on which his master speculated. Suso w^as a monk of
the Dominican order ; famous as a preacher and distinguished
for his piety and benevolence ; an ardent lover of the monastic
life, and a great enemy to the corruptions of the church. His
definition of God is purely Dionysian — Being which is equal
to non-being. " He is not any particular being, or made up of
parts. He is not a being that has still to be, or is capable of
any possibility of receiving addition ; but pure, simple, undi-
vided universal Being. This pure and simple Being is the
supreme cause of actual being, and includes all temporal exist-
ences as their beginning and end. It is in all things, and out
of all things, so that we may say ' God is a circle whose centre is
everywhere, His circumference nowhere.' " On the union of
man with God he speaks with the same guarded expressions as
Kuysbroek, maintaining the unity, yet holding the creature to be
still a creature. Man vanishes into God. All things become
Go J, yet in such a way that the created is the created still, " A
meek man," he says, "must be clef ormed from the creature, cnoi-
f armed to Christ, and transformed into t\\e Deity; yet the divine
^Thou and the human I continue to exist." " The soul," he
says again, " passes beyond time and space, and with a lovirg
inward intuition is dissolved in God. This entrance of the soul
banishes all forms images and multipHcity. It is ignorant of
itself and all things. Keduced to its essence it hovers on the
brink of the Trinity. At this elevation there is no effort, no
struggle ; the beginning and the end are one. Here the divine
178 THB THEOLOGIA GERMANICA.
nature doth as it were embrace and mildly kiss through and
through the soul that they may be one for ever. He who is
thus received into the eternal Nothing is in the everlasting noiv^
and hath neither hefore nor after. Rightly hath Dionysius said
that God is non-Being; that is, above all our notions of being.
VTe have to employ images and similitudes, as I must do in
setting forth such truths, but know that all such figures are as
much below the reality as a blackamore is below the sun. In
this absorption of which I speak, the soul is still a creature ;
but, at the same time, hath no thought whether it be a creature
or no."
The Theologia Germanica, a pious mystical book, the
author of which is unknown, belonged to the age of Tauler.and was
probably written by some of the Mystics of his brotherhood. It
begins with an ontological application of S. Paul's words, " When
that which is perfect is come then things which are in part shall
be done away" The Perfect is that Being "who hath com-
prehended and included all things in Himself and His own
substance, and without whom and beside whom there is no true
substance, and in whom all things have their substance, for He
is the substance of all things, and is in Himself unchangeable
and immovable, yet changeth and moveth all things." The
things which are in part, are explained as those things which may
be apprehended, known and expressed ; but the Perfect is that
which cannot be known, apprehended, or expressed by any
creature. For this reason the Perfect is nameless. No creature
as a creature can name it or conceive it. Before the Perfect can
be known in the creature all creature qualities such as Zand self
must be lost and done away.
God, or the eternally good, is that which truly exists. Evil
has no real being, because it does not really exist. Anything
exists just in proportion as it is good. The author of the
Theologia Germanica does not hesitate to carry this principle
to its utmost extent, even saying that the devil is good, so far as
he has being.
Submission to eternal goodness is described as the soul's
freedom. He is not free who looks for a reward of his well-
doing, or T\ho does what is right through fear of hell punish-
ment. He alone is free who loves goodness for its own sake,
and does what is right because in well-doing is blessedness.
*' What is Paradise," the author asks, and he answers, " All
things that are, for all are goodly and pleas uit, and therefore
may be fitly called a paradise. It is said also that paradise- is
LUTHER AND THE MYSTICS. 179
an outer court of heaven. Even so this world is verilj an outer
court of the eternal, or of eternity, and specially whatever in
time or any temporal things or creatures manifesteth or remind-
eth us of God or eternity, for the creatures are a guide and a
path unto God and eternity. Thus the world is an outer court
of eternity ; and, therefore, it may well be called a paradise, for
it is such ni truth ; and in this p radise all things are lawful
save one tree and the fruit thereof — nothing is contrary to God
but self-will ; to will otherwise than as the Eternal Will would
have it."
This book was a great favorite with the Eeformers. Luther
edited it and recommended it to the people. Spcner says " that
it was the Holy Scriptures, the Theologia Germanica and the
sermons of Tauler, that made Luther what he was." From the
title of it the Germ-m Mystics were called " German Theo-
logians." Anticipating the reproach of thus identifying himself
with Eckart and Tauler, Luther said, " We shall be called
German Theologians" and he answers, " Well, German Theo-
logians let us he.""
Of all the German Mystics, Dr. Ullmann considers Eckart ^ r
alone to be a decided Pantheist. He classes all the others as
Theists, except the author of the Theologia Germcmica. Of ^
this book, he says that it contains the elements of Pantheism, yet 1
a Pantheism not of speculation, but of the deepest and the i
purest piety. He had difficulty, as others before him, in draw-
ing the lines of distinction. This book which, before the Refor-
mation, had great influence among the Catholics of Germany,
has since be.-n placed in the index of books forbidden ; but among
the Lutherans it is still in high esteem.^^
* Sebastian Frank, a contemporary of Luther systematized the speculations
of Eckart and Tauler, and reduced them to definite forms of lo,2:ic. " Starting,"
savs Mr. Vanghan, " Avith the doctrine of the Theologia Germanica, that
Goil is the S'llistiince of all things, he pushes it to the verge of a dreary Pan-
theism, and even beyond that uncertain frontier." In his system the universe
passes through the process of a divine life. First there is the divme substance,
or abstract unitv, which produces all existence. This substance appearing as
an opposite to itself, becomes subject and object. This opposition is abj-orbed
in the consciousness of man when he is restored to the Suj^reme Unity, and is
rendered divine. The fiill of man is a fall from the Divinity Avithin him, a
fall from that reason which is the Holy Ghost ; that reason in which the Divine
Being is supposed first to acquire will and self-consciousness. Clirist is the
Divine element in man. The work of the historical Christ is to make us con-
scious of the ideal and inward, and we thus arrive at the consciousness of that
fundamental divineness in us which knows and is one with the Supreme by
identity of nature.
» 2
3 80 JACOB BOHME.
Lnther retained much of the spirit of the German Mystics,
but neither he nor his immediate followers seem to have
adopted their theology. The mystical succession was broken
in Germany for more than a century. It was then taken
up by Jacob Bohme, the philosophical shoemaker of Gorlitz.
Bdhme was a member of the Lutheran church, the authorities
of which treated him as the Catholic church did Eckart and
Tauler. Bohme's meaning is often obscure. He had not the
learning of the pre-Reformation Mystics, but what he wants in
learning he amply makes up for in originality.
We can either, he says, begin at man and reason up to God,
or we can begin at God and reason down to man ; the conclusion
either w^ay will be the same. To know ourselves is to know
God, for we are a similitude of the Deity — a living image of the
eternal divine nature. That which is in the triune God is
manifested in nature, and creation; and of this entire nature and
creation, man is the epitome.
Beginning with the consideration of the Infinite Being, we
can contemplate Him as He is in Himself ; as He is in His
Word or eternal nature ; and as He is in the visible creation, " the
out-spoken or visible word." In Himself, God is an eternal Unity ;
an eternal Nothing ; an Abyss withouttime or space. He needs no
habitation, for He is without and within the world equally alike ;
deeper than thought ; higher than imagination ; no numbers can
express His greatness, for He is endless and infinite. He mani-
fests Himself in His word, eternal nature — the All of the
universe. He fills all things, and is in all things. " The
Being of God is like a wheel in which many wheels are made
one in another, upwards, downwards, crossways, and yet conti-
nually all of them turn together." The whole of nature ; heaven,
earth and above the heavens is the body of God. The powers of
the stars are the fountain veins in this natural body, which is the
world or universe.
The process of the Divine going forth from nothing to some-
thing is on this wise. In the abyssal Nothing there is an eternal
Will, which is the Father ; and an apprc bending mind, which
is the Son. From the will and mind there is a procession which
is the Spirit. The Father eternally generates the Son. The
Son is the wisdom in which all things are formed. The Spirit ex-
presses the egress of the will and mind, '' standing continually
in the flash wherein life is generated." This triune Being is
yet but one essence, which is the Essence of aU essences. It is
enough to name Him God, but with the very conception of God
ETERNAL NATURE. 181
there is introduced that of eternal nature. Of this nature Grod
is the root and the ground ; but He is not before it, for it is
co-eternal with Him. The external world is the out-birth of
this nature. In the one are all the principles that are found
in the other. But though eternal nature is divine, for
into it God enters as He is in Himself an eternal Good, yet the
external world cannot be so mireservcdly called divine, for into
it He enters both as wrath and love. God is in all things as
the sap in the green and flourishing tree. He lives in the stars
and the elements of nature. He is present in the meanest of
insects, and the tiniest of herbs. By His wisdom, and of His
essence is all creation made. In the stillness of the evening
twilight we may feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, in whose
kingdom all creatures rejoice to live. If our eyes are purified
we may see God everywhere. He is in us, and we are in Him,
and if our lives are holy we may know ourselves to be God. All
lies in man, he is the living book of God and all things.
These doctrines are repeated in Bohme's writings times with-
out number, and with so many modifications, and further de-
velopments, as to make it difficult to set them forth definitely as
constitutinLT an harmonious system. The root idea seems to be
a dualism, like what is found among the Gnostics, but with this
difference, that Bohme receives no principle as independent of
the being of God, but posits a duality of principles in the very
essence of God.
In this essence is an opposition of darkness and light, fierce-
ness and tenderness, and from this proceeds all opposition in
the life of nature and of spirit, and even the opposition of good
and evil. There is a duality of principles of which the first
which is dark, fierce, and astringent, is not God in His highest
Being; yet it is God, or at least it belongs to the essence of
God. " Since man knows, that he is twofold, possessing both
good and evil, then is it highly necessary to him that he
know himself ; how he was created ; whence his good and evil
impulses ; what is good and evil and on what they depend ; what
is the origin of all good and of all evil, how or when evil came
mto the devil, or men, and all creatures ; if the devil was a holy
angel, and man too was created good, why such misery is found
in all creatures, and why every one is biting, beating, push-
ing, and crushing each other, and there is such opposition not
only in living things but in stones, elements, earth, metals, wood,
leaves, and grasses : in all is poison and wickedness, and it must
be so, otherwise there would be neither life, nor movement, nor
182 THE FIRST PRINCIPLE.
color, nor virtue, nor tliickness, nor thinness, nor perception of any
kind, but all would be a nothing. In such a hio-h consideration
we find that all such comes from and out of God, and that it is
of His substance, and evil belongs to formation and move-
ment, and good to love, and the severe or counter-willing to joy."
This opposition which Bohme found in all nature, he was com-
pelled to carry up to God ; for following the analogy he had laid
down, what he saw in the creature he must posit in the Abyssal
Deity. Though God, in the first conception, is a simple Unity in
whom difference is not supposed to exist ; yet w4ien we enquire
into the origin of love and anger, we find that they come from
the same fountain, and that they are the children of one parent.
We cannot say that the dark, fiery, astringent principle is in
God any more than earth, air, or water, and yet these have all
come from God. Sorrow, death, and hell, camiot be in God, and
yet they have their origin in the divine Nothing. The enquiry
must be into the cause of the evil not only in creatures but in
the divine Essence, for in the root or original all is one. Ail
comes from the essence of God considered in His threefold nature.
God in the first principle is not properly God, but wrath and terror,
the origin of bitterness and evil. Though this is not God it is
yet the innermost first fountain wdiich is in God the Father, ac-
cording to which He calls Himself an angry and a jealous God.
This fountain is the first principle and in it the world has its
origin. It is the principle of severity and anger, resembling a
brimstone-spirit, and constituting "the abyss of hell, in which
Prince Lucifer remained after the extinction of his light." This
dark principle is not God, yet it is the essence out of wdiich God's
light and heart are eternally produced. In it is the eternal
mind which generates the eternal will, and the eternal Avill
generates the eternal heart of God, and the heart gene-
rates the light, and the light the power, and the power the
Spirit, and that is the Almighty God, who is in an unchangeable
Will. The Godhead is thus: — God the Father, and the
light makes the will-longing power, which is God the Son, since
in the power the light is eternally generated ; and in the light out
of the power proceeds the Holy Spirit, which again in the dark
mind generates the will of the eternal Being. " See now,
dear soul," says Bohme, " this is the Godhead and contains in
itself the second or middle principle, therefore God is alone
good ; He is love, light and power. Consider now that there
would not have been in God such eternal wisdom and knowledge
had not the mind stood in the darkness."
THE TRINITY. 188
Such is the eternal birth of the divine Essence. By this, God
Himself realizes tlie eternal idea of His Being. The momenis
of the eternal binh are differently set forth in Bohme's writings,
according as the Divine Being is considered in Himself, or in
His relation to Satan, the world, or man. Again, in the first re-
lation, there are different points of view under which we may
regard the eternal birth of the Deity.
The life process in God constitutes a Trinity, which is the
eternal and necessary birth of God, who produces Himself, and
without this life-process could not bethought of as a living God.
Bohme says, " When Ave speak of the Holy Ternary we
must first say there is one God — He who is called the Father and
Creator of all things, who is therefore Almighty, and all in all.
All is His. All has originated in Him, and from Him, and re-
mains eternally in Him. Then we say He is threefold in per-
sons and has from all eternity generated His Son, who is His
heart, light, and love, so that the Father and the Son are not
two beings, but only one. Then we say from the Holy Scrip-
tures, that there is a Spirit who proceeds from the Father and
the Son, and is one essence in the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost. " See then,'' says Bohme, " since the Father is
the most original Essence of all essences, if the other principle
did not appear and go forth in the birth of the Son, then the
Father would be a dark valley. You see now that the Son, who
is the heart, life, light, beauty, and gentle beneficence of the
Father, discloses in His birth another principle, and reconciles
the angry terrible Father, and makes Him loving and merciful,
and is another person than the Father, since in His centre is no-
thing but pure joy, love, and delight. You may now see how the
Holy Spirit proceeds from the Fatlier and the Son. When the
heart or light of God is begotten in the Father, there arises in
the kindling of light, in the fifth form, out of the water-fountain
or gentleness, in light, a very loving, pleasant, and agreeable spirit,
that is the spirit which in the original was the bitter sting in the
astringent mother, and which now makes in the water fountain many
thousand, yea innumerable centres. You may now understand
that the birth of the Son is originated in the fire, and He re-
ceives His personality and name in the kindling of the soft,
white, and clear light which is Himself, and which makes the
sweet odor, savor and gentle beneficence in the Father, and.
is most truly the heart of the Father, and is yet another
person, since it bears and unfolds the other principle in the
Father, and is His being, form, and light, therefore is it rightly
184 THE FOUNTAIN SPIRITS.
called the power of God. The Holj Spirit was not known
in the original of the Father before the light but when the soft
fountain rises to the light, then it issues forth as a strong Almighty
Spirit, with great joy, out of the water-fountain and light, and
is the power of the water-fountain and light. It now makes
forms and figures, and is the centre in all essences where the
light of life originates in the light of the Son, or heart of the
Father. The Holy Ghost is therefore called a separate person,
because it goes forth as the living power of the Father, and the
Son, and confirms the eternal birth of the Trinity." The Holy
Spirit is in the manifold what the Son is in the Unity. It is
the creative power of God ; the formative principle which
moves the power of the Father and unfolds the immeasurable
and innumerable centres in the birth of the heart of God.
As the Ternary of the Divine Nature may be reduced to
a unity or a duality, so may it be increased to a Septenary of
powers or principles — the ground relationship remaining the
same. God the Father is all power, He is the well-spring of
all — " in Him is light and darkness, air and water, heat and
cold, hard and soft, thick and thin, sound and tone, sweet and
sour, astringent aiid bitter." The properties or fountain spirits in
God, are divided into seven kinds. The first is the astringent;
a property of seed or concealed essence, a sharpness, contracting
or penetrating of the sharp and bitter nitre^ which produces the
heat and the cold, when it is kindled it produces the salt-like
sharpness. The other property, or spirit of God, in the divine
nitre or in the Divine Power, is the sweet property which works
in the astringent and softens it so that it becomes entirely loving
and soft. It is then a conquering of the astringent; the foun-
tain of the mercy of God, which overcomes wrath. The third
property is the bitter : a penetrating aud compressing of the
sweet and astringent. The fourth is the heat : it is the proper
beginning of life, and also the right spirit of life, it kindles all the
properties, for when the heat works in the sweet moisture it pro-
duces the light in all qualities so that everyone sees the other ;
therein arise sense and thought, in this light arises the flash of life.
The fifth property is the blessed, friendly, and joyful love.
When the heat arises in the sweet property and kindles the sweet
fountain, then arises the friendly love-light-fire in the sweet
property, and kindles the bitter and the astringent, and eats and
drinks them with sweet love-juice, and refreshes them, and
makes them loving and friendly, and then when the sweet
light love- power comes to them that they taste of it, and receive
THE ANGELS. 185
life, then is a friendly meeting and triumphing, a friendly
saluting, and a great love ; yea a friendly and blessed kissing
and tasting — then the bridegroom kisses his bride. The sixth
fountain spirit in the Divine Power is the sound and tone which
everything has, whence arises speech, and the difference of all
things, with the music and songs of the holy angels, and herein
too stands the forming of all colors and beauty, and also the
heavenly kingdom of joy. The seventh spirit of God is the
hochj^ which is produced out of the other six spirits. In it are
all heavenly figures, in it everything is formed and imaged, and
in it arises all beauty and gladness. This is the right spirit of
nature ; yea nature itself, in which all creatures in heaven and
earth are formed, yea heaven itself, and in this spirit consists
all naturalness in the entire of God. But for this spirit there
would neither be angel nor man, and God would be an unsearch-
able Being, who existcid only in unsearchable power. All these
S3ven spirits live and move in each other. They are all
together God. Since there is no one spirit outside of another, but
all the seven produce each other, so the one is not without the
other. But the light is another person since it is continually
generated out of the seven spirits, and the seven spirits con-
tinuiUy arise in ths light, and the powers of these sevc-n spirits
proceed CO itinually in the glare of the light into the seventh
nature spirit, and in it they fashion and form all things, and
this pro33S3ion into the light is the Holy Spirit.
The first fi)ur of these fountain spirits or properties, express
the being of God the Father. The fifth, that of the Son, which
is light, and this light is the heart of the seven spirits. The two
last which give the spirits their definite and concrete form, re-
present the being of the Holy Ghost. Out of the seventh foun-
tain spirit, which is nature, or holy heaven, God created the
angels. Through the rising of the seven spirits, the light
in them, the Holy Spirit which proceeded from them was
moved, and they became creatures, so that every angel has the
power of all the seven spirits ; but in each, one property predomi-
nates. But here again the prevailing ground-form is the triad
of the divine essence, and that in a manifold sense. Every angel,
is created as the entire Godhead — as a little God — because God
created the angels out of Himself, and He is everywhere the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. There is no difference
between the spirits of God and the angels, but only
this that the angels are creatures, and their corporeal essence
has a beginning, but their power wherein they were created,
186 THE FALL OF LUCIFER.
i3 Godl HinivSelf. Now tlie same triad whicli is the essence
of every individual angel is fouiad also in the three ange-
lical kingdoms. God created these angel princes, each of
which is the Lord of an angelic host, and is united to the Creator
as a soul is to a body. '1 he first is Michael, who is called the
strength of God. He bears this name because he is formed out
of the seven spirits, and stands in the place of God the Father.
The second is he who is now called Lucifer, because he was
expelled from the light of God. As Michael was created after
the image of God the Father, so Lucifer was created after the
beautiful image of God the Son ; and, as a dear son, was united
in love to Him. His heart stood in the centre of light, as if it
had been God Himself, and his beauty was resplendent over all,
for he was the son of the Son of God, and even as God the
Father was united in great love to God the Son so also was
Lucifer united to Michael as one heart or one God, for the
well-spring of the Son of God had reached to the heart of
Lucifer. The third angelical king is called Uriel, from the light,
lio^htnins:, or outa-oino; of tiie lio;ht. He is created in the imafre
of the Holy Ghost, and is [the Holy Ghost. These are the three
princes of God in heaven. " Since now the flash of life, that is
the Son of God, arises in the middle circle among the fountain
spirits of God, and shows itself triumphing, and the Holy Spirit
raises itself triumphing over it, so also arises to this elevation
in the hearts of the three kings the Holy Trinity and thus all the
heavenly hosts are triumphant and full of joy."
Eohme has to struggle with the same difficulty that beset
all other philosophers who have tried to resolve the all of being
into one. There is obviously the perfect and the imperfect; the
infinite and the finite. A way of uniting these opposites must
be found — some device must be formed which, while admitting
the existence of the imperfect and the finite, will yet eliminate
all imperfection and finitude from the perfect and the infinite.
Bohme essays the solution of the problem in two ways. At
one time by the idea of a fall. At another time by the suppo-
sition of a duality of principles. In the one case he follows
the Scriptures, in the other he approaches Manichseism, with
this difierence that the Manichees placed one principle outside
of God, but Bohme posits both in the Divine Essence; and yet
he contends that, though evil has this origin, God is not its
author. As to the fall, it began with Lucifer, whose kingdom
VYXis originally created " in the royal, lovely and heavenly
god's anger and jealousy. 187
nitre^ of the divine properties." Lucifer was the most beautiful
prince in heaven, adorned and clothed with the most resplendent
beauty of the Son of God. Why he fell rather than the others
l>6hme scarcely knows. Indeed he carries back into the very crea-
tion of Lucifertiienecessity of a fall, for those attributes with which
Lucifer was endowed seem to have been his only potentially.
He would have possessed them, had he with the other spirits
taken his direction to the heart of God. It was intended that
the seven spirits in an angel should be as God was, but the
fountain spirits in Lucifer seeing that they sat supreme, moved
the astringent and produced a fiery spirit which rose up in the heart
like a proud virgin. By thus acting contrary to the law of
nature, and otherwise than God their Father, there was a
fountain against the entire Godhead. They kindled the nitre
of the body, and then was produced a son, entirely unlike the
sonorheart of God such as the fountain spirits would have brought
forth had they not stirred the astringent. "He," saysBohme, speak-
ing of Lucifer, '' was created like the other angels, out of eternal
nature, out of the eternal indissoluble bond and has stood in Para-
dise. He has also felt and seen the birth of the Holy Godhead, the
birth of the second principle, the heart of God, and the confirma-
tion of the Holy Spirit. His nourishment would also have been
from the word of God, and he would have remained an angel.
But because he saw that he was a prince, standing in the highest
principle, he despised the birth of the Son of God and His
gentle loving qu ilitiies, and determined to be a very powerful
and terrible lord in the first principle, and as he wished to
qualify himself in the five powers, and despised the gentle dis-
position of the heart of God, he could not be nourished by the
word of God, and his light was extinguished. He lost God and
the kingdom of Heaven, and all the delights and joys of Para-
dise, and remained in the dark valley of the eternal original,
always shut up in the first principle as in eternal death. He
raises himself continually trying to reach the heart of God and
rule over it."
Lucifer first kindled the fiery principle in God whereby He
became an angry and a jealous God ; that is, first showed His
wrath, which is in reality His righteousness. i\nd this fire
which burns in God is manifest in nature too, for the whole of
nature is set on fire by Lucifer. He could not enter into the
* The nitre, sal nitrum, Salilter or saltpetre is one of Bolime's Alchemico-
mjstical marks of the divine Essence.
188 CHRIST AND LUCIFER.
two births, that of the Son and that of the Holy Ghost, but
he remained in the birth of God, and was cast out with air and fire
into the outermost nature wherein he had kindled the fire- anger.
This nature indeed is the body of God, in which the Godhead
produced itself ; but the devil could not touch the gentle birth
of the Son of God, w^hich rises in the light. As God finished the
creation of this world after the fall of Lucifer, so was every-
thing created out of the nitre wherein Lucifer was placed, and
this lire-anger of God is still in the body of the god of this
world, and will be till the end.
The dualism or opposition of principles is between Lucifer
and God the Son ; but in the deeper ground of the Deity this
dualism vanishes. It is in the Son that God is first truly God,
but that same separation of powers and principles in virtue of
which God manifests Himself as Father and Son, also gives
beingto Lucifer, and the same principle which inunity with the Son
is th'e Father, in its for-ifs- self -being, in its full antithesis to the
Son, is Lucifer. But this antithesis or difference which in
Lucifer comes to its full development, isone which again is entirely
removed. Therefore, into the place of fallen Lucifer, the eter-
nal only-begotten Son has directly entered. On the kingly
chair of expelled Lucifer now sits our King. The kingdom of
Lucifer has become the kingdom of Christ.
In his interpretation of Scripture P>ohme is more mystical
than all the Mystics. With the revelation within, he made
all external revelation to agree. God, he says, made all things
out of His own essence, because there was no other essence from
which they could be made. The Spirit of God indeed moved
upon the water in forming the world, but this is the Spirit's
eternal work. In the birth of the Son of God, it moveth upon
the water, for it is the power and outpouring of the Father out
of the water and light of God. Man is made in the image of
the Trinity. Like the Father, he has mind; like the Son, he
has light in that mind; like the Holy Ghost, he has "a spirit
which goes out from all the powers." His fall was a necessary
event, for in Adam were contending principles under the domi-
nion of the more hurtful of which he could not but fall. Like
the angels, he was created with a spiritual body, and would have
multiplied his kind as they do. Hut he fell, and then Eve was
created, that his posterity might be continued, as they now are.
This may not accord with the letter of the Scripture narrative,
according to which Eve sinned first and then Adam ; but that
is only a mystical representation, of which the sense is, that
THE CREATION OF EVB. 189
Adam sinned by desire. He fell into a deep sleep, the death of
his soul. When he awoke he found Eve. They both knew that
they were naked — the sensual had eclipsed the spiritual, and
they were ashamed of their material bodies.*
* Bohme's representations of the Trinity are not always verbally consistent,
and this is one of the things which make h'im difficult to be understood. The
following passage from the book on the Three Principles seems a definite ex-
pression of his conception of God, though in some points it does not agree with
what is quoted in the text—" The seven spirits are God the Father, the life of
the seven spirits is the light which subsists in the centre of the seven spirits,
and is generated bj them ; this light is the Son, flash, stock, pith, or heart of
the seven spirits. The si)lendor, or glance in all the powers which goes forth
from the Father and the Son, and forms or images all in the seventh nature
spirit ; this is the Holy Ghost. Thus, O blind Jew, Turk, and Heathen, thou
seest that there are three persons in the Deity, thou canst not deny it, for thou
livest, and art, and hast thy being in the three persons, and thou hast thy life
from them, and in the power of these three persons thou art to rise from the
dead at the last day, and live eternally.
The following exposition of Pohme is from his commentator Freher. It is
taken from Mr. Walton's Memorial of William Law :— " After the three first
properties, called by Bohme the triangle in nature, and referring distinctly to
Father, Son, and Spirit, in the generation of the fourth, which is the fire, the
first Abyssal Will is opened as an eternal nothing, consuming, melting down,
turning, and transmuting, in one sense, into nothing, but in another into some-
thing better and more noble, all what by the three first properties in their fight-
ing and whirling was made up. And this is the Father, whom the Scripture
also calleth a consuming fire. If then this first abyssal will is Gid, viz. the
Father, considered as in Himself only without all nature, this same abyssal will,
now opened in the generation of this fourtli form, is God in nature.
" From this first manifestation which is the Father's in the fire, the second,
viz. the Son's in the light, is all inseparable. And so is also from these two the
third, which is the Spirit's, called or compared, as in the Scripture, so by
Bohme also, to a wind or air, not only proceeding forth from fire and light, but
also keeping them both in union, according to that outward ^presentation there-
of in temporal nature, Avherein we see, that without air proceeding from [and
with] the fire, no fire can burn and consequently no light can shine."
Mr. Walton gives the following exposition : — " What is the Abyss of All
things where there is no creature, viz. the Abyssal No-thing ?
" Answer. (1.) It is a habitation of God's Unity, for the opening, or the
something of the nothing, is God himself The opening is the Uiiify,v\z. nn
eternal life and desiring, a mere velleity or will, which yet hath nothing that it
can desire, but itself Therefore is the will a mere desirous love-longing de-
light, viz. an exit of itself to its perceptibility or inventilnlity.
" (2.) This will is first, the eternal Father of the byss or ground ; and
secondly, the perceptibiliti/ of the hve is the eternal Son, which the will in itself
generateth to a perceptible love-power ; and thirdly, the exit of the desirous
perceptible Love is the Spirit of the Divine life,
" (3.) And this is the eternal Unity, or threefold, immeasurable, un-
beginning Life, which standeth in mere desiring ; in conceiving, comprehend-
ing and finding of itself, and in an eternal exit of itself.
" (4.) And that which is gone forth from the Will, from the Love, and from
the Life, the same is the Wisdom of God, viz. the Divine vision, conterapla-
bility, ^nd joy of the Unity of God, where the Lore eternally introduceth itself
inta powers, colors, woaders, and virtues."
190 ANGELUS SILESIUS.
Tli8 poems of Angelus Silesius published in the seventeenth
century were the last manifestation of the mystical German
Theology, excepting, of course, the Transcendentalists, who shall
be mentioned in a subsequent chapter. Silesius Avas long con-
founded with John Scheffler, who is said to have been a follower
of Jacob Bohme, but who was at last a priest of the Catholic
Church. It is now considered as proved that they were two
diflerent persons. The followino- verses will be sufficient to show
the character of the theology of Silesius : —
" God never yet lias been, nor will He ever be ;
But yet before the world, and after it, is He.
What God is no one knows, nor sprite nor light is He,
Nor happiness, nor one, nor even Divinity,
Nor mind, love, goodness, will, nor intellect far seeing,
Nor thing, nor nought, nor soul, nor yet essential being,
He is what I and thou, may vainly strive to learn.
Until to Gods like Him, we worldly creatures turn."
" God in my nature is involved, as I in the Divine,
I help to make His being up, as much as He does mine.
As much as I to God, owes God to me.
His blissfulncss and self-sufficiency.
I am as rich as God, no grain of dust
That is not mine too — share with me He must.
I am as great as God, and He as small as I ;
He cannot me surpass, or I beneath Him lie."
*' God cannot without me endm-e a moment's space j
Were I to be destroyed He must give up the Ghost,
Naught seemeth high to me, I am the highest thing,
Because even God Himself is poor deprived of me."
" While aught thou art, or know'st, or lov'st, or hast.
Nor yet believe me is thy burden gone.
Who is as though he were not, ne'er had been ;
That man oh joy ! is made God absolute,
Self is surpassed by self annihilation —
The nearer nothing, so much more divine.
Bise above time and sjxace, and thou can'st be,
At any moment in eternity."
*' Eternity and time, time and eternity,
Are in themselves alike, the difference is in thee ;
'Tis thou thyself tak'st time, the clock-work is thy sense,
If thou but dropp'st the spring the time will vanish hence j
You think the world will fade, the world will not decay,
The darkness of the world alone is swept away."
" I bear God's image, would tie see Himself ;
He only can in me, or such as I."
"I see in God, both God and man.
He man and God in me ;
I quench His thirst, and He, in turn.
Helps my necessity."*
* In Angelus Silesius we reach the culmination of mystical extravagance :
'" tli« flotsam and jetsam *' of Pantheism. Of the same kind are two books,
FRENCH MYSTICS. 191
French Mystics. — The chief Mystics of France are Fenclon
which Ave shall not have an opportunity of mentioning in tlie text. One is
John Toland's Pantheist icon. Toland was a man of great reading and great
intellectual powers, but deficient in the ordinary wisdom of the woiid. The
publication of this book was simply a freak of his erratic genius. It meant no-
thing except perhaps to confound and horrify the advocates of Christianity, who
looked upon Toland as an unbeliever of the worst kind. In the introduction
he quoted Thomas Aquinas as saying that " they did not contradict the Mosaic
account of creation, who taught that God was the etcriial cause of the eternal
Avorld,and that all things from all eternity flowed from God without a medium,"
and S. Jerome as saying that " God is interfused and circumfused both within
and without the world." " The seeds of all things," Toland says, "begun from
an eternal time, are composed out of the first bodies, or most simple principles,
the four c)mm->nly received elements being neither simple nor sufficient, for in
an infinity all things are infinite, nay even eternal, as nothing could be made
out of nothing. To illustrate this, the seed of a tree is not a tree in mere poten-
tiality as Aristotle would say, but a real tree, in which are all the integrant
parts of a tree, though so minute as not to be perceived by the senses Avithout
microscopes, and not even then but in a very few things." The Socratic So-
ciely, Avhich indulged in these deep speculations is represented as singing in
alternate parts, after the convivial fashion of a Masonic Lodge, some verses of
which the foUoAving are a specimen: —
" President. — Keep off the profane vulgar.
Respondents. — The coast is clear, the door is shut. All safe !
P. — All things in the Avorld are one,
And one is all in all things.
i?. — What is all in all things, is God ;
Eternal and immense —
Neither begotten nor ever to perish.
P. — In Him Ave live, Ave moA-e, and have our being.
R. — Fvery thing has sprung from Him, and shall be reimited to Him,
He Himself being the beginning and end of all things.
P. — Let us sing a hymn
Upon the nature of the universe.
" P. ^ R. — Whatever this is it animates all things,
Forms, nourisbes, increases, creates.
Buries, and takes into itself all things,
And of all things is itself the Parent
From Avhom all things that receive a being,
Into the same are anew resolved."
Sometimes they sing this hymn —
" All things Avithin the verge of mortal laws
Are changed, all climates in revolving years
KnoAv not themselves, nations change their faces,
But the AA'orld is safe, and preserves its all.
Neither increased by time, nor Avorn by age ;
Its motion is not instantaneous.
It fatigues not its course, ahvays the same
It has been and shall be, our fathers saAV
No alteration, neither shall posterity,
It is God immutable for ever."
Toland professed to refute the blasphemies of Spinoza ! He also translated
into English Giordano Bruno's Spaccio della Bestia trionfante, but the transla-
tion was as destitute of meaning as the original. The other book is Edgar
Poe's Eureka, in VA^hich the author derives all things from an original unity. It
is. called a prose poem, but.it has, not the merit either of Poe's prose or hi«
ipoetry. ,••;.• .
192 FENELON AKD MADAME QUYON.
the Archbishop of Cambray, and Madame Gujon. They
were accused by Bossuet of teaching doctrines that led to Pan-
theism. The inference may have been correct, but Fenelon
and Madame Guyon would have recoiled not only from the bold
speculations of Erigena and Eckart, but even from the more
modified doctrines of the other German Mystics. Their mysti-
cism was practical rather than speculative. They were more
anxious to be able to love God than to explain His essence.
But like all great religious souls when they did speak of God
f their language overflowed the bounds of the prescribed theo-
I logy, and wandered into a kind of religious Pantheism. '' What
do I see in all nature," cried Fenelon, *' God — God is every-
thing, and God alone." Fenelon may have paused to explain
what he meant; so did Erigena and Eckart; and so did even
Spinoza ; but the explanation was either at war with the ori^jinal
statement, or it went to establish it. If the former, there was a
manifest contradiction, if the latter Pantheism was openly
espouse.].
From Madame Guyon's writings a few smilar sentences might
I be gleaned, but they are not numerous, and they never express
1 more than that ineffable union of the soul with the Deity, which
i in some way or other is the hope of every Christian. Her deep
piety, and the warmth and earnestness of her spirit may have
led to the use of language which reminds us of Brahmaiiical
absorption ; but we may plead for her, as Dr. Ulhnann did for
some of the Germans, that the union of which she spoke was
not one of essence, but only moral or religious. In this verse,
fiom one of her hymns, we have an instance of ih.s language,
-and with it a guide to the meaning
"I love the Lord— but with no love of mine,
For I have none to give ;
I love the Lord— but with a love divine,
For by thy love I live.
I am as nothing, and rejoice to be
Emptied and lost, and sivalhiced up in Thee !"
Again, in describing the mode of the soul's union with God,
she s'ays, " The soul passing out of self, by dying to itself neces-
sarily passes into its Divine Object. This is the law of its
transition. When it passes out of self, which is limited,
and therefore is not God, and consequently evil, it necessarily
passes into the unlimited and uncreated, which is God, and
therefore the true and good."^"
* • Under the liead of French Mystics we might have mentioned the French
disciples of Jacob Bohme, the chief of whom was Saint-Martin, but they
were mostly employed in translating and expounding the works of Bohme.
WILLIAM LAW.
193
English Mystics. — The mystical spirit has not been fruitful
in England. The writings of Jacob Bohme were translated into
English in the time of the Puritans by some zealous disciples,
but"his followers in this country do not appear ever to have been
numerous. In the middle of the last century he found an
eloquent expounder of his doctrines in William Law, a non-
juring clergyman of the Church of England. Bishop ^ War-
burton charged Law with teaching Spinozism, to which 'his only
answer was that " Spinoza made God matter, and that it surely
could not be supposed that he could be capable of any belief so
absurd." Law did not understand Spinoza, but he made no
secret of his agreement with Jacob Bohme.
Perhaps the best text for an exposition of Law's Theology, is
the following passage, " Everything that is in being, is either
God, or nature, or creature ; and everything that is not God is
only a manifestation of God ; for as there is nothing, neither
nature nor creature, but what must have its being in and from
God, so everything is and must be according to its nature more
or less a manifestation of God. Everything, therefore by its
form and condition speaks so much of God, and God in every-
thing speaks and manifests so much of Himself. Properly and
strictly speaking nothing can leg in to be. The beginning of
everything is nothing more than its beginning to be in a new
state." Whatever separation may be afterwards made between
God and the creature, we see in this passage in what sense they
are one. All things live, and move, and have their being in God.
This is true of devils, as well as of angels, and of all beings in
the ranks between devils and angels. The happiness or misery
of every creature is regulated by its state and manner of exist-
ence in God. He is all in all. We have nothing separately or
at a distance from Him, but everything in Him., Whatever
He gives us is something of Himself, and thus we become more
and more partakers of the Divine nature.
Man was created with an angelic nature. It was intended
that he should be the restoring angel who was to bring back all
things to their first state as they were before the fall of Lucifer.
He was placed in this world which had formerly been the place
of the fallen angels. He was in a paradise which covered that
earth which is now revealed by sin. He was to keep that para-
dise, but after his fall he was sentenced to till the ground which
now appears, for this world and all that we see in it are but the
invisible things of a fallen world made visible in a new and lower
state of existence. The first creation wliich was perfect, spiritual,
ll'i THE SEA OF GLASS.
and angelical, is represented by the sea of glass which S. John
saw before the throne of God. That sea is the heavenly
materiahty out of which were formed the bodies of the angels,
and the angelical Adam. 'In this sea of glass all the properties
and powers of nature moved and worked in the unity and purity
of the one will of God. Perpetual scenes of light and glory and
beauty were rising and changing through all the height and
depth of this sea of glass, at the will and pleasure of the angels
who once inhabited the region which is now this earth. But
these angels rebelled, and by their rebellion this sea of glass w^as
broken to pieces and became a black lake ; a horrible chaos of
fire and wrath ; a depth of the confused, divided, and fighting
properties of nature. The revolt of the angels brought forth
that disordered chaos, and that matter of which this earth is now
composed. Stones and rocks, fire and water, with all the vege-
tables and anim-dls that arise from the contending and co-
mingling of the elements came into existence through the
rebellion of the angels. They exist only in time ; they are un-
known in eternity. The angelical world or sea of glass had indeed
its fruits and flowers, which were more real than those which
grow in time, but as diflferent from the grossness of the fruits
of this world as the heavenly body of an angel is different from the
gross body of an earthly animal. It was the mirror of beautiful
figures and ideal forms, which continually manifested the wonders
of the Divine nature, and ministered to the joy of the angels.
Adam was created with dominion over the fallen world and
all the creatures whose existence was mortal, but he himself was
immortal and possessed of a heavenly body. He was placed in
paradise till he should bring forth a numerous offspring fitted to
inhabit the world that had been lost to the angels. The sea of
glass was to be restored. The sun, and stars, the earth, and all
the elements were to be purified by fire, and when all that was
gross and dead was purged away, the sons of Adam were to in^
habit the renewed earth and sing hallelujahs to all eternity.
Adam with the body and soul of an angel in an outward body,
was thus placed in paradise. He was put on his trial not by the
mere will of God, nor by experiment, but by the necessity of his
nature. He was free to choose either the angelic life, in which he
could have used his outward body as a means of opening up the
wonders of the outward world; or to turn his desire to the opening
of the bestial life of the outward world in himself, so as to know
the good and evil that were in it. He chose the latter. The
moment the bestial life was opened within him he died
ALL THINGS OF GOD. 195
spiritually. His angelic body and spirit were extinguished, but
his soul being an immortal fire became a poor slave in prison of
bestial flesh and blood.
When Adam had thus fallen it was not good for him to be
alone, so God divided the first perfect human nature into two
parts. Eve was created, or rather taken out of Adam. She
led him further astray by eating of the forbidden fruit, and per-
suading him also to eat of it. He saw that he was* naked ; that
he was an animal of gross flesh and blood, and he was ashamed
of his bestial body. That man was created at first male and
female in one person, and that his ofispring was to be continued
after the manner of his own birth from God, Law endeavours
to prove not only from the record in Genesis, but from the words
of our Lord to the Sadducees that " in the resurrection they
neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in
heaven," or as S. Luke has it, ** they are equal to the angels of
God," which is supposed to mean that the state of angelic being,
which Adam had before he sinned, will be again restored to
humanity.
That the original substance of humanity was Divine is evident
from the record of creation, where it is said that God breathed
into man ' the breath of lives, and he became a living soul. That
soul did not come from the womb of nothing, but as a breath
from the mouth of God. What it is and what it has in itself is
from and out of the First and Highest of all beings. To this
record in Genesis S. Paul appeals where he wishes to show that
all things, all worlds, and all living creatures were not created
out of nothing. The woman, he says, was created out of the man,
but all things are out of Grod. Again, he says that there is to us
but one God, out of whom are all things. Creation out of no-
thing is a fiction of modern theology, a fiction big with the
greatest absurdities. Every creature is a birth from something
else. Birth is the only procedure of nature. All nature is itself
a birth from God ; the first manifestation of the hidden incon-
ceivable God. So far is it from being out of nothing, that it is
the manifestation of that in God which before was not manifest,
and as nature is the manifestation of God so are all creatures the
manifestation of the powers of nature. Those creatures that are
nearest to God are out of the highest powers of nature. The
spiritual materiality, or the element of heaven, produces the
bodies, or heavenly flesh and blood of the angels, just as the
elements of this world produce material flesh and blood. The
spiritual materiality of heaven, in the kingdom of the fallen
o 2
1^ T?HE CHRIST WITHIN.
angels, has gone through a variety of births or creations, till
some of it came down to the grossness of air and water, and the
hardness of rocks and stones.
A spark of the light and spirit of God is still in man. It has a
strong and natural tendency towards the eternal light from which
it came. This light is Christ in us. He is the woman's seed who
from the beginning has been bruisins: the serpent's head. He
did not begin to be a Saviour when He was born of Mary, for
He is the eternal Word that has ever been in the hearts of men ;
the light which iighteth every man that cometh into the world.
He is our Emmanuel, the God with us given unto Adam, and
through him to all his oflfspring. To turn to the light and spirit
tvitliin us is the only true turning to God. The Saviour of the world
lies hid in man, for in the depth of the soul the Holy Trinity
brought forth its own living image in the first created man, who
was a living representation of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
This Avas the Kingdom of God within him, and this made para-
dise without him. At the fall, man lost this Deity within him,
but from the moment that God treasured up in Adam the
Bruiser of the serpent^ all the riches of the Divine nature came
seminally back to him again, so that our own good spirit is the
very Spirit of God.
The Christ within us, is that Christ whom we crucify. Adam
and Eve were His first murderers. Eating of the earthly tree,
•Was the death of the Christ of God, — the divine life in the soul
of man. Christ would not have come into the world as the
second Adam had He not been the life and perfection of the
first Adam. God's delight in any creature is just as His well-be-
loved Son, the express image of His person, is found in that
creature. This is true of angels as well as of men, for the
angels need no redemption only because the life of Christ
dwells in them.
The work of Christ is not to reconcile or appease an angry
God. There is no wrath in God. He is an immutable will to all
good. The reconciliation is to turn man from the bestial life,
from nature which is without God. The efi'ect of the fall of the
angels was to deprive nature of God, that is to say, angels and
fallen man turned to nature without God. Nature in itself is a
desire, a universal want, which must be filled with God who is
the Universal All. In this desire is a will to have something
which it has not, and which it cannot seize. In the endeavour
after what it seeks, it begets resistance. From these two pro-
perties arises a third which is called the ^ wheel' or ' whirling
NATURE WITHOUT GOD. 107
anguish of life' These three great laws of matter and nature
are seen in the attraction, equal resistance, and orbicuhir
motion of the planets. Their existence as pointed out by Jacob
Bohme has'* since been demonstrated by Sir Isaac Newton,
These three properties vfere never to have been seen or known
by any creature. Their denseness, and strife, and darkness were
brought forth by God, in union with the light, and glory, and
majesty of heaven, and only for this end, that God might be
manifested in them. Nor could they have been known, nor the
nature of any creature as it is in itself without God, had not
the rebel angels turned their desire backward to search and find
the original ground of life. This turning of their desire into the
origin of life was their turning from the light of God. They
discovered a new kind of substantiality; natitre fallen fromG-od,
To these three properties are added other four ; fire ; the form of
light and love ; sound or understanding ; and the state of peace
and joy into which these are brought, which state is called the
seventh property of nature. The fourth, fifth, and sixth, ex-
press the existence of the Deity in the first three properties of
nature. Bohme explains the first chapter of Genesis, as a
manifestation of the seven properties in the creation of this
material temporal system ; the last of Avhich properties is the
state of repose, the joyful Sabbath of the Deity. As Adam failed
to be the restoring angel it was necessary that God should be-
come man, '* take a birth in fallen nature, be united to it and
become the life of it, or the natural man must of all necessity
be for ever and ever in the hell of his own hunger, anguish, con-
trariety, and self-torment ; and all for this plain reason, because
nature is and can be nothing else but this variety of self-torment,
till the Deity is manifested and dwelling in it."
From this doctrine followed of necessity the perpetual in-
spiration of the human race. God lives and works in man. It
is by His inspiration that we think those things that be good.
It is not confined to individuals, nor given only on special occa-
sions. The true Word of God is not the sacred writings, but the
in- spoken living Word in the soul. The law was the schoolmaster to
bring us to Christ, and the New Testament is but another school-
master— a light, like that of prophecy, to which we are to give
heed until Christ the dawning of the day, or the day star,
arise in our hearts. The sons of wisdom in the heathen world,
were enlightened by the Spirit and Word of God. Christ was
born in them. They were the Apostles of the Christ ivithin,
commissioned to call mankind from the pursuits of flesh and blood
198 INSPIRATION PERPETUAL AND UNIVERSAL.
to know themselves, the dignity of their nature, and the im-
mortality of their souls.^
* Dean Stanley, in his Lectures on the Eastern Church, has expressed a wish
that some historian would axise " who would trace the history of Alexandrian
theology from its first dawning among the Greek Fathers to its influence on
John Wesley." Such a historian would have an interesting and hitherto un-
trodden field. His history would be that of almost every manifestation of
earnest religion in the Christian world. Law took the form of his theology
from Bohme, but in substance it was Alexandrian. Wesley's theology was
eclectic. It did not take the same form as Law's, but the really earnest part
of it he had in common with Law.
The authorities for the first part of this Chapter are Dr. UllmanrCs Re-
formers before the Reformation ; Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics ; Tauler's
Sermons and the Theologia Germanica, both translated into English by Susannah
Winkworth ; Schrader's Angelus Silesius und seine Mystik ; and Upham^s Life
of Madame Guyon. This account of Bohme's Theology is derived almost
verbally from Bohme's Aurora, De Tribus Principiis, and the Mysterium
Magnum in Schiebler's edition of Bohme's Sdmmtliche Werke, with William
Law's translation of Bohme's Works. The exposition of Law's Theology is
founded on his Way to Divine Knowledge, his Spirit of Prayer, and his
Spirit of Love. A valuable collection of Theosophical writings to which the
writer of this has been greatly indebted, is a Memorial of Law, Jacob Bohme,
and other Theosophers by Christopher Walton (London, 1854:, printed for pri-
vate circulation.) The writer has been duly warned by Mr. Walton that what is
here written on Jacob Bohme is a mass of confusion, and that he must study
Bohme for the next seven years before he can get " an intellectual glimpse of
the great landscape," for " Bohme can not be touched by blind reason and
mere earthly understanding." Mr. Walton is preparing a work in elucidation of
" Bohme's seven properties of the centre of nature, or the first eternal mathe-
matical point of mental essence." He says that " the discourses of Bohme pro-
fess to be a strict demonstration from the very essence, or ground of being of
the several subjects they profess to treat of : being, in short, a fundamental
demonstration of Christianitv."
T
CHAPTER XL
SUFEYISM.
HE only religion in the world in which we should have con-
eluded, before examination, that the Pantheistic spirit was
impossible, is the religion of Mahomet. Islamism is repellant
of all speculation about God, and all exercise of reason in
matters pertaining to faith. The supreme God of the Arabian
prophet was not a Being from whom all things emanated, and
whom men were to serve by contemplation, but an absolute Will
whom all creation was to obey. He was separated from every-
thing, above everything, the Ruler of all things, the Sovereign
of the universe. It was the mission of Moses to teach the unity
of God in opposition to the idolatry of the nations which, through
beholding the worshipful in nature, had put the created in the
place of the Creator. For this purpose all images of the Divine
Being were forbidden to the Hebrews, yet their prophets made
use of all the glories of creation to set forth the Divine Majesty
and the splendor of God. His chariots were fire. He walked on
the wings of the wind. He clothed Himself with light as with a
garment. He was in heaven and on earth, and in the utter-
most parts of the sea, yea even in hell. Neither matter, suffering
nor impurity excluded Him from any region of the universe.
Jesus Christ, even more than the Hebrew prophets, directed His
disciples to the natural world that He might show them the
Father; nor did He hesitate to point to natural objects as
symbols of God and emblems of His glory. S. John tells us of
the rapture with which he delighted to repeat the message he
heard from Jesus that ' God is Light ;' and in setting forth the
Divinity of the Logos he pronounced this light to be ' the life
of men.' Mahometanism was at least as clear in its doctrine of
the Divine Unity as either Judaism or Christianity, and more
rigid than either of these in excluding nature from any place in
religion. It recognized no symbols. It learned nothing of God
from creation. The Supreme One had spoken by His prophet,
and His word was the essence of religion. Again, Mahometanism
is a religion of dogmas and ceremonies. It rests on authority.
Its doctrines are definite. The Koran is infallible ; the words
are not only inspired but dictated in Heaven. To find Panthoisrn
200 SUFEYISM AND PARSEEISM.
in Mahometaiiism is to find it in a system which of all others is
the most alien to its spirit. But in this as in all other religions
we have the orthodox who abide by the creeds and the ceremonies,
— who repose implicitly on the authority of a person, a book or a
church ; and those of a free spirit who demand the exercise of
reason, or look for divine intuitions in individual souls — the one
saying religion is a creed, the other it is a life — the one saying God
has spoken to some of old, the other saying He is speaking to
us now. The latter class is represented in Mahometanism by
the Sufis, who are its philosophers, its poets, its Mystics, its
enthusiasts. To give a history of them is not easy, for they are
divided into many sects, nor is it less difiicult to find their
origin, and the genealogy of their doctrines. Mahometan
authors admit that there were Sufis in the earliest times of their
religion, probably cotemporary with the prophet himself. Some
trace the origin of the Sufis to India, and identify them with
the mystical sects of Brahmanism. Others find in Sufeyism un-
mistakable remnants of the old Persian faith. This is the more
likely hypothesis. The spirit of Parseeism, which survived
after the victory of the Mahometan faith, again awoke and
following a law, which can be traced in many similar cases, gave
birth to the Puritanism^ of Mahometanism. The Sufis thought
that they believed as Mahomet and wished to prove that he also
was a Sufi ; an effort the accomplishment of which to all but them-
selves has appeared impossible. " Sufeyism ; says an English
writer" f has arisen from the bosom of Mahometanism as a vague
protest of the human soul, in its intense longing after a purer
creed. On certain tenets of the Koran the Sufis have erected their
own system, professing indeed to reverence its authority as a
divine revelation, but in reality substituting for it the oral voice
of the teacher, or the secret dreams of the Mystic. Dissatisfied
with the barren letter of the Koran, Sufeyism appeals to human
consciousness, and from our nature's felt wants seeks to set before
us nobler hopes than a gross Mahometan Paradise can fulfil."
" The Great Creator" says Sir John Malcolm, " is, according
to the doctrine of the Sufis, diffused over all creation. He exists
everywhere and in everything. They compare the emanation
of His divine essence or spirit to the rays of the sun, which
they conceive are continually darted forth and re-absorbed. It is
for this re-absorption into the divine essence, to which their im-
mortal part belongs, that they continually sigh. They believe
* Suji means pure. f Mr. Cowell.
SUFI ABSORPTION. 201
that the soul of man, and that the prmciple of life which exists
through all nature is not only from God but of God ; and hence ^
these doctrines which their adversaries have held to be most
profane, as they are calculated to establish a degree of equality of
nature between the created and the Creator."
This brief description, not only fully declares the character of
the Sufi doctrines concerning God, but by the illustration of the
sun and it rays points at the same time to their origin. God
is light, and that light is all which is. The phenomenal world is
mere illusion, a vision which the senses take to be a something,
but which is nothing. All things are what they are by an
eternal necessity, and all events so predestined that the existence
of evil is impossible. On these subjects some of the Sufi sects
manifest a Vvild fanaticism which has caused them to be charged
with lawlessness, but their more frequent character is that of
extravagant Mystics. We are come from God and we long to
return to Him again, is their incessant cry. But while acknow-
ledging a separation from God which they regard as the worst of
miseries, they yet deny that the soul of man has ever been
divided from God. The words ' separated' and ' divided' may not
convey the meaning of the corresponding Persian words, nor make
clear to us the distinction which it is intended should be conveyed.
Perhaps there is here logically a contradiction ; for at one
time it is declared that God created all things by His breath,
and everything therefore is both the Creator and created ; and
at another time this unity of God and the creature, is
limited to the enlightened soul. The difficulty is one we
have met before, and though admitting the inadequacy of the
words we may yet understand or at least conjecture the meaning.
To be re-absorbed into the glorious essence of God is the great ;
object of the Sufi. To attain this he has to pass through four I
stages. The first is that of obedience to the laws of the prophet, |
The second is that state of spiritual struggling attained through | ^
this obedience Avhen he lives more in the spirit than in the letter. ? ^
In the third he arrives at knowledge and is inspired. In the fourth
he attains to truth and is completely re-united with the Deity.
In this state he loses all will and personality. He is no more
creature but Creator, and when he worships God it is God
worshipping Himself.
Dr. Tholuck, in his book on Suflsmus, has shown by many .
passages from Mahometan authors that the Sufi doctrines are \ v,
identical with those of the Brahmans and Budhists, the Neo-
Platonists, theBeghards and Beguines. There is the same luiiou
202 GAZZALI.
of man with God, the same emanation of all things from God and
the same final absorption of all things into the Divine Essence,
— and with these doctrines a Mahometan predestination which
makes all a necessary evolution of the Divine Essence. The
creation of the creature, the fall of those who have departed
from God and their final return, are all, events preordained by
an absolute necessity. The chief school of Arabian philosophy,
that of Gazzali, passed over to Sufeyism by the same reasoning
which led Plotinus to his mystical theology. After long enquiries
for some ground on which to base the certainty of our knowledge,
Gazzali was led to reject entirely all belief in the senses. He
then found it equally difficult to be certified of the accuracy of
the conclusions of reason, for there may be, he thought, some
faculty higher than reason which, if we possessed, would show
the uncertainty of reason, as reason now shows the uncertainty of
the senses. He was left in scepticism, and saw no escape but in
the Sufi union with Deity. There alone can man know what is
true by becoming the truth itself. 'I was forced,' he said, ' to
return to the admission of intellectual notions as the bases of
all certitude. This however was not by systematic reasoning
and accumulation of proofs, but by a flash of light which God
sent into my soul ! For whoever imagines that truth can only
be rendered evident by proofs, places narrow limits to the wide
compassion of the Creator,'
Bustami, a Mystic of the ninth century, said he was a sea
without a bottom, without beginning, and without end. Being
asked what is the throne of God ? He answered, I am the
throne of God — What is the table on which the divine decrees
are written ? I am that table — What is the pen of God — The
word by which God created all things ? I am the pen — What
is Abraham, Moses and Jesus ? I am Abraham, Moses and
Jesus — What are the angels Gabriel, Michael, Israfil ? I am
Gabriel, Michael, Israfil, for whatever comes to true being is
absorbed into God, and thus is God. Again, in another place,
Bustami cries. Praise to me, I am truth. I am the true God,
Praise to me, I must be celebrated by divine praise.
Jelaleddin a Sufi poet thus sings of himself. : —
" I am the gospel , the Psalter, the Koran,
I am Usa and Zaf— (Arabic deities)— Bell and the Dragon
Into two and seventy sects, is the world divided.
Yet only one God, the faithful who believe in Him am I,
Thou knowest what are fire, water, aii- and earth,
Fire, water, air and earth, all am I,
Lies and truth, good, bad, hard and soft,
SUFI POETRY. 203
Knowledge, solitude, virtue, faith.
The deepest ground of hell, the highest torment of the flameg,
The highest paradise,
The earth and what is therein.
The angels and the devils, spirit and man, am I ;
What is the goal of speech, O tell it Schems Tebrisi ?
The goal of sense ? This : — The World Soul am I.f
Mr. Vaughan, in his " Hours with the Mystics," quotes the
following verses from Persian poets : —
" All sects but multiply the I and Thou ;
This I and Thou belong to partial being.
When I and Thou, and several being vanish,
Then mosque and church shall find thee nevermore.
Our individual life is but a phantom ;
Make clear thine eye, and see reality."— Mahmud.
" On earth thou see'st His actions ; but His spirit
Makes heaven His seat, and all infinity,
Space, and duration boundless do Him service ;
As Eden's rivers dwell and serve in Eden." — Ibid.
" Man, what thou art is hidden from thyself ;
Know'st not that morning, mid-day and the eve
Are all within thee ? The ninth heaven art Thou ;
And from the spheres into the roar of time
Didst full ere-while, Thou art the brush that painted
The hues of all the world — the light of life
That ranged its glory in the nothingness."
" Joy ! joy I I triumph now ; no more I know
Myself as simply me. I burn with love.
The centre is within me, and its wonder
Lies as a circle everywhere about me.
Joy ! joy ' no mortal thought can fathom me.
I am the merchant and the pearl at once.
Lo ! time and space lie crouching at my feet.
Joy ! joy ! when I would revel in a rapture.
I plunge into myself, and all things know." — Ferridoddin,
*' Are we fools ? We are God's captivity.
Are we wise ? We are His promenade.
Are we sleeping ? We are drunk with God.
Are we waking ? Then we are His heralds.
Are we weeping ? Then His clouds of wrath.
Are we laughing ? Flashes of His love." — Jelaleddin.
" Every night God frees the host of spirits ;
Frees them every night from fleshly prison.
Then the soul is neither slave, nor master.
Nothing knows the bondsman of his bondage :
Nothing knows the lord of all his lordship.
Gone from such a night, is eating sorrow ;
Gone, the thoughts that question good or evil.
Then without distraction, or division,
In this One the spirit sinks and slumbers." — Ibid.*
t Compare this with what Krishna says. — Page 21.
• Compare this with what is said on Brahmanism at the bottom of pa^ 28,
204 S^LAMAN AND ABSAL.
TLoluck quotes this verse from a Dervish Breviary :-—
" Yesterday I beat the kettle-drum of dominion,
I pitched ray tent on the highest throne,
I drank, crowned by the Beloved,
The wine of unity from the cup of the Ahnighty."
Some verses from Jami's " Salaman and Absal" which has
been recently translated into English may conclude this notice
of the ki^ufis. The subject of the poem is the joys of divine
love — the pleasures of the religious life as opposed to the
delusive fascinations of the life of sense. In the Prologue the
poet thus addresses the Deity : —
" Time it is
To unfold Thy perfect beauty. I would be
Thy lover, and Thine only — I, mine eyes
Sealed in the light of Thee to all but Thee,
Yea, in the revelation of Thyself
Self-lost, and conscience-quit of good and evil.
Thou movest under all the forms of truth,
Under the forms of all created things ;
Look whence I will, still nothing I discern
But Thee in all the universe, in which
Thyself Thou dost invest, and through the eyes
Of man, the subtle censor scrutinize.
To Thy Ilarim Dividuality
No entrance finds — no word of this and that ;
Do Thou my separate and derived self
Make One with Thy Essential! Leave me room
On that Divan which leaves no room for two ;
Lest, like the simple kurd of whom they tell,
I grow perplext, oh God, 'twixt ' I' and ' Thou.'
If I — this dignity and wisdom whence ?
If Thou — then what this abject impotence ?"
The fable of the kurd is then told in verse, A kurd per-
plexed in the ways of fortune left the desert for the city, where
he saw the multitudes all in commotion, every one hastening
hither and thither on his special business, and being weary with
travel the kurd lay down to sleep, but fearing lest among so
many people he should not know himself when he aw^oke he tied
a pumpkin round his foot. A knave who heard him deli-
beratino- about the difficulty of knowing himself ogain, took the
pumpkin off the kurd's foot and tied it round his own. When the
kurd awoke he was bewildered not knowing
•' Whither I he I or no,
If /—the pumpkin why on yon ?
If you — then where am I, and who ?
The Prologue continues : —
" Oh God ! this poor bewildered kurd am I,
Than any kurd more helj^less ! — Oh, do Thou,
Strike down a ray of light into my darkness !
Turn by Thy grace these dregs into pure wine,
THE TEMPTATION. 205
I'o recreate tlic spirits of the good ; •
Or if not that, yet, as the little cup* .
Whose name I v;o by, not unworthy found,
To i)ass thy salutary vintage round !"
Tlie poet is answered by the Beloved: — ■
" No longer think of rhyme, but think of Me ?" —
Of whom ? — Of Him whose palace the soul is,
And treasure-house — who notices and knows
Its income and out-going and then comes
To till it when the stranger is departed.
AVhose shadow being kings— whose attributes
The type of theirs — their wrath and favor His —
Lo ! in the celebration of His glory
The King Himself comes on me unaware,
And suddenly arrests me for His own.
Wherefore once more I take — best quitted else-^
The field of verse, to chant that double praise.
And in that memory refresh my soul
Until I grasp the skirt of living Presence."
The story is of a Shah or king who ruled over Ionia, which
with the Persians meant Greece. This king lived in great
prosperity, but one thing was wanting to complete his happiness ; he
had no son. One day he expressed his regrets to a sage whom
he held for his counsellor. The sage told him of a man who
^'craving for the curse of children," went to the Shiekh beseechino-
him to pray for him to Allah, that he might have a son. The
Shiekh told him to leave that wholly in the hand of Allah, but
no, he would have a son. The Shiekh prayed and his prayer
was answered. The son took to evil company and disgraced his
father. The sage could not persuade the king that he was happy
without a son. Salaman was given him from the pure heaven.
As he had no mother, Absal a young maiden was chosen to nurse
him. Salaman grew up a youth of marvellous beauty, and of
wonderful gifts. None could equal him in the royal games, none
could aim the arrow so unerringly as he, and when he summoned
his " Houri-faced musicians" to the banquet hall, he it was that
with the reed or harp governed all and made them cry for sorrow
or for joy as he willed. His wisdom was the marvel of all who
knew him, and his munificence was compared to that of the sea
which profusely heaves up its pearls and its shells. When
Salaman had reached the prime of manhood, Absal tried to>
ensnare him : —
" Thus day by day did Absal tempt Salaman,
And by and bye her wiles began to work.
Her eyes, Narcissus stole his sleep — their lashes
Pierc'd to his heart — out from her locks a snake
* Jami means a cup.
20^ THE CELESTIAL BEAUTY.
Bit him — and bitter, bitter on his tongue
Became the memory of her honey lip.
He saw the ringlet restless on her cheek,
And he too quiver'd with desire ; his tears
Turn'd crimson from her cheek, whose musky spot
Infected all his soul with melancholy.
Love drew him from behind the veil, where yet
Withheld him better resolution —
'Oh, should the food I long for, tasted, turn
Unwholesome, and if all my life to come
Should sicken from one momentary sweet !"
For a full year Salaman and Absal rejoiced together and
thought their pleasure would never end. The king and the
sage were sadlj troubled for the fall of Salaman. The king
reproached him. The sage reasoned with him, with all the
wisdom of a Plato. Salaman confessed the right, but pleaded
that he had no will for choice. He fled with Absal. They
came to the sea-shore and sailed till they reached an island of
wonderful beauty. The king is in great sorrow for his absent
son, who overcome by passion has left the kingdom to which he
is heir. Salaman, unsatisfied, returns to his father and is forgiven.
He and Absal go to the desert and kindle a pile. They both
walk into the fire. Absal is consumed. Salaman laments the loss
of her. The king, seeing his sad condition, consults the sage,
who speaks to Salaman of Zuhrah the celestial beauty : —
*' Salaman listen'd, and inclin'd — again
Repeated, inclination ever grew ;
Until THE Sage beholding in his soul
The Spirit quicken, so eftectually
With Zuhrah wrought, that she reveal'd herself
In her pure beauty to Salaman's soul.
And washing Absal's image from his breast,
There reign'd instead. Celestial beauty seen,
He left the earthly ; and, once come to know
Eternal love, he let the mortal go."
THE EPILOGUE.
" Under the outward form of any story
An inner meaning lies — this story now
Completed, do thou of its mystery
(Whereto the wise hath found himself a way)
Have thy desire — no tale of I and Thou,
Though I and Thou be its interpreters.
What signifies the Shah ? and what the Sage?
And what Salaman not of woman born ?
And what Absal who drew him to desire ?
And what the Kingdom that awaited him
When he had drawn his garment from her hand ?
What means that Fiery Pile ? and what the Sea ?
And what that heavenly Zuhrah who at last
Clear'd Absal from the mirror of his soul ?
JiCarn part by part the mystery from me ;
The MJEANiNa.
All ear from head to foot and understanding be-
The incomparable Creator, when this world
JKe did create, created first of all
"niQfirst intelligence— i^vst of a chain
Of ten intelh^^ences, of which the last
hole Agent is in this our Universe
Active intelligence so call'd, the on'e
-Distributor of evil and of good
Of joy and sorrow. Himself a^art from matter.
In essence and in energy-His treasure '
feubjectto no such talisman— He yet
Hath fashion'd all that is— material form
And spiritual sprung from Him— by Hiin'
Directed all, and in His bounty drown'd.
Therefore is He that Firman-issuing Shah
WhTf r }^\ T'^^ ""^^ '"'^J^^*- -But because
^ hat He distributes to the Universe
Hmiself from still higher power receives
1 he wise, and all who comprehend aright
Will recognise that higher in the Sage. '
His the Pnme Spirit that, spontaneously
Projected by the tenth intelligence
AVas fi-om no womb of matter reproduced
A special essence called th^ Soul— a Child
Presh sprung from heaven in raiment undefiled
Of sensual taint, and therefore eall'd Salaraan
And who Absal ?-The lust-adoring bodv
Slave to the blood and sense-through whom the Soul
Although the body's very life it be '
Does yet imbibe the knowledge and desire
Ot things of sense ; and these united thus
By such a tie God only can unloose,
-Body and soul are lovers each of other.
What is the Sea on which they sail'd ?_the Sea
Of animal desire-the sensual abvss
Under whose waters lies a world of bein<r
Swept far from God in that submersion. '^
And wherefore was Absal in that Isle
Deceived in her delight, and that Salaman
I ell short of his desire ?-that was to show
TrS''°" *f S' ^°^ ^""^ ^'^^^ ti^^e begins
The folding of the carpet of desire.
And what the turning of Salaman's heart
Back to THE Shah, and looking to the throne
Of pomp and g ory ? What but the return
Ot the lost soul to Its true parentage
And back from carnal error looking up
Kepentant to its intellectual throne
What is the Fire ?-Ascetic discipline,
i hat burns away the animal alloy
Till all the dross of matter be consumed
And the essential Soul, its raiment clean'
Of mortal taint, be left. But forasmuch
As, any life-long habit so consumed
May well recur a pang for what is lost
Therefore the Sage set in Salaman's eyes
207
208
A soothing fantom of the past, but still
Told of a better Venus, till his sonl
She fill'd, and blotted out his mortal love,
For what is Zuhrah ? — That divine perfection,
Wherewith the soul inspir'd and all array'd
In intellectual light is royal blest.
And mounts the throne, and wears the crown, and reigns
Lord of the empire of humanity.
This is the meaning of this mystery.
Which to know wholly ponder in thy heart,
Till all its ancient secret be enlarged.
Enough — the M'ritten summary I close,
And set my seal :
The Truth God only Knows.*"
* The following fable from Jelaleddin will illusti-ate the Sufi idea of identity
which, under the image of love, is set forth in Salaman and Absal :
" One knocked at the Beloved's door ; and a voice asked from within
'Who is there ?' and he answered 'It is I.' Then the voice said, 'This
house will not hold me and thee.' And the door was not opened. Then
went the lover into the desert, and fasted and prayed in solitude. And after
a year he returned, and knocked again at the door. And again the voice
asked, ' Who is there ?' and he said, ' It is thyself !' — and the door was
opened to him,"
The quotations in this chapter are made from M. SckmoeIder''s Essai sur les
Ecoles Philosophes chez les Arabes ; Dr. Tholuck's Snfismus ; Sir John Mah
colm's History of Persia ; Vaughan's Hours with the Mystics ; Persian Litera'-
ture,one of the Oxford Essays for 1855, by E. B. Cowell of Magdalene Hallj
and an English translation of JamVs Salaman and Absal.
CHAPTER XII.
IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY.
THE title of this chapter is less correct than that of any of its
predecessors. An idealist philosophy has been at the base
of all the systems we have reviewed. A history of Panthe-
ism would be for the most part a history of Idealism. It is not
however without reason that we apply the term Idealistic
Philosophy specially to this chapter, for here we find those
doctrines concerning God and creation, which have so generally
prevailed in the world, relegated entirely to the province of
philosophy, supported by vigorous reasoning and an effort made
for the absolute demonstration of their truth. And all this is
done on the only ground on which it could be done, that of a
pure Idealism.
Des Cartes. — The founder of modern ideal philosophy was
Rene Des Cartes, a French nobleman. He flourished about the
beginning of the seventeenth century, and was distinguished in
his life-time as a mathematician, metaphysician, natural philo-
sopher, and soldier. Though an Idealist in philosophy he was
no visionary, but an experienced open-eyed man of the world,
who well knew that
* All theory is grey,
But green is the golden tree of life,
Despairing of being able to extricate philosophy from the con-
fusion into which it had fallen, he resolved to apply to mental
phenomena the same principle which Bacon had applied to
physics, that of examination, observation and experience. But
before this could be done the authority of two great powers had
to be put aside, that of Aristotle, and that of the Church. The
influence of the former was already passing away. The new life
of the sixteenth century had thrown off the bondage of what was
called Aristotelianism. Some theologians there were who still
defended the philosophy of Aristotle, but it had met its death
blow before the appearance of Des Cartes. How he stood in
relation to the Church is not so easily determined. He openly
professed the Catholic faith, and declared his object to be, the
discovery of grounds in reason by which he could defend and
210 DES cartes' method.
uphold the doctrines which he received on the Church's authority.
This complacency towards the Church is by some regarded as
only a polite method of keeping clear of the Ecclesiastical
Doctors and the Inquisition ; but modern Catholics take Des
Cartes seriously and represent him as a philosopher whose great
object was to refute, on Protestant grounds, that is, on principles
of reason, the heresies of the Reformation.
Aristotle and the Church being thus put aside, the first en-
quiry was for a ground of certitude. Does anything exist ? It
does not prove that anything is, because some one has said that
it is. Nor are the senses sufficient to testify to the existence
of anything, for they may be deceived. So too with our reason-
ings, even those of mathematics are not to be relied on, for
perhaps the human mind cannot receive truth. There is left
nothing but doubt. We must posit everything as uncertain ;
and yet this cannot be ; for the I which thus posits must be a
true existence. He who thus doubts of all things ; he who thus
enquires after truth must himself he. So reasoned Des Cartes, I
doubt then must there be a subject doubting ; / think, there-
fore, I exist; or, more accurately, I think, and that is equivalent
to saying, I am a ' thinking something.'
The clearness of this idea of self-existence evinces its truth,
and from this Des Cartes drew the principle that whatever the
mind perceives clearly and distinctly is true. Now we have a
clear and distinct idea of a Being infinite, eternal, omnipotent,
and omnipresent. There must then be such a Being — necessary
existence is contained in the idea. If it were possible for that
Being not to be, that very possibility would be an imperfection,
and cannot therefore belong to what is perfect. None but the
perfect Being could give us this idea of infinite perfection, and
since we live, having this idea in us, the Being who put it in us,
must Himself be. We are the imperfect. We are the finite.
We are the caused. There must be One who is the complement
of our being, the infinity of our finitude, the perfection of our
imperfection ; a mind which gives us that which we have not
from ourselves. Des Cartes eliminated from the idea of the
Divine Being everything which implied imperfection. He was
careful to distinguish between God and His creation. He left
the finite standing over against the Infinite — the creature abso-
lutely distinct in substance and essence from the Creator. He
did not take the step which annihilated the one to make room
for the other, and yet he suggested it. Unconsciously, and even
in spite of himself, he is carried on towards conclusions from
CARTESIAN THEOLOGY. 211
which he shrinks, and to which he refuses to go forward. |
* When I come to consider the particular views of Pes Cartes,'
says M. Saisset, " upon the perfection of God and the relations
of the Creator with the world and with men ; when I endeavour
to link his thoughts, and to follows out their consequences, I find
that they do not form a homogeneous whole, I believe that I can
detect the conflict of contrary thoughts and tendencies.' Des
Cartes had got on the track of Parmenides, but like Plato and
8. Anselm he refused to advance. He preferred a theology not
logically consistent to the theology of the Eleatics.
There are but two starting points of knowledge. Either we
begin with matter, and assuming the reality of the visible world,
we go on to the proof of other existences, but in this way we can
never demonstrate the existence of mind hy itself: or we begin
with mind, and assuming it as the first certain existence, we go
on to the proof of others, but in this way we never legitimately
reach the proof of the existence of matter hy itself. The exist-
ence of mind was, to Des Cartes, an undoubted existence, I
think is a present consciousness, and the existence of an infinite
mind was a lawful conclusion from the fact of the existence of
a finite mind ; but since the senses were distrusted how was Des
Cartes ever to prove the existence of matter ? Only by means
of the mind. We have no knowledge of the corporeal, but
through the mental ; that we have a body is not a self-evident
truth, but that we have a mind, is. Yet Des Cartes wanted to
have an external world, and as he could not prove its existence he
took it on trust as other men do. As he had taken the existence
of the mind independently of the body, why should not body
exist independently of mind ? Even on the principle of clear i
ideas we have some knowledge of matter, for the thinking sub-
stance is different from that which is the immediate subject of
extension and the accidents of extension, such as figure, place,
and motion. ?'
Des Cartes was satisfied to have proved the existence of God,
of mind, and of matter. The first is the uncreated substance,
self-existent and eternal ; the other two are created substances
whose existence is derived from God. Their creation was no
necessary act of Deity ; their existence in no way flowed ne-
cessarily from His existence — but in the exercise of His own
free will He created them. Mind is a something which thinks,
and matter a something which is extended. God, too, thinks.
He is incorporeal, yet we must not deny Him the attribute of
extension, so far as that attribute can be separated from any
P 2
212 GOD IMMANENT IN CREATION.
idea of imperfection. Extension being pre-eminently an attri-
bute of matter, the transference of it to Deity in any form
seems to betray a concealed conjecture in Des Cartes' mind, of
some ultimate connection between the spiritual and the material.
He had denied it, he had fouo;ht against the conclusion to which
his method led him, but in spite of his protestation, the tendency
is manifest at every step he takes. The attribute of matter has
been transferred to God, and now consciously, but with no
thought of the result, the attributes of God are transferred to
the material world. Des Cartes contemplates the universe, and
he is overwhelmed with thoughts of infinity and eternity. Is
not the universe infinite ? It is at least indefinite, but this
word is used only that the other word may be reserved for
Deity. The universe is infinite. There can he no void beyond
immensity. Illimitable extension is one of our necessary
thoughts. It impinges on our idea of infinity, if it is not one
with it. But if the universe is infinite, why not eternal ? If
unlimited in space, why limited in time ? Des Cartes having
placed the origin of the universe in the free will of God, was com-
pelled to give it a beginning, but the question was urgent; —
why should it have a beginning? If it is necessary to con-
stitute infinite space, why is it not also necessary to constitute
infinite time ? The necessity for a beginning deprives it of the
existence of eternity past ; but we may without danger, thought
Des Cartes, allow it eternity to come. We have thus an infinite
Being, and an infinite universe. At some point or other these
two infinites must be only one. Creation is indeed a work, but
i unlike a human work it cannot exist without the continual pre-
••L \ sence of the Worker."^ It requires for its existence a continual
repetition of the Creator's act. God is not at a distance from
His universe. He is immanent therein — the Executor of all
laws, the Doer of all works, the ever present Agency that per-
vades and upholds the infinite All.
* This idea has been beautifully expressed by an eminent preacher :— ' A
human mechanist may leave the machine he has constructed to work without
his further personal superintendence, because when he leaves it, God's laws
take it up, and by their aid the materials of which the machine is made retain
their solidity, the steel continues elastic, the vapour keeps its expansive power.
But when God has constructed His machine of the universe, He cannot so
leave it, or any the minutest part of it, in its immensity and intricacy of move-
ment, to itself ; for, if He retire, there is no second God to take care of this
machine. Not from a single atom of matter can He who made it for a moment
withdraw His superintendence and support. Each successive moment, all over
the world, the act of creation must be repeated.'— Serwon on Spiritual Influence
by the Rev, John Caird.
SPINOZA. 213
Spinoza. — Des Cartes died a Catliolic, receiving in his last
hours the sacraments of the Church. Though in his life-time
persecuted for an Atheist, his memory is now revered through-
out Christendom. Not so with Des Cartes' disciple, Benedict
Spinoza. The Germans indeed have done something to rescue
his memory from the reproaches of nearly two centuries, but the
time has not yet come for either Catholic or Protestant theolo-
gians to judge him impartially.
Herder and Schleiermacher have wished to claim Spinoza as
indeed a Christian, but their claims are rejected not only by the
Churches but by the open enemies of Christianity. Whatever
may be said of his opinions, all agree to represent him as a
Christian in heart and life ; an example of patient endurance ; a
man full of faith in the Divine Goodness, preferring to bring
forth the fruits of the Spirit, to bearing the bitter apples of wrath
and malice, strife and discord, by which the professed Christians
of his day were distinguished."^ It would be no great error to
accord to Spinoza the name of Christian. He certainly was no
enemy to rational Christianity. Nothing but ignorance could
ever have classed him with the French Encyclopedists ; and that
is only a more culpable ignorance which classes him with any
sect of materialists.
Of Spinoza's system, Bayle says that ^ but few have
studied it, and of those who have studied it but few have under-
stood it, and most are discouraged by the difficulties, and im-
penetrable abstractions which attend it.' Voltaire says ' that
the reason why so few people understand Spinoza is because
Spinoza did not understand himself.' It is now presumed that
Spinoza may be understood, and notwithstanding the great
authority of Voltaire it is more than probable that he understood
himself. Spinoza was avowedly a teacher of Cartesianism. His
first writings were expository of Des Cartes' philosophy. To these
he added appendices, explaining wherein he differed from that
philosopher. In truth, Spinoza was consistent, and w^ent reso-
lutely to the conclusion before which Des Cartes stood appalled.
His doctrines were purely Cartesian. Some who would save the
master and sacrifice the disciple will deny this. It has been
maintained that he OAved to Des Cartes only the form, and that
his principles were derived from other sources. The Cabbala has
* Yes, I repeat with S. John, that it is justice and charity which are the
most certain signs, the only signs of the true Catholic faith ; justice, charity,
these are the true fruits of the Holy Spirit. Wherever these are, there is Christ,
and, Avhere these are not, there Christ cannot be. — Letter to Albert Buryh.
214 Spinoza's doctrine cartesian.
been named as a probable source, and the influence of Averroes
on Maimonides and the Jews of the middle ages, has been
brought forward as another.^ That Spinoza had learned all the
philosophies of the Rabbis before he was excommunicated from
the synagogue of the Jews is probable ; but there is no need to
seek the origin of Spinozism in any other system, but that in
which it had its natural growth ; the philosophy of Des Cartes.
Spinoza's doctrines are indigenous to the the soil of Idealism. J
* Article by Emile Saisset in the 'Revue des deux Mondes', 1862.
J To understand Spinoza it is absolutely necessary to attend to his Definitions .
The following are those of the first book of theEthica, The subject of the
first book is God.
I. I understand, by ccmse of itself, that whose essence implies existence, or
that the nature of which can be conceived as existing.
II. A [.thing is called finite in its kind when it can be limited by something
else of the same nature. For instance, a body is called finite because we
always conceive one greater ; so also a thought is limit( d by another thought ;
but the body is not limited by thought, nor thought by the body.
III. I understand, by substance, that which is in itself, and conceived by it-
self, tliat is to say, that of which the concept can be formed without having
need of the concept of anything else.
IV. I understand by attribute that which the reason conceives in the sub-
stance as constituting its essence.
V. I understand by 7node the affections of substance, or that which is in
another thing, and is conceived by that thing.
VI. I understand by God a Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, a sub-
stance constituted by an infinity of attributes, of which each expresses an eter-
nal and infinite essence.
Explanation. — / say absolutely infinite, and not infinite in its kind ; for
everything which is infinite only in its kind can be denied an infinity of attributes ;
but as to being absolutely infinite, all that which expresses an essence, and does
not include any negation, belongs to its essence.
VII. A thing is free when it exists by the sole necessity of its nature, and is
determined to action only by itself ; a thing is necessary, or rather constrained,
when it is determined by another thing to exist and to act according to a cer-
tain determined law.
VIII. By eternity I understand existence itself, in so far as it is conceived
as resulting necessarily from the sole definition of the eternal thing.
Explanation. — Such an existence in fact is conceived as the essence itself
of the thing which is considered, and consequently it cannot be extended into
time or duration, even though duration be conceived as having neither
beginning nor end.
The following are Axioms : —
I. Everything which is, is in itself or in something else.
II. A thing which cannot be conceived by another, must be conceived by
itself.
ni. A definite cause being given, the effect follows necessarily ; and on the
contrary if any definite cause is not given, it is impossible that the effect
follows.
IV. The knowledge of the effect depends on the knowledge of the cause, and
implies it.
V. Things which have between them nothing in common cannot be con-
THEORY OF KNOWING. 215
We may take as Spinoza's starting point his theory of know-
ledge, which had its foundation in the Cartesian principle of
the truth of clear ideas. Our modes of perception he reduced
to four : —
I. That which we have from hear-say, or from any sign
which may be agreed upon.
II. That which we have from vague experience, that is, from
experience which is undetermined by the intellect, but is only
called an idea, because it comes as it were by accident, and wo
have no other test which opposes it, and so it remains as it were
unshaken with us.
III. That where the essence is concluded from another thing
but not adequately, which takes place when we gather the cause
from any effect, or when it is concluded from something univer-
sal, which is always accompanied by some property.
IV. Lastly there is that perception where a thing is per-
ceived by its own essence alone, or by the knowledge of its
proximate cause.
Spinoza illustrates each of these by an example, *' By
hearsay only I know my birth-day, that I had such parents
and similar things concerning which I never doubted. By
vague experience I know that I shall die ; I affirm this be-
cause I have seen others like me die, although all may not
have lived the same space of time, nor died the same
ceived by each other, or in other words the concept of the one does not include the
concept of the other.
VI. A true idea must agree with its ideate (object).
VII. "When a thing can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not in-
clude existence.
The following are some of the Propositions : —
There cannot be in nature two or more substances of the same nature ; in
other words, of the same attributes.
A substance cannot be produced by another substance.
Existence belongs to the nature of substance.
The essence of things, produced by God, does not include existence.
All substance is necessarily infinite.
God, that is to say a substance constituted by an infinity of attributes,
exists necessarily.
Substance actually infinite is indivisible.
There cannot exist, and we cannot conceive, any other substance but
God.
All that which is, is in God, and nothing can be, nor can be conceived
without God.
From the necessity of the Divine nature, must flow an infinity of things
infinitely modified.
God is the immanent and not the transient cause of all things.
The existence of God and His essence, are one and the same thing.
Understanding whether finite or infinite, as for instance, will, desire, love,
&c., must be referred to nature produced, and not to nature producing.
216 MODES OV PERCEPTION.
death. Then by vague experience I also know that oil is a fit
aliment for nourishing a flame, and that water is capable of
extinguishing it ; I know also that a dog is an animal which
barks ; that a man is an animal who reasons ; and in this way
are known almost all things which belong to common life. From
another thing we conclude in this manner — since we clearly
perceive that our body feels and nothing else, thence we may
clearly conclude that the soul is united to the body, which union
is the cause of sensation, but what that sensation and union are,
we are not able absolutely to understand ; or after that I have
known the nature of sight, and at the same time that it has this
property, that we see the same thing at a great distance to be
less than if we looked at it nearer ; whence we infer that the sun
is larger than it appears, and so with other like things. Lastly,
by the sole essence of a thing, the thing is perceived ; whence
from this that I know anything, I know what it is to know
anything ; or from this that I have known the essence of the
soul — I know that it is united to a body. By the same cogni-
tion we know that two and three make five, and if two lines are
given parallel to a third, these are also parallel to each other.
But those things which I have hitherto been able to understand
in this way are very few."
That these things may be better understood he gives a further
illustration. *' Three numbers are given to find a fourth, which
shall be to the third as the second is to the first. Merchants
say they know what to do to find the fourth, as they have not
forgotten the operation they learned from their schoolmasters ;
though it is only a bare rule without demonstration. Others
make a simple axiom, borrowed from experience, where the
fourth number lies open, as in 2, 4, 3, 6, where they find that
the second being multiplied into the third, and the product
divided by the first, the quotient is 6, and when they see the
same number produced, which they had known without opera-
tion to be the proportional one, they thence conclude that the
operation is always good for finding the fourth proportional num-
ber. But mathematicians know by the demonstration of the
nineteenth Proposition of the seventh book of Euclid's elements
what numbers are mutually proportional by the very nature and
property of that proposition; so the number which results from
the first and fourth is equal to that which results from the second
and third. And yet they do not see the absolute proportionality
of the numbers given, or if they see it, it is not by virtue of
the proposition in Euclid, but intuitively and without perform-
ing any operation."
INTUITION. 217
Intuitive perception is thus the ground of certitude. That is
most surely known, which we know by its sole essence alone.
Hereby the simplest truths are manifest to the mind. They are
the true ideas which correspond to their ideates or objects. Now
the first and most evident of these, is that of an infinitely perfect
Being, whose existence is necessary. Des Cartes defined this
Being as an infinite substance, but he placed beside Him the in-
finite universe, which was a created mfinite substance. Spinoza
could find place for only one Infinite, so he denied to creation
the character of substance. It is dependent. It does not exist
in and by itself. It requires for the conception of it the con-
ception of some other existence as its cause. It is therefore not
a substance, but only a mode of that substance which is infinite.
God being the absolutely infinite, there can be no substance be- .
sides Him, for every attribute that expresses the essence of sub-
stance must belong to Him. Here Spinoza first separates from
Des Cartes. What one calls created substances, the other calls
modes. Apparently this is only a verbal difference, and it may
be that in reality it is nothing more. Precisely as we under-
stand this, will be our interpretation of Spinoza's system. If it
is only verbal what matters it by what names created things are
called, so long as the Creator is distinguished from the creation ?
And why is the latter called a mode, but to make the distinction
more definite ? ' Substance,' says Spinoza, ' is that which ex-
ists in itself.' ^ A mode is that which exists in something else
by which that thing is conceived.' It would seem that the first ob-
ject of these two definitions was to mark definitely the Self-
existing as substance, the dependent as something so different
that it must be called the opposite of substance, that is a mode.
But the distinction between mode and created substance is not
one of words merely. It goes deeper than words. The created
thing is not a nothing. It is not merely a mode. It has a sub-
stance because it partakes of the one substance. And thus it is
a reality at the same time that it is only a mode ^by which the
one reality is conceived. By the Cartesian theory of know-
ledge we have God, mind or soul, and matter. Through the
medium of mind we arrive at the certitude of the existence of
God and matter. Is God of a different essence from mind ? Is
mind of a different essence from matter ? Or is it that in some
measure God communicates His essence to all beings, and that
they «re, just in proportion as they partake of His essence ?
This last is the Cartesian doctrine which Spinoza further ex-
pounds. * These axioms,' he says, * may be drawn from Des
Cartes.' There are different degrees of reality or entity. For
218 NATURE INFINITE.
substance has more reality than mode, and infinite substance
than finite. So also there is more objective reahty in the idea
of substance than of mode, and in the idea of infinite substance
than in the idea of finite. 'God is the infinitely perfect Being,
His Being is distributed to all orders of the finite creation in
diverse degrees according to the measure of perfection, which
belongs to each.' Angels and such invisible beings as we know
of only by revelation do not come within the region of the
philosopher's enquiries, and therefore no account is taken of
them. There is much ground for believing that created beings
of greater perfection than man exist in other worlds ; but man
is the most, perfect in this. Yet he is only part of infinite
nature, which is but one individual consisting of many bodies,
which though they vary infinitely among themselves, yet leave
the one individual nature without any change. And as being is
constituted by the amount of perfection, that which is without
any perfection whatever, is without any being, so that what the
vulgar say of the devil as one entirely opposed to God is not
true ; for being destitute of perfection he must be equally des-
titute of existence."^ The philosopher has only to deal with
thought and the externality of thought. Now though we may
distinguish afterwards finite thinking beings, and finite external
objects, yet our first and clearest perceptions, both of thought
and the externality of thought, are infinite. We first think the
infinite, and then the finite. But this perfect Being, whom our
minds reveal to us thus directly, is an infinite Essence, and in
His externality infinitely extended. Here, in the very conception
of Him, His only attributes of which the human mind can have
knowledge are infinite extension and infinite thought. We have
not reached the idea of God through external nature, but
through the mind. Thought is first, externality follows it and
depends on it. But if we call that world, which is exhibited
to the senses, created nature, what shall we call that internal
thought, whose image and manifestation it is ? If the one is
* nature produced,^ will it be improper to call the other, nature
producing'' ? They are so different that the one may be called
* producing and the other, 'produced,' yet they are so like, that
is, they have their identity in a deeper aspect, that the word
7iature may be applied to both. Nature however is applied to
the second in a supreme sense, and not as ordinarily understood,
not the mere workings of the external universe, but the Being
whom these workings make manifest.
* Compare this with what is said on the Theologia Germanica. — Page 178.
THE INTERMEDIARIES. 219
Spinoza, as we have intimated, builds his whole system on
the ontological argument as revived by S. Anselm and Des
Cartes, We have in the mind a clear and distinct idea of an
infinitely perfect Being of whose Existence reason itself will
not allow us to doubt. The two attributes under which we con-
ceive this Being are infinite thought and mfinite extension. The
doctrine ascribed to Plato, that the universe is God's thought
realized, seems clearly to be the doctrine of Spinoza. God
is a Being who thinks, and His thoughts under different aspect^
constitute the ideal, and the phenomenal worlds. As a Being,
who thlnks^ljrod is ''primarily manifested in the world of thought,
that is, in beings who think. Des Cartes had shown that thought
is the essence of soul — the foundation of spiritual existence, in
fact, that the soul is a thought. Spinoza added that it is a
thought of God's, for Divine thought being a form of abso-
lute activity, must develop itself as an infinite succession of
thoughts or ideas, that is, particular souls. M. Saisset, in an
ingenious chapter on this part of Spinoza's doctrine, has pointed
out, in one or two places in Spinoza's writings, obscure but
decided intimations that Spinoza placed intermediaries between
God, and the finite modes or particular souls. Existence had been
divided into three kinds ; substance, attributes, modes, yet the
last seems to have been again divided into two kinds. There
were modes properly so called ; the finite which are variable and
successive, and other modes of an altogether different nature
which are infinite and eternal. The infinite modes are more
directly united to substance than the finite. ' Everything'
Spinoza says ' which comes from the absolute nature of an at-
tribute of God must be eternal and infinite, in other words, must
possess by its relation to that attribute eternity and infinity.'*
For an example of this kind of mode he gives the idea of God,
so that between absolute substance and any particular or finite
mode, there are at least two intermediaries — the attribute of
substance and the immediate mode of that attribute. The idea of
God is not absolute thought but the first of the manifestations
or emanations of absolute thought. It is infinite because it com-
prehends all other ideas, and as it is an absolutely simple and
necessary emanation from the divine thought, it must be eternal.
It cannot then be confounded with the changing and finite ideas
which constitute particular souls. From the idea of God
emanate other modifications equally eternal and infinite. We
♦ Proposition XXI, Ethica, Book I.
220 SPINOZA AND PLATO.
have here room for such an infinity of intermediaries, that we do
not know where the infinites end, and the finites begin. The chain
is endless, Spinoza did not name any of these infinite and eternal
modifications of the idea of God, but M. Saisset thinks he is
justified in reckoning among them, the idea of the extension of
God. Thus infinite thought, which has for its object, substance
or Being absolutely indetermined, is the foundation of all ideas.
The first of these the idea of God which has God for its object,
is the idea of the attributes of God. This idea is the infinite
understanding which includes an infinity of ideas, for it includes
the idea of every one of the attributes of God, and these are
infinite. Each of these ideas, the idea of extension for instance,
is an immediate emanation of the idea of God, just as the idea
of God, is an immediate emanation of the thought of God, and the
thought itself an immediate emanation of the essence of God.
*' Now," M. Saisset asks, " what does each of these ideas of each
of these attributes of God contain, say for instance, the idea of
extension? It comprehends the ideas of all the modalities of
extension. Now what is the idea of a modality of extension ?
It is a soul — a particular soul joined to a particular body. The
idea of extension thus embraces all souls. It is literally the
world soul of Plato and the Alexandrians — the universal soul of
which ^all particular souls are the emanations. It is an infinite
ocean of souls or ideas. Every soul is a river of this ocean.
Every thought is one of its waves. The idea of extension is the
soul of the corporeal world, but the idea of extension is itself a
particular emanation of a principle which contains an infinity
of ideas ; a wave of a still vaster ocean. The idea of extension,
and the idea of thought, with an infinity of ideas of the same
degree, are included in the idea of God. The idea of God is
then no longer merely the soul of the universe known to us. It
is the soul of that infinity of worlds, which the incomprehensible
fecundity of being is incessantly producing. It is truly the
world soul, taking the world in that wide sense in which the in-
finite universe known to us — the universe of bodies and souls,
matter and spirit, is lost as an imperceptible atom." According
to this interpretation of Spinoza's doctrine of intermediaries we
have for ' nature producing ' God and His infinite attributes,
thought, and extension, with all the infinity of attributes beyond
the reach of the reason of man; and for ' nature jDroduced,' we
have the idea of God with an infinity of emanations, or modes
both infinite and finite.
BODIES. 221
The world of bodies corresponds in its development to the
world of souls, that is of ideas or thought. Spinoza defines a
body as ' a mode which expresses after a certain determinate
fashion the essence of God considered as something extended.'
Des Cartes said that every body is a mode of extension.
Spinoza added, a mode of the extension of God ; for infinite ex-
tension, like infinite thought, is one of the attributes of God. But
extension is nothing more than space, and the secondary qualities
of bodies are but impressions of sensibility, from which it follows
that bodies themselves are only ideas or expressions of thought
taking definite forms in space. The only thing which bodies
have in common is extension, and this as we have seen is one of
the two attributes by which God is known to the human mind.
The participation of bodies in this attribute is that which makes
them alike. It is, so to speak, their substance while the modi-
fications constitute the differences. A^ody then with Spinoza
is an act of thought, as it is with other idealists, but it is more
than an act of thought- — it is also the object corresponding to
the act. Bodies and souls are thus distinct existences. The
body does not depend on the soul, nor the soul on the body.
The one exists as God's thought, the other as God's extension.
They have their identity only in that substance^ of which thought
and extension are the attributes, that is, in God."^
Definitions from the second book, the subject of which is the Soul.
* I. I understand by body a mode which expresses in a certain determined
way the essence of God, in so far as it is considered as something extended,
II. That which belongs to the essence of a thing is that whose existence
implies that of the thing, and whose non-existence, its non-existence ; in other
words, that which is such that the thing cannot exist without it, nor it without
the thing.
III. By idea I understand a concept of the soul, which the soul forms as a
thinking thing.
Explanation. — / say concept rather than perception, because that the name
perception seems to indicate that the soul receives from the object a passive im~
pression, and that concept on the other hand appears to express the action of the
soul.
IV. By adequate idea, I understand an idea which, considered in itself,
without regard to its object, has all the properties, all the intrinsic denomina-
tions of a true idea.
Explanation. — / say intrinsic in order to set aside the extrinsic property or
denomination of an idea, namely, its accordance with its object.
V. Duration is the indefinite continuation of existence.
Explanation. — / say indefinite because it can never be determined by the
nature itself of the existing thing, nor by its efficient cause, which necessaril'y
posits the existence of the thing, and does not destroy it.
VI. Reality and perfection are for me the same thing.
VII. By individual things I understand the things which are finite, and have
a determined existence. But if many individuals meet for a certain action, in
222 THE ETERNAL AND THE TEMPORAL.
The passage from the eternal to the temporal, from the infinite
to the finite, is left by Spinoza in the same obscurity which en-
velopes the intermediaries. When did bodies begin to be ? This
question seems to have been answered when it is said that the
only attribute which they have in common is one of the attri-
butes of God. But extension is nothing more than infinite
length and breadth, infinite height and depth ; when and how do
bodies become actual objects ? Leibnitz answers for Spinoza,
that he made his actual bodies from abstractions ; with ciphers
he made unities and numbers. In this he approached some of
such a way that they are altogether the cause of the same effect, I consider them
under this point of view as a single individual thing.
Axioms.
I. The essence of man does not imply necessar}^ existence, in other words,
in the order of nature, it might happen that such or such a man exists, as it
might happen that he did not exist.
II. Man thinks.
III. The modes of thought, such as love, desire, and other passions of the
soul, by whatever name they may be kno^vn, can not exist except there be in
the individual in whom they are found, the idea of a thing loved, desired, &c.
But an idea can exist without any other mode of thought.
IV. We feel a certain body affected in many ways.
V. We do not feel, nor do Ave perceive, any other individual things than
bodies and modes of thought.
Propositions.
Thought is an attribute of God, in other words, God is a Being who
thinks.
Extension is an attribute of God, in other words, God is a Being
extended.
The formal being of ideas has God for its cause, so far only as God is re-
garded as a Being who thinks, and not as His nature, is expressed by any other
attribute, in other words, the ideas of particular things have not their object
for an efficient cause, that is to say, things perceived, but God Himself so far
as He is a Being who thinks.
The order and the connexion of ideas is the same as the order and
connexion of things.
The being of substance does not belong to the essence of man, in other
words, it is not the substance which constitutes the form or the essence of
man.
The object of the idea which constitutes the human soul is the body, in
other words, a certain mode of existence and nothing more.
He who has a true idea, knows at the same time that he has that idea, and
cannot doubt of the thing which it represents.
It is not of the nature of reason to perceive things as contingent but, rather
as necessary.
Every idea of a body, or any particular thing actually existing, involves,
necessarily, the eternal and infinite existence of God.
The knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God, which every idea
involves, is adequate and perfect.
The human soul has an adequate knowledge of the infinite and eternal
essence of God.
CREATION. 223
the old philosophers who made corporeals by the meeting of in-
corporeals. And this was not some process which had a
beginning, but one that was necessary and eternal. Spinoza
accounts for the transformations of bodies by the mathematical
laws of movement. In nature there is neither birth nor death.
What we call birth is but the composition of simple modes of
extension. Their decomposition we call death. For a time
they are maintained in a finite relation, that is life. The inert
elements of the corporeal universe are simple modes uncomposed.
The most simple combinations of these modes form inorganic
bodies. If we add to these combinations a higher degree of
complexity, the individual becomes capable of a greater number
of actions and passions. It is organized. It lives. With the in-
creasing complexity of parts the organization becomes perfect.
By degrees we arrive at the human body : that wonderful ma-
chine, the richest, the most diversified, the most complete of all,
yea, that master piece of nature which contains all the forms of com-
bination and organization which nature can produce ; that little
world in which is reflected the entire universe. The w^hole of
nature is one individual. Its parts vary infinitely, but the in-
dividual in its totality undergoes no change.
The division of the all of existence into ' nature producing '
and / nature produced,' carries with it Spinoza's doctrine of
creation. He clings tenaciously to the word creation, though he
denies with all explicitness the doctrine of creation from nothing.
This doctrine he calls a fiction and deceit of the mind, by which
nothing is made a reality. God is not a great^Eeing who w£>rks
outside of His own essence. He is Being itself. The Being
who is all Being. Creation depends immediately upon God
without the intervention of anything with which or upon which
He works. God is essentially a cause — the cause of Himself
and all things. Creation resembles the work of preservation,
which, asDes Cartes has shown, is but a continual repetition of the
work or act of creation. Yet that which is created is not sub-
stance, for no substance can be created by another. The essence
of everything is eternal, for it is the essence of God. From the
bosom of His unchanging eternity He unceasingly creates. JEIe
fills infinite duration with the exhaustless variety of HisjEorks;
the effects of which He is the cause. But thesa.works are not
themselves infinite or eternal. The finite never becomes the in-
_finrte. * Natura-producedl can never become. ' nature producing.*
JBoth are called God, but the one is only God iu His finite
224 IS CREATION ETERNAL.
modes, the other is God in His eternal activity. As we thus
distinguish between finite and infinite, so must we distinguish
between eternity and time.* The first is, the latter is constituted
by duration. Created things are necessary to its existence. It
has no existence apart from them. ' Before creation,' says
Spinoza, ' we cannot conceive either time or duration, for these
began with created things. Time is the measure of duration, or
rather it is nothing but a mode of thinking. Not only does it
pre-suppose something created, but chiefly thinking beings.
Duration ends when created things cease to be, and begins when
they begin to be.' Eternity, which belongs to God alone, is dis-
tinct from all duration. Make it as vast as we may, the idea
of duration still admits that there may be something vaster still.
No accumulation of numbers can express eternity. It is the ne-
gation of all number. It follows then that nothing could have
been created from eternity. The favorite argument of those who
maintained an eternal creation is founded on the necessity of an
efiect following wherever there is a cause. And if God is the
cause of creation, it must, they said, be eternal like Him. Re-
ferring to these, Spinoza says, " There are some who assert that
the thing produced may be contemporaneous with the cause, and
that seeing God was from eternity. His efiects also must be from
eternity. And this they further confirm by the example of the
Son of God, who was from eternity begotten of the Father. But
it is evident from what we have said above that they confound
eternity with duration, and attribute to God only duration from
eternity, which is evident from the very example they bring
forward, for they suppose that the same eternity which they
attribute to the Son of God is possible for creatures. They
imagine time and duration before the foundation of the world,
and they wish to establish a duration separate from things
created ; as others wished to make an eternity distinct from
God. Either of which is very far from the truth. It is alto-
gether false that God can communicate His eternity to creatures:
the Son of God is not a creature but eternal as the Father.
When we say that the Father has an eternally begotten Son, we
only mean that the Father has always communicated His eternity
to the Son." Spinoza's idea of creation differs on the one side
from the ordinary idea that God works on something external to
* It must be noticed here that if Saisset's interpretation of Spinoza is correct,
Spinoza is altogether confused about these modes. Are they eternal and
infinite or are they only temporal and finite ? Is ' nature produced' in any
sense eternal and infinite ?
FREE NECESSITY. 225
Himself, and on the other side it differs from the pre-eminently
Pantheistic notion of an eternal emanation, from and out of the
essence of the Divine Being. Created things are indeed emana-
tions but not eternal^ for God is still God, and the creature is
still a creature. M. Saisset compares Spinoza's doctrine of
creation with that of the Church Fathers, quoting S. Augustine
who says in the * City of Qod^ ' Before all creatures God has
always been, and yet He has never existed without the creatures,
because He does not precede them by an interval of time, but
by a fixed eternity.' This seems to be the very doctrine of
Spinoza, but how it differs from that of an eternal emanation,
depends on the meaning given to the word ' eternal,' which, with
some of the old philosophers, meant unending duration, but with
S. Augustine and Spinoza it is the negation of all duration.
Since created things are the modes of the Deity it follows that
their existence is necessary. Des Cartes said that creation was
due to the will of God uninfluenced by any motive. From this,
Spinoza concluded that God must then act from the necessity of
His own nature. God is free to create, that is, there is no mo-
tive from without, no subjection to fate, no compulsion to call
forth creation, but this freedom is regulated by the nature of
God, so that He acts by a free necessity.'^ We cannot ascribe
will to God. In fact, will apart from volitions is a chimera ; a
scholastic entity or non-entity, as humanity abstracted from
inen, or sfoneity abstracted from stones. Will is only a series of
volitions, and a series of volitions is merely a series of modes of
activity, not of activity itself. But God is the absolute ac-
tivity, even as He is the absolute existence, and the soui'ce of all
existence. He acts because He is. Forjftim to exist is to act.
He is absolute liberty just as He is absolute activity, and abso-
lute existence. In the words ' free necessity ' Spinoza introduces
a verbal contradiction, which he tries to explain. He contro-
verts the popular belief in the freedom of the will. We act and
we know that we act, but we do not know the motives which de-
termine our actions. Liberty does not consist in the will being
undetermined, but in its not being determined by anything but
* " I am far from submitting God in any way to fate ; only I conceive that
all things result from the nature of God, in the same way that everyone con^
ceives that it results from the nature of God that God has knowledge of Him*
self. There is certainly no one who disputes that this really results from the
existence of God, and yet no one understands by this, submitting God to fate,
Everyone believes that God comprehends Himself with a perfect liberty, and
yet necessarily." — Letter to Oldenburg.
226 FINAL CAUSES.
itself. Hence the definition :~— ' A thin^ \afree when it exists
by the sole necessity of its nature, and is determined to action
by itself alone ; a thing is necessary, or rather constrained when
it is determined by another thing to exist, and to act according
to a certain determined law.' God is free because He acts from
the necessity of His own nature. * All things result from the
nature of God in the same way as it results from the nature of
God that He has consciousness of Himself ; God comprehends
Himself with a perfect liberty, and yet by necessity.' Things
which follow from the nature of God must necessarily exist. To
imagine that God could order it otherwise is to suppose that the
effect of a cause is not something necessary, or that in a triangle
God could prevent that its three angles be equal to two right
angles.
Spinoza's doctrine of the necessity of creation will help us to
understand what he says nhont final causes. He does not deny,
as we have seen, that God thinks, for thought is one of His in-
finite attributes, nor does he deny that God is a living, conscious
Being who creates freely, though His freedom is regulated by
His own nature, but he does deny that God works for an end.
* Men commonly suppose,' says Spinoza, ' that all the beings of
nature act like themselves for an end. They hold it for certain
that God conducts all things towards a certain definite end.
God, they say, has made everything for man, and He has made
man to be worshipped by him.' Spinoza introduces some con-
fusion into his argument by identifying the doctrine of final
causes with the belief that all things were made specially for the
use of man. God may work for an end, though that end^ may
not be to make all creation the servant of man. Yet this is the
belief which Spinoza has chiefly before him when he speaks of
final causes. ' Men,' he says, in the next page, * meeting out-
side of themselves a great number of means, which are of
great service to procure useful things, for instance ; eyes to see,
teeth to masticate, vegetables and animals to nourish them, the
sun to give them light, the sea to nourish fishes, &c. ; they con-
sider all beings of nature as means for their use, and well know-
ing besides that they have met these means, and have not made
them, they think that there is reason for believing that there
exists another Being who has disposed them in their favor.' It
does not appear that Spinoza meant that men should not con-
clude from the works of nature that there is a manifest
Intelligence at work in creation. What he chiefly objects to, is
that men judging of all things by their utility to man, suppose
GOD INCORPOREAL. 227
that for this end they were made, so that the master or masters
of nature being themselves like men, have taken care of mankind,
and made all things for their use. Spinoza denies God design
just as he denied Him mW, because design is human ; a mode of
finite working which cannot be supposed to exist in God. Infinite
wisdom must differ from finite. God is intelligent ; yea He is
intelligence infinite. He thinks though He has no understand-
ing, just as He acts though He has no will, for understanding
like will is a mere abstraction ; a succession of modes of thought,
as will is of volitions. But God's thought cannot be a succession
of ideas. It is infinite, and therefore we cannot call it under-
standing without ascribing to the all-Perfect the conditions of
imperfection. Understanding implies a process of reasoning. It
consists in passing from one idea to another ; going from the
known to the unknown, till that becomes the known ; but all
thinking and all knowing is included in the ideas of infinite
thinking and infinite knowing, so that understanding in the
sense in which it belongs to man cannot be predicated of God.*
In this way Spinoza eliminates all imperfection from human
attributes before he ascribes them to God, lest he should carry
over into the Divine nature the limitations of the human. This
principle which he had learned from Des Cartes he pushed to its
last consequence, even denying that God has the same attributes
as man, or if He has, it is in a way so different that the theo-
logical distinction between attributes, communicable and incom-
municable, disappears. Understanding and will have been denied
to God, and on the same principle He is incorporeal. Extension
is one of the two known attributes of God. It is also an attri-
bute of bodies ; that which constitutes bodies, or rather that in
which bodies have their constitution. That God is corporeal seems
the necessary conclusion from extension being one of His attri-
butes ; and so it would be if Spinoza were in any sense a
materialist. But though Divinity be exhibited to all our senses
by modes, it does not follow that these modes are in themselves
God. If they were anything real they would be God. If they
were God they would not be modes. But their very name de-
clares that they are not the essence, though the essence is mani-
fested in them ; God, therefore, is not corporeal, for though the
subject of extension, He is not the subject of motion or division,
* The word understanding does not convey in itself the idea which Spinoza
intends. His meaning must be gathered from what he says. What he seems to
deny in God is not reason, but the necessity of reasoning.
228 DURATION NOT TO BE ASCRIBED TO GOD.
He cannot be divided into parts ; that would clearly imply im-
perfection, to affirm which of God would be absurd. ' Substance
absolutely infinite is indivisible.' The division which we see in
the world is in the modes, not in the substance. It is not exten-
sion which constitutes a body, but division, so that God is not
necessarily corporeal because He is the subject of extension.
It does not follow that whatever substance is extended, is finite,
for to be finite is contrary to the nature of substance. We can
conceive corporeal substance only as infinite. In the same matter
parts are not distinguished, except as we conceive the matter as
affected in different ways ; so that the distinction is not as to
the essence, but only the modes. Water, for instance, we may
conceive to be divided and separated into parts, so far as it is
water, but not as it is corporeal substance ; for as such it can be
neither separated nor divided. The one substance, whose attri-
butes are infinite thought and extension, is incorporeal ; for
extension is not body, but being infinite it excludes the idea of
anything corporeal. Although it is granted that God is incor-
poreal, yet this is not to be received as if all the perfections of
extension were removed from Him, but only so far as the nature
and properties of extension involve any imperfection. This dis-
tinction between extension and corporeity, though not admitted
in our ordinary thought, explains how God is incorporeal and
yet infinitely extended.
Can we ascribe duration to God ? Sir Isaac Newton defined
God as that Being who endures always, and thereby constitutes
duration. Spinoza says, we call God eternal that we may ex-
clude from Him the idea of duration. He does not endure. He
is. Duration is an affection of existence, but not of essence, and
cannot be attributed to God, whose existence is one with His
essence. No one can say of the essence of a circle or a triangle
so far as it is eternal truth, that it has existed longer to-day
than it had existed in the days of Adam. To ascribe duration to
God would be to suppose Him capable of division, and this would
be contrary to His infinite nature. God does not, like created
things, possess existence. He is Himself existence, as He is
Himself essence. Has God life ? As with duration and exist-
ence in the sense in which the created thing has it ; God has it
not. " By life we understand the force by which things continue
in their own being. And because that force is different from the
things themselves, we say properly that the things have life.
But the force by which God continues in His Being, is nothing
but His own essence, so that they speak right who call God life.
THE DIVINE UNDERSTANDING, AND THE HUMAN. 229
There are theologians who think that because God is life, and
not distinguished from life, is the reason why the Jews did not
swear by the life of Jehovah as Joseph swears by the life of
Pharaoh, but by the living God." Again, God does not love nor
hate. He is not angry with any man; He is without passions.
The Scriptures indeed ascribe love and hatred to Him, but they
are altogether different from the human emotions that go
by these names. S. Paul understood this well, when he said
God loved Jacob and hated Esau before they were bom, or had
done good or evil.
The effort to keep the perfection of God free from every human
element led Spinoza to make the difference between the human
and the Divine attributes, not merely one of degree but of kind.
He even denied that there was anything in common between the
Divine understanding and the human, saying that when we as-
cribe understanding to God, that attribute in the Divine Being
has no more resemblance to human understanding than the dog
• — the celestial sign, has to the dog which barks. Spinoza seems
here for a moment to have lost himself in the abyssal sea of the
Infinite. Every rational theology, that is, every theology which
has been reasoned out can only depend for its conclusions on the
belief that the human mind is a copy of the Divine : that the
one resembles the other, and that the human mind is capable of
knowing God, and to some extent of understanding His ways.
If there is no analogy between the mind of God and the mind of
man, theology and rational religion are impossible. The Infinite
indeed can never be brought under the limitations of the finite,
but if the difference is in kind, why did Spinoza attempt to tell
us what God is, or how He is related to creation ? The ground
of hid denying this analogy was that the Divine thought was the
cause of human thought. One of his friends reminded him that
he had said ' If two things have nothing in common they cannot
be the cause of each other, from which it follows that if there
was nothing in common between the Divine and the human
understanding, the Divine could not be the cause of the human.'
To rhis, Spinoza answered that all beings differed from their
causes both as to essence and existence, excepting where like
produced like ; and referred to a scholium and corollary, where he
had shown in what sense God was the efficient cause of the
essence of created things. What he meant may be conjectured,
but the objection was never really answered.
Spinoza had used a strong and unfortunate comparison, which
expressed more than he intended. To another friend he wrote,
y
230 PERSONALil:y.
' As to what you maintain that God has nothing formally in
common with created things, I have established the contrary
in my definition for I have said, God is a Being constituted
by an infinity of infinite attributes, that is to say perfect, each
^ in its kind.' The attributes which correspond to human attri-
butes, he considered as existing in God after an infinite manner
indeed, yet not as difi*ering in kind from the finite. That
Spinoza believed in the humanity * of God is evident from what he
says in another place : " The will of God, by which He wills to
love Himself, follows necessarily from His infinite understanding,
by which He knows Himself. But how these are distinguished
from each other, namely, His essence, the understanding by
which He knows Himself, and the will by which He wills to love
Himself we place among the things which we desire to know.
]S^or do we forget the word ^5rsowa/%, which theologians some-
times use to explain this matter. But though we are not
ignorant of the word, we nevertheless confess our ignorance of
its meaning, nor can we form any clear and distinct conception
of it, although we constantly believe in the most blessed vision
ivhich is promised to the faithful that Crod will reveal even this to
His own. That will and power are not distinguished from the
understanding of God we have shown from this that He not only
decreed things to exist, but to exist with such a nature, that is
that their essence and their existence depended on the will and
power of God ; from which we plainly and distinctly perceive
that the understanding of God His power and His will, by which
He has created, and has known created things, preserves them
and loves them, are in nowise to be distinguished but only in
respect of our thoughts."
• ** He did not Tnercly receive the witness of a one God from his mother's
lips. The voice which spoke to Moses out of the bush was uttering itself in his
generation. It was no cunningly devised fable, no story of another day. There
was a witness for it in the very nature and being of man ; it might be brought
forth in hard forms of geometry. In those forms it necessarily became con-
tracted. Its life, its personality, were always threatening to disappear. The /
am seems in the act of passing into the Being. (Mr. Maurice means Plato's
ontological Deity, whom we have identified with the One of Parmenides.) But
the change is never fully accomplished. The living God spoke still to the
modem sage. He conld not shake off the belief that His voice was in some way
to be heard in the Bible. With all his physical science, all his reverence for
the light of nature he bows before the God of his fathers. There is awe and
trembling in the worshipper. Though so clear in his perceptions, though so
calm in his utterances, he often shrinks and becomes confused in that presence.
He does not feel that he is alone in it: all men are dwelling in it : were it with-
drawn all would perish." — Modern Fhilosophy, by the Rev. F. D. Maurice.
MAN HAS NO FKEE WILL. 231
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 pro-
duced' is determined by * nature producing.' It does not act ; it
is acted upon. The soul of man is a Spiritual automaton. It is
not an empire within an empire. It does not belong to itself; it
belongs to nature. It does not make its destiny ; it submits to
a destiny made for it. Every individual acts according to its
being, and that being is grounded in the Being of God. There
can be nothing arbitrary in the necessary developments of the
Divine essence. There can be no disorder in that perpetual
movement which incessantly creates, destroys, and renews all
things. The harmony of the all is so perfect in itself, and all
its unfoldings,that no possibility is left for free will in the creature.
Every being is determined to existence and to action by another
being, and so on for ever. Movements produce movements, and
ideas generate ideas according to a law I'ounded upon the very
nature of thought and extension, and in a perfect correspondence
which again has for its foundation the identity of thought and
extension in God. We imagine ourselves to be free, but it is
only imagination. It is a delusion arising from our ignorance of
the motives which determine us to action. When we think that
in virtue of any self-determining power in the soul, we can
speak or be silent as we choose, we dream with our eyes open.
Were a man placed like the schoolmen's ass between twobundlesof
hay, each of which had equal attractions for him, he could de-
cide for neither. If hay were his food he would die of hunger
rather than make a choice. And if equally placed between two
pails of water he would die of thirst. Of course he would be an ass
if he did, says a supposed objector, to which Spinoza has no other
answer, but that he would not know what to think of such a man.
The old and stubborn objection to this doctrine will arise in every
reader's mind. Is God then the author of sin? Spinoza
answers that sin is nothing positive. It exists for us but not
for God. The same things which appear hateful in men are re-
garded with admiration in animals; such, for instance, as the
wars of bees and the jealousies of wood pigeons. 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. No-
282 GOOD AND EVIli
thing can exist, and no event can happen, contrary to the will
of God. ^ The command given to Adam consisted simply in
this, that God revealed to him that eating the forbidden fruit
would cause death. In the same way He reveals to us, by the
natural hght of our minds, that poison is mortal. If you ask
for what end was this revelation given ? I answer : To render
him so much more perfect in the order of knowledge. To ask then
of God, why He has not given to Adam a more perfect will is
as absurd as to ask why He has not given to the circle the pro-
perties of the square.' The consequence, which seems to us
naturally to follow from this doctrine, is that there is no differ-
ence between virtue and vice : good and bad. But this Spinoza
does not admit. There is a difference between perfection and
imperfection. The wicked, after their own manner, express the
will of God. They are instruments in His hand. He uses
them as His instruments, but destroys them in the use. It is
true they are wicked by necessity, but they are not on that ac-
count less hurtful or less to be feared. We are in the hands
of God as the clay in the hand of the potter, who, of the same
lump, makes one vessel to honor and another to dishonor.
In a system where all is necessary, and where sin is only a
privation of reality, the distinction between good and evil can-
not be more than relative. Our knowledge of things is imper-
fect. When we imagine, we think that we know. If nature,
and the chain of causes were not hidden from our weak sight,
every existence would appear to us, as it is, finished and perfect.
Our ideas of good and evil, perfection and imperfection, like
those of beauty and ugliness, are not children of reason but of
imagination. They express nothing absolute — nothing which
belongs to being. They but mark the weakness of the human
mind. That which is easily imagined we call beautiful and
well-formed, but that which we have difficulty in imagining ap-
pears to us without beauty or order. What we call a fault in
nature, such as a man born blind, is only a negation in nature.
We compare such a man with one who sees, but nature is no
more at fault than in denying sight to stones. For man however
there exists good and evil relatively if not absolutely. But
these are resolved into the useful and the injurious. A thing
at the same time may be good, bad, or indifferent. Music for
instance is good for a melancholy man, but for a deaf man it is
neither good nor bad. Goodness is but the abstraction, we make
from things which gives us pleasure. We do not desire them be-
cause they are good, but our desire invests them with a supposed
MIGHT IS RIGHT. 233
goodness. 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 na-
ture, that which he judges good or bad.' To follow this im-
pulse is not only a necessity but it is the right and the duty of
every man, and everyone should be reckoned an enemy who
wishes to hinder another in the gratification of the impulses of
his nature. The measure of everyone's right is his power.
The best right is that of the strongest, and as the wise man has
an absolute right to do all which reason dictates, or the right of
living according to the laws of reason, so also the ignorant and
foolish man has a right to live according to the laws of
appetite. J
The introduction of predestination, or necessity into Spinoza's
system gives it an aspect of terror. The heart of man recoils
from that stern fatalism which makes men good or bad, and
leads them on to reward or punishment, not according to
what they are by choice, but according to what necessity has
made them. But like all predestinarians Spinoza was happily
inconsistent. The fact that we are predestined, must not in-
fluence us in our eiforts. We must act as if no such predestina-
tion existed. The end Spinoza had in all his speculations,
was to find a supreme good, such as would satisfy an im-
mortal spirit. He exercised his reason with all earnestness, that
I The following are the definitions in the third book — the subject of
which is the nature and origin of the passions :
I. I call adequate cause, that the effect of which can be clearly and dis-
tinctly perceived by itself, and inadequate or partial, that the effect of which
cannot be conceived by itself alone.
II. When anything happens in us or outside of us, of which we are the
adequate cause, that is to say, when anything, in us or outside of us, follows
from our nature, which can be conceived by it clearly and distinctly, I call that
acting. When, on the contrary, anything happens in us, or results from our
natm-e, of which we are not the cause, not even partially, I call that suffering.
III. I understand by passions those affections of the body which increase or
diminish, favor, or hinder its power of acting, and I understand also, at the
same time, the ideas of these affections.
This is tohy, if we can be the adequate cause of any one of these affections^
passion then expresses an action ; in every other case it is a true passion.
PROPOSITIONS.
Om- soul does certain actions, and suffers certain passions ; namely, so far
as it has adequate ideas, it does certain actions ; and so far as it has inadequate
ideas it suffers certain passions.
The actions of the soul come only from adequate ideas, passions only from
inadequate.
Everything so far as it is, is forced to persevere in its own being.
The effort by which everything tends to persevere in its own being, is no-
thing more than the actual essence of that thing.
234 THE LIFE OF REASON.
he might know himself and God ; and find that which would
give him joy when temporal pursuits and pleasures failed him.
The existence of good and evil, perfection and imperfection,
taken in the moral sense given to them in the human conscious-
ness, he denied. But he denied their existence only to re-affirm
it in a higher, and as he reckoned, the only true sense. He had
started with the perfection of God. We have an idea of such a
perfection : an adequate idea of One who is the Perfect. The
infinite number of modes which emanate from the Divine attri-
butes are less perfect, and yet each in its rank of being expresses
the absolute perfection of Being in itself. There is then an ab-
solute perfection and a relative perfection ; the latter including
a necessary mixture of imperfection. Everything is perfect ac-
cording to the measure of reality which it possesses, and im-
perfect just as it lacks reality. What is good for man is that
which is useful — that which brings him joy and takes away
sorrow. Joy is the passage of the soul to a greater perfection,
and sorrow to a less perfection ; in other words, joy is the desire
satisfied, and sorrow the desire opposed. The ruling desire in
man is to continue in being : to be more that which he is. Our
duty is to know what is the supreme good — the good of the soul.
We need not interrupt Spinoza with any questions about duty
when he has denied us free will. He will answer, that is alto-
gether a difi"erent question, and one that should not interfere with
our striving after perfection. It is a man's right, as well as the law
of his nature to strive to continue in being. But there are two
ways by which this may be done ; one is blind brutal appetite,
the other is the desire which is guided by reason. Now reason
avails more than appetite. Reason is master of the passions,
appetite is their slave. Reason thinks of the future, appetite
only of the present. It belongs to reason to think of things
under the form of eternity ; it afiects the soul as powerfully with
the desire of good things to come, as with those that now are.
Its joys are not delusive and fleeting but solid and enduring.
It nourishes the soul with a blessedness which no time can
change. Reason leads us to God and to the love of God. The
life of reason is then the highest life, the happiest, the most per-
fect, the richest, that is to say, the life in which the being of
man is most possessed and increased. By reason, man is free.
He then regulates his life by a clear and adequate idea of the
true value both of the temporal and the eternal. The cause of
this we can see in the very nature of the soul. It is an idea : a
thought. Its activity is in the exercise of thought. The more
THE SOUL IMMORTAL. 235
it thinks, the more it is, that is, the more it has of perfection and
blessedness. True thought is in adequate ideas. All others are
inadequate and mutilated, leading to error and sorrow, and
making men slaves to their appetites and passions. The life of
reason is the most perfect life, because it is the life in God.
* The supreme life of the soul is the knowledge of God.'"^
Spinoza's object was the same as that proposed bj Des Cartes
— to prove that religion is the highest reason ; that the doctrines of
religion are in accordance with reason, that is to say, rational.
Starting with the existence of God, which he held for a primary
truth, he went on to demonstrate the immortality of the soul.
This was involved in the definition of soul. It is an idea : a
thought of God's. As such it is an eternal mode of the eternal
understanding of God. It does not belong to time. Its exist-
ence is as immutable as that of its Divine Object. It does not
perceive things under the form of duration, that is, successively
and imperfectly, but under the form of eternity, that is, in their
immanent relation to substance. The human soul is thus a
pure intelligence entirely formed of adequate ideas, entirely ac-
tive and altogether happy ; in a word, altogether in God. But
the absolute necessity of the Divine nature requires every soul
in its turn to have its career in time, and partake the vicissi-
tudes of the body, which is appointed for it. From eternal life
it falls into the darkness of the terrestrial state. Detached in
some way from the bosom of God it is exiled into nature. Hence-
forth, subjected to the laws of time and change, it perceives things
only in their temporal and changing aspect, and with difficulty
seizes the eternal bond which binds the entire universe and it-
self to God. It does, however, seize it, and by a lofty effort,
surpassing the weight of the corporeal chain, it finds again the
infinite good which it had lost. The human soul is thus im-
mortal. The senses, memory, and imagination being passive
faculties appropriated to a successive and changing existence,
* Definitions from the fourth book— the subject of which is the bondage
of 3ian, or the power of the Passions :
I understand by good that which we certainly know to be useful to us.
By«ui7that which we certainly know hinders us possessing a certain
good.
PROPOSITION.
Men are constantly and necessarily in conformity with nature only so far
as they live according to the counsels of reason. '
Propositions from the fifth book— the subject of which is Liberty :
The more we comprehend particular things, the more we comprehend God.
The soul can imagine nothing, nor remember anything past, but on con-
dition that the body continues to exist.
236 LIFE ETERNAL.
perish with the body. Then too the soul loses all its inadequate
ideas, which were the cause of the passions, prejudices, and
errors which enslaved it and led it astray while it was in the
body. Reason, which enables us to perceive things under the
form of eternity, alone subsists. ^ The human soul cannot en-
tirely perish with the body. There remains something of it
which is eternal.'*
We have come from God. Once we existed in the bosom of
God, and loved Him with an eternal love. Our souls fell from
eternity into time. They came into material bodies. We have
reminiscences of our former blessedness in that reason which
tells us that God is the highest good : the only true joy of the
soul. When the body is dissolved, and that order of things which
is constituted by the union of our souls with bodies is ended, then
we shall find the good which we lost, or rather which was for a
time hidden from our eyes. This is life eternal ; this is true
blessedness, to find, in the contemplation of the perfect Being, the
satisfaction of the desire of our souls. Those who now live
rationally have a foretaste of this blessedness, which they shall
enjoy in its full fruition when all dies but reason, and God shall
love us in Himself, and we shall perfectly love God in us.
Spinoza pursues, throughout, the object which Des Cartes had
proposed — to show the reasonableness of religion; yea, to demon-
strate that religion is reason itself, and that reason is re-
ligion. The highest life is the most rational, and that must be
religious. For what is reason ? That which gives us such clear
and adequate ideas of God, of ourselves, and of the eternal rela-
tions of the universe, that we cannot do otherwise than love God,
and all mankind. And to be thus guided by reason is to pre-
serve and increase our being. It is to nourish the eternal life
* Nevertheless, there is necessarily in God, an idea which expresses the
essence of such and such a human body under the character of eternity.
That the idea which expresses the essence of the body under the character
of eternity is a mode determind by thought which relates it to the soul and
which is necessarily eternal. Yet it is impossible for us to remember that we have
existed before the body, since no trace of that existence can be found in the
body, and that eternity can be measured by time or have any relation to it,
and yet we feel, we prove, that we are eternal. Although we do not remember
to have existed before the body, we feel that our soul, so far as it includes
the essence of the body under the character of eternity is eternal, and this
eternal existence cannot be measured by time, or stretched into duration.
Our soul, so far as it knows its body and itself under the character of
-eternity, possesses necessarily the knoAvledge of God, and knows if is in God, and
is conceived by God.
REVELATION. 237
within us. Our being is in thought, and the very essence of
thought is the idea of God. To know God is then our highest
knowledge. To love Him is our highest joy.* And this par-
ticipation in blessedness, leads us to desire that other men may
enjoy it too. It then becomes the foundation of morality ; the
only true source of all good in men. The Divine law is thus a
natural law ; the foundation of religious instruction ; the eternal
original of which all the various religions are but changing and
perishable copies. This law, according to Spinoza, has four
chief characters. First, it is alone truly universal, being founded
on the very nature of man, so far as he is guided by reason. In
the second place, it reveals and establishes itself, having no need
of being supported by histories and traditions. Thirdly, it does not
require ceremonies, but works. Actions which we merely call
good because they are commanded by some institutions, are but
symbols of what is really good. They are incapable of perfect-
ing our understanding. We do not put them among works that
are truly excellent — among such as are the offspring of reason,
and the natural fruits of a sound mind. The fourth character
of the Divine law, is that it carries with it the reward of its ob-
servance, for the happiness of man, is to know and to love God
with a soul perfectly free ; with a pure and an enduring love ;
while the chastisement of those who break it is a privation of
these blessings, slavery to the flesh, and a soul always restless
and troubled.
Spinoza starting with reason, and the reasonableness of re-
ligion, of necessity came into collision with those parts of Chris-
tianity which are at present above our reason. While he could
aim a deadly blow at superstition, and recommend the general
precepts and doctrines of Christianity, he was yet compelled to put
aside, or relegate to the category of impossibles, other doctrines
or events which did not seem according to reason. There was
no Revelation for him in the ordinary conventional sense of that
word. Revelation was in the human soul; in the light that
God Himself is kindling in men's hearts. What we call revela-
tion is but the gathering up of the greatest and most important
* The intellectual love of the soul for God, is the very love which God has
for Himself, not only so far as He is infinite, but so far as His nature can be
expressed by the essence of the human soul, considered under the character of
eternity ; in other words, the intellectual love of the soul for God is a part
of the infinite love which God has for Himself.
From this it follows that so far as God loves Himself He also loves men^
and consequently the intellectual love of God for men, and the intellectual love
of God, are only one and the same thing.
238 JESUS CHRIST IS THE TRUTH.
truths which God has revealed to the human race. But they were
revealed through the human mind in the natural order of things,
and while our reason endorses them as rational, we are not com-
pelled to believe that the wisest of those, through whom they
were made, were free from the errors and prejudices of the age
in which they lived.
Revelation or prophecy Spinoza defines as * a certain know-
ledge of anything revealed to men by God.' He immediately
adds that from this definition, it follows that natural knowledge
may also be called prophecy, for the things which we know by the
natural light depend entirely on the knowledge of God, and His
eternal decrees. The difierence between natural knowledge and
divine is one of degree. The Divine passes the bounds
which terminate natural knowledge. It cannot have its cause
in human nature, considered in itself, but there is SiJjight which
lightens every man who comethinto the world , and we know by this
that we dwell in Grod^ and Grod in us, because Me hath made us to
participate of His Holy Spirit. The prophets, by whom the
Scripture revelations were made, had imaginations which reached
after higher truths. They saw visions that were not given to other
men ; visions of which they themselves did not always understand
the meaning. But to Jesus was givenan open vision. Hesaw and
comprehended truth as it is in God. He was not a mere medium of
the divine revelation; He was the revelation, the truth itself.
'' Though it is easy ' says Spinoza * to comprehend that God can
communicate Himself immediately to men, since without any
corporeal intermediary. He communicates His essence to our souls,
it is nevertheless true, that a man, to comprehend by the sole force
of his soul, truths which are not contained in the first principles of
human knowledge, and cannot be deduced from them, ought to
possess a soul, very superior to ours and much more excellent.
Nor do I believe that any one ever attained this eminent degree
of perfection except Jesus Christ, to whom were immediately re-
vealed without words, and without visions, these decrees of God
which lead men to salvation. God manifested Himself to the
apostles by the soul of Jesus Christ, as he had done to Moses
by a voice in the air, and therefore we can say that the voice of
Christ, like that which Moses heard, is the voice of God. We can
also say in the same sense that the wisdom of God, I mean a
wisdom more than human, was clothed with our nature in the
person of Christ, and that Jesus Christ was the way of
Salvation." Spinoza's relation to Christianity is a vexed question
THE FALL. 239
among his critics. In this passage he evidently presents Jesus
Christ as the very incarnation of truth, which is the wisdom
of God, and which, with the Greek Fathers, was God Himself,
or God the Son. He openly admitted that he did not hold
the ordinary belief concerning God ; the Trinity ; and the
doctrine of the incarnation. In a letter to a friend he wrote,
"To show you openly my opinion, I say that it is not absolutely
necessary for salvation, to know Christ after the flesh ; but it is
altogether otherwise if we speak of the Son of God, that is, of
the eternal wisdom of God, which is manifested in all things,
and chiefly in the human soul and most of all in Jesus Christ.
Without this wisdom, no one can come to the state of happiness
for it is this alone which teaches what is true and what is false,
good and evil. As to what certain churches add that God
took human nature, I expressly declare that I do not know what
they say, and to speak frankly, I confess that they seem to me,
to speak a language as absurd as if one were to say that a circle
has taken the nature of a triangle." He calls this the doctrine
of certain modern Christians, intimating that there was no such
doctrine in the early Church. God dwelt in the tabernacle, and in
the cloud, but He did not take the nature either of the cloud or the
tabernacle. He dwelt in Jesus Christ as He dwelt in the temple
but with greater fulness for in Jesus Christ was the highest mani-
festation, and this S. John wished to declare with all possible
explicitness when he said, that the Word was made flesh.
Spinoza's doctrine will be best understood by comparing it with
what the Alexandrian Fathers have written on the Trinity and
the incarnation of the Word or Wisdom of God. The fall of man
was explained by Spinoza as we have more than once seen it ex-
plained by others. Man losthis liberty by eatingof the fruit of
the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam having found Eve
discovered that there was nothing in nature more useful to him
then her. But as he found that the beasts were like him-
self he began to imitate their passions and to lose his liberty.
He came under the dominion of his passions, which is the real
bondage of the soul. To be freed from this dominion is liberty. f
Redemption, or the restoration of this liberty, began immediately
after the fall. The patriarchs were guided by the spirit of
t It is this which enables us clearly to understand in what our salvation, our
blessedness, in other words, our liberty, consists : namely, in a constant and
eternal love for God, or if people wish it in the love of God for us. The
Holy Scripture gives to this love, this blessedness, the name of glory, and that
rightly. We may refer this love to the soul or to God, in either case it is
always that eternal peace which is not truly distinguished from glory.
240 REDEMPTION.
Christ, that is to say, the idea of God. And this restoration,
begun in the patriarchs, will be carried on till man completely
regains the freedom which he lost in Adam. As the record of the
fall of man represented the loss of human liberty, so the resurrec-
tion of Christ represented the rising from the death of sin.
Christ's resurrection was altogether spiritual, and revealed only
to the faithful, according as they could understand it. "I mean,"
says Spinoza, "that Jesus Christ was called from life to eternity,
and that after His passion He was raised from the bosom of the dead,
(taking this word in the same sense as where Jesus Christ said :
' Let the dead bury their dead,') as He was raised by His life,
and by His death, in giving the example of an unequalled holi-
ness," Spinoza gave this instance simply as a mode that
might be adopted to interpret those parts of the Scriptures which
speak of things beyond or out of the course of nature as known
to us. But this was only an indifferent and secondary matter.
He was in reality opposed to explaining the mysteries of religion
by subtle speculation, declaring that those who did this, found
nothing in the Scriptures but ' the fictions of Aristotle and Plato.'
He saw in the Scriptures a practical religion : instructions how
men may live righteous lives, and the histories of men who have
lived such lives. The sum of all rehgion, both as taught by the
Scriptures and by the light within, is that there is one God ; that
He loves justice and charity ; that all men ought to obey Him,
and that the obedience with which He is most pleased, is the
practice of justice and charity towards our neighbour, — in the
words of Him who was pre-eminently the Teacher of religion to
men, we are to love the Lord our God ivith all our hearts and
minds and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves,^
* An account of the attempts to refute and criticise Spinoza would make a
•curious chapter. The first great effort was that of Bayle, who is generally
said to have refuted the whole of Spinozism. Bayle's argument was very pro^
found and very conclusive. It consisted in disregarding Spinoza's definition of
substance, and then going on to prove that everything had a substance of its
own. Voltaire suspects that Bayle did not quite understand Spinoza's
substance, and suggests how Spinoza might really be refuted. This is the
process : Spinoza builds his theory on the mistake of Des Cartes, that ' Nature
IS a Plenum.' As every motion requires empty space, what becomes of Spinoza's
one and only substance ? How can the substance of a star between which and
me there is a void so immense, be precisely the substance of this earth, or the
substance of myself, or the substance of a fly eaten by a spider? Voltaire's
argument is as ingenious as Bayle's is profound and conclusive. Even Emile
Saisset, who is by far the best expositor of Spinoza is not always to be
trusted. Both in his introduction to Spinoza's works, and in his ' Essay on
Religious Philosophy,' he makes a rhetorical picture of Spinoza finishing the
^rst book of his Ethica, pronouncing, with perfect serenity, * / have eai-'
MALEBRANCIIE. 241
Malebranche. — To Malebranche the difference between him-
self and Spinoza seemed infinite. And externally it was great.
Spinoza was a Jew, excommunicated from the synagogue ; Male-
branche, a Christian priest. The one had been educated in the
Cabbala, the other clung to the writings of S. Augustine. But
great as were the external differences, impartial judges justly
reckon them teachers of kindred theologies. Des Cartes, as we
have seen, admitted two kinds of substance, the created and the
uncreated, but in reality the latter was the only real substance.
Spinoza saw this inconsistency, and made the created substances,
accidents or modes of the uncreated. But these created sub-
stances are evidently of two kinds, the spiritual and the
material. Can these be reduced to one, or are they in their
essence entirely distinct? Des Cartes was of the latter opinion.
Spinoza held the former. From this resulted his belief in the
original unity of the thinking and the extended substance ; of
God as thought and extension. Malebranche wished to keep
the Cartesian ground, that they were distinct substances, and at
the same time to remove the Cartesian dualism. He did this
by supposing them distinct in themselves, yet finding their unity
in God. As all things exist spiritually and ideally in the Divine
Mind, God is, as it were, the higher mean between the Zand the
external world — ' We see all things in God.' Malebranche as a
Cartesian, started with thought. We are a something which thinks;
we have ideas. Whence have we these ideas ? Some are imme-
diate, but others are the ideas of things material. The latter
we may have either from the objects themselves — from the soul
having the power of producing them, or from God's producing
them in us, which He may have done, either at creation, or may
do every time we think of any object ; or we may conceive the
plained the nature of God.' These words are certainly in the Ethica, but there
is a comma after God, and the sentence goes on ' as that which necessarily ex-
ists, &c.' The Latin is, His Dei naturam ejusque propriefates eyiplicui, ut quod
necessario existat, quod sit unicus, 8fc. M, Saisset translates it apparently to
make way for his own rhetoric, J' ai expUcui dans ce qu 'on vient de lire la na-
ture de Dieu et ses proprietes ; J' ai montre que Dieu existe nccessairement,
qu' il est unique, Sfc. Mr. Froude, misled apparently by Saisset, has repeated
this criticism. Voltaire complained of the difficulty of understanding Spinoza,
but surely Spinoza has cause to complain of the want of understanding in his
Critics.
An English clergyman has prefixed an inti-oduction to a tract of Leibnitz's
recently discovered, which has been published as a refutation of Spinoza. The
tract does not profess to deal with more than one point of Spinoza's philosophy,
and that a subordinate one, but the editor lauds it as a complete refutation. ' Uii-
necessary, indeed,' he goes on to say, 'for we all know that Dr. Adam (!) Clarke
refuted Spinoza a hundred years ago.*
242 SEEING ALL THINGS IN GOD.
soul as having in itself all the perfections which we discover in
external objects, or lastly, as united with an All-Perfect Being,
who comprehends in Himself all the perfections of created be-
ings. Malebranche examines each of these five ways of knowing
external objects, to find out the one that is most probable. He finds
objections to them all except the last. His arguments for this
are founded on the old Neo-Platonic doctrine of ideas. ' It is
absolutely necessary,' he says, ' for God to have in Himself the
ideas of all the beings He has created, since otherwise He could
not have produced them, and He sees them all by considering
those of His perfections to which they are related.' God and
the human soul are supposed to be so united that God may be
called the ' place ' of souls, as extension is the place of bodies.
Spinoza could not have expressed this so well, nor could he have
wished it expressed better. The chief attribute of the corporeal
is extension. In it, bodies have their being and essence. And
as bodies are constituted in extension, so are souls constituted in
God. ' It is the Divine Word alone which enlightens us by
those ideas which are in Him, for there are not two or more
wisdoms ; two or more universal reasons. Truth is immutable,
necessary, eternal ; the same in time and in eternity; the same
in heaven and in hell. The Eternal Word speaks in the same
language to all nations.' This speaking in us of the universal
reason is a true revelation from God. It is the only means of
our possessing any true knowledge of things external. ' To see
the intelligible world, it is enough to consult the reason which
contains these ideas, or these intelligible, eternal, and necessary
essences which make all minds reasonable and united to the
Reason. But in order to see the material world, or rather to
determine that this world exists — for this world is invisible of
itself — it is necessary that God should 7'eveal it to us, because
we cannot perceive those arrangements which arise from His
choice in that Reason which is necessary."
The ideas of material things we see in God, but spiritual
things we see in God immediately without the medium of ideas.
In the spiritual, internal, or ideal world we are face to face
with truth and reason. There we see, not ideas, but realities.
There we hioiu the Infinite, not through the idea of Him, but
immediately, and it is through Him that we have our knowledge
of all things finite. In Him the material exists spiritually. Be-
fore the world was created God alone existed. To produce the
world He must have had ideas of the world and all that is in it.
And these ideas must have been identical with Himself, so that
S. AUGUSTINE AND MALEBRANCHE. 243
in creating the -vvorld, He communicated Himself to external
objects. God eternally beholds His ideas. This is His converse
with the Eternal Word. This is God as Being, giving Himself
to God as thought — the Father giving all things to the Son.
This Divine "Word shines in our souls. By it we see in God
some of the ideas unfolded in the Infinite essence. God sees all
things in Himself, but a created spirit does not see all things in
itself, because it does not contain all things in itself. It sees
them in God, in whom they exist. When for instance we see a
square we do not see merely the mental idea within us, but the
square itself, which is external to us. God Himself is the imme-
mediate cause of this Divine vision. He instructs us in that
knowledge which ungrateful men call natural ; He hath shown it
unto us. He is the light of the world, and the Father of light
and knowledge. S. Augustine says that ^ we see God in this life
by the knowledge we have of eternal truths. Truth is uncreated,
immutable, eternal, above all things. It is true by itself. It
makes creatures more perfect ; and all spirits naturally endeavour
to know it. Nothing but God can have the perfections of truth ;
therefore, truth is God. When we see some eternal and immu-
table truths we see God.' After quoting from S. Augustine,
Malebranche adds, ' These are S. Augustine's reasons, ours differ
a little from them. We see God when we see eternal truths,
not that these are God, but because the ideas on which these
truths depend are in God — perhaps Augustine had the same
meaning.' In starting from thought, Malebranche, like Des
Cartes and Spinoza, had found the idea of the Infinite to be the
first and clearest of our ideas. ' This,' he said, ' is the most
beautiful, the most exalted, the soundest and best proof of the
existence of God.' It is the idea of Universal Being, which in-
cludes in itself all beings. The human mind can know the
Infinite, though it cannot comprehend it. We conceive first the
Infinite, and then we retrench the idea to make it finite : not
however, that the idea represents the Infinite Being, for so far
as it is an idea it represents something determinate, but though
our vision be dark and finite we yet see and know God as the
Infinite. He is then identical with Universal Being. We call
Him a Spirit, but this is not to declare what He is, but what He
is not. He is not matter. He is as much above spirit, as spirit
is above matter. The highest attribute which we know of that can
belong to being, is thought or mind, and therefore we call God a
Spirit, but He is the infinitely perfect Being. As we deny Him
a human shape, so should we deny Him human thoughts, Kh
7t 2
244 NO SECONDARY CAUSES.
mind is not like ours. We only compare it to our own because
mind is the most perfect attribute of which we know anything.
As He includes in Himself the perfections of matter, though
He is immaterial, so does He include in Himself the perfections
of spirit without being a spirit, as we conceive spirits. His
name is He that is. He is Being without limitation; All
Being ; Being infinite and universal. And as we have this dis-
tinct idea of God as Being, so have we another idea also
necessary, eternal, and immutable ; that is, the idea of extension.
It is impossible to efface this idea from our minds, for infinite
extension belongs to being, or at least, to our idea of being.
Malebranche does not make extension one of the attributes of
God, but he ought to have done, after what he has said of Being
and extension. He maintains that the idea of extension is eter-
nal and immutable ; common to all minds, to angels ; yea, to
God Himself — that it is a true being, and identical with matter.
We need not draw any inferences from Malebranche's doctrines.
It is enough at present to show the parallelism between his views
on God, being, spirit and matter, with those of Spinoza. As our
souls are united to God, and see all things in God, so our bodies
have their essence in extension. Between the substances, matter
and spirit, there is no necessary relation. The modalities of our
body cannot by their own force change those of the mind, and
yet the modalities of the brain are uniformly in connection with
the sentiments of our souls, because the Author of our being
has so determined it.
And this immediate action of God is not limited to the mind
of man. It is the same through all nature. God has not given
up His creation to secondary causes ; what we call such are but
the occasions whereby God, who is the universal cause, executes
His decrees as He wills they should be executed. It is true
that Scriptui-e in some places ascribes events to secondary causes,
as in the book of Genesis, when it is said, ^ Let the earth bring
forth ; ' but this is said improperly. In most parts of the Scrip-
tures God is spoken of as the immediate actor. He commands
the children of Israel to honor Him as the only true cause, both
of good and evil, reward and punishment. ' Is there any evil
in the city,' said the prophet Amos, * and the Lord hath not
done it ? ' The works of nature are God's immediate works. He
forms all things. He giveth to all life and health, and all things.
He causeth grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service
of man, that He may bring forth food out of the earth. God
never leaves His world. He is present in it now as much as in
SIN. 245
the first moment of creation ; in fact, creation never ceases. The
same -will, the same power, and the same presence that were re-
quired to create the world, are required every moment to preserve
it. What we call the laws of nature, are but the expressions of
the will of God. He works by laws, but the working is not
therefore, less immediate or less dependent on His will and
power.
Malebranche reminds us of Spinoza when he discourses of the
passions. The human mind has two relations essentially dif-
ferent— one to God, and the other to the body. This is no
meaningless comparison, as we may at once conclude from what
has been said of our seeing all things in God. The union of the
soul with God is not less than that of the soul with the body.
By the union with the Divine word, wisdom, or truth, we have
the faculty of thought. By our union with the material we
have the perceptions of sense. When the body is the cause of
our thoughts we only imagine; but when the soul acts by itself, in
other words, when God acts by it, then we understand. Passions
in themselves are not evil. They are the impressions of the
Author of nature which incline us to love the body and whatever
is useful for its preservation. Whether our union with the
body is a punishment for sin, or a gift of nature, we cannot de-
termine. But we are certain of this, that before his sin man
was not a slave to his passions. He had a perfect mastery over
them. But now nature is corrupted. The body, instead of
humbly representing its wants to the soul, acts upon it with
violence, becomes its tyrant, and turns it aside from the love and
service of God. Redemption can be nothing else but the re-
storation of man to the dominion of the soul over the body, for
this is to have God reigning within him.
But this question of the passions involves a further enquiry
— what is sin ? If God works whatever is real in the emotior.s
of the mind, and what is real in the sensations of the passions,
is He not the Author of sin ? Malebranche gives the old
answer that sin is nothing real. God continually impels man to
good, but he stops ^ he rests ; this is his sin. He does not follow the
leading of God, he does nothing^ and thus sin is nothing. So
far we have followed Malebranche simply as a philosopher, but
how could he as a priest of the Catholic church, reconcile his
speculations with the Scriptures, and the decrees of the
councils ? He did not attempt to reconcile them, or if he did
the reconciliation was but partial. Where the Church has not
spoken reason is free, but where the church has spoken, what-
240 LEIBNITZ.
ever be our conclusions from reason, we must submit to the de-
cisions of the Church.^" We have no evidence of the existence
of an external world, but we receive it on the Church's authority.
Our reason cannot be trusted with the mysteries of the faith.
They are beyond the limits of our faculties. The incarnation,
the Trinity, the changing of the bread and wine in the eucharist
into the real body and blood of Christ, who can understand ? It
is well to exercise our reason on subtle questions that its pre-
sumption may be tamed, for is not reason the author of all the
heresies that have rent the Church ? Yet Malebranche used
bis reason, for after all a man cannot help using his reason, let
him be in the Catholic church or out of it. Malebranche had a
grand theory — worthy of Jacob Bohme — that all things were
made for the redeemed Church. This world is finite and im-
perfect, but in Jesus Christ it becomes perfect, and of infinite
value. Jesus Christ is the beginning of the ways of God — the
first-born among many brethren. God loves the world only be-
cause of Jesus Christ. Even had God willed that sin should
never have come into the world, yet Christ, the eternal Word,
would have united Himself to the universe, and made it worthy
of God. Christ had an interest in man, independent both of sin
and redemption. God foresaw the existence of sin. He de-
creed to give Jesus Christ a body to be the victim which he was
to offer, for it is necessary that every priest have somewhat to
offer. God thought on the body of His Son when He formed
that of Adam, and He has given every one of us a body which
we are to sacrifice, as Christ sacrificed His body.
Leibnitz. — Lessing once said to Jacobi that Leibnitz was as
much a Pantheist as Spinoza. Jacobi would not admit this,
and on further acquaintance with the writings of Leibnitz,
Lessing gave a difterent judgment. Lideed Leibnitz was so
* How completely Malebranche had followed Des Cartes in throwing off the
authority of Aristotle may be seen from this j^assage : ' If any truth is dis-
covered noAv, Aristotle must have known it, but if Aristotle is against it the
discovery is false. Some make that philosopher speak one way and some
another, for all pretenders to learning make him speak in their own dialect.
There is no impertinence which is not ascribed to Aristotle nor any new dis-
covery which is not found treasured up enigmatically in some corner of his books.
He constantly contradicts himself, if not in his works at least in the mouth of
his disciples. For though the philosophers intend to teach his doctrines, yet it
is a hai'd thing to find two of them to agree as to his opinions. In fact his books
are so obscure, and abound with so many loose, indefinite, and general terms
that even the most opposite opinions may be ascribed to him. In his works he
may be made to say anything because he says just nothing, and yet he makes a
great deal of noise' just as children make bells sound whatever they wish, be-
cause they are noisy and inarticulate.
THE MONADS. 247
thoroughlj opposed to most of Spinoza's doctrines that our only
reason for introducing him here is to complete the history of
Cartesianism. Leibnitz wished to return to Des Cartes, and so
to re-construct Cartesianism as to refute on Cartesian ground the
errors of Spinoza and Malebranclie. But he was only in a very
limited sense a disciple of Des Cartes. Locke said that there is
nothing in the mind which does not come through the senses.
Leibnitz added, except the mind itself. So far as he agreed with
Locke he was a materialist, but so far as he differed from Locke
he was an idealist. Des Cartes had cast doubts on the existence
of matter, and from the idea of the infinite given in conscious-
ness, he had proceeded to construct a universe. This universe
was in reality nothing more than space or extension — something
destitute of energy ; an abstraction ; a nothing. Now, said
Leibnitz, if Des Cartes' universe is not sometliing real, then
God produces no reality external to Himself, and if God pro-
duces nothing real, that is, if He is not a creative God He is
only an abstraction. Into the conclusiveness of this argument
we need not make any enquiry. Des Cartes and Spinoza would
both have exclaimed that they were misunderstood. This
matters nothing here. The argument gives Leibnitz's point of
departure from Des Cartes.
Substance with Leibnitz was not an idea as it was with the
idealists, nor was it a substratum of matter as it was with the
materialists, but a force ; a dynamical power. The simple
originals of beings he calls monads^ which are metaphysical
points to be thought of as we think of souls. God is the chief
Monad; the others are of different ranks and degrees from the
humblest forms ^f matter to the highest spiritual substance.
These monads are the true atoms of nature, so to speak, the
elements of things. They are imperishable, simple, and original
— they have no windows by which anything can enter into them
or come out of them. And yet they have qualities, for without
qualities they could not be distinguished from each other. Every
monad must differ from every other, for there never was in
nature two beings perfectly like each other. Being created,
as they all are except the chief Monad, they must be subject to
" change, but the principle of change must be from within, for no
external cause can influence them. They are also called entele-
chies, because as simple substances they have a certain perfec-
tion. These have a sufficiency of themselves which makes them
the source of their own internal actions, they are, so to speak
incorporeal automatons. Every body has a monad belonging
248 DEMONSTRATION OF THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT.
to it. This monad is its entelechy or soul. The body with the
monad constitutes a living creature, or an animal. Every body
is organized. It is a divine mechanism, every part of which is
again a mechanism, and so on infinitely for every portion of
matter is infinitely divisible, so that there is a world of creation
endowed with souls in the least part of matter. With Des
Cartes and Spinoza, Leibnitz admits the infinity, and, after a
fashion, even the eternity of the universe. But he defines in-
finity and eternity, when applied to the universe, as difierent
from the same terms when applied to God. There is everywhere
a relative infinity — in every particle of the universe an infinity of
creatures, each of which again embraces another infinity, and so
on for ever. This infinity extends to duration, and constitutes
the eternity of the universe. Creation and annihilation do not
take place in time but in eternity. To speak properly, nothing
perishes and nothing begins to be. All things, even the most
inanimate, are naturally immortal. But the immortality of a
self-conscious monad is necessarily different from that of one
which wants self- consciousness. It is not only a mirror of the
universe of creatures, but also an image of the Deity. The
human mind has not only a perception of the works of God ; it is
even capable of imitating them. The soul of man can discover and
understand the laws by which God made and governs the uni-
verse, and in its own little world it can do the same things as
God does in His great world. And thus it is that men are
capable of religion. They can know the Infinite. In virtue of
their reason and their knowledge of eternal truths, they enter
into a kind of society with God. They are members of the City
of Crod. •
Leibnitz as an idealist necessarily held to the ontological
argument for the existence of God. He even put it into the
form of a demonstration : — The Being whose essence implies ex-
istence, exists, if it is possible ; that is to say, if it has an
essence. ( This is an axiom of identity which requires no de-
monstration.)
Now God is a Being whose essence implies existence.
(Through Definition.)
Therefore, if God is possible. He exists. (By the very
necessity of the concept of Him.)
The conception of perfect being is more than possible, it is
necessary. It is an absolute necessity of reason. Leibnitz tried
to strengthen this position by arguments drawn from experience,
especially that which is founded upon the non-necessity of crea-
SUFFICIENT REASON. ^49
tion, or the contingent existence of the world. If necessary
being is possible it must also be real, for if it be impossible all
contingent beings would also be impossible : if it did not exist,
there would be no existence at all ; which is what we cannot
suppose.
While Leibnitz remained on the ground of ontology he had
much in common with Des Cartes and Spinoza, but he wished
to escape their errors. To do this he gives prominence to the
other two great arguments which were either ignored or denied
by Des Cartes and Spinoza ; these were the cosmological, and the
li-rgMmQTit horn final causes. The world is manifestly a work,
and God is the Worker. All phenomena must have a producing
cause — a sufficient reason. Nothing can happen without a cause
or antecedent. In the whole range of contingent, that is, created
beings, there is not one which does not take its origin in another.
^ Every particular being includes other anterior contingent be-
ings.' Carry up the analysis as far as we will, let us mount un-
ceasingly from ring to ring we must stop at a first cause or
reason placed outside of this long chain ; at the necessary beino-
in whom the series of events and agents exist as rivers in their
fountain heads. This Being is the ultima radix ; the last root
of things. ^ The cosmological argument with Leibnitz runs into
the teleological, and this it ought to do, for the proper doctrine of
final causes is not that all things were made for the use of man
but that all things manifest the wisdom of the great Author of
nature. The end may be the general good of the whole uni-
verse ; it may be the glory of God, or both of them together.
Leibnitz often speaks of the Divinity as the true end of all the
movements in the world. He identifies the life eternal, or the
final goal of the career of man with the very essence of the
Divinity, and regards the moral activity of intelligent beings as
an element necessary to the felicity of God. God is free
and yet the Divine freedom with Leibnitz does not difier from the
free necessity of Spinoza. ' That pretended /aife,' says Leibnitz,
' which necessitates even the Divinity is nothing but the proper
nature of God — His understanding, which furnishes laws for
H s wisdom and His goodness. It is a happy necessity, without
which He would be neither wise nor good.'
But though Leibnitz in some parts of his theology approaches
the Cartesians, his escape from everything Pantheistic is
supremely manifest in his denying the immanency of God in
the world. Des Cartes thought that an Infinite, Omniscient, and
Omnipresent Being must be ever in His universe, and that what ia
250 PRE-ESTABLISHED HARMONY.
done in it must be done immediately by God. Leibnitz thought
this unworthy of God. If man can make a machine that will
work by itself, how much more can God ? Why may not He,
like the human mechanist, retire from His work ? ' He would be,'
says Leibnitz, ' a bad workman whose engines could not work
unless he were himself standing by and giving them a helping
hand ; a workman who having constructed a time-piece would
still be obliged himself to turn the hands to make it mark the
hours.' God has made a perfect machine. It is governed by
immutable laws. We cannot even suppose, as Locke and New-
ton did, that God sometimes interferes to restore it, or to keep
it in repair. The very perfection of His workmanship must ex-
clude every such thought. He is a Perfect Worker, and there-
fore His work must be perfect too. But is it perfect ? Leibnitz
says this is the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire says it is the
worst. Leibnitz says that out of an infinity of possible worlds
Infinite Wisdom must have formed the best. It is not indeed a
world without evils, but
' Discord, is harmony not understood
All partial evil, universal good,'
* Then say not man's imperfect, heaven at fault,
Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought/
' Respecting man, whatever wrong we call,
^"' May, must be right as relative to all.'
The Divine Mind has so arranged that all things shall work
together for good. In making a contingent world God foresaw
what would happen through the action of moral agents and
natural causes, and provided for these accidents, that they might
be over-ruled for the general welfare of the universe. There
^>^ was a pre-estahlished harmomj by which all things were
necessary, and yet man was left free ; God
' Binding nature fast in fate
Left free the human will.'
This universal order we see everywhere rising above apparent
disorder, and triumphing over it. How numerous are the marks
of wisdom, visible in creation. How beautiful the proportions.
How benevolent the intentions. How wisely are the relations
calculated, and how solidly organized. The harmony in which
they are maintained is permanent and universal. That harmony
has an Author. It is He who has arranged that this infinite
diversity of beings, shall maintain their places in the order of
creation ; that there be a continuous gradation and a mutual
dependence among all kingdoms, species, families, and indi-
viduals. Leibnitz explaned all things by liis iirr-ff^tahlished
ALL FOR THE BEST. 25l
harmony. By it the monads come together to form composite
beings. Bj it all monads and composite beings maintahi a
perfect order in their existence. By it God operates upon mind
and matter. He wound them up like two clocks, so that when
we see a thing it is not because mind acts upon matter, or matter
upon mind, but because it was pre-arranged from eternity that
the object and the fact of om' seeing it should occur at the same
instant.
The rational explication which Leibnitz gave of the world,
and his vindication of the perfections of Grod through maintain-
ing that after all it is a perfect world, necessarily brought him
in collision with the commonly received doctrine of original
sin. If the world was once better, and may be better again,
how is it noiv the best of all possible worlds ?* Leibnitz's answer
has been partly anticipated in his doctrine of relative perfection,
and the educing of good from seeming evil. But to meet the ob-
jection fully he divides evil into three kinds : metaphysical evil
or imperfection^ physical evil or suffering, and moral evil or sin.
The two first he ascribes directly to God. The evil of imper-
fection is " inevitable, it belongs to the creature. Everything
created must be limited. In a relative and dependent world,
weakness must be mingled with strength, and light with dark-
ness. The uncreated alone can be free from fault, infinite, and
truly perfect. As to physical evils we cannot say that God has
absolutely willed them. He may have willed them conditionally,
that is to say as suffering justly inflicted for our faults, or as
the means of leading us to good ; the true end of man and the
only source of happiness. As to moral evil, Leibnitz falls back
on the metaphysical doctrines of the fathers and the schoolmen.
God gives us liberty. He respects that liberty in us. He sets
before us good and evil, and leaves us to choose. We cannot
charge human perversity upon God, He gives all things — that
is true. He is the first cause of all things ; the first original
of the power which we have to do evil ; the material element of
sin as S. Augustine expressed it. But this power indispensable
to every action, good or bad, is itself a boon, and in giving it
God bears witness of His goodness. That then in sin which is
* Voltaire, in his charming romance Candide which was written to ridicule
the doctrine of Leibnitz, causes Dr. Pangloss and Candide to be arrested by
the Inquisition at Lisbon for saying, among the ruins of the houses, after
the earthquake, * It is all for the best in this best of all possible worlds,' The
doctors of the Inquisition thought the doctrine amounted to a denial of original
sin.
252 FAITH AND REASON.
real and positive comes from God ; that which is perfect and
unreal belongs to us.
On the great question of the conformity of faith and reason
Leibnitz, like Spinoza, was purely Cartesian. The spirit of wis-
dom is the spirit of liberty. The wise man alone is free, said
the ancient Stoics. Where the spirit of Grod is, there is liberty,
said S. Paul. And what is wisdom but the Spirit of God ? That
which constitutes a created monad is its power of thinking.
Much more must God who gives us this power possess it
supremely in Himself. God is thought ; yea, the very essence
of all intelligence, of all reason, and all knowledge. The first
original of all things is a Supreme Mind. The doctrines of re-
ligion, if they come from God, must be rational. This was a
great question in Leibnitz's day, and always will be a great ques-
tion with men who think earnestly and who are sincere and
honest with themselves. For those who are too idle to think, or
who are attached to some favorite dogma, it is convenient to
decry reason and philosophy. The most enlightened theologians
of the Catholic Church— Pascal, Malebranche, Bossuet, and
Fenelon received what they called Catholic doctrines, as
mysterious dogmas to which no principles of reason could be
applied. Some even said that the more the mysteries shocked
the reason and the conscience, the more devoutly they were to
be believed. Baronius called reason that Hagar who was to be
cast out with her profane Ishmael. Nor was this spirit con-
fined to the Catholic Church. Luther is full of it. The more,
enlightened Protestants tried to harmonize the teachings of the
Bible with those of reason and conscience, the more those who
had to defend the dogmatic forms of the Churches, cried out
against reason. Bayle, with his encyclopedic learning, had
set forth all the received doctrines of Christianity, and
in a spirit of the deepest scepticism had tried to
show how incompatible they all are with reason. From
this armoury in later times Voltaire drew the darts, which, with
winged sarcasm, he aimed at the Theologians who defied reason.
Leibnitz had Bayle before him when he discoursed of the con-
formity of faith with reason. He maintains that what God
reveals to man, must agree with what man knows to be right.
God's goodness, and God's justice cannot difi*er from ours,
except in being more perfect. There may be revealed doctrines
above our reason, but not contrary to it. Even the mysteries
may be explained so far as it is necessary for us to believe them.
The Lutherans defended tlio doctrine of consubstantiation as
CHRISTIANITY RATIONAL. 253
rational. The Trinity is no contradiction in reason. When
we say the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost
is God, and yet these are not three but one God, the word
God has not the same meaning at the beginning of the sentence
which it has at the end. In the one case it signifies a person
of the Trinity and in the other, the divine Substance. The old
fathers refuted the heathen religions by arguments drawn from
reason; and defended the Christian doctrines as in the highest
sense rational.
It is beside our purpose to follow Leibnitz further. Though
sprung from the school of Des Cartes, he is henceforth the
representative TJieist of Germany.
The authorities for this chapter, besides the Histories of Philosophy men-
tioned at the end of the chapter on Greek Philosophy, are Mor ell's His tort/ of
Philosophy ; A Critical History of Rationalism, by Amand Saintes, translated
from the French ; Kahnis' German Protestantism ; CEuvres de Des Cartes ; M.
Saisset's ' Essay on Religious Philosophy,' translated from the French ; Bene-
dict de Spinoza opera quae supersunt omnia edidit Carolus Hermannus Bruder,
(This edition contains more than any of the previous editions.) CEuvres de
Spinoza traduites par Emile Saisset avec une Introduction du Traducteur; (We
have nothing in English on Spinoza of any value except what Mr. Maurice
has written in his Modern Philosophy, and an article by Mr. Froude in the
Westminster Review, July, 1855.) (Euvres de Malebranche, esTpeciaWy Recherche
de la Verite and Entretiens sur la Metaphysique ; Oeuvres de Leibnitz^
especially Theodicee, La Monadologie, Principes de la Nature et de la Grace,
Lettres entre Leibnitz et Clarke sur Dieu, L' Ame, L'Espace, La Duree, SfC,
and M. Bartholmess' Histoire Critique des Doctrines Religieuaes de la Philoso'
phie Moderne,
<
CHAPTER XIII.
TRANSCENDENTALISM.
FROM French Idealism to German Transcendentalism we
pass over a full century. That century was the remark-
able eighteenth, despised as superficial by all true philosophers,
lamented as Godless by all truly religious men. The philosophy
of Locke, which rejected all enquiry into * Being' and 'Essence,'
guarded the English mind from all doctrines that savored of
Pantheism or mysticism. Carried into France, that philosophy
bore its legitimate fruit; an atheism such as the world had
never seen. It was reserved for Germany to revive Idealism ;
to re-assert that there is in the human soul an overwhelming
conviction of the existence of God, and with this to restore
the rejected Pantheisms and neglected mysticisms of past ages.
Kant. — Transcendental philosophy, which is merely another
name for German Idealism, takes its beginning from Kant. He,
however, only laid the foundation, his successors reared the
superstructure. Kant, like Locke, was a reformer in philosophy,
concerning himself not so much with being, as with our modes
of knowing being. So far as he was instrumental in the re-
storation of a philosophy of being and essence, he was only an
unwilling contributor. Idealism in the hands of Hume had
met the same fate that materialism had met in the hands of the
Idealists. Hume returned to absolute doubt — we have ideas, but
we know nothing more — we have no right to identify thought
with reality.
Cartesianism, as interpreted by Leibnitz, and systematized
by Christian Wolf, was the orthodox philosophy of Germany.
It had grown into an extravagant dogmatism, no longer tenable
in presence of the searching scepticism that had come from
France and England. Kant applied himself to the criticism of
philosophy that he might save it, both from this dogmatism,
and this scepticism. He tested the powers of the intellect, and
essayed to fix the limits of reason. He tried to hold the balance
between the materialist and the idealist, maintaining with the
one the necessity of experience to give validity to our intellectual
cognitions ; with the other, that the intellect is the basis of our
kant's critique. 255
knowledge, and that it contains a priori the condition on which
we know anything by experience. A criticism of reason
naturally led to a criticism of the conclusions of reason, or rather
it included them. Prominent among these were the proofs of
the Being of God, in the Cartesian and Leibnitzian philosophies,
the ' ontological,' the ' cosmological,' and peculiarly in the original
philosophy of Locke, the ' physico- theological.' The two first,
Kant showed to be only subjectively valid, we having no means
of applying to them the test of experience necessary to give
validity to the mental ideas. The last he showed to be imperfect,
as from design we cannot argue the existence of any being
greater than a designer. The argument proves a world maker,
but not a Creator ; a framer, but not a maker of matter.
The idea of God, which Des Cartes recognized as in-born in
the human mind had been elaborated by a process of dialectics
into a demonstration of the existence of God. Kant objected to
the conclusion, and yet admitted the fact of the existence of the
idea, and while admitting it, endeavoured to determine how far,
and in what manner, our reasonings concerning it are justi-
fied. In objecting to the idealistic arguments as theoretical
demonstrations, he opposed the idealists. In again establishing
their practical validity he opposed the sceptics. His guide,
however, was not eclecticism, but criticism. His object was not
idealistic, nor realistic, but to find exactly what was true in
Idealism and in Realism.
The idea of God is in the mind, but His existence is not
verified by experience, for it transcends experience. So on the
other hand, the idea of the external world is derived through
the senses. We have experience, or empirical knowledge of
its existence; practically it exists, but as we have no cog-
nition of anything external, by, and in itself, without the
mind accompanying the cognition, so in pure reason its exist-
ence cannot be demonstrated. In the external world we have
phenomena. Beyond this, we can demonstrate nothing.
True to his principle of a critical investigator Kant wished to
stop here, as having reached the furthest boundary of the pos-
sibility of human knowledge. Further than this, he was not an
idealist, and only thus far is he the founder of Transcendental-
ism. In the first edition of his ' Critique of the pure Reason,*
he threw out a conjecture that perhaps the reahty of phenomena ^
was only the J that contemplates it; that the thinking mind
and the thing thought are perhaps one and the same substance.
On this conjecture Fichte started the doctrine of the J- hood.
256 FICHTB.
Kant protested that Fichte's doctrine was not his, and to
strengthen the protest that he was not responsible for the de-
velopment of his ardent disciple, he omitted this passage in all
subsequent editions of his ' Critique.'
The primitive duality then, of subject and object, was left im-
touched by Kant. The one he maintained to be the comple-
ment of the other, and both were reckoned necessary to make
^ knowledge possible — suhjed as the form or the principle of our
'^ representations, and object as the principle of the matter of these
representations. The one being thus necessary to the other, it
could not be proved that either of them was a real being. Some-
thing real in their internal nature there must be, but what this
substratum of phenomena is, what this being is which unites
subject and object was not only left by Kant undefined, but even
declared to be beyond our knowledge.
FiCHTE. — It might have been supposed that the critical
philosophy of Kant was omnipotent to check all further specu-
lation concerning the nature of that which Is. Had he not
fixed the limits of the human mind, and shown the impossibility
of any science of the absolutely unconditioned ? Had he not
shown that it was impossible to demonstrate the truth, either of
idealism or materialism ; that, in the one case, we had no means
of verifying by experience the ideas in the mind, and, in the
other, no means of knowing the existence of objects independent
of the mind always present in the cognition of them. Philosophy
seemed to have spoken its last word. Materialism and ideaUsm
had been fairly weighed, and the truth in each impartially ac-
knowledged. ' But,' said Fichte on the side of idealism, ' is not
our knowledge of the subject greatly more than that of the ob-
ject, and moreover, prior to it ? We know that we have an in-
ternal world, and only through the medium of it do we know
that there is an external world. The existence of my i, my con-
sciousness, is a primary fact. The existence of anything external
"^ is only seen in the mirror of this J. Its existence therefore, is de-
pendent, and may be only apparent. The subject is the mani-
fest reality; the primitive ground of knowledge; the true
foundation of philosophy.
On this consciousness Fichte based his philosophy, and from
the given existence of the I it received its first form. We think,
is our most certain knowledge. What it is which thinks need
not concern us. Of its essence we know as little as we do of the
substance 6f the world. Indeed we may not be justified in con-
cluding that such an essence exists. We need not suppose its
THE I AND THE NON-I. 257
existence, it is enoiigli to take by itself the simple fact of con-
sciousness. This is only cognised by us as an activity. It is
the act of forming and representing internal images. We must,
however, distinguish between the act and the image — ^the one is
the actnig process, the other the process by which it acts. In
this way the /creates itself. By thus acting it becomes actually
what it is potentially. It renders itself self-conscious. And in
this act of the /we have a duality, itself and the object it evokes.
The /, in positing its own existence, posits also that of the 7ion-
I. These two principles stand in the consciousness opposed to
each other — the one limiting and determining the other, for
what the I is, the non-I is not, and what the non-I is, the / is
not. But the / in determining itself to a representation does
so with the consciousness that the representation is only a modi-
fication of itself ; so that the I and the non-I are again united
in one and the same consciousness. The formula is Thesis,
Antithesis, Synthesis.
Jacohi called this philosophy an inverted Spinozism. In place
of tTieal^solute substance Fichte substituted the 1. He thought
by this to avoid Spinoza's theology, but the endeavour was vain.
He had ultimately to go beyond the 1, for in no other way could
he reach the Infinite. The finite consciousness disappeared in
the infinite consciousness. The /found nothing but its own
reflex. It sought a God, but it only found itself — the /
answering to the / Freed from the limits which it produces
for itself, our /is the Infinite /of the universe ; that in which
all finite Vs lose their existence, and in which are embraced as
its representation all the varied phenomena of the external
world. There is originally and essentially but one conscious-
ness, that of the absolutely Infinite /. Every efi'ort to repre-
sent this 1 as conceivable by the human intellect was rejected
by Fichte as anthropomorphism. The supposition of a personal
God was a mere transference of human limits and imperfections
to the Divine Being ; and when we a^scribe to Him such attri-
butes as consciousness, or extra-mundane existence, we only make
Him finite, for these qualities necessarily include the idea of
substance extended in time and space.
God is not substance. The attributes ascribed to Him by
Spinoza are liable to the same objections as were made to clie
common anthropomorphism. If they do not make God mm,
they yet limit Him. They make Him corporeal, and substitute
a substratum of the universe for the Divine Activity. Nor do
we escape this result by calling God a Spirit. What is spirit ?
268 THE INFINITE I.
A mere negation of body, a term which as a positive definition
of God, is wholly useless unless by a deception of the mind we
ascribe to spirit some of the qualities Avhich constitute a body.
For the same reason that we deny to God consciousness, per-
sonality, and substantiality, we also deny Him reality; all
reality being to us only finite. God cannot be adequately con-
ceived, defined, or represented; for conceptions, definitions, and
representations are only applicable to things limited and deter-
mined. ' If,' says Fichte * we call God a consciousness, it
follows that we apply to Him the limits of the human conscious-
ness, if we get rid of this limit of thought, then there remains to
us a knowledge which is quite incomprehensible, and this might
well be ascribed to God, who, so to speak, is in this sense pure
consciousness, intelligence, spiritual life, and activity, save only
that we could form no notion of such attributes, and on that ac-
count would rather abstain from the approximate definition, and
that, too, out of strict regard to philosophical accuracy, for every
conception of the Deity would be an idol.'
God is the infinite /, clearly incomprehensible. The finite I
is known only as an activity, and so likewise only as an Activity
do we know God. We are constituted in a moral order. As
finite Ts we have duties and destinies. By fulfilling these we
realize our place in the moral order of the universe. And this
order is the highest idea of God to which we can attain. We
need no other God, we can comprehend no other. Only by this
Moral Order livmg and working in us do we perceive anything
divine. God is not a being or an existence, but a pure Activity
— the life and soul of a transcendent world order, just as every
personal I or finite intelligence is no being, but a pure activity
in conformity with duty, as a member of that transcendent world
order.
This form — the form of morality — is the second phase of the
development of Fichte's philosophy. It incurred, as we might
have expected, the charge of Atheism. Jacobi said it was the
' worship of mere universality^ and even Schelling said * that it
swallowed up all religion.' Fichte defended himself, and in his
later works so explained his meaning as to leave no doubt of
his firm faith in God. Jdsche says 'The idealist's religious faith
in a moral order of the world is now raised to a higher stand-
point ; to the realistic religious faith in a living and independent
intelligent principle of the world order ; and for the proud self-
feeling of absolute freedom, we now have humility and sub-
mission to an Absolute Will.' These later writings were
GOD MORE THAN A PERSON. 259
addressed to popular audiences. A mystical faith had taken
the place of metaphysical reasonings. Man reaches the know-
ledge of God in pure thought, which is the eye of the soul. By
this he perceives God, for what is pure thought but the Divine
Existence ? Of the mode of God's being we know nothing, nor
do we need to know. ' We cannot pierce the inaccessible light
in which He dwells, but through the shadows which veil His
presence there flows an endless stream of life, and love, and
beauty. He is the Fountain of our life, the Home of our spirits,
the One Being, the I am, for whom reason has no idea, and
language has no name.' In conscious union with the Infinite,
addressing Him as a ' Sublime and Living Will,' Fichte exclaims
' I may well raise my soul to Thee, for Thou and I are not di-
vided. Thy voice sounds within me, mine sounds in Thee, and
all my thoughts, if they are bnt good and true^ are in Thee also*
In Thee the incomprehensible, I myself and the world in which
I live, become comprehensible to me. All the secrets of my ex-
istence are laid open, and perfect harmony arises in my soul.
I hide my face before Thee, and lay my hand upon my mouth.
Hoiv thou art and seemest to Thine own Being I can never
know, any more than I can assume Thy nature. After thousands
upon thousands of spirit lives I shall comprehend Thee as little
as I now do in this house of clay. Thou knowest, and wiliest,
and workest, omnipresent to finite reason, but as I now, and al-
ways must conceive of being, Tliou art not.^
God knows, luiUs, and luorks, He is something more than a
principle, just as He is something more than a person. Yet our
highest conception of Him is as a principle, as the world order ;
and our most convincing proof of His existence is in the realiza-
tion of our place in this order. Then we become conscious of our
oneness with Him. We cannot become God, but when we anni-
hilate ourselves to the very root, God alone remains, and is all
in all. We speak of our existence as something distinct from
God's, but ours is only the negation of existence. Apart from
the Being of God our being is a mere semblance, which has as-
sumed the form and appearance of being. That, alone, is
reality, which is good and true. Our highest conception of
being is identical with our highest conception of good — a prin-
ciple°of right. What then is blessedness, but to seek this true
life ? The eternal is in us and around us on every side. Would
we realize this presence ; would we feel that this eternal Being
is our being, then must we forsake the transitory and apparent,
and cling with an unfailing love to the unchangeably true, and
s 2
260 IMMORTALITY.
everlastingly good. God is goodness unceasingly active, in
what the holy man does, lives, and loves, God appears in His
own immediate and efficient life. Nor in man only does God
appear, but in all nature the soul purified from the love of the
transitory and unreal may see Him immediately present.
* Through that,' says Fichte, ^ which seems to me a dead mass,
my eye beholds this eternal life and movement in every vein of
sensible and spiritual nature, and sees this life rising in ever-
increasing growth, and ever purifying itself to a more spiritual
expression. The universe is to me no longer that eternally re-
peated play ; that monster swallowing up itself only to bring itself
forth again as it was before. It has become transformed before
me, and bears the one stamp of spiritual life ; a constant pro-
gress towards higher perfection in a line that runs out into the
Infinite. The sun rises and sets. The stars sink and re-appear,
and all the spheres hold their circle-dance, but they never re-
turn again as they disappeared. And even in this light-
fountain of life itself, there is life and progress. Every hour
which they lead on ; every morning and every evening sinks
with new increase upon the world. New life and love descend
from the spheres, and encircle nature as the cool evening en-
circles the earth.'
Wherefore should man doubt of life and immortality ? Are
they not clearly revealed to the soul that loves the true life ?
Being passes through its phases, but it does not cease to be. A
dark soul not recognizing its root in the Godhead may be
troubled at the changes in nature, and made sad by the passing
away of that which to it alone seems real. But is not all death
in nature birth ? In death itself visibly appears the exaltation
of life. There is no destructive principle in nature, for nature
throughout is free and unclouded life. It is not death which
kills, but the new life concealed behind death begins to develop
itself. Death and birth are but the struggle of life with itself
to assume a more glorious and congenial form. * And my death,'
said Fichte, speaking as one who participated in this blessed and
unchanging life. 'How can it be aught else but birth, since I
am not a mere sham and semblance of life, but bear within me
the life which is one, true, original, and essential. It is im-
possible to conceive that nature should annihilate a life which
does not proceed from her : nature exists for me, I do not exist
for her.'
Fichte did not profess to derive his doctrines from Christianity,
yet he did maintain, that between them and Christianity the
CREATION ETERNAL. 261
identity was complete. He lived in that life in -which Christ
lived, and drew his inspiration from the same fountain of truth.
All true men have found their strength there, and Christ above
all others because He was supremely true. Christianity then is
no external revelation, but God speaking and working in humanity.
By Christianity, however, Fichte only meant what he called the
Johannean gospel. He rejected S. Paul and his party as un-
sound teachers of Christian doctrine. They were but half
Christians, and left untouched the fundan^^ntal error of Judaism
and Heathenism. S. John was the disciple who had respect for
reason. He alone appealed to that evidence which has weight
with the philosopher — the internal. ' If any man will do the
will of Him that sent me he shall know of the doctrine whether
it be of God.' The preface to S. John's gospel is not to be re-
garded as a merely speculative prelude to an historical narrative,
but is to be taken as the essence and stand-point of all the
discourses of Jesus. In the sight of John this preface is not his
own doctrine, but that of Jesus, and indeed is the spirit, the in-
nermost root of the whole doctrine of Jesus. And what is the
doctrine of that preface ? Its subject is creation. Precisely
that on which Judaism and Heathenism had erred. Compelled
to recognize the absolute unity and unchangeableness of the
Divine Nature in itself, and being unwilling to give up the inde-
pendence and real existence of finite things, they made the latter
proceed from the former by an act of absolute and arbitrary
Power. The Jewish books begin : — ' In the beginning God
createcV No, said S. John, in express contradiction to this.
In the beginning ; in the same beginning which is there
spoken of; that is, originally and before all time, God did not
create, for no creation was needed, but there was already ' In
the beginning loas the word ; and all things were made by it.'
In the beginning was the word ; in the original text the Logos j
which might be translated reason, or as nearly the same idea is
expressed in the book called the ' Wisdom of Solomon,' wisdom.
John says that the Word was in the beginning, that the Word
was with God, that God Himself was the Word, that the Word
was in the beginning with God.
Fichte asks, — ' Was it possible for John to have m.ore clearly
expressed the doctrine which we have already taught in such
words as the following : — Besides God's inward and hidden
Being in Himself, which we are able to conceive of in thought,
He has another existence which w^e can only practically appre-
liend, but yet this existence necessarily arises through His in-
262 GOD IS THE WORD OR REASON.
ward and absolute Being itself ; and His existence, "which is only
hy us distinguished from His Being, is in itself and in
Him not distinguished for His Being, but this ex-
istence is originally before all time, and independently of all
time, with His Being, inseparable from His Being, and itself
His Being, — the Word in the beginning, the Word with God,
the Word in the beginning with God, God Himself the Word,
and the Word itself God. Was it possible for Him to set forth
more distinctly and forcibly the ground of this proposition, that
in God and from God there is nothing that arises or becomes,
but in Him there is only an IS ; an Eternal Present, and what-
ever has existence must be originally with Him, and must be
Himself? 'Away with the perplexing phantasm,' might the
Evangelist have added had he wished to multiply words. 'Away
with that perplexing phantom of a creation from God, of a
something that is not Himself, and has not been eternally and
necessarily in Himself; an emanation in which He is not Him-
self present, but forsakes His work — an expulsion and separation
from Him that casts us out into desolate nothingness, and makes
Him an arbitrary and hostile Lord.'
The immediate existence of God is necessarily consciousness — -
reason. In it the world and all things exist, or as John ex-
presses it, they are in the Word. They are God's spontaneous
expression of Himself. That Word or consciousness is the only
Creator of the world, and by means of the principle of separ-
ation contained in its very nature, the Creator of the manifold
and infinite variety of things in the world. This Word mani-
fested itself in a personal, sensible, and human existence ;
namely in that of Jesus of Nazareth, of whom the Evangelist
truly said, He was ' the Eternal Word made flesh.'' In and
through Him, others were to be partakers of the divine nature.
His disciples were to be one with Him as He was one with the
Father. This is the characteristic dogma of Christianity as a
phenomenon of time; as a temporary form of the religious
culture of man. But the deep truth which it reveals is the
absolute unity of the human existence with the Divine.
Christ does not constitute that union, but reveals to us the
knowledge that it exists. Before Him, it was unknown, and
all who have since known it, may ascribe that knowledge to
Him. The philosopher may indeed discover it, but it is
already revealed to him in Christanity. All Christ's discourses
as recorded by John are full of it. We must eat His flesh and
drink His blood — that is, we must be transformed into Him.
SCHELLING. 263
We must live His life, not in imitation merely, but in a faithful
repetition. We must be like Him, the Eternal Word made flesh
and blood. For those who repeat the character of Christ He
prays that they all may be one as ' Thou Father art in me and
I in Thee that they also may be one in us.' One in us — all
distinctions are laid aside. The whole community, the First-
born of all, with His more immediate followers, and with all
those who are born in later days, fall back together into the
one common source of all life, the Godhead. Thus Christianity,
its purpose being obtained, falls again into harmony with the
absolute truth and maintains that every man may, and ought
to come into unity with God, and in his own personality become
the divine existence in the Eternal Word. No man had ever a
higher preception of the identity of Godhead and humanity
than the founder of Christianity. He never supposed the
existence of finite things; they had no existence for Him.
Only in union with God was there reality. How the non-
entity assumed the semblance of being, the difficulty from which
profane speculation proceeds. He never cared to enquire.
He knew truth in Himself, He knew it solely in his own existence.
He knew that all being is founded in God alone, and conse-
quently that His own being proceeds directly from Him. When
He showed His disciples the way to blessedness, He told them
to be like Himself, for He knew of no blessedness but in His own
existence. They were to come to Him for life, and they were to
find it by being in Him as He was in the Father, and being one
with Him as He was one with the Father.
ScHELLiNG. — With Fichte the reality of the object had dis-
appeared. The non-lvisis only the production of the I. Here
he departed from Kant, who left subject and object as cor-
relates ; the one giving validity to the other. At the same
point Schelling departed from Fichte. The arguments which
rendered the existence of the object uncertain prevailed equally
against the existence of the subject. But, why should we not
believe in the existence of the external world, or why should we
doubt our own existence ? After all our reasonings, the fact
still remains that we do exist, and with our existence emerges
face to face an existence which is not Vie. The I and the
no7i- 1 continue to assert their being — the subject as validly as
the object, and the object as validly as the subject. Is either
of them real, and which? Fichte said, the subject. Schelling
said,— both are real, but they have their reality in the identity
of the two. The thinking process reveals to us not merely a
264 THE DOCTRINE OF IDENTITY.
subject or an object, but both as one — the mind thinking, and
the thing thought. We cannot separate them, because we
cannot have the one without the other. The /is then evidently
a subject- object. It is a mind possessing in itself the poten-
tiality of all that is out of itself, and in its own spontaneous
evolution evolving the potential into the actual. Thinking is
thus identical with being, for there can be no thinking without
a thing thought, and this thing thought cannot be separated
from the mind thinking. There can be no knowledge without a
thing known. A true knowledge, therefore, can be only a
knowledge of self as subject and object — in other words, a self-
consciousness. What is thus true of the human J is equally
true of the I of the universe — the absolute or fundamental I.
It too is a mind knowing, identical with the things known, an
absolute reason in which all things exist as potentialities and
come forth as actual. That J, to use Fichte's expression, is an
absolute activity whose movements are represented to us in
time and space. The activity of the j&nite /is the result of its
being acted upon by the /of the universe. The world spirit
is knowing itself as subject and object in every individual, so
that in his internal essence every man is real and actual ; but,
as to his form and personality he is imaginary and unsub-
stantial.
We have just said that Schelling at the point of the reality
of the external world departed from Fichte, yet only to give
reality to the external world from its necessary connection with
the ideal. It may be maintained, and justly, that as yet he is
on Fichte's stand-point, for nature is wholly deduced from the
essence of the /. Schelling's earliest writings do not show a
sudden departure from Fichte, but a gradual development, im-
perceptibly it would seem, to the author himself, from the
doctrine of the / to a philosophy of nature. In the later
writings, the stand-point is frequently changed. Schelling felt
that among real philosophers the harmony was greater than the
difference. In every new form which the expression of his own
philosophy took, he identified it with that of some other philo-
sopher who had gone before him. Having died without giving
to the world the long expected exposition which would show the
agreement of all the forms his doctrines assumed, we have no
alternative but to follow them in their historical development.
This is divided by Schwegler into five periods. In the first,
Schelling agrees with Fichte. In the second, he has advanced
to the recognition of a science of nature as distinct from the
NATURE AND SPIRIT. 265
science of mind. In the third, he agrees with Spinoza. In the
fourth with Plotinus, and last of all with Jacob Bohme, of
whom he boasts that he is not ashamed.
I. Schelling agrees with Fichte. He discourses of the Zand
from it deduces nature. He sees in this nature, processes cor-
responding to those of mind. As feeling, perception, and
knowledge are the result of the antagonism of the two potencies
— the unlimited and the limited — which constitute mind, so is
matter the production of attraction and repulsion. These forces
being its original, it is not something gross and inert, as we
might suppose but of the nature of those forces which though
called material are yet more like something immaterial. Force
is that which we may compare to mind. The conflict which
constitutes mind being precisely that conflict of opposite forces
which constitutes matter, we must look to a higher identity for
the union of the two. The same Absolute is manifested in the
external world as in mind. Nature is visible mind, and mind
is invisible nature. The stand point being the I, the internal
world comes first. It is then followed by the external world as
its copy. The mind produces this copy in its way to self-
consciousness. In the copy the successive mental stages are
visibly marked. Organic life being the highest, in it especially
does mind behold the production of itself. In everything
organic there is something symbolical. Every plant bears
some feature of mind. Each organism is an interpenetra-
tion of form and matter. Like the mind, nature too strives
towards a purpose, and presses from within outwards. All
nature proceeds from a centre progressing onward and outward
to higher stages. The prevailing mode of its activity, the
element so to speak of its existence, is the conflict of opposing
forces. These are one in a higher unity, and taken together,
they lead to the idea of an organizing principle which makes of
the universe a system, in other words, to the idea of a World
Soul. Though nature and mind are but two sides of the same
Absolute, yet the science of each is a distinct science by itself.
Here, Schelling progresses to the second form of his philosophy,
where he distinguis4ies between a philosophy of nature and a
philosophy of mind.
II. The distinction, however, is only provisional, and for the
purposes of philosophy. The development of the fundamental
unity is ever kept in view. We may begin with nature and
trace backwards the progress from mind, or we may begin with
mind and study the procession from it of the external world. The
266 PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE.
one gives us natural pliilosopliy which aims at an explanation
of the ideal by the real ; the other transcendental philosophy
which seeks to explain the real by the ideal.
Nature, which to other men seems dead, and moved only by a
power external to itself, is to the true philosopher a living self-
unfolding energy. It is the absolute unity manifesting itself
on the phenomenal side. It is the movement between the
producing activity and the product. Taken absolutely, it is
infinite activity or productivity but, this being hindered in
expressing itself, gives finite products. These individual
finite products are only phenomenal ; beyond each one of which
nature herself advances. The individual is contrary to nature ;
she desires the absolute, and to express it is her constant
efibrt. All different as these finite products are, nature yet
leaves on all the impress of her unity. We may divide and
subdivide, but only to return again to the original identity.
The powers in nature are distributed in different measures to
various classes of beings, yet the organization of all things
organic is one. The life of a plant is but the smallest degree
of the life which is enjoyed by man. In the inorganic world
we seem to lose the trace of this unity. Yet here we find
gradations and processes, corresponding to the gradations and
energies of organic existence. There must be a third principle
or 7nedium by which organic and inorganic are again united —
some ultimate cause in which they are one, and through which,
as through a common soul of nature, both organic and inorganic
have at once their origin and identity.
On the transcendental side the philosophy of nature is that
of the 7, the beholding subject. Starting from mind, we
must establish the validity and explain the character of mental
cognitions. The common understanding gives a world existing
outside of ourselves. The first problem of transcendental
philosophy is to explain this pre-judgment of the common under-
standing. This constitutes theoretical philosophy, which be-
ginning with the 1 developes the history of self-consciousness
through its different stages of sensations, intuitive abstraction,
and will. It explains the origin of the external world in the
productive intuition, and the existence of time and space in the
outer and inner intuition.
With the act of the will arises the second problem : — How
we can produce an effect upon the objective world according to
representations which arise freely in us. The solution of this
is practical philosophy. Here the /is no longer unconsciously
SCnELLINa AND SPINOZA. 267
beholding but consciously producing. The Absolute is reveal-
ing Himself in the self-determinations of the human spirit. In
the effort to solve these problems, transcendental philosophy
finds itself engaged in the solution of a problem yet higher, that
is, the reconciliation of the subjective and the objective. This
can only be done on the ground that the activity through which
the objective world is produced is originally identical with that
which utters itself in the will. This identity of the conscious
and unconscious in nature is shown by the philosophy of art.
The peculiarity of nature, is that it exhibits itself as nothing
but a blind mechanism and yet it displays design. It repre-
sents an identity of the conscious subjective, and the conscious-
less objective activity. In nature the Z beholds its most pecu-
liar essence, which consists alone in this identity. That con-
tradiction between the conscious and the consciousless, which is
inconsciously reconciled in nature, finds its perfect recon-cilia-
tion in a work of art. There the intelligence finds a perfect
intuition of itself. The unhnown which perfectly harmonizes
the objective, and the conscious activity, is nothing other than
that absolute and unchangeable identity to which every
existence must be referred.
III. In the third period Schelling has advanced from the
idealism of Fichte, to the idealistic realism of Spinoza. The
second period is the history of that progress. Now the stage is
reached and Schelling adopts Spinoza's definition of matter, as
an attribute which expresses in itself an infinite and eternal
Being. He repeats too with increased conviction of its truth,
another of Spinoza's sentiments, 'that the more we know in-
dividual things, the more we know God;' and to those who seek
the science of the Eternal I-hood, he says, ' Come to physical
nature and see it there.' It may satisfy such pretenders to
philosophy as Epicurus and his disciples, to regard matter as
simply atoms ; but it was partly guessed, and partly known by
all the wise men of antiquity, that matter had another side than
the apparent one, and that a duality lay at its root. And
since the question has been raised again in modern times, it has
been concluded that the duality was due to a third principle,
and therefore matter represents a triplicity enclosed in itself,
and identical with itself. The first glance of nature teaches us
what the last teaches us. Matter expresses no other nor closer
bond than that which is in the reason, the eternal unity of the
infinite with the finite. In the things we recognize the pure
essence which cannot be further explained, yet we never see
268 THE ABSOLUTE.
the essence by itself, but always and everywhere in a wonderful
union with that which cannot of itself be, and is explained only
by the being of the essence. This which cannot be an essence
by itself is called the finite or the form. It is not first a some-
thing by the infinite coming to it, nor by its going to the
infinite, but in the identity with the infinite. These always
appear united. The necessity which makes them one, is the
bond or copula, which must be itself the only real and true
infinite.
Schelling repeats this idea in a multitude of forms. The
Absolute is the copula of the finite and infinite, the being of
the ideal and real, the identity of subject and object, the unity
of mind and matter. This absolute is reason — the only stand-
point of philosophy which seeks to know things as they really
are, that is, as they are in the reason. Every thing which is,
is in essence like the reason, and is one with it. Now the
reason is absolutely one, and like itself. Its highest law, there-
fore, which is that of identity, must be the highest law of all
being. Difierence then can be only difi"erence of quantity, and
can exist only in the finite ; for the Absolute Being, perfect
identity or difierence cannot exist there. Nothing is either
simple object or simple subject, but in all things subject and
object are united ; this union being in difterent proportions, so
that sometimes the subject, and sometimes the object, has the
preponderance. The fundamental form of the infinite is A=A,
so the scheme of the finite is A=B (i.e., the union of a subjec-
tive with another objective in a difierent proportion.) But in
reality nothing is finite, because the identity is the only reality.
So far as there is difierence in individual things, the identity
exists in the form of indifference. If we could see together
everything which is, we should find in all the pure identity,
because we should find in all a perfect quantitative equilibrium
of subjectivity and objectivity. In looking at individual objects
we see the preponderance sometimes on the one side, and some-
times on the other ; but on the whole this is compensated. The
absolute identity is the absolute totality ; the universe itself.
There is by itself no individual thing or being. The absolute
identity is essentially the same in every part of the universe.
The universe may be conceived under the figure of a line, in the
centre of which is the A=A, while at the end, on one side, is
A=h {i.e. transcendence of the subjective) and at the end, on the
other side, is a=jB ({.e., a transcendence of the objective) though
this must be conceived, so that a relative identity may exist
THE POTENCIES IN NATURE. 269
even in these extremes. The one side is the real, or nature, the
other side is the ideal. The symbol of the Absolute is the
magnet where one principle constantly manifests itself as two
poles, and still rests in the midst as their identity. Divide the
magnet, every part will be a complete system in itself: two poles
and a point of divergence. Just as every part of the magnet is
the entire magnet in miniature, so also every individual develop-
ment in nature is a miniature universe ; since, however, the pre-
ponderance of the real is the characteristic of nature, the ideal,
though present, is held as it were in the bondage of matter,
spell-bound in the embrace of reality. But in an ever-rising
gradation the ideal effects its disenchantment, the members of
that gradation again embodying the type — real, ideal, identity,
whore it is to be remembered that in each of these three, both
principles are present, so that the powers or potencies in nature
represent only their particular quantitative differences.
The first potency in nature is weight, matter, the most real
principle, which craves a necessary complement from without,
that complement, the ' ideal real,' is light or movement which is
the second potency. The union of both, the identity, life, or
organism constitutes the third. Organism is just as original as
matter. Inorganic nature as such does not exist ; it is actually
organized, and is as it were the universal germ, out of which or-
ganization proceeds. The organization of every globe is but the
inner evolution of the globe itself. The earth by its own evolving
becomes plant and animal. The organic world has not formed
itself out of the inorganic, but has been at least potentially
present in it from the beginning. That matter which is before
us apparently inorganic, is the residuum of organic metamor-
phoses which could not become organic. The human brain is
the highest bloom of the whole organic metamorphoses of the
earth.
The manifestations in the ideal world; corresponding to
matter, light, and life ; are truth, goodness, beauty; or science,
religion and art. God is again regarded as manifested in the
great universe, the macrocosm ; or in man, the little world, or
the microcosm, and in the ideals corresponding to these, which
are history and the state. In nature we see the real progressing
towards identity, by bodying forth with increasing adequacy the
ideal, and conversely we see the ideal advancing towards the
same identity, by shaping itself out more and more into the real.
As the acme in the one case we behold reason organized in
man, and in the other the transcendental imagination embodied
in works of art.
270 TIME AND SPACE.
We need not follow Sclielling into the details of his nature
philosophy. It is enough to mark the principle on which it is
grounded ; the identity of the object with the subject. The
ideal is represented as shadowing itself over into the real. Ideas
are produced, and these again are necessarily productive. They
are related to each other as they are related to the original
unity. The entire result of continued subject-objectiving which
according to one of the first laws of the form of the absolute
goes into the infinite is this — that the entire absolute universe
with all ranks of being is reduced to the absolute unity. In it
nothing is truly individual, and nothing as yet is, which is not
absolutely ideal, entire soul — pure ' nature producing.'^
The ancients said of God, that He was that Being whose
centre is here, His circumference nowhere. *Were we on the
other hand,' says Schelling, ' to define space, we might say that
it is that which is everywhere merely circumference, and no-
where centre, space as such is the mere form of things without
the Bond.' Its unreality then is evident, for it shows nothing
but its want of power, its destitution of being. We cannot
define space, because there is nothing in it to define, nor can we
say how it was created, for how can we speak of the creation of
that which is non-being? The bond as the one in the mul-
tiplicity negatives the multiplicity as self-subsisting, and this at
the same time negatives space in the form of this self-
subsisting multiplicity. Whilst the bond thus negatives
space as the form of the self-subsisting multiplicity it also
posits time — the other form of finitude. Time is the ex-
pression of the One in opposition to the many. Its centre is
everywhere, its circumference no where. Temporal things have,
as it were, bubbled over from the eternal, and been posited in
time. In the being -less-ness of time, the real is the eternal
Copula without which time would not flow over. Every moment
is an undivided eternity. If we did not see eternity in the
moment, then could we see nothing anywhere, and the moment
itself would be unfulfilled. The universe is beyond all time
and space. It is only the imagination which changes the actual
infinity of the all into the empirical of time and space. In the
true infinity of the all the greatest does not differ from the least
and endless duration does not differ from a moment. It has
neither beginning nor end, but both at once, because the all is
neither in time nor in space. The world goes beyond time, not
from eternity — that is, not from endless duration, but in an
eternal way. Everything is thus eternal, for eternity ia
wholly different in kind from duration. Duration is short, but
INTELLECTUAL INTUITION. 271
Eternity is shorter still. Eternity is all in a moment, as
substance is also the all in a point and infinite. Infinite du-
ration, were it conceiveable, could not create eternity, neither
can the smallest duration annihilate it.
IV. In the fourth period, Schelling's philosophy is allied to
Neo-Platonism. He had passed from the Z-hood of Fichte, to
the Ideo-Naturalism of Spinoza; and now he has come to
recognize with Plotinus a ground of absolute knowledge in the
mind itself. We say he has passed from Fichte, and Spinoza,
but the transition was no violent effort. There was no barrier
to be crossed. The In-itsdf of the I freed from all limits and
opposition was itself the Absolute. Spinoza, as well as Schelling
recognized the intuition of the intellect as the ultimate ground
and certainty of knowledge. Reason has not only an idea of
God, but it is itself that idea. In the identity of subject and
object, the knowing and the known, is an imm diate revelation
of God. 'I know,' says Schelling, 'something higher than
science. And if science has only these two ways open before it
to knowledge — viz, analysis or abstraction, and that of synthetic
derivation, then we deny all science of the Absolute. Specula-
tion is everything — that is a beholding of that which is in
God. Science itself has worth only so far as it is speculative
— that is, only so far as it is a contemplation of God as
He is. But the time shall come when the sciences shall more
and more cease, and immediate knowledge take their place.
The mortal eye closes only in the highest science when it is no
longer the man who sees, but the Eternal Beholding which has
now become seeing in him.' But Schelling's agreement with
the Neo-Platonists did not merely consist in adopting their
starting point of intellectual intuition. He had hitherto made
natural philosophy the science of the Divine and had shown the
identity of the Ideal and the Real. But the external world still
presented a difiiculty which he could not ignore. That would
stand forth as something distinct from the Absolute and as
opposed to the Absolute. True, indeed, finite things have no
reality in themselves ; but whence is their unreal existence ?
Whence had this sense world its origin ? Not, certainly, in
any reality imparted to it from the Absolute, but in a complete
falling away and separation from the Absolute. To restore it is
the work of time. History is the record of the progress of
reconciliation. God is manifesting Himself there, and when
that manifestation is complete, so also will be the world's
restoration.
272 SCHELLING AND BoHME.
V. The mystical element, which appeared so decidedly in the
fourth period of Schelling's philosophy, was yet more fully
developed in the fifth and last. He expressly abandons Spinoza
for the company of Jacob Bohme. The Philosopher of Gorlitz,
while maintaining the fundamental union between God and
nature, had yet definitely distinguished between them. Schell-
ing had done the same in the earlier forms of his philosophy,
but the method of Bohme seemed to lead to a more definite
Theism, and to be free from the objections to which Spinozism
was exposed.
This method was to recognize an abyssal Nothing, in which
God and nature had their beginning eternally. Schelling called
it the ' Original Ground,' or rather the * Un-GYOund.' It is
not merely an idea, but a something real and actual. It is not
God Himself considered in His actuality, but only the ground
of His existence. It is nature in God; an essence inseparable
from Him, and yet different. The relation is explained ana-
logically through the power of gravity and light in nature.
The power of gravity goes before the light in its eternal dark
ground of being, which is not itself actual, and which disappears
in night whilst the light goes forth. This ' Original Ground,'
or ' Un-Qvomid ' is the absolute indifi'erence. Now in-
difference is not a product of opposites, nor are they implicitly
contained in it, but it is an essence different from all opposites,
and in which all opposites are broken. It is nothing but their
annihilation, and therefore it has no predicate but that of pre-
dicatelessness. The ' ^72-ground' goes before all existence.
But the precedence is not one of time. There is here no first
nor last. The one is not without the other, so that God is both
that which exists ; and again the Prius of the ground — since
the ground as such could not be, if God did not exist.
This ground of the existence of God is nature in God. It is
also described as the non-intelligent principle in God, not only
as a mere non-intelligent, but because it is the potentiality —
the ground and beginning of the existing God — that is of
God as Intelligence. It is a medium which works indeed
with wisdom, yet, as a blind, in-born intuition, and not a con-
scious wisdom. ' I posit God ' says Schelling, ' as the first and
the last, as Alpha and Omega ; but He is not as Alpha what he
is as Omega.' In the one He is God involved ; f in the other He
is God evolveduX For the evolution of Deity it is necessary that
t Deus implicitus. % -^^"* explicitxts.
PERSONALITY OF GOD. • 273
God have before Him an object, and this object must be Himself.
To reach self-consciousness, the Absolute comes from His
unconscious envelopement, which is His first state. He comes
out of it by a necessary evolution, which is the revelation of
Himself — creation. As yet He is but half-conscious, His
wisdom is but a blind instinct. This is the condition of nature
— this is the God of pure naturalism. He then becomes the
pure and holy Divinity whom we worship — a personal God. He
He is thus the first and the last. As Alpha, He is^^God involved,
as Omega, He is God evolved. True religion reconciles the
worship of both in the worship of the higher Identity, who is at
once Alpha and Omega.
This nature in God is the bond which unites Naturalism and
Theism. This is Schelling's passage from Spinozism to the
recognition of a conscious, personal God. Without this bond
there would be on the one side God without nature ; on the
other, nature without God. It may be asked concerning the
Perfect — the Actual, why is it not so from the beginning ?
The answer is that God is not merely a being, but a life, and
alllife has a destiny, and is subjected to suffering and becoming.
Every life, without distinction, goes forth from the condition of
evolution. Whence as regards its next condition, it is dead and
dark. Even so is it with the life of God. Personality rests
on the union of one independent with one dependent on it, so
that these two entirely penetrate each other and are one. Thus
God, through the union in Him of the ideal principle with the
independent ground, is the highest personality. And since the
living unity of both is Spirit, then is God, as the absolute Bond,
Spirit in an eminent and absolute sense.
We have followed Schwegler's five divisions of Schelling's
Philosophy, but in reality the five may be reduced to two — that
in which Schelling agrees with Spinoza, and that in which he
follows Bohme. He repudiated the epithet ' Pantheistic,' and
strongly expressed his belief in the personality of God. But
whether Spinoza or Bohme was the more Pantheistic, or which
of them most believed in the Divine Personality is ' among the
things which we desire to know.'
* The God of pure idealism,' said Schelling, * as well as the God
of pure realism is necessarily impersonal. That is the God of
Fichte and of Spinoza, but to me God is the living unity of all
forces — the union of the ideal principle with itself in the bosom
of its own independence. This is spirit in the only true sense.'
The latest and most interesting phase of Schelling's Philo*
274 CHRISTIAKITT NOT A NATURE RELIGION.
ftophy is its application to mythology, in which Schelling seeks
to discover the principle of divine revelation. Worship was
first addressed to the elements. Visible objects were wor-
shipped with God. Afterwards, in the Greek religion for
instance, these objects were endowed with spirit, and the In-
finite was finitely represented. Christianity, on the other
hand, went out direct to the Infinite. When its ideas became
objective they were still infinite. They were clothed, not in
permanent, but in phenomenal forms. They were not eternal
beings of nature, but divine manifestations fleeting and tran-
sient which could never be changed into an absolute present.
The Greek religion was Polytheism, for this reason that the
Infinite became finite. In its very nature it was a potential
Polytheism. Christianity is not Polytheism, because it does
not see in the finite the symbol of the Infinite. It does not
muke a synthesis of the absolute with limitations, in which the
form of the absolute remains with the limits of the finite. It
has not, therefore, its origin in nature, but in that which falls into
time. It is in its inmost spirit, and in its highest sense, his-
torical. Every particular moment of time is a manifestation
of a particular side of God, in each of which He is absolute.
What the Greek religion had as an at-oncey the Christian has a
one- after- another.
Nature and history are generally related to each other as
the real and the ideal unity. Even so is the religion of the
Greek world related to the Christian, in which the Divine has
ceased to manifest itself in nature, and is only discernible in
history.
Nature is the sphere of the one -in- it self-being of things, in
which, in virtue of the imaging of the Infinite in the finite
they, as symbols of the ideas, have likewise a life independent
of their signification. God is, as it were, exoteric in nature
— the ideal appears through another than itself. But in his-
tory, the Divine lays aside the veil, and the mystery of the
divine kingdom is manifefct.
With Christianity the whole relation of nature and the ideal
world must be inverted. As nature was the manifest in Heathen-
ism, the ideal world retreated as mystery; but, in Christianity,
nature must retreat as mystery, while the ideal world becomes
the manifest. The old world is the nature side of history —
the ruling idea in it is the infinite in the finite. The old world
could only end, and the new one begin, by the Infinite coming
into the finite — not to deify it, but only to sacrifice it
FINITB AND INFINITB RECONCILED IN CHRIST. 275
to God in its own person, and thereby to make reconciliation.
The first idea, then, of Christianity is necessarily the incarnation
of God. Christ is the summit and end of the old world of
gods. He stands as a phenomenon determined from eternity,
but transient in time. He is the boundary of both worlds. He
returns into the invisible, and promises in His place, not the
coming again into the finite, but the Spirit — tlie ideal principle
which leads back the finite to the Infinite, and, as such, is the
light of the new world.
To represent the unity of the finite and Infinite objectively
and through the symbol, as the Greek religion essayed to do, is
impossible. The all-pervading antinomy of the divine and the
natural, is only removed through the subjective determination
to think both one, in a way that is inconceivable. Such a sub-
jective unity the idea of miracle expresses. On this supposition
the origin of every idea is a miracle. It enters into time, and
yet has no relation to time. Ideas cannot arise in the way of
time. It is God Himself who manifests them, and therefore
the idea of revelation is necessary to Christianity.
A religion, which like poetry Uves in the species, does not re-
quire a historical foundation. Its nature is ever manifest.
When the Divine does not live in abiding forms, but goes out in
fleshly phenomena it wants the means of being held fast and
perpetuated. Outside of the peculiar mysteries of religion, there
is necessarily a mythology on its exoteric side, and which is
grounded on religion, as religion of the other kind is grounded on
mythology.
The reconciliation of the finite fallen from God, through His
own birth into the finite, is the first thought of Christianity; and
the perfecting of its entire view of the universe, and of its his-
tory is in the idea of the Trinity, which, on that account, is neces-
sary to it. The Son of God — the Eternal produced from the
being of the Father is the finite itself, as it is in the eternal in-
tuition of God. He appears as God sufiering, and made subject '
to the destinies of time in His incarnation. He shuts up the
finite world, and opens that of the infinite, which is the kingdom
of the Spirit.
When Schelling, following Bohme, made the imperfect crea-
tion a necessary development of God, he was met by the question
which all philosophers, Pantheistic or otherwise, have had to
answer ; ' Is God ;then the author of evil ? ' ' No,' answered
Schelling, * for evil though it is necessary is nothing real.' It is
the darkness which God, who is light, requires for the full mani-
8 T
276 HEGEL.
festation of Himself. All birth begins in obscurity. It comes
out of darkness. In every existence the light is fighting with
the darkness. Where the darkness predominates, there is evil.
On the immortality of the soul, Schelling differs in nothing
from Spinoza. * The J,' he says, ' and its essence undergoes
neither conditions nor restrictions. Its primitive form is that of
Being, pure and eternal. We cannot say of it, it ivas or it ivill
he, we can only say , it is. It exists absolutely. It is then outside
of time and beyond it. The form of its intellectual intuition is
eternity. Now since it is eternal it has no duration, for duration
only relates to objects, so that eternity properly consists in hav-
ing nothing to do with time.' This is the eternity which belongs
to God, and, therefore, belongs to the human soul, which finds
its true life in God — whose essence is the essence of God, and
as it returns to the service of its life, it loses its individuality,
and knows itself as one with the Absolute and the Eternal.
When Schelling gave to the world his philosophy of revela-
tion he declared that all his former philosophy was only a poem,
a ' mere poem.' The public, it is said, never took it for any-
thing else, even including ' the last development.' ^
Hegel. — There is nothing new in Hegel. After mastering
his fearful verbology we have gained no new ideas ; but he in-
herited the riches of all previous philosophers. The whole world
of speculation lay open before him. He made a system, grand,
compact, logical. He summed up the entire wisdom of the
world. He spoke the last word of philosophy. With him philo-
sophy stands or falls. A disciple and fellow student of Schelling
he had much in common with his master, but he came out from
Schelling, as Schelling came out from Fichte, and Fichte from
Kant. For ' the poetical raphsodies, the dithyrambic inspirations,
the capricious contemplations, and the brilliant disorders' of
Schelling, he substituted an inflexible method by which he sub-
mitted to the yoke of philosophy all the triumphs of science.
But how shall we explain Hegel? When M. Cousin asked
Hegel for a succinct statement of his system, the German smiled
ironically and said 4t was impossible, especially in French:
* Schelling's philosophy, though a ' mere poem,' like all true poetry was
pregnant with truth. Among his disciples in nature philosophy — those who
looked upon all the forms of nature as a picture of the divine life— were Oken
Klein and Blasche. Among his mystical disciples — those who considered the
spirit as produced by nature, and yet capable of rising above it — were Schubert,
Steffens, and Baader. The famous Romantic School also claimed discipleship
from Schelling— Novalis, Solger, Frederic Schlegel, and Schleiermacher.
THE ABSOLUTE IDEA. 277
What cannot be explained in French is surely incapable of ex-
planation. Mr. Stirling* traces the immediate origin of Hegel's
philosophy to Kant. Perhaps he is right. We might trace it
to Hume, which is nearly the same thing. The idealists, Bishop
Berkeley for instance, had denied the existence of matter, that
is, abstract matter. Phenomena, the things apparent to sense —
these are the all of the material. By the same reasoning which
led Berkeley to his conclusion, Hume showed that mind had no
existence as abstracted from our thoughts. Impressions, ideas —
these are the all of the mental. Hegel's position is precisely
Hume's ; we know nothing of matter but as phenomena ; we
know nothing of mind but as a thought, an idea. This then is
the reality, both of mind and matter. Thought is existence.
The rational is the actual, and therefore the Supreme Reality
is absolute Thought, Mind, or Idea. The unfolding of this
thought is the unfolding of the manifold ; for the order of the
actual or phenomenal world has a perfect correspondence with
the order of the ideal or intellectual. Kant had said that * there
are two stocks or stems of human knowledge, which arise per-
haps from a single common root^ as yet unknown to us, namely,
sense and understanding. Through the former of which, objects
are given ; and through the latter, tJiought^ This common root
was Fichte's synthesis, which united the J and the wo7i-/. It
was Schelling's identity, in which the ideal and the real were one.
It corresponded, too, with Spinoza's substance, of which the two
attributes were thought and extension. Hegel made it ilionght
itself, the absolute Idea. Sensation and understanding are vir-
tually one — the former being externally what the latter is
internally.
Hegel objected to the term substance as applied to God. ^ It
has a sound of materialism. Doubtless there may be a spiritual
substance, but the word is borrowed from sense-objects. Spinoza
applies it to that absolute Being in whom mind and matter have
their identity, with the obvious conviction that His nature is not
* The Secret of Hegel, by James Hutchison Stirling. Mr. Stirling says that
Hegel is the only man who understood Kant, and he leaves it to be inferred
that he (Mr. Stirling), is the only man who has understood Hegel. However,
this may be, he has written a very interesting and sensible book on a very
difficult subject. If it has a fault it is that the writer has stopped in the middle
«.f Hegel, and left untouched what to the English reader would be the most in-
teresting part of the Hegelian system. No one, I suppose, will dispute Mr. Stir-
ling's argument that Hegel realized Kant's Categories — transformed Kant's
P>;ychology into an Ontology.
278 LOGIC OR LOGOS.
definable beyond a describing of some of His known attributes.
Hegel, on the other hand, defines God as the Absolute Mind;
He accepts and endorses the Christian definition that God is a
Spirit ; not as Malebranche, Augustine, and others had explained
this passage as declaring what God is not ; but as affirming, and
positively defining what He is, God is not merely being and
substance. He is not merely intelligent and living, but He is
Spirit. 'The spiritual nature/ says Hegel, * is alone the true
and worthy starting-point for the thought of the Absolute.'
Beasts have no religion ; they do not know God, because they
do not transcend the sensuous. It is only for thought that there
is being or substance. Only for thought does the world manifest
Almighty power and exhibit marks of design. The so-called
proofs of the being of God are only descriptions and analyses of
the coming of the spirit, which is a thinker, and which thinks
the sensuous. The elevation of thought over the sensuous ; its
going out beyond the finite to the Infinite, the leap which is
made by the breaking off from the sensuous into the super-sen-
euous ; all, this is thought itself. This transition is only thought.
If this passage were not thought it would not be made.
Starting with absolute thought, Hegel constructs a universal
philosophy. There is nothing new in this conception. Schelling
had discoursed of the absolute science to which all sciences were
subordinate. Others had done the same before him, but HegePa
system has an interest for its completeness, its order, and the
universality of its applications. The study of all things is the
study of mind, and mind is God. We have then : —
I. Logic, or the science of the idea in-and-for-itself.
II. Nature philosophy; or the science of the idea in its
otherness.
III. The philosophy of spirit ; or of the idea which, from its
otherness, returns to itself.
Logic, with Hegel, is not mere reasoning, but the whole
science of reason. It is that which treats of the Logos ; the
thought of the universe in itself, and all its manifestations.
Thought is known to us in its three forms : — subjective, objec-
tive, and the union of these two ; or thesis, antithesis, and
synthesis. Corresponding triads form the ' rhythmus of the
universe.' All things are trinities in unities, from the Supreme
Idea to the humblest phenomenal existence. The first division
of Logic is into
1. The doctrine of Being.
2. The doctrine of essence.
3. The doctrine of the notion or idea.
BEINa THE SAME AS NOTHING. 279
The first definition of the Absolute is Being. It is that in which
thought is the most primitive, abstract, and necessary. Being
simply, is the indefinite immediate. It is pure indefiniteness and
necessary. At this stage, and under this aspect, it is not to be
distinguished from Nothing. Pure Being and pure Nothing are
the same. They are united in a Becoming. Nothing has passed
over into Being, and Being into Nothing, so that, though they
are the same, they are yet absolutely distinguished. Their truth is
the immediate disappearance of the one into the other. This
movement we call a * Becoming.' The abstract being of
Parmenides was really identical with the Nothing of the Bud-
hists, though Parmenides did not see it. He said * Only being
is, and nothing is altogether not.' * The deep-thinking Heraclitus
said Hegel, ' brought forward against that simple and onesided
abstraction, the higher total notion of Becoming, and said —
Being is as little as nothing is, for all flows — that is, all is a Be-
coming. We never pass through the same street ; we never
bathe in the same stream. Neither Being nor Nothii^g is, what is
is only their union, and that is Becoming, for Becoming is Nothing
passing into Being, or Being passing into Nothing; and this truth
is the foundation of all the Oriental wisdom ; that everything has
the germ of its death even in its birth, while death is but the
entrance into new life. ' It does not require much wit,' says
Hegel, * to turn this principle into jest, and to ask if it matters
not whether my house, property, the air, this town, the sun,
right, spirit, yea God, be or be not ? The end of philosophy
indeed is to free men from the multitude of finite objects, and to
make it a matter of no importance, whether they are or are not.
But those who ask this question do not understand the subject.
Our enquiry is not concerning concrete existences, whether their
content is the same as Nothing. Our discourse is entirely of Be-
ing and Nothing in the abstract. If it be said that this iden-
tity of Being and Nothing is inconceivable, it is illustrated by the
idea of Becoming. When we analyse the conception it is found
to contain not only the determination of Being, but also another,
that of Nothing. These two determinations are in this concep-
tion, one, so that becoming is the unity of Being and Nothing.'
The old argument against a Beginning of anything was grounded,
according to Hegel, on the philosophical opinion that Being
is only being, and Nothing is only nothing. On this supposition
it was correct to say ' from nothing, nothing comes.' But thd
later Christian metaphysic rejected this axiom for it involved
280 BECOMING AND TIlERE-BEINa.
the denial of creation from nothing. This was the error of
Parmenides and Spinoza, and the result was ^ Pantheism:
The outcome of the Becoming is There-being — in plain Eng-
lish, individual things. There-being is to be discussed (1) as
such (2) in its other or finitude, and (3) as qualitative infinitude.
There-being in general is the simple oneness of Being and
Nothing ; but, as yet it exists only /or us in our reflexion. A?>
it is something definite, a concrete^ it has qualities, and is
determined to a Something which evokes its Other. This is
considered in itself^ in its qualification and its finitude. Through
the removal of this limit it passes into the Infinite. It is then
considered as the Infinite in general] the Infinite as the negative
of the finite ; and, lastly, as the affirmative Infinite. Being-for-
se/f is the ultimate of the passing over of There-heing, or finitude,
into the Infinite. It is considered (1) as such (2) as the one
and the many ; and (3) as repulsion and attraction. Being, which
refers only to itself, is the One ; but, by its repelling others, it
posits many ones. These are not, however, to be distinguished
as to essence. The one is what the other is. The many are
therefore one, and the one is the many.
Essence is Being, as phenomena. The same developments
which logic treats of in the doctrine of being, it now treats of in
the doctrine of essence, but, in their reflected, not their im-
mediate fonn. Instead of Being and Nothing, we have now the
forms of positive and negative ; and, instead of individual
existence, we now have existence. Phenomenon is the appear-
ance which the essence fills and which is hence no longer
essenceless. There is no phenomenon without essence, and no
essence which may not enter into phenomenon. It is one and
the same content, which at one time is taken as essence, and at
another as phenomenon. When the phenomenon is a complete
and adequate manifestation of the essence, then we have an
actual something as distinct from the essence of which it forms
a part. The individuality of every individual thing is thus
reconciled with the unity of absolute essence. This union of
being and essence takes place through the notion, which, being
rational, is the truly actual.
The notion appears first as subjective, then in its objectivity.
The union of these is the Idea which is the highest definition
of the Absolute. The absolute Idea in its reflecting, discharging,
or overflowing itself into space constitutes nature. This gives
rise to
1>HIL0S0PHY OF NATURE AND SPIRIT. 281
II. The philosophy of nature, or the idea in its Otherness.
This evolution is marked by three epochs, the mechanical, the
physicaly the organic. Nature, as mechanic, constitutes time
and space, matter and movement. As physical, it consists of in-
dividualities, general, particular, total. As organic, it is at one
time geologic, at another vegetable, another animal. Nature is
mind estranged from itself — Bacchus unbridled and unrestrained.
Its products do not correspond to our conceptions. They repre-
sent no ideal sucession, but everywhere obliterate all limits, and
defy every classification. The province of philosophy is to trace
the return of nature to mind. This stage it reaches in the self-
conscious individuality, man. At this stage begins
III. The Philosophy of Spirit, or the doctrine of the Idea in
its return from nature or its otherness. In this process the 1
separates itself from nature and rises above it. The spirit is
first subjective in its transition from general consciousness to
self-consciousness. As subjective it creates anthropology,
phenomenology, psychology. Objectively it appears in right,
morality, politics. As spirit absolute, it gives birth to religion,
esthetics, philosophy. This last, which is the knowledge of
knowledge — the knowledge of the Absolute Being, is the crown
and termination of all the evolutions of the Idea.
We need not go further into the details of Hegel's philo-
sophy. The whole secret of it seems to be that it realizes
thought, Logos, or Logic— concatenates or classifies all sciences
as the expressions of the Logos — divides each into a ternary, and
subdivides each member of the ternary into another. Every-
thing has a beginning, an existence, an end. There is a birth,
a life, a death. We have sowing, growing, seed time ; all is a
three in one, and a one in three.
Hegel appeared first as the disciple and advocate of Schelling.
At this stage he did not seem to difier from Schelling, except
that he applied a more rigorous method, and tried to system-
atize Schelling's raphsodies. This stage is marked by the ^ Phe-
nomenology of Spirit.'^ Hegel's object in this work is to show
how the spirit, both in an individual and in a nation, rises above
the vulgar consciousness, or what we call common sense, to the
height of absolute science. In its progress it passes through
four phases, — self-consciousness, reason, morality, religion.
These phases Hegel calls spiritual 'phenomena, and he endeavours
to prove that they are the result of the mediate labour of
thought, and not as Schelling said, the fruit of an immediate
intuition. This is the ladder which intelligence passes over
282 HEGEL PARTS WITH SCHELLING.
after it has overcome the feeling of individual existence, and
before it arrives at the full possession of universal knowledge —
that is, of that knowledge which shows to the individual intelli-
gence that it is identical with the universal and absolute Spirit
— with the World Soul. Man only knows just as he has
knowledge of this identity. So long as he has not reached this,
he has a soul, but he has not a spirit. So long as he is di-
vided by the opposition of being and thought, he distinguishes
between his / and his knowing. He does not yet know that he
is one with pure knowledge. He does not know that ' The
Spirit which, in developing itself, teaches to know that it is
spirit ; is knowledge itself. Knowledge is its life ; it is the
reality which it creates — which it draws from its own substance.'
Absolute or speculative knowledge does not begin till after this
evolution of spirit. It constitutes the sphere in which the pure
Idea reigns — that is, the whole of the laws which govern all
that which can exist and can be conceived — the whole of the
categories — the conditions which reason fulfils in accomplishing
the end which it has before it — which is, to reach the state
of perfect Reason. The Phenomenology thus ends where the
Logic and the Encyclopedia begin.
Hegel has now fairly parted with Schelling. Starting, where
Spinoza stopped, with the abstract conception of pure Being, the
Hegelian Logic arrives at a concrete idea whose manifestation is
the universe. This Idea whose developments are traced in the
Logic and the Ln cyclopaedia is God Himself, — God, anterior to
the creation of the world, viewed in his abstract universality and
eternity. It belongs to His nature to be unfolded in the oppo-
sites — general and particular, infinite and finite, internal and
external, ideal and real.
Hegel's last writings were devoted to developing particular
parts of his doctrine, such as the Philosophy of Hight, the
Philosophy of History^ and the Philosophy of Philosophy.
This evolution of Spirit is Hegel's Theodicea — the know-
ledge that spirit can only free itself in the element of spirit,
and that what is past and what is daily passing, not only
comes from God, but is the work of God Himself. History
is but the successive revelations of Spirit. Each of these
revelations is an epoch in which there appears a new mani-
festation of Spirit. Every people, representative of an epoch,
expresses a given form — a factor, so to speak, of the unceasing
development of Spirit. These manifestations constitute a part
of the grand drama of the universe. They are united to the
THE IDEA IN HISTORY AND RELIGION. 283
revolutions of nature — to the destinies of the terrestial globe
and the vicissitudes of time and space. History has presented
four great ages, each of them representing a distinct principle,
and yet all the principles are closely allied to each other. The
first is that of the East — the theatre of the idea of the Infinite,
which is there still absolute and undetermined, immovable, and
as it were, self-involved. There the individual has no part to
perform, the theocratic power has united the political and the
religious in a unity as indissoluble and compact as it is over-
powering and oppressive. Among the Greeks we see the idea
of the finite everywhere triumphant. The free and varied ac-
tivity of the most complete of finite beings, man, has signally
disengaged itself from Oriental confusion. It has shaken ofi"
Asiatic apathy, and is producing marvels of sentiment and
independence ; at the same time maintaining its relation to the
Infinite — considering this relation as one of dependence which it
expresses under the power of symbol and myth. At Rome, the
idea of the finite reigns alone. The worship of the Infinite is
'banished as the worship of a mere abstraction. In the German
world, the fourth age of the manifestation of Spirit in History,
on the ruins of the Egoistic empire of Rome, the Divine unity
better understood, and human nature entirely free are met and
reconciled in the bosom of a harmonious identity. From this
alliance there has sprung forth, and will yet spring forth
more and more, truth, liberty, morality — the peculiar perfection
of the modern Spirit.
The philosophy of religion shows similar manifestations, or
developments of spirit. In every religion there is a Divine
presence, a Divine revelation, but it does not follow that be-
cause it is a religion it is therefore good. On the contrary
some religions are bad. If the spirit of a people is sensual, so
will be its gods. Of these gods it may be said ' they that made
them are like unto them.' But all religions seek the reconcilia-
tion of the finite and the Infinite — man and God — and all point
to an absolute religion, in which God will be revealed in His
entireness, and in which this reconciliation will be realized. In
the great religions of the Eastern world man is overpowered by
nature. In the first and lowest forms of them he worships the
objects around him. His God is a fetiscli. To nature in her
more sensuous forms he addresses his prayer. By adorations
and conjurations he struggles to be free from that brute force,
which he worships in a spirit of superstition and fear. In
Hinduism we have a higher form. Nature is Btill powerful.
284 HEGELIAN CHRISTIANITY.
but God is viewed aa present, diffusing Himself over all things.
Between Creator and creature there is no determined and
marked line. The greatest of truths is here divinely shadowed
forth — not reached by thought, but by imagination. It is a
poetical Pantheism, in which God, man, and nature are undis-
tinguished, and hence the most sublime verities are mingled
with the vilest superstitions. In the Persian religion, God or
the principle of good, is more precisely determined as spirit,
but this only in opposition to the principle of evil, which is
matter. In the religion of Ancient Egypt the personality of
God emerges yet more distinctly. It now appears as it is, and
has no need of a principle of opposition for its manifestation.
But though God appears as distinct from nature. He. remains,
as to form, entirely undetermined. Hence the Egyptians wor-
shipped Him, now as a man, and again as an animal. Fetischism
was still blended with the worship of Him who is a Spirit. The
religion of Egypt was the highest form of the religions of
nature.
These were followed by the religions of spiritual individuality.'
In them, spirit is independent of the external world. The first
is Judaism. Here the spiritual speaks itself absolutely free
of the sensuous, and nature is reduced to something merely ex- •
ternal and undivine. This is the true and proper estimate of
nature at this stage ; for only at a more advanced phase can the
Idea attain a reconciliation in this its alien form. The Greek
religion also decidedly consecrated the personality of God.
Hence mind freed itself from the dominion of nature. The gods
are creations of the intellect — arbitrary expressions of the good
and the beautiful. In the Roman religion the nature-side of
spirit dies. The world has reached that stage of life where it
feels nature unsatisfying. It is melancholy, hopeless, despair-
ing, unhappy. From this feeling arises the super-sensuous, the
free spirit of Christianity. The Christian religion is the highest
determination of the spirit in the religious sphere. Here the
spirituality of God is clearly defined. The finite and the In-
finite are seen both in their separation and in their unity. God
and the world are reconciled. The Divine and the human meet
in the Person of Christ. The intellectual content of revealed
religion in Christianity is thus the same as that of speculative
philosophy.
The Roman world in its desperate and abandoned condition
came to an open rupture with reality, and made prominent the
general desire for a satisfaction, such as could only be attained
HEGEL MEANT TO BE ORTHODOX. 285
in the new man — the soul. Rome was the fate that crushed down
the gods and all genial life, in its hard service, while it was the
power which purified the human heart from all speciality. Its
pains were the travail throes of another and higher spirit ; that
which manifested itself in the Christian religion. This higher
spirit involves the reconciliation and emancipation of spirit,
while man obtains the consciousness of spirit in its universality
and infinity. The absolute object, truth, is spirit, and as man
himself is spirit he is mirrored to himself in that object, and
thus in his absolute object has found essential Being and his
o^{;w essential being. But in order that the objectivity of essen-
tial being may be done away with, and spirit be no longer alien
to itself, the naturalness of spirit, that in virtue of which man
is a special empirical existence, must be removed, so that the
alien element may be destroyed, and the reconciliation of the
spirit accomplished. With the Greeks the law for the spirit
was ' Man know thyself.' The Greek spirit was a consciousness
of spirit, but under a limited form, having the element of nature
as an essential ingredient. Spirit may have had the upper-hand,
but the unity of the superior and subordinate was itself still
natural.
The element of subjectivity which was wanting to the Greeks
we find among the Romans, but it was merely formal and
indefinite. Only among the Jewish people do we find the con-
scious wretchedness of the isolated self, and a longing to
transcend that condition of individual nothingness. From this
state of mind arose that higher phase, in which spirit came to
absolute consciousness. From that unrest of infinite sorrow is
developed the unity of God with reality, that is, with subjec-
tivity, which had been separated from Him. The recognition
of the identity of subject and object was introduced into the
world when ihQ fulness of time was come, the consciousness of this
identity, is the recognition of God in His true essence. The ma-
terial of truth is spirit itself, inherent vital movement. The na-
ture of Go'd as pure Spirit is manifested to man in the Christian
religion.
Hegel's great object, like that of his predecessors, was to show
the rationalness of Christianity. He was, or at least he meant
to be, thoroughly orthodox. The mysteries, as Malebranche
and the Catholic Theologians called them, were no mysteries
to Hegel. ' That Eagar and her profane Ishmael ' were not to be
banished, for they were satisfied that Christianity, in all its ful-
ness, as taught in the Holy Scriptures, and interpreted by the
286 THE HEGELIAN TRINITY.
Lutheran Church, was in perfect agreement with reason. The
Hegelian philosophy is the scientific exposition of historical
Christianity. The religion of Christ was the point in the
world's history when the spirit awoke to a clear consciousness
of its absolute essence, and made a decided beginning to return
to itself out of nature, or its other7iess. Hegel's Christology
proves how earnestly he strove to embrace in his philosophy the
whole content of the Christian faith. Not only is the historical
account of the incarnation received in all its fulness, but it is
shown that God became man ; that He appeared in the flesh as
manifesting and accomplishing the unity of God and man. Jesus
Christ conquered death. He was the death of death. He anni-
hilated the finite as something evil and foreign, and so He re-
conciled the world with God.*
The Idea being reason or spirit, it cannot be said that we do
not know God, for this is the starting-point of our knowledge.
The Trinity is in no wise a mystery. It is the first Triad of
Being. God, as the Absolute Spirit, eternally distinguishes
Himself, and in this distinction He is eternally one with Him-
self. The true forms of the Divine manifestations are (1) The
Kingdom of God the Father — that is, the Idea, in and for
itself. God, in His eternity, before and out of the world, in
the element of thought. (2) The Kingdom of the Son in which
God is in the moment of separation — the element of representa-
tion. In this second stand-point is contained all that, which in
the first, was the other of God. Here nature is the other — the
world and the spirit which is manifested there — the nature
spirit. (3) The Kingdom of the Spirit which contains the
consciousness that man is reconciled with God. The difference
and determination of these three lorms is not directly explained
through the idea of the Trinity. Each form contains all the
three forms — the one, the other, and the removing of the
other. There is thus, in all the three forms, a unity as well as
a difference, but in a different way. The Father is the abstract
God — the Universal — the eternal unrestrained total particular-
* There was no question of Hegel's orthodoxy till some of his professed dis-
ciples went into Atheism. But what right they had to call themselves his
disciples is not easily made out. His first and true disciples were orthodox
theologians of the Protestant Church. The attempt of Strauss to connect his
doctrine with Hegel's, was as unwarranted as the claim of the Antinomians
to be followers of S. Paul. The whole spirit and character of Strauss's ' Life
of Jesus,' is contrary to Hegelianism. Hegel was constructive. He acknow-
ledged the good which the Jllumination had done, but its day was past.
He wished to build up again by philosophy to the full extent of what tho
Church believedo
IMMORTALITY. 287
ity. The other is the Son, the infinite particularity— the mani-
festation. The third is the Spirit — the individuality as such.
The difference, then, is only between the Father and the Son,
and, as the Father and the Son are one, the third is also the first.
Hegel as a Christian often speaks with a firm conviction of
the reality of the future life. As a philosopher he explains his
belief. The explanation differs from that of Spinoza, Fichte,
and Schelling only by the form it takes in connection with the
idea. Death, which can only happen to a living organism, stands
between it and the moment of its other life, which is the life of
the Spirit. The reason of the dissolution of a livino- beino- is
to be found in its idea. Organism is the culminating point, and,
as it were, the unity of nature ; but, it is only an external unity,
and does not reach the simple and internal unity of thought and
spirit. Death is but the neces'^ary act — the mediating idea
by which the reality of the individual is raised from nature to
spirit. It is but the natural progress of the Ide;i which, to produce
temperature and color goes from heat and light to their negatives
and so to posit spirit it goes to the negative of life — which is
death. What we call death marks a higher degree of existence.
Beings which do not die are those which are furthest removed
from spirit ; such as mechanic and inorganic nature. ' At death
the external other of nature falls from us, we are born wholly
into spirit, spirit concrete, for it has taken up unto itself nature
and its natural life. Nature is to Hegel much as it is to Kant.
It is but the phenomenon of the noumenon — it is but the action
of what is, and passes, while the latter is and remains. Time
and space, and all questions that concern them, reach only to
the phenomenon ; they have no place in the noumenon. There
is but one life, and we live it iviih, as the Germans say. That life
we live now, though in the veil of the phenomenon. There is
but an eternal now, there are properly no two places, and no two
times in the life of spirit, whose we are, and which we are, in
that it is all. So it is that Hegel is wholly sincere and without
affectation, when he talks of its being in effect indifferent to
him, hoiu and whether he is in the finite life. He is anchored
safe in thought, in the notion, and cares not for what vicis-
situde of the phenomenal may open to him.' ^ In everything
Hegel wishes to be orthodox. He defends the validity of the
three great arguments for the being of God — the ontological,
the cosmological, and the teleological. He dreads nothing
so much as ' Pantheism.^ But which of all the systems we have
♦ Mr. Stirling,
288 THE ONE.
examined is the most Pantheistic, or what Pantheism is, we
do not yet know. Hegel concludes his Encydopcedia with some
verses from a Persian j^oet, which express, as well as poetry can
express, the great idea of his philosophy. As they are no less
applicable to the doctrines of all our preceding chapters we shall
quote them as a fitting conclusion for this. They are, perhaps,
the most accurate expression of what is called Pantheism which
we have yet met.
I looked above and in all spaces saw but One ;
I looked below and in all billows saw but One;
I looked into its heart, it was a sea of worlds ;
A space of ireams all full, and in the dreams but One.
Earth, air and fire and water in Thy fear dissolve ;
Ere they ascend to Thee, they trembling blend in One.
All life in heaven and earth, all pulsing hearts should throb
In prayer, lest they impede the One.
Nought but a sparkle of Thy glory is the sun;
And yet Thy light and mine both centre in the One.
Though at Thy feet the circling heaven is only dust,
Yet is it one, and one my being is with Thine.
The heavens shall dust become, and dust be heaven again,
Yet shall the One remain and one my life with Thine.
Authorities — Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft ; Kritik der praktischen
Vernunft ; the translations of Fichte's works by William Smith in Chapman's
Catholic Series ; Schelling's Werke, and the works of Hegel mentioned in the text,
especially Die Wissenschaft der Logik ; Pkenomenologie der Geistes and the
Encyclopddie der philosophischen Wissenschaften. Mr. Stirling has translated
the two Sections on Quality and Quantity of the Logic in his • Secret of Hegel.'
There is a translation of Hegel's Philosophy of History by Mr. Sibree in
John's Library.
T
CHAPTER XIV.
POETRY.
0 see all nature blooming of God, is one of the most beauti-
ful of our sentiments. To behold the green and variegated
mantle, which in the glowing spring-time is flung over mountain
and valley, as the living garment of God, is the sublimest poetry.
There cannot be a diviner feelmg than that which hears all
birds singing of God, and sees all the powers of nature whether
in terrific grandeur or in placid repose, as the working of the
ever-present Deity. To the pious soul, nature is God's speech ;
every little flower peeping from the ground is a silent memorial ;
the daisies and the cowslips, the blue bells and the hyacinths are
all speaking of God. This is the marriage of religion and
poetry where both as one are penetrated with the presence of the
true and the Divine, Where the poetical spirit is absent,
nature appears but a dead mass, destitute of of divinity, and de-
serted of God. Where the religious spirit is absent or deficient,
God is lost in nature, and the nature spirit alone remains. If
this beholding of God in nature be so common to poetry and re-
ligion it will not be surprising that we find Pantheism in our
poets, even in those of them whose religious sentiments are
the most unlike.
The first passages we have selected are from Goethe. What
was Goethe's creed we scarcely know. He is generally con-
sidered a mere Pagan, though he professed to be a Christian.
Goethe lived when Spinoza was being revived in Germany. He
does not conceal his obligations to the Portugese Jew. In his Anto-
Uographj he speaks of the delight with which in early life he
read Spinoza's Ethica. The dry abstractions of the geometrical
and metajihysical universe-expounder appeared fresh and beauti-
ful to Goethe. He was fascinated with Spinoza's gentle and
humble, yet sublime spirit. And then that lofty doctrine of
unselfishness was so charming that even Goethe was disposed to
say that God should be loved for His own sake, and without
reference to reward. But before Goethe met Spinoza's Ethica
he had embraced a similar theology as we may see from this pas-
290 Goethe's faust.
sage. ' To discuss God, apart from nature, is both difficult and
dangerous. It is as if we separated tlie soul from the bodj.
We know the soul only through the medium of the body, and
God only through nature. Hence the absurdity as it appears
to me of accusing those of absurdity who philosophically have
united God with the world. For everything which exists,
necessarily pertains to the essence of God, because God is the
One Being whose existence includes all things. Nor does the
Holy Scripture contradict this, although we differently interpret
its dogmas, each according to his own views. All antiquity
thought in this way, — an unanimity, which to my mind is of
great significance. To me the judgment of so many men speaks
highly for the rationality of the doctrine of emanation.'
In the prologur^ of Fanst the second person of the Trinity pro-
nounces a benediction. Instead of tho Semetic form, ' May the
Holy Spirit' — the corresponding philosophical speech is used,
* May the Becoming^ which works and lives through all time,
embrace you within the holy bonds of love.' This use of the
Becoming might be related to the Hegelian philosophy, but it is
said that Goethe never understood Hegel, nor had any interest
in Hegel's development. In another place IMephistopheles tells
Faust that he is ' a part of the part which in the beginning was
the AlV — a blasphemous utterance, and as destitute of the
spirit of philosophy as of the spirit of reverence. But the
speaker is Mephistoplieles.
The earth spirit says : —
In Lebensfluthen, im Thate^sturm
Wall' ich auf und ab,
Wehe hill und her !
Geburt und Grab,
Em ewiges Meer,
Ein wechselud Weben,
Ein gluhend Leben,
So schaff ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit.
Und wirke der Gottheit lebendigcs Kleid.
In the floods of life, in the storm of deeds,
I move up and down,
I go to and fro,
Birth and the grave,
An eteiTial sea,
A changing strife,
A glowing life.
Thus I create at the roaring loom of time,
And weave the living garment of the Deity.
Faust says to Margaret, when she doubts if he believes in
God,—
THE ALL-EMBRACER. 291
Wer darf ihn nennen ?
Und wer bekenaen :
Ich glaub' ihn.
Wer empfinden
Und sich unterwinden _
Zu sagen : ich glaub' ihn nicht ?
Der Allumfasser,
Der AUerhalter,
Fasst und erhalt cr nicht
Dich, mich, sich selbst ?
Wolbt sich der Himmel nicht dadroben ?
Liegt die Erde nicht hieriinten fest ?
Und steigen freundlich blickend
Ewige Sterne nicht heraaf ?
Schau' ich nicht Aug'in Auge dir,
Und drangt nicht alles
Nach Haupt und Herzen dir,
Und webt in ewigem Geheimniss
Unsichtbar sichtbar neben dir ?
Erf iill' davon dein Herz, so gross es ist,
Und wenn du ganz in dem Gefiihle selig bist,
Nenn' es dann wie du willst,
Nenn's Gliick ! Herz ! Liebe 1 Gott I
Ich babe keinen Namen
Dafur ! Gefiihl ist alles ;
Name ist Schall und Rauch,
Umnebelnd Himmelsgluth.
Who dares to name Him ?
And who dares to acknowledge ;
I believe Him.
Who can feel,
And presume
To say, I believe not in Him ?
The One who embraces all,
The Preserver of all.
Does He not keep and preserve
Thee, me, Himself ?
Does not the sky arch itself above ?
Does not the earth lie firm below ?
And do not friendly looking stars ascend ?
Do I not behold eye in eye in thee,
And does not everything throng
Towards head and heart in thee,
And hovers in eternal mystery
Invisibly, visible near thee ?
Fill with it thy heart, large as it is,
And when thou art quite blissful in that feeling,
Name it then, as thou likest,
Call it happiness, heart, love, God !
I have no name for it !
Feeling is all.
Name is sound and smoke,
Surrounding with mist the glow of heaven.
In Faust's interpretation of the first verses of S. John's gospel
we have the doctrine of creation
s u
292 CREATION.
Gesclirieben steht : 'Mm Anfang ^yar das Wort ! "
Hier stock' ich schon ! Wer hilft mir weiter fort ?
Ich kann das Wort so hoch unmoglich schatzen,
Ich muss es anders iibersetzen,
Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin.
Geschrieben steht : im Anfang war der Sinn.
Bedenke woiil die erste Zeile,
Dass deine Feder sich nicht iibereile !
1st es der Sinn, der alles wirkt und schafft ?
Es sollte stehn : im Anfang war die Kraft I
Doch, auch indem ich dieses niederschreibe,
Schon warnt mich was, dass ich dabei nicht bleibe.
Mir hilt der Geist ! Auf einmal seh' ich Eatli
Und schreibe getrost : im Anfang war die That !
It is written — " In the beginning was the Word."
Here I am at a stand abeady, who will help me on ?
I cannot possibly value the word so highly,
I must translate it differently,
If I am really inspired by the Spirit.
It is written, — In the beginning was the sense.
Consider well the first line,
That your pen does not out-run you.
Is it the sense that influences and produces everything ?
It should stand : In the beginning was the Power.
Yet even as I am writing this
Something warns me not to keep to it.
The Spirit comps to my aid. At once I see my way
And write confidently. In the beginning was the deed.
In some verses entitled Groti, Gremuth, Welt ; Crody Soicl, World,
Goethe sajs,
Was war' ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse,
Im Kreis das All am Finger laiofen Hesse !
Ihm ziemt's, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,
Natur in Sich, Sich in Natur zu hegen,
So dass was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist,
Nie Seine I&aft, nie Seincn Geist vermisst.
" What were a God who only wrought externally.
And turned the All iu a circle on His finger.
It becomes Him to move the world in its interior ;
To cherish nature in Himself and Himself in nature.
So that whatsoever lives and weaves and is in Him
Never lacks His presence and His spirit.
The following is called Weltseele or World-Soul: —
Vertheilet euch, nach alien Regionen,
Von diesem heil'gen Schmaus !
Begeistert reisst euch durch die niichsten Zonen
In's All und fiillt es aus !
Schon schwebet ihr, in ungemess'nen Fcrnen,
Den sel'gen Gottertraum,
Und leuchtet neu, gesellig, unter Sternen
Im lichtbesaten Raum.
WORLD SOUL. 29^
Dann treibt ihr euch, gewaltige Kometen,
In's Weit' und Weitr' hinan.
Das Labyrinth der Sonnen und Planeten
Durchschneidet cure Balm,
Ihr greifet rascli nach ungeforinten Erden
Und mrket, schopfrisch jung,
Dass sie belebt und stets belebter werden,
Ln abgemess'nen Schwung.
Und kreisend fiihrfc ihr in bewegten Liiften
Den wandelbaren Flor,
Und schreibt dem Stein, in alien scinen Griif ten,
Die festen Fonnen vor.
Nun alles sich mit gottlichem Erkiihnen
Zu iibertreffen strebt ;
Das Wasser will, das unfruchtbare, griinen,
Und jedes Stiiubchen lebt.
Und so verdriingt, mit liebevollem Strciten,
Der feuchten Qualme Nacht ;
Nun gliihen schon des Paradieses Weiten
Jn iiberbunter Pracht.
Wie regt sich bald, ein holdes Licht zu schauen,
Gestaltenreiche Schaar,
Und ihr erstaunt, auf den begiiickten Auen,
Nun als das erste Paar,
Und bald verlisclit ein unbegriinztes Streben
Im sel'gen Wechselblick.
Und so empfangt mit Dank das schonste Lebcn
Vom All in's All zuriick.
Disperse yourselves towards all regions,
From this holy feast
Inspirited take yourselves through the next zones
Into all and fill it out.
Already you hover in unlimited distances
Around the blessed Divine dream,
And shine anew, sociably, under stars,
In the space sown about with light.
Then you rush about, powerful comets.
Out into the wide and distant parts
The labyrinth of suns and planets
Cuts through your path.
You seize quickly after unformed earths.
And work creatingiy young,
That they get more and more animated
In this measm'ed flight.
And whirling you carry in agitated air
The changeable veil,
And prescribe to the stone in all its pits,
The firm forms.
Now everything strives with divine holiness
To surpass itself.
The water wishes the unfruitful to be green,
And eveiy atom lives.
294 SCHILLER.
And tlms the night with affectionate strife is dispossessed
Of the moist vapour,
Now glow ah-eady the wide distances of paradise
In great splendour.
Soon there moves about a light lovely to behold ;
A troop rich in forms,
And you are astonished on the happy meadows,
Now as the first pair.
And soon an unlimited stiiving
Is extinguished in a holy mutual look.
And so receive with thanks the most beautiful life,
From all into all back.
There is less theology in Schiller's poetry than in Goethe's.
The following extract from one of his letters is Platonic, but not
extravagant : — ' The universe is a thought of God's. After this
ideal image in His mind burst into reality and the new-born world
filled up the sketch of its Creator— allow me this human repre-
sentation—it became the vocation of all thinking beings to re- dis-
cover in the existent whole the original outline. To seek in the
machine its regulator; in the phenomena the law of its production; in
composition its several unities ; and thus to trace back the build-
ing to its plan or scheme, is the highest office of contemplation.
Nature has for me but one phenomenon — the thinking principle.
The great composition which we call the world is to me only re-
markable because it is able to indicate to me symbolically the
various properties of the thinking being. Everything within
me and without me is the hieroglyphic of a force, and analogous
to my own. The laws of nature are the cyphers which the
thinking being adopts to make himself intelligible to other
thinking beings. They are but the alphabet by means of which
all spirits converse with the Perfect Spirit, and with each other.
Harmony, order, beauty, give me pleasure, but they put me in
the active state of a possessor, because they reveal to me the
presence of a reasoning and a feeling being, and reveal to me
my own relation tc that being. A new experiment in this
kingdom of truth ; gravitation, the detected circulation of the
blood, the classifications of Linnaeus* are to me originally just
the same as ^an antique dug up at Herculaneum ; both are re-
flections of a mind — new acquaintance with a being like myself.
I converse with infinitude through the organ of nature, through
the history of the world, and I read the soul of the artist in his
Apollo.'
• Schiller seems to have supposed the Linnaean classifications natural.
N0VALI3. 295
We have already mentioned Novalis as a disciple of Schelling,
and a leader of the Romantic school. Like Schelling he had no
defined system. His doctrines were poetical, mystical,ecstatical.
The desire for the Absolute is, he said, universal. The
human spirit is tormented with the desire of returning to its
native land, of being with itself. It seeks this country every-
where. What are all the yearnings of man after a Being beyond
himself — what are all the philosophies of the world but the utter-
ance of this desire for the Infinite ? ' In philosophy,' says
Novalis, * I hold converse with my true .ZJ with that ideal and
better J, which is the sole centre of my being. God converses
with my soul, and thereby nourishes and strengthens it making
it like Himself. Nature, too, converses with me. It is an im-
mense and an eternal converse, where thousands on thousands
of voices relate the history of God. God speaks to nature and
by nature, lives in it and reveals Himself by it just as He lives
and reveals Himself in man. Our /enters into a living and
spiritual relation with an unknown Being. This Being in-
spires us to become spiritual as He is. By His inspiration we
come to know that our J is but the reflex of the true I. This
knowledge is produced in us just in the degree that the false
individuality evanishes. Then the marriage of spirit and
nature is completed for us in the unity of the Being of beings.
God is truly known, when to our restless enquiring / there is
an answer from the world-soul ; the great / of the universe.'
Novalis objected to Fichte's evolving all from the individual
I. We must begin, rather with putting our /to death, and
this suicide is that which will meet true life. Then shall be
opened to it the life of the universe, the life of God, and it shall
live again in the universal and perfect I. ' No mortal hath yet
uncovered my veil,' said the inscription on the temple of the
goddess at Sais. ' If no mortal,' cried one of her disciples,' has
been able to lift the veil of the goddess, then we must become
immortal, for he who does not lift this veil is not a true disciple.
Einem gelang es, — ei- hob den Schleier der Gotten zu Sais
Aber was sah er? — er sah., Wunder dcs Wunders, sich selbat.
One succeeded — he lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais,
But what did he see ? —he saw, wonder of wonders, himself.
Es farbte sich die Wiese griin
Und um die Hecken sah ichs bliihn ;
Tagtaglich sah ich neue Kraiiter
Mild war die Luft, der Himmel hciter :
Ich wusste nicht wie mir geschah
Und wie das wurde, v,-as ich sah.
296 MEN SHALL BE GODS.
Und immer dunkler ward der Wald
Aiich bunter Sanger Aufenthalt,
Es drang mir bald auf alien Wegen
Ihr Klang in siissem Dufit entgegen.
Ich wusste nicht, wie mir geschah
Und wie das wurde, was ich sah.
Es quoll und trieb nun iiberall,
Mit Leben, Farben, Duft und Schall ;
Sie schienen gern sich zuvereinen,
Dass alles mochte lieblich schienen ,
Ich wusste nicht, wie mu' geschah
Und wie das wurde, was ich sah.
So dacht' ich ; ist ein Geist erwacht,
Der alles so lebendig macht,
Und der mit tausend schonen Waaren
Und Bliiten sich will ofEeubaren ?
Ich wusste nicht, wie mir geschah
Und wie das wurde, was ich sah.
Vielleicht beginnt ein neues Reich,
Der lockre Staub wird zum Gestrauch,
Der Baum nimmt thierische Geberden,
Das Thier soil gar zmn Menschen werden.
Ich wusste nicht, wie mir geschah,
Und wie das wurde, was ich sah.
Wie ich so stand und bei mir sann,
Ein miicht'ger Trieb in mir begann ;
Ein freundlich Madchen kam gegangen,
Und nahm mir jeden Sinn gefongen.
Ich wusste nicht, wie mir geschah,
Und wie das wurde, was ich sah.
Uns barg der Wald vor Sonnnenschein.
Das ist der Friihling! fiel mir ein ;
Und kurz, ich sah,dass jetzt auf Erden
Die Menshen soUten Gotter werden
Nun wusst' ich wohl, wie mir geschah
Und wde das wurde, was ich sah.
The meadow was tinted green,
And around the hedges I saw it blossom,
I saw daily new herbs ;
The air was mild, the sky cleai',
I knew not how I felt,
And how that was which I saw.
And the wood became darker and darker,
Also the abode of variegated songsters,
It soon thronged towards me on all sides.
I knew not how I felt,
And how that was which I saw.
It was gushing, and that everywhere.
With life, colors, fragrancy, and sound
They seemed willing to unite together
So that all might appear lovely.
I knew not how I felt,
And how that was which I saw.
WIELAND. 297
So I thought ; is a spirit awake
Who makes everything alive,
And who wishes to manifest himself
With thousand beautiful wares and blossom ?
I knew not how I felt
And how that was which I saw.
Perhaps a new realm is beginning,
The loose dust becomes shrubs,
The tree assumes animal gestures,
The animal is perhaps to become man,
I knew not how I felt,
And how that was which I saw.
As I thus stood and reflected within myself
A mighty impulse began within me,
A friendly maiden was coming by
And took every sense within me captive.
I knew not how I felt.
And how that was which 1 saw.
The wood concealed us from sunshine.
It struck me, this is the spring !
And in short, I saw, that now upon earth,
Men should become Gods.
Now I knew well how I felt.
And, how that was which I saw.
The following lines are from Wieland's Hymn to Grod : —
Gross und erhaben bist da ! Ein unergriindlichea Dunkel
Birgt dich dem Menschen von Staub. Du bist ! Wir gleichen den Triiumen.
Die mit den Liiften des Morgens urn's Haupt des Schlummernden Schweben.
Deine Gegenwart halt die Welten in ihrem Gehorsam,
Winkt dem Kometen aus Schwindlichten Fernen. Du sendest, o Schopfer,
Einen Strahl von dem Licht, in welchem du wohnst, in die Tiefe,
Und er gerinnt zur Sonne, die Leben und bliihende Schonheit.
Ueber junge, zu ilir sich driingende Welten ergiesset.
In der einsamen Ewigkeit standen in geistiger Schonheit
Alle Ideen vor Ihm, nur seinem Angesicht sichtbai',
Keizende Nebenbuhler lun's Leben ; und welchen er winkte,
Siehe, die wurden. Das UrxCrmessne, so weit er umher sah,
Rauschte von neu entsprossenden Sphiiren ; der werdende Cherub
Stammelte, halb geschaffen, ihm seine Hymne entgegen;
Aber sein Stammeln war mehr als einer mcnschlichen Seele
Feurigster Schwung, wenn sie, von deinem Daseyn umschattet,
Gott, dich empfindet, mit alien ganz ausgebreiteten Eliigeln
Und mit alien Gedanken in dein Geheimniss sich senket.
Wahrheit, O Gott, ist dein Leib, das Licht des Aethers dein Schatten,
Durch die Schopfung geworfen. Ich lehnte den Fliigel des Seraphs
Flog an die Granzen des Himmels, den Thron des Konigs zu fin den ;
Aber die Sphiiren sprachen : wir haben ihn niemals gesehen ;
Und die Tiefe : er wohnt nicht in mir. Da lispelt ein Anhauch
Einer atherischen Stimm' in mein horchende Seele ;
Sanft, wie das erste Verlangen der Li*be, wie zartliche Seufzer,
Lispelte sie zu meinen Gedanken : Der, welchen du, Seele,
Suchest, ist allenthalben ! Sein Arm umfasset den Weltbau,
Alle Gedanken der Geister sein Blick. Was sichtbar ist, strahlet
Etwas Gottliches aus ; was sich beweget erzahlt Ihn,
298 RUCKEET.
Von den Gesangen des Ilimmels zum Lied des Sangers im Haine,
Oder zum Siiuseln des Zephyrs, der unter den Lilien weidet.
Ihn zu denken wird stets die hochste Bestrebung des Tiefsinns
Jedes Oljmpiers seyn ; sie werden sich e\vig bestreben.
Great and lofty ai-t Thou ! An unsearchable darkness
Covers Thee from man (that is made) of dust. Thou art ! We are like the
dreams
Which with the breath of the morning more over the head of him that
slumbers.
Thy presence holds the worlds in their obedience
Beckons to the comet from the vanishing distances. Thou sendest, O Creator,
A ray of the light, in which Thou dwellest, into the deep,
And it curdles to a sun, which pours out life and blooming beauty
Over young worlds crowding towards it.
In solitary eternity stood in spiritual beauty
All ideas before Him, manifest only to His sight,
Charming rivals for life, and to whichever He beckoned ;
Lo, they were. The unmeasurable, as He looked wide around
Rustled from the rising spheres ; the becoming cherub
Stammered, half-created, towards Him, his hymn,
But his stammering was more than the ardent quivering
Of a human soul when, shadowed by Thy being,
It receives Thee, 0 God, with all its wings outspread,
And with all (its) thoughts sinks into Thy mystery.
Truth, 0 God, is Thy body, the light of the air Thy shadow
Cast forth through creation. I borrowed the wings of a seraph
(And) flew to the borders of heaven to find the throne of the King,
But the spheres said — wc have ncA^er seen Him,
And the deep — (said) — He dwells not in me. Then whispered a breath,
Of an etherial voice, in my listening soul.
Soft as the first longing of love, like a tender sigh
It whispered to my thought. He whom thy soul
Seeketh is everywhere ! His arm embraces the universe ;
His look all the thoughts of spirits. What is manifest streams out
Something Divine. Whatever moves speaks of Him,
From the songs of heaven to the song of the songster in the meadow,
Or to the whisper of the zephyr, which pastures among the lilies.
To think Him is to be continually the highest striving of the deep thought
Of every inhabitant of heaven ; they will strive for ever.
These are from Riickert's Wisdom of the Brahmans : —
Wohl der Gedanke bringt die ganze Welt hervor,
Der, welchen Gott gedacht, nicht den du denkst, 0 Thor.
Du denkst sie, ohne dass darum entsteht die Welt
Und ohne dass, wenn du sie wegdenkst, wegfallt.
Aus Geist entstand die Welt und gehet auf in Geist.
Gott ist der Grund, aus dem, in den zuriick sie kreist.
Ein siiuchling ist der Geist, Natur ist seine Amme,
Sie nahrt ihn, bis er fiihlt dass er von ihr nicht stamme.
Die dunkle mutter will ihr kind im Schlummer halten;
Von oben bricht ein Strahl durch ihres Hauses Spalten.
Unendlich fiihlest du dich in dir selbst, doch enlich
Nach aussen hin'und bist selber, unverstandlich.
LAMARTINE. 299
Versteh ' ! Unendliches und Endlichs, das dir scheint
So unvereinbar, ist dm-ch Eines doch vereint.
Dn bist ein werdendes, nicht ein geword'nes Ich,
Und alles Werden ist in Widerspruch mit sich.
Woher ich kam, woliiii ich gehe, weiss ich nicht ;
Nur diess, von Gott zu Gott, ist meine Zuversicht.
Thought, indeed, produces the whole world
That, 0 fool, which God has thought, not what thou thinkest.
Thou thinkest it, but not on this account does the world arise ;
And, without your thinking it away, does it pass away.
Out of Spirit the world arose, and into Spirit it goes again .
God is the ground out of which the world comes, and into which, baring
made its cycle, it returns.
The spirit is a suckling, nature is its nurse ;
She nourishes it till it feels that it does not spring from her.
The dark mother wishes to hold her child in slumber.
From above breaks in a ray through the cleaving of her house.
Thou feelest in thyself (that thou art) infinite, yet finite
Externally, and thou art incomprehensible to thyself.
Understand ; infinite and finite, what appears to thee
So irreconcilable, is yet reconciled through One.
Thou art a becoming, not yet an / become
And all becoming is a contradiction in itself.
Whence I come, whither I go, I know not.
Only this is my trust — From God to God.
M. Claudius, in a beautiful summer poem, makes Frau Be-
hecca thus speak to her children : —
Dies Veilchen, dieser Bliithenbaum
Der seine Arm' austrecket,
Sind, Kinder ! ' Seines Kleides Saum,'
Das ihn vor uns bedecket.
This violet, this tree covered with blossoms
Which stretches out its branches.
Are O children ' the hem of his garment
Which covers Him from our sight.
The poetical works of Lamartine are full of the Pantheistic
sentiment. This is from La Priere in 3feditations Poetiques.
Salut, principe et fin de toi-meme et du monde !
Toi qui rends d'un regard I'immensite feconde,
Ame de I'univers, Dieu, pei'e, create ur,
Sous tons ces noms divers je crois en toi. Seigneur I
Et, sans avoir besoin d'entendre ta parole,
Je lis au front des cieux mon glorieux symbole.
L'etendue a mes yeux revele ta grandeur ;
La terre, ta bonte ; les astres, ta splendeur.
Tu t'es produit toi-meme en ton brillant ouvrage !
300
GOD IN NATURE.
L'univers tout entier reflechit ton image,
Et men ame a son tour reflechit l'univers.
Ma pensee, embrassant tes attributs divers,
Partout autour de toi te decouvre et t'adore,
Se contemple soi meme, et t'y decouvre encore ;
Ainsi I'astre du jour eclate dans les cieux,
Se reflechit dans I'onde, et se peint a mes yeux.
C'estpeu de croire en toi, bonte, beaute supreme !
Je te cherche partout, j'aspire a toi, je t'aime !
Mon ame est un rayon de lumiere et d'amour
Qui, du foyer divin detache pour un jour,
s De desirs devorants loin de toi consumee,
Brule de remonter a sa source enflammee,
Je respire, je sens, je pense, j'aime en toi !
Ce monde qui te cache est transparent pour moi ;
C'est toi que je decouvre an fond de la nature,
C'est toi que je benis dans toute creature.
Pour m'approcher de toi, j'ai fui dans ces deserts :
La, quand I'aube, agitant son voile dans les airs,
Entr'ouvre I'horizon qu'un jour naissant colore,
Et s^rae sur les monts les perles de I'aurore,
Pour moi c'est ton regard qui, du divin sejour,
S'entr'ouvre sur le monde et lui repand le join-.'
Salvation, principle and end of Thyself and of the world !
Ihou who with a glance renderest immensity fruitful,
Soul of the universe, God, Father, Creator,
Under all these different names I bcHeve in Thee, Lord
And without having need to hear Thy word, '
I read in the face of the heavens my glorious' symbol
Extension reveals to my eye Thy greatness.
The earth Thy goodness, the stars Thy splendor.
Ihou Thyself art produced in Thy shining work '
All the entire universe reflects Thy image.
And my soul in its turn reflects the universe.
My thought embracing Thy diverse atti-ibutes.
Everywhere around Thee discovers Thee and adores Thee
Contemplates itself, and yet discovers Thee there :
Thus the day star shines in the heavens.
Is reflected in the wave, and is painted on my eye.
It is little to believe in Thee, goodness, supreme beauty ;
1 seek Thee everywhere, I aspu'c to Thee, I love Thee ^
M y soul IS a ray of light and of love,
Which detached from the Divine centre for a day
Consumed with devouring desires far from Thee
Bums to re-ascend to its burning source '
I breathe, I feel, I think, I love in Thee !
That world which conceals Thee is transparent for me
It IS Thou whom I discover at the foundation of nature,
It IS Ihou whom I bless in every creatm-e.
To approach Thee, I have fled into the deserts ;
Ihere, when the day-break, waving its veil in the air,
iiait-opens the horizon which colors a rising day
And sows upon the mountains the pearls of the dawn
i or me it is Thy glance which from the Divine dwelling
Opens upon the world and sheds over it the dav.
CE GRAND TOUT. 301
These lines are from the poem Dieu, addressed to the brave
Abbe Lamennais : —
Comme une goutte d'eau dans 1' Ocean rerseo,
L'infini dans son sein absorb ma pens^e ;
La, reine de Tespace et de I'eternite,
Elle ose mesurer le temps, I'immensite,
Aborder le neant, parcourir I'existence,
Et concevoir de Dieu I'inconcevable essence.
Mais sitot que je veux peindre ce que je sens,
Toute parole expire en efforts impuissants :
Mon ame croit parlor ; ma langue embarass^c
Frappe Fair de vains sons ; ombre de ma pensee.
Dieu fit pour les csprits deux langages divers :
En sons articules I'un vole dans les airs ;
Ce langage borne s'apprend parmi les hommes ;
II suffit aux besoins de I'exil oii nous sommes,
Et, suivant des mortels les destins inconstants,
Change avec les climats ou passe avec les temps.
L' autre, eternel, sublime, universel, immense,
Est le langage inne de toute intelligence ;
Ce n'est point un son mort dans les airs repandu,
C'est un verbe vivant dans le cceur entendu ;
On I'entend, on I'cxplique, on le parle avec I'ame ;
Ce langage senti touche, illumine, enflamme :
De ce que I'ame eprouve inter[Dretes brulants,
II n'a que des soupirs, des ardours, des elans ;
C'est la langue du cicl que parle la priere,
Et que le tendre amour comprend seul sur la ten-e.
Aux pures regions ou j'aime a m'envoler,
L'enthousiasme aussi vient me la reveler ;
Lui seul est mon flambeau dans cette nuit profonde,
Et mieux que la raisou il m'exf)lique le monde.
Viens done ! il est mon guide, et je veux t'en servir
A ses ailes de feu, viens, laisse-toi ravir.
Deja I'ombre du monde a nos regards s'efFace ;
Et, dans I'ordre eternel de la realite,
Nous voila face a face avec la verite I
Cet astre universel, sans declin, sans aurore,
C'est Dieu, c'est ce grand tout, qui soi-meme s'adore I
II est ; tout est en lui: I'immensite, les temps,
De son etre infini sont les purs elements ;
L'espace est son sejour, , I'eternite son age;
Le jour est son regard, le monde est son image :
Tout I'univers subsist a I'ombre de sa main ;
L'etre a flots etemels decoulant de son sein,
Comme un fleuve uourri par cette source Immense,
S'en echappe, etrevient finir ou tout commence.
Sans borne comme lui, ses ouvrages parfaits
Benissent en naissant la main qui les a faits :
II peuple l'infini chaque f ois qu'il respire ;
Pour lui, vouloir c'est faire, exister c'est produire !
Tirant tout de soi seul, rapportant tout a soi,
Sa volonte supreme est sa supreme loi.
Mais cette volonte, sans ombre et sans faiblesse.
Est a la fois puissance, ordre, equity, sagesse.
802 THE GOD OF PLATO, CHRIST'S GOD.
Sur tout ce qui peut etre il I'exerce a son gre ;
Le neant jusqu' a lui s'el^ve par degre :
Intelligence, amour, force, beaute, jeunesse,
Sans s'epuiser jamais, il peut donner sans cesse ;
Et, eomblant le neant de ses dons precieux,
Des demiers rangs de I'etre il peut tirer des dieux 1
Mais ces dieux de sa main, ces fils de sa puissance,
Mesurent d'eux a lui Tetemelle distance,
Tendant par la nature a I'etre qui les fit :
H est leur fin a tons, et lui seul se suffit I
Voila, voila Dieu que tout esprit adore,
Qu' Abraham a servi, que revait Pythagore,
Que Socrate annongait, qu'entrevoyait Platen ;
Ce Dieu que runivers revile a la raison,
Que la justice attend, que I'infortune espSre,
Et que le Christ enfin vint montrer a la terre I
Ce n'est plus la ce Dieu par I'homme fabrique,
Ce Dieu par 1' imposture a I'erreur explique,
Ce Dieu defigure par la main des faux pretres,
Qu' adoraient en tremblant nos credules ancetres :
II est seul, il est un, il est juste, il est bon ;
La terre voit son oeuvre, et le ciel sait son nom 1
As a drop of water in the full ocean.
The Infinite in His bosom absorbs my thought ;
There, queen of space and of eternity,
It dares to measure time, and immensity.
To approach the nothing, to run over existence,
And to conceive the inconceivable essence of God.
But so soon as I wish to picture what I feel,
Every word expires in powerless efforts ;
My soul believes that it speaks ; my embarrassed tongue
Strikes the air with vain sounds ; shadow of my thought.
God made for souls two different languages ;
In articulated sounds the one flies into the air ;
This limited language is learned among men ;
It suffices for the wants of the exile in which we are,
And following the uncertain destinies of mortals,
Changes with the climates, or passes with the times,
The other, eternal, sublime, universal immense,
Is the innate language of all intelligence ;
It is not a dead sound cast into air,
It is a living word in the understanding heart ;
We know it, we explain it, we speak it with the soul ;
This language felt, touches, illumines, inflames :
Burning interpreter of what the soul experiences,
It has only sighs, ardors, raptures,
This is the language of heaven which prayer speaks.
And which on earth tender love alone comprehends.
In the pure regions whither I love to fly.
Enthusiasm also comes to reveal it to me ;
It alone is my torch in this profound night ;
And better than reason it explains to me the world.
Come then ! it is my guide, and I wish to serve thee with it
On the wings of fire, come, suffer thyself to be ravished.
Already the shadow of the world is effaced from our view ;
We escape from time, we leap over space ;
SHELLEY. 303
And in the eternal order of reality,
We are here /ace to face with truth.
This universal star, without setting, without rising,
This is God, this is tlie great All who worships Himself ;
He is, All is in Him : immensity, times
Are the pure elements of His infinite being ;
Space in His dwelling — eternity His age ;
The whole universe subsists by the shadow of His hand,
Being in eternal billows flowing from His bosom
Like a river fed by this immense source
Escapes from Him, and returns to finish where all begins.
Like Himself without bounds, His perfect works
Bless as they are produced, the hand which has made them ;
He peoples the infinite each time that He breathes ;
For Him to will is to do, to exist is to produce !
Drawing everything from Himself, relating all to Himself.
His Supreme Avill is His Supreme law.
But this will without shadow and without weakness,
Is at once power, order, equity, wisdom.
Upon all Avliich can be. He exercises it at His pleasure,
The nothing is by degrees elevated to Himself :
Intelligence, love, power, beauty, youth.
He can give unceasingly, without exhausting Himself.
And filling the nothing with His precious gifts
Erom the last ranks of being He can draw the gods.
But these gods of his hand; these sons of his might,
Measure from them to Him, eternal distance.
Tending by nature to the Being who has made them.
He is the end of all things, and Pie alone suffices Himself.
Behold 1 behold the God whom every spirit adores ;
Whom A braham served, of whom Pythagoras dreamed.
Whom Socrates announced, with whom Plato conversed ;
That God whom the universe reveals to reason,
Whom justice waits for, whom the unfortunate hopes for,
And whom at length Christ came to show to the world ;
This is not that Deity fabricated by man.
That God ill explained by imposture
That God, disfigured by the hands of false priests.
Whom our credulous ancestors trembling worshipped ;
He aione is, He is One, He is just. He is good ;
The earth sees His work, and the heaven knows His name.
Among English poets, the representative Pantheist is Shelley.
He denies explicitly the existence of a personal or creative God.
Infinity %vithin,
Infinity without, belie creation
The interminable spirit it contains
Is nature's only God.
His God is the soul, life, or activity, of nature.
Throughout the varied and eternal world,
Soul is the only element, the block
That for immortal ages has remained
The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight,
Is active living spirit.
304 SHELLEY'S SPIRIT OF NATURE PERSONAL.
Spirit of nature ! here !
In this interminable wilderness
Of worlds, at whose immensity
Even soaring fancy staggers.
Here is thy fitting temple,
Yet not the lightest leaf
That quivers to the passing breeze
Is less instinct with Thee.
Yet not the meanest worm
That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead
Less shares thy eternal breath.
Spirit of nature I thou !
Imperishable as this scene,
Here is thy fitting temple.
Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,
Of which yon earth is one, is wide dif^sed
A spirit of activity and life,
That knows no term, cessation, or decay ;
TI at fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
Extinguished in the dampness of the grave.
Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe
In the dim newness of its being feels
The impulse of sublunary things,
And all is wonder to unpractised sense :
But, active, stedfast, and eternal, still
Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,
Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,
Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease ;
And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly
Eolls round the eternal universe, and shakes
Its undecaying battlement, presides,
Apportioning with irresistible law
The place each spring of its machine shall find.
In the following lines this ' Spirit of Nature ' seems to be
identified with * Necessity' : —
Soul of the Universe ! eternal spring
Of life and death, of happiness and woe.
Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene
That floats before our eyes in wavering light.
Which gleams but on the darkness of om' prison,
Whose chains and massy walls
We feel, but cannot see.
Spirit of Natm-e ! all-sufficing Power,
Necessity ! thou mother of the world !
Unlike the God of human error, thou
Eequirest no prayers or praises.
Shelley denies that he ' deifies the principle of the universe.'
He calls the Divinity a pervading Spirit, co-eternal with the
universe ; and yet unconsciously as it were, he acknowledges
a personal and creative God, possessing ivill, and to whose wis-
dom the world owes its happiness and its harmonies : —
Spirit of Nature ! thou
Life of interminable multitudes j
pope's essay on man. 305
Soul of those mighty spheres
Whose changeless pjith thro' heavens deep silence lies ;
Soul of that smallest being,
The dwelling of whose life
Is one faint April sun-gleam ;— ■
Man, like these passive things.
Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth :
Like theirs, his age of endless peace,
Which time is fast maturing,
Will swiftly, surely come ;
And the unbounded frame, which thou prevftdeBt,
Will be without a flaw
Marring its perfect symmetry.
Nature's soul
That formed the earth so beautiful, and spread
Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord
Strung to unchanging unison, that gave
The happy birds their dwelling in the grove ;
That yielded to the wanderers of the deep
The lovely silence of the unfathomed main,
And filled the meanest worm that crawls the earth,
With spirit, thought, and love.
Pope's Essay on Man is said to have been vrritten to advo-
cate the doctrines of Leibnitz, as they were made known to Pope
by Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury. In what Pope says of
natural laws and the perfection of the universe as a divinely
constituted machine, there is much of Leibnitz, but Leibnitz
would not have sanctioned
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body nature is, and God the soul ;
That, changed through all, and yet in all the same j
Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame ;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives through all life, extends through all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent ;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph, that adores and burns :
To Him no high, no low, no great, no small ;
He fills. He bounds, connects, and equals all.
nor this,
One all-extending, all-preserving Soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least ;
Made beast in aid of man, and man of beast ;
All served, all serving ; nothing stands alone ;
The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.
An immanent, ever-present, all-extending soul in nature was
just what Leibnitz emphatically refused to admit.
806 THOMSON AND COWPER.
Thomson, in his Hymn on the Seasons,\i'&^ beautifully blended
the impersonality and the personality of God,
These, as they change, Almighty Father ! these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring
Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love.
Wide flush the fields ; the softening air is balm ;
Echo the mountains round ; the forest smiles ;
And every sense, and every heart, is joy.
Then comes Thy glory in the Summer months,
With light and heat refulgent. Then Thy sun
Shoots full perfection thro' the swelling year ;
And oft Thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks ;
And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,
By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales.
Thy bounty shines in Autumn unconfin'd.
And spreads a common feast for all that lives.
In Winter awful Thou ! with clouds and storms
Around Thee thrown ! tempest o'er tempest roll.
Majestic darkness ! On the whirlwind's wings,
Biding sublime, Thou bidst the world adore,
And humblest Nature with thy northern blast.
In the conclusion of this hymn, the poet rises to a sublime
expression of ^ all for the best.'
Should fate command me to the farthest verge
Of the gTeen earth, to distant barbarous climes,
llivers unknown to song, where first the sun
Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam
Flames on th' Atlantic isles, 'tis nought to me ;
Since God is ever present, cA^er felt.
In the void waste as in the city fall !
And where He vital breathes there must be joy.
I When e'en at last the solemn hour shall come,
And wing my mystic flight to future worlds,
I cheerful will obey ; there with new powers
Will rising wonders sing. I cannot go
Where Universal Love not smiles around.
Sustaining all yon orbs, and all their suns,
From seeing evil still educing good.
And better thence again, and better still.
In infinite progression. But I lose
Myself in Him, in Light Ineffable :
Come then, expressive Silence ! muse His praise.
Cowper did not mean to be a Pantheist when he "wrote
There lives and works
A soul in all things, and that soul is God.
John Sterling was once in a company where the conversation
turned on poets and which of them were Christian. One gentle-
man was claiming Wordsworth as a Christian poet. ' No ! '
said John Sterling, emphatically, ' Wordsworth is not a Chris-
WORDSWORTH. 307
tian. He is nothing but a Cliurch-of-England Pantheist.'
That Wordsworth should have been Pantheistic is the more re-
markable in that he avowedly belonged to that party in the
church whose tendency is to localize the Deity ; to consecrate
temples and cathedrals for His special dwelling place. Words-
worth's Pantheism is found in some passages in the ' Excursion ^^
but especially in the lines on Tintern Abbey.
I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky and in the mind of man
A motion and a spirit, which impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought
And rolls through all things.
His Platonism, or behef in the pre-existence of souls, is found
in the well-known lines,
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ;
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And Cometh from afar ;
Not in entire forgetfiilness
And not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.
Bailey's Festus has some Pantheistic lines.
The visible world
Is as the Christ of nature, God the Maker
In matter made self-manifest ;
All things are formed of all things, all of God.
A world
Is but perhaps a sense of God's, by which
He may explain His nature and receive
Eit pleasure.
Our religious poetry — that is, our hymn literature, is pecu»
liarly destitute of the Pantheistic sentiment. This verse in
Wesley's Hymns approaches the raptures of the mystic.
Ah ! give me this to know,
With all Thy saints below ;
Swells my soul to compass Thee ;
Gasps in Thee to live and move j
Fill'd with all the Deity,
All immersed and lost in love !
The following is more to our purpose : — ■
In Thee we move -.—all things of Thee
308 WESLEY.
Are full, thou Source and Life of all ;
Thou vast unfathomable Sea !
(Fall prosti-ate. lost in Avonder, fall
Ye sons of men, for God is man !)
All may we lose, so Thee we gain.
This hymn seems to be a translation of Tersteegen's hymn
on the Presence of Grod. The corresponding verse in G©ri»aii
Luft, die Alles f iillet !
Drinn wir immer schweben ;
Aller Dinge Grund und Leben !
Meer ohn' Grund und Ende,
Wunder aller Wunder !
Ich senk' mich in dich hinunter :
Ich in dir,
Du in mir,
Lass mich ganz verschwinden,
Dich nur sehn und finden.
Air, which filleth all
Wherein we always move ;
Ground and life of all things I
Sea without bottom or shore,
Wonder of all wonders,
I sink myself in Thee,
I in Thee,
Thou in me.
Let me vanish
To see and find only Thee.
It was impossible for Wesley to translate this literally to be
sung by English congregations. For * air which filleth all,' he
wrote, ' In Tliee we move.' This had the sanction of S. Paul ;
but, the next words, ' All things of Thee are full/ is the most
familiar sentiment of the Greek and Roman poets.* If the third
line is to be interpreted by the original, the ' God is man '
is not more true and marvellous than the converse, * man is
God ^ ' I in Thee ' and * Thotc in me.^ With the next verse,
Wesley changed the sense and ended the translation. The
German is this —
Du durchdringest Alles ;
Lass dein schonstes Lichte,
Herr, berxiliren mein Gesichte.
Wie die zarten Blumen
Willig sich entfalten
Und der Sonne stille halten ;
Lass mich so.
Still und froh,
Deine Strahlen fassen
Und dich wirken lassen.
* See the verse of Aratus from which S. Paul quoted, page 53, and also the
lines from Virgil, page 55.
BRYANT. 309
Thou penetratest all !
Let Th} beautiful light,
Lord, touch my eyes
As the tendei' flowers
Willingly unfold,
And hold (themselves) still before the sun,
Lea^^e me so.
Still and joyful,
To catch Thy rays
And let Thee work.
Wesley's translation or paraphrase is,
As flowers their oj^'ning leaves display,
And glad drink in the solar fire.
So may we catch Thy every ray,
So may Thy influence us inspire ;
Thou Beam of the eternal Beam,
Thou purging Fire, Thou quick'ning Flame.
Bryant, the American poet, is as little Pantheistic as Cowper,
yet he writes —
Thou art in the soft winds
That run along the summit of these trees
In music, Thou art in the cooler breath
That in the inmost darkness of this place
Comes scarcely felt — the barky trunks, the ground
The moist fresh ground are all instinct with Thee.
That forest flower,
With scented breath and look so like a smile,
Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,
An emanation of the indwelling Life,
A visible token of upholding Love,
That are the soul of this wide universe.*
He describes creation as —
The boundless visible smile of Him,
To the veil of whose brow our lamps grow dim.
The following lines are in Emerson's Wood Notes. The pine
tree sings —
Hearken ! once more ;
I will tell thee mundane lore ;
Older am I than thy numbers wot,
Changes I may but I pass not.
Hitherto all things fast abide.
Safe anchored, in the tempest ride.
Trendrant time returns to hurry
All to yean and all to bury.
All the forms are fugitive.
But the substances survive,
* It appears that John Wesley was the first English Theologiau who intro-
duced German Theology into England.
810 EMERSON.
Ever fresh, the broad creation,
A divine improvisation,
From the heart of God proceeds,
A single will, a million deeds.
Once slept the world, an egg of stone,
And pulse and sound and light were none,
And God said ' Throb ' and there was motion,
And the vast mass became vast ocean.
Outward and onward the eternal Pan,
Who layeth the world's incessant plan,
Halteth never in one shape.
But for ever doth escape.
Like wave or flame into new forms.
Of gem and air and plant and worms,
I that to day am a pine
Yesterday was a bundle of grass.
He is free and libertine
Pouring of His power the wine.
To every age and every race.
Unto every race and age,
He emptieth the beverage
Unto each and all,
Maker and Original
The world is the ring of His spells
And the play of His miracles.
*****
Thou seekest in globe and galaxy
He hides in pure transparency,
Thou askest in fountains and in fires.
He is the essence that inquires ;
He is the axis of the star ;
He is the sparkle of the spar ;
He is the heart of every creature ;
He is the meaning of each feature ;
And His mind is the sky ;
Than all it holds more deep, more high.
CHAPTER XV.
WHAT IS PANTHEISM?
A celebrated Frenchman once said that language was invented
to conceal our thoughts. This may not be true, yet surely
men's thought are very indefinite, or language is a very imperfect
vehicle for expressing them. What careful reader of these
pages has not wished long ere now that writers, especially on ab-
struse subjects, would define all the terms they use. How many
mistakes would this prevent. How much thne and labor would
it save the reader. The word Pantheism seems to be the most
indefinite of all indefinite words. * To sum up a man, and call
him a Pantheist,' says Mr. Stirling in his book on Hegel, ' is to
tell you just nothing at all about him.' What religion from
Indian Brahmanism to English Protestantism? — What philosophy
from Thales to Hegel might not be called Pantheistic ? And
to what religion or to what philosophy will its advocates admit
that the word is rightly applied ? In the first chapter we ex-
eluded entirely the Atheistic side, or that which measures God
by material laws, and allows Him no existence beyond the as-
semblage of individual beings which compose the universe. This
is called material Pantheism^ but it is not Theism in any proper
sense. It is what has always been known as Atheism, and why
should a new element of confusion be introduced into a subject
already sufficiently difficult by the use of new and indefinite
words ? If a distinction is to be made between the Atheist who
believes that all arose from chance, and him who sees in all
nature an eternal order and the working of certain and immu-
table law, let the distinction be made, but let us call them both
Atheists, for this is their proper appellation. We should then
lay aside the words ' material Pantheism.' They mean nothing.
They carry in themselves an express contradiction.
312 SCHLEIERMACHER.
What, then, we have hitherto meant by Pantheism is what is
called spiritual Pantheism. We have seen it exhibited in all its
forms, — the poetical, the mystical, the religious, and the meta-
physical. We may eliminate the extravagances of some of the
mystics and the intoxication of the Sufis ; and, this being done,
we shall try to find the value and meaning of what remains.
But, before proceeding to this enquiry, it will help us, first
briefly to review one or two popular forms of theology said to be
partly, if not altogether Pantheistic.
The first is that of Schleiermacher. Neander did not over-
estimate Schleiermacher when he announced his death in these
words, — * We have now lost a man from whom will be dated
henceforth a new era in the history of theology.' Schleiermacher
gave the death blow to the old Rationalism of Germany, and he
sowed the seeds of the new. He regenerated theology, and gave
it a fresh start ; and, what is more, he revived religion. His
Moravian piety was combined with the speculations of Schelling;
and the glowing Discourses, by which he recalled the educated
classes of Germany to a sense of religion, took for their stand-
point the philosophy of Spinoza. * Piety ' he says, * was the
maternal bosom in the sacred shade of which my youth was
passed, and which prepared me for the yet unknown scenes of
the world. In piety my spirit breathed before I found my
peculiar station in science and the affairs of life. It aided me
when I began to examine into the faith of my fathers, and to
purify my thoughts and feelings against all alloy. It remained
with me when the G-od and immortality of my childhood dis-
appeared from my doubting sight. It guided me in active life.
It enabled me to keep my character duly balanced between my
faults and my virtues. Through its means I have experienced
friendship and love.' The ' God and immortality ' of his child-
hood disappeared. The personal God whom the Moravians
worshipped was exchanged for the impersonal Divinity of
philosophy. Nor did this theology seem impious. No, it was
the very essence of true religion. The pious soul has an im-
mediate knowledge of the Infinite in the finite — of the eternal
in the temporal. True piety is to seek this Infinite ; to find it
in all that lives and moves, in all which is born and changes, in
all acting and suffering. It is a life in the all. It is to possess
all in God and God in all. Nature becomes a continuous
action of the Divinity in the world, and in the sons of men.
Religion, as the highest science, tries to comprehend the unity
of the Divine works — the unchangeable harmony which vivifies
THE TRINITY NOT TRIPERSONAL. 313
the world. In one of his famous * Discourses on Religion,
Schleiennacher exclaims, with enthusiastic adoration, — ' Offer
up reverently with me a lock of hair to the manes of the holy,
repudiated Spinoza ! The high World-Spirit penetrated him ;
the Infinite was his beginning and his end; the universe his
only and eternal love. In holy innocence and lowliness he
mirrored himself in the eternal world, and saw himself as its
most loveworthy image. He was full of religion and of the
Holy Spirit ; and, therefore, he stands alone and unreachable,
master in his art above the profane multitude, without disciples
and without citizenship.' ' When philosophers ' he says again
* shall be religious, and shall seek God like Spinoza; when poets
shall be pious and love Christ like Novalis, then will the great
resurrection be celebrated in the two worlds.'
The old Rationalists placed religion in reason ; the orthodox
in authority. Schleiermacher, following Jacobi, placed it in
devout feeling, or an immediate self-consciousness. Out of
this he drew his entire theology, and on this ground he tried to
harmonize theology with philosophy. To describe the forms of
this religious feeling; the conditions of the pious conscious-
ness, is the work of theology. Now the first and most obvious
of these is a consciousness of ourselves as completely dependent,
which is the same thing as a consciousness of ourselves in our
relation to God. This feeling is the Divine element in our con-
stitution. By it we are capable of fellowship with God. It
proclaims the presence of God in us, and shows how we may be
one with the Infinite.
Jesus Christ differed from other men in this, that in Him
there was a perfect consciousness of God. He was actually what
all men are potentially. He was the realization of our
humanity ; a perfect indwelling of the Supreme constituted His
inner-self. The Divine activity, which is in humanity, was
chiefly manifested in Him. The Divine word was not an eternal
person. It only became a person in Jesus of Nazareth. As the
Divinity is potentially a person in every man, we may at once
conclude that the Trinity in the orthodox, or Western view of it,
was rejected by Schleiermacher. There are not three persons, but
three activities — .The Father in creation ; the Son in redemp-
tion ; the Holy Spirit in sanctifying the Church. It is only in
an improper sense that we apply the word person to Deity at all.
He is the Infinite Being, the universal substance. We may
think of God as a person if we can separate from His personality
everything incompatible with His infinity. Indeed it is a neces-
314 INDIVIDUAL IMMORTALITY.
Bity of our minds that we do form a personal conception of God,
yet God is more than a person. The question, he says 'be-
tween us and the material Pantheist is not whether there is
a personal, but whether there is a living God. The attribute,
' living,' Schleiermacher regarded as not placing the same limita-
tions to the Divine Being as that of personal. It might be
objected that the humblest beings, even unorganized matter, pos-
sess life, and that Schleiermacher, instead of raising onr views
of the attributes of God, as He intended to do, in reality lowers
them. But this would be an irrelevant objection for Schleier-
macher is showing the materialist that God is a living Being,
and not a blind necessity. What kind of a Being He is, and in
what respect He is personal, is to be discussed not with the ma-
terialist, but with the believer in God.
Schleiermacher's doctrine of creation was the same as Spinoza's.
There is a creation, but it is eternal. God as the absolute
causality could never have been without a something caused.
He dwells immanently in His universe, and creates unceasingly.
The fall was a necessary step in human progress. It was inevitable
from the existence of the sense element in man. Redemp-
tion is, therefore, a necessary result, or a continuation of crea-
tion. Its object is to raise men to a perfect communion with
God, such as was possessed by Jesus Christ. Revelation is the
revealing of God in us. Inspiration is the growth of the Christ
within. In the life of Christians, the resurrection of Jesus is
completed and His earthly life perpetuated. We are progress-
ing God-wards. In Christ humanity becomes divine, and this
by an eternal predestination, not of some men only, but of all
men, to eternal life.
Schleiermacher said that the immortality as well as the
God of his childhood disappeared. ' The last enemy to be
destroyed is not death, but the hope of immortality ' said
Strauss ; but Schleiermacher had said before that, — ' Life to
come, as actually conceived, is the last enemy which speculative
criticism has yet to encounter, and, if possible, to overcome.'
He means individual immortality — an immortality apart from
God ; a continuance of our present unreal existence. The true
eternal life is that of which the religious soul has a foretaste in
communion with God. Thus to lose ourselves — thus to abandon
ourselves to the universe, to our eternal interest ; to know that
we are a part of the All, and one with the Eternal is not to be
lost without a return, not to be annihilated without reward. On
the contrary, it is to create the true personality, to know that
schleiermacher's disciples. 315
we are not a mere transient mode of the Infinite, but its en-
during expression, its chosen and wished for instrument. These
doctrines were called Pantheistic. Schleiermacher maintained
that they were not. His critics say that these were merely the
doctrines of his youth, and they trace in his writings modifica-
tions, gradual changes, approximations to a belief in the per-
sonality of God. Schleiermacher, in his old age, declared that
he retracted nothing. He added explanatory notes to his
' Discourses on Religion ; ' but these were only to confirm what
he had taught, and to show the harmony of his earlier and his
later teaching. His critics found in this but ^ the weakness,
common to great men, of believing that he had never erred.'
The great German theologians whose works we now eagerly
translate into our language — Tholuck, Neander, Dorner, Liicke,
Ullmann, and Julius Miiller — were the disciples of Schleier-
macher. To such as these we may suppose were addressed the
inspiring words with which he concludes the fourth of the ' Dis-
courses on Religion,' — *' Friends and admirers of all that is
beautiful and good, you are a school of priests. Each of you
handles as the object of art and study the representation of the
spiritual life — to you the highest life. The Godhead out of
His infinite riches has given to each of you a peculiar destiny.
With the universal sense for all which belongs to the sacred
domain of religion, each of you, as becomes an artist, unites
the desire to be perfect in one particular branch. A noble
emulation reigns among you, and the desire to produce some-
thing which is worthy of such an assembly, sufiers each of you
to drink in with truth and eagerness all which belongs to his
appointed domain. It will be preserved in a pure heart. It
will be arranged with a collected mind. It will be adorned and
perfected by a heavenly art. And thus in all ways and from
all sources shall sound forth a hymn of gratitude and praise to
the Infinite, whilst each of you with a joyful heart, ofiers the
ripest fruit of his thought and contemplation — of his reflection
and feeling. . You are a band of friends. Each knows that he
is a part and a work of the universe, and that in him its divine
work and life are manifested. He beholds himself as a worthy
object of attention for others. What he observes in himself, of
his relation to the universe — what there is formed in him of the
elements of humanity, all will be disclosed with holy fear, but
with ready openness that every one may go in and see it. Why
should you conceal anything from each other ? All that is
human is sacred, for all is divine. You are a band of brothers
316 FKEDERICK ROBERTSON.
— or have you a better expression for the entire mingling of
your nature, not as regards being and action, but as regards
feeling and understanding ? The more each of you comes near
to the universal, the more does he communicate himself to others,
the more perfectly do you become one. Each has a conscious-
ness for himself. Each at the same time has a consciousness of
the other. You are no longer merely men ; you are also hu-
manity, and in going forth from yourselves ; triumphing over
yourselves, you are on the road to true immortality and
eternity." "^
The next theology we have to examine is that of Frederick
Robertson. Shall we call him a disciple of Schleiermacher ? His
favorite doctrine of the heart preceding the intellect in all
matters of eternal truth reminds us of Schleiermacher' s devout
feeling, and immediate consciousness of God. In Robertson's
sermoDs there is the same mystical piety combined with a manly
freedom of enquiry, the same faith in the inherent power of
truth, and the same placing of the personal or internal posses-
sion of ' eternal life,' above all external authority. And, more
than this, Robertson's view of the relation of God to the world is
as near to Schleiermacher' s as it can well be. ' The world,' he says,
* is but manifested Deity, — God shown to eye and ear and sense ;
this strange phenomenon of a world, what is it? All we know
of it ; all we know of matter is that it is an assemblage of powers
which produce in us certain sensations, but what these powers
are in themselves we know not. The sensations of color, weight,
form we have, but what it is which gives us these sensations —
in the language of the schools, what is the substance which sup-
ports the accidents and qualities of being, we cannot tell.
Speculative philosophy replies it is but ourselves becoming con-
scious of ourselves Positive philosophy replies, what the
being of the world is we cannot tell, we only know what it seems
to us. Phenomena, appearances, beyond these we cannot reach.
Being itself is, and ever must be, unknowable. Religion replies
* Schleiermacher's strength lay in the religious life within him ; his weakness
was his faith in criticism. It was necessary that the spirit of enquiry should be
permitted free course, but the grounds on which he rejected some portions of
the Scriptures were arbitrary without measure. His classification of the
Dialogues of Plato from internal evidence has not been sanctioned by any
eminent Platonist. That kind of criticism which gave but a faint probability
as to Plato, ought surely never to have been applied to the vrritings of the
New Testament. It must be very questionable criticism which rejects from
internal evidence the first two chapters of S. Luke's gospel, and retains the
rest as genuine.
THEODORE PAKKER. 317
that something is God, the world is but manifested Deity. That
•which is beneath the surface of all appearances, the cause of all
manifestations is God. The sounds and sights of this lovely
world are but the drapery of the robe in which the Invisible has
clothed Himself.'
* Go out at this Spring season ; see the mighty preparations for
life that nature is making ; feel the swelling sense of gratefulness,
and the persuasive, expanding consciousness of love for all being,
and then say whether this whoje form which we call nature is not
the great sacrament of God — the revelation of His existence,
and the channel of His communication with the spirit? "
< What is the world itself but the form J of Deity ; whereby the
manifoldness of His mind and beauty manifests itself, and
wherein and whereby it clothes itself. It is idle to say that
spirit can exist apart from form. We do not know that it can.
Perhaps even the Eternal Himself is more closely bound to His
works than our philosophical systems have conceived. Perhaps
matter is but a mode of thought.' f
' The Spirit of God lies touching, as it were, the soul of man —
ever around and near. On the outside of earth man stands with
the boundless heaven above him — nothing between him and
space, space around him and above him — the confines of the sky
touching him. So is the spirit of man to the spirit of the Ever-
near. They mingle — in every man this is true. God has placed
men here to feel after Him, if haply they might find Him, al-
beit Re is not far from any one of them. Our souls float in
the immeasurable ocean of Spirit. God lies around us ; at any
moment we might be conscious of the contact.'"^
The influence of Schleiermacher may be distinctly traced in
the writings of Theodore Parker. His chief work, ' A Discourse
*Even the practical Charles Kingsley, who is thoroughly sound on the
personality of God, has these words in one of his Village Sermons,— * He
lets His breath, His spirit, go forth, and out of that dead dust grow plants
and herbs afresh for man and beast, and He renews the face of the earth.
For, says the wise man, * all things are God's garment '—outward and visible
signs of His unseen and unapproachable glory ; and when they are worn out
Ho changes them — says the Psalmist — as a garment, and they shall be changed.
The old order changes, giving place to the new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways.
But He is the same. He is there all the time. All things are His work
In all things we may see Him, if our souls have eyes. All things, be they
what they may, which live and grow on this earth, or happen on laud or in
the sky, will tell us a tale of God.
JEven Dr. Rowland Williams, in quoting this passage, puts a gwery after it.
t These three lines are found ahnost verbatim in Channing's Essay on Milton.
318 THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT.
ef Matters 'pertaining to Religion ' was obviously suggested by
Schleiermacher's ' Discourses.' It proceeds on the same doctrine
of religious consciousness — a sense of dependence ; or, as it is
otherwise called, the religious element in man. This sense of
dependence does not disclose the character, still less the nature
and essence of the Object on which it depends. It is but the
capacity of perception — the eye which sees or the ear which
hears. But it implies the Absolute. The reason spontaneously
gives us by intuition an Idea of that on which we depend.
This is natural religion or revelation, for all actual religion is
revealed m us. There is but one religion, and it is always the
same. Theologies are men's thoughts about religion, and these
have never ending differences ; no two men having precisely the
same theology. There have been then forms of religion of all
kinds, from the worship of the Fetich to the worship of Him who
is a Spirit. God has spoken most clearly in Jesus of Nazareth ;
but He is speaking in all men — speaking most audibly in those
who listen most attentively, who honestly use the faculties which
God has given them, and are in earnest to know and do .His
will. Jesus of Nazareth taught the absolute religion, but the
churches have never realized what He taught. The Christianity
of the churches is, therefore, transient and like all other passing
forms will have its day, and give place to something higher and
better. Parker discourses of the workings of the religious senti-
ment, and after the fashion of the Germans traces its develop-
ment from the lowest to the highest forms. Of the one-and-all
doctrine, he says, " Pantheism has, perhaps, never been altogether
a stranger to the world. It makes all things God, and God all
things. This view seems at first congenial to a poetic and re-
ligious mind. If the world be regarded as a collection of powers,
— the awful force of the storm, of the thunder, the earthquake ;
the huge magnificence of the ocean, in its slumber or its wrath ;
the sublimity of the ever-during hills ; the rocks, which resist
all but the unseen hand of Time ; these might lead to the
thought that matter is God. If men looked at the order, fitness,
beauty, love, everywhere apparent in Nature, the impression is
confirmed. The All of things appears so beautiful to the com-
prehensive eye, that we almost think it is its own Cause and
Creator. The animals find their support and their pleasure ;
the painted leopard and the snowy swan, each living by its own
law ; the bird of passage that pursues, from zone to zone, its
unmarked path ; the summer warbler which sings out its melo-
dious existence in the woodbine ; the flowers that come unask'^'^
PARKER ON PANTHEISM. 319
charming the youthful year ; the golden fruit maturing in its
wilderness of green ; the dew and the rainbow ; the frost flake
and the mountain snow ; the glories that wait upon the morning,
or sing the sun to his ambrosial rest; the pomp of the sun at
noon, amid the clouds of a June day ; the awful majesty of
night, when all the stars with a serene step come out, and tread
their round, and seem to watch in blest tranquillity about the
slumbering world ; the moon waning and waxing, walking in
beauty through the night : — daily the water is rough with the
winds ; they come or abide at no man's bidding, and roll the
yellow corn, or wake religious music at nightfall in the pines —
these things are all so fair, so wondrous, so wrapt in mystery;
it is no marvel that men say, this is divine ; yes, the All is God ;
He is the light of the morning, the beauty of the noon, and
the strength of the sun. The little grass grows by His Pre-
sence. He preserveth the cedars. The stars are serene because
He is in them. I'he lilies are redolent of God. He is the One ;
the All. God is the mind of man. The Soul of all ; more
moving than motion ; more stable than rest ; fairer than beauty,
and stronger than strength. The power of nature is God ; the
universe, broad, and deep, and high, a handful of dust, which God
enchants. He is the mysterious magic that possesses the world.
Yes, He is the All; the Reality of all phenomena.
But an old writer thus pleasantly rebukes this conclusion :
' Surely, ,vain are all men by nature, who are ignorant of God,
and could not out of the good things that are seen, know Him
that is . . . but deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air,
or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lio-hts
of heaven, to be the gods which govern the world. With whose
beauty if they being delighted took them to be gods ; let them
know how much better the Lord of them is, for the first Author
of beauty hath created them." '
After this description of material Pantheism, which does not
admit God as the Absolute and Infinite, but only as the sum
total of material things, and which he regards as having been the
doctrine of Strato of Lampsacus, of Democritus, and perhaps of
Hippocrates, Parker goes on to describe what he calls Spiritnal
Pantheism. This denies the existence of matter, and resolves
all into spirit, which is God. The material is but phenomenal
and the reality of it is God. This, Parker describes, as the
Pantheism of Spinoza, of the Mediaeval Mystics, of S. John and
of S. Dionysius the Areopagite. We may add that it is the
T>a,r.tlTPi«na nf T>>AOf1orft Parker, at least it is difficult to distinguish
320 GOD IMMANENT IN YET TRANSCENDING THE WORLD.
if from what he says soon after, about the relation of nature to
God : — " If Infinite, He must be present everywhere in general,
and not limited to any particular spot, as an old writer so
beautifully says : — * Even heaven and the heaven of heavens
cannot contain Him.' Heathen writers are full of such expres-
sions. God, then, is universally present in the world of matter.
He is the substantiality of matter The circle of His Being in
space has an infinite radius. We cannot say, Lo here, or Lo
there — for He is everywhere. He fills all nature with His over-
flowing currents ; without Him it were not. His Presence gives
it existence ; His Will its law and force ; His Wisdom its order ;
His Goodness its beauty.
It follows unavoidably, from the idea of God, that He is pre-
sent everywhere in space; not transiently present, now and then,
but immanently present, always ; His centre here ; His circum-
ference nowhere ; just as present in the eye of an emmet as in
the Jewish ho' of holies, or the sun itself. We may call
common what God has cleansed with His Presence; but there is
no corner of sp ce so small, no atom of matter so despised and
little, but God, '-he Infinite, is there.
Now, to push the inquiry nearer the point. The nature or
substance of God, as represented by our idea of Him, is divisible
or not divisible. If infinite He must be indivisible, a part of
God cannot be in this point of space, and another in that ; His
Power in the sun, His Wisdom in the moon, and His Justice in
the earth. He must be wholly, vitally, essentially present, as
much in one point as in another point, or all points; as
essentially present in each point at any one moment of time as
at any other or all moments of time. He is there not idly pre-
sent but actively, as much now as at creation. Divine Omnipo-
tence can neither slumber nor sleep. Was God but transiently
active in matter at creation, His action now passed away ? From
the idea of Him it follows that He is immanent in the world,
however much He also transcends the world. ' Our Father
worketh hitherto,' and for this reason nature works, and so has
done since its creation. There is no spot the foot of hoary time
has trod on, but it is instinct with God's activity. He is the
ground of nature ; what is permanent in the passing ; what is
real in the apparent. All nature then is but an exhibition of
God to the senses; the veil of smoke on which His shadow falls ;
the dew-drop in which the heaven of His magnificence is poorly
imaged. The sun is but a sparkle of His splendor. Endless
THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF NATURE. 321
and without beginning flows forth the stream of Divine influence
that encircles and possesses the all of things. From God it
comes, to God it goes. The material world is j^erpetual growth ;
a continual transfiguration, renewal that never ceases. Is this
without God ? Is it not because God, who is ever the same,
flows into it without end ? It is the fulness of God that flows
into the crystal of the rock, the juices of the plant, the life of
the emmet and the elephant. He penetrates and pervades the
world. All things are full of Him, who surrounds the sun, the
stars, the universe itself; ' goes through all lands, the expanse
of oceans, and the profound heaven.'
* * * « iij » «
Since these things are so, nature is not only strong and beauti-
ful, but has likewise a religious aspect. This fact was noticed
in the very earliest times ; appears in the rudest worship, which
is an adoration of God in nature. It will move r an's heart to
the latest day, and exert an influence on souls th^c are deepest
and most holy. Who that looks on the ocean, in ts anger or its
play ; who that walks at twilight under a mo. ntain's brow,
listens to the sighing of the pines, touched by the indolent wind
of summer, and hears the light tinkle of the brook, murmuring
its quiet tune, — who is there but feels the deep religion of the
scene ? In the heart of a city we are called away from God.
The dust of man's foot and the sooty print of his fingers are oa
all we see. The very earth is unnatural, and the heaven scarce
seen. In a crowd of busy men which set through its streets, or
flow together of a holiday ; in the dust and jar, the bustle and
strife of business, there is little to remind us of God. Men must
build a cathedral for that. But everywhere in nature we are
carried straightway back to Him. The fern, green and growing
amid the frost, each little grass and lichen, is a silent memento.
The first bird of spring, and the last rose of summer ; the gran-
deur or the dulness of evening or morning ; the rain, the dew,
the sunshine ; the stars that come out to watch over the farmer's
rising corn ; the birds that nestle contentedly, brooding over their
young, quietly tending the little strugglers with their beak, — all
these have a religious significance to a thinking soul. Every
violet blooms of God, each lily is fragrant with the presence of
Deity. The awful scenes of storms, and lightning and thunder,
seem but the sterner sounds of the great concert, wherewith God
speaks to man. Is this an accident ? Ay, earth is full of such
' accidents.' When the seer rests from religious thought, or
when the world's temptations make his soul tremble, and though
822 EMERSON.
the spirit be willing, the flesh is weak ; when the perishable body
weighs down the mind, musing on many things ; when he wishes
to draw near to God, he goes, not to the city — there conscious
men obstruct Him with their works — but to the meadow,
spangled all over with flowers, and sung to by every bird ; to
the mountain ; * visited all night by troops of stars ; ' to the
ocean, the undying type of shifting phenomena and unchanging
law ; to the forest, stretching out motherly arms, with its mighty
growth and awful shade, and there, in the obedience these things
pay, in their order, strength, beauty, he is encountered front to
front with the awful presence of Almighty power. A voice cries
to him from the thicket, ' God will provide.' The bushes burn
with Deity. Angels minister to Him. There is no mortal
pang, but it is allayed by God's fair voice as it whispers, in
nature, still and small, it may be, but moving on the face of the
deep, and bringing light out of darkness."
From this immanency of God in the universe, Parker argues
for the in-dwelling of God in man — the natural, perpetual, and
universal inspiration of the human race. He supposes that the
spiritual Pantheists, especially the German philosophers, did not
allow God any existence beyond the sum total of finite spirit ;
and thus, God, with them, was variable and progressive, growing
in wisdom as the ages roll. From this view of the Deity, he
differed widely, as God must infinitely transcend both the worlds
of matter and of spirit. The progress is not in God, the
manifestor, but in nature, which is the manifestation of Him.
We have already quoted from Emerson's poetry. His prose
writings abound with sentiments similar to those in his verses.
Emerson is usually classed with Theodore Parker as representa-
tives of a far gone school of Unitarianism, but this like all such
classifications is open to many exceptions. A similarity of sen-
timents is indeed found, but the diff'erences are manifest. For
some to whom Parker is reverent, Emerson seems to border on
blasphemy.
The Egyptian Hermes said, ^ Let us call God by all names,
or rather let us call Him by no name, for no man can express
Him.' The latter is more reverent, and Parker hc;s followed it,
but Emerson delights to give God names, which according to the
wise rule of Des Cartes should be rejected as expressing
impefection in the Divine •• ature. But Emerson does not
forget the wisdom of Hermes. If he calls God by any name, it
is with the distinct remembrance that no name can express Him.
He says that Empedocles spoke a great truth of thought when
OVERSOUL. 323
he declared that he was God, but it was a lie before it reached
the ear, for every expression of the Infinite must be blasphemous
to the finite. To determine is to deny. Yet Emerson calls
God the ' Oversoul,' within which every man's particular being
is contained, and by which it has its unity with all other beings.
God is the Impersonal — the Common Nature — which appears in
each of us, and which is yet higher than ourselves. We, as
individuals, live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles,
but within, in the universal- soul, the ivise silence, the universal
heauty, to which every part or particle is equally related — the
Eternal One. And the deep power in which we all exist — this
beatitude, which is all accessible to us, is not only perfect and
self-sufficient, but it is at once the act of seeing, and the thing
seen, the subject and the object in one. Time, space, and
nature vanish before the revelation of the soul. The simplest
person, who in integrity worships God receives God, yet for ever
and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new, and
unsearchable. Man, the imperfect, adores his own perfect. He
is receptive of the great soul, whereby he overlooks the sun and
the stars, and feels them to be accidents and effects, which to-
day are, and to-morrow change and pass. Man is nothing. As
a transparent eyeball he sees all the currents of universal being
circulate through him. He is a part or particle of God. Hu-
manity is afagade of Deity. Let man but live according to the
laws of his being, and he becomes Divine. So far as man is just
and pure and good — he is God. The immortality of God, the
safety of God, the majesty of God have entered into his soul.
There is but one mind everywhere — in each wavelet of the pool,
in each ray of the star, in each heart. Whatever opposes that
mind is baffled. When man becomes unjust or impure, he comes
into collision with his own nature. Of his own will he subjects
himself to the opposition of that mind, which, with rapid energy,
is righting all wrongs.
* Jesus Christ,' says Emerson, * belonged to the true race of
prophets. He saw with open eye the majesty of the soul.
Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he
lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he
estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to humanity.
He saw that God incarnates Himself in man, and goes forth
evermore anew to take possession of the world. He felt respect
for Moses and the prophets, but no unfit tenderness at post«
poning their initial revelation to the hour, and man that now
is — to the eternal revelation in the human heart. Thus was He
a true man,' t 3
324 M. EEIs^AN.
A theology, corresponding to Theodore Parker's, is at the
foundation of the celebrated ' Life of Jesus,' by M. Renan.
Describing the theology of Jesus and its relation to other
religions, the author says, " Deism and Pantheism have become
the two poles of theology. The paltry discussions of scholastic-
ism, the dryness of spirit of Des Cartes, the deep-rooted irreligion
of the eighteenth century, by lessening God, and by limiting
Him, in a manner, by the exclusion of everything which is not
His very self, have stifled in the breast of modern rationalism
all fertile ideas of the Divinity. If God, in fact, is a personal
being outside of us, he who believes himself to have peculiar re-
lations with God is a ' visionary,' and as the physical and
physiological sciences have shown us that all supernatural visions
are illusions, the logical Deist finds it impossible to understand
the great beliefs of the past. Pantheism, on the other hand, in
suppressing the Divine personality, is as far as it can be from
the living God of the ancient religions. \Yere the men who
have best comprehended God — Sakya-Muni, Plato, S. Paul, S.
Francis d'Assissi, and S. Augustine (at some periods of his
fluctuating life) — Deists or Pantheists ? Such a question has no
meaning. The physical and metaphysical proofs of the exist-
ence of God were quite indifi'erent to them. They felt the
Divine within themselves. We must place Jesus in the first
rank of this great family of the true sons of God. Jesus had
no visions ; God did not speak to Him as to one outside of Him-
self ; God was in Him ; He felt himself with God, and He drew
from His heart all He said of his Pather, He lived in the bosom
of God by constant communication with Him ; he saw Him not,
but he understood Him, without need of the thunder and the
burning bush of Moses, of the revealing tempest of Job, of the
oracle of the old Greek sages, of the familiar genius of Socrates,
or of the angel Gabriel of Mahomet. The imagination and the
hallucination of a S. Theresa, for example, are useless here.
The intoxication of the Sufi proclaiming himself identical with
God is also quite another thing. Jesus never once gave utter-
ance to the sacrilegious idea that he was God. He believed
Himself to be in direct communion with God ; He believed Him-
self to be the Son of God. The highest consciousness of God
which has existed in the bosom of humanity was that of
Jesus."
What M. Renan means by ^ Pantheism,' is evidently material-
ism, or the denial of a living God. It is not that of the ancient
religions nor of the old philosophers. But the doctrine which
RENAN ON PANTHEISM. 825
he attributes to Jesus, and Jesus' view of His relation to God,
are not widely different from what -was taught by Spinoza and
Schleiermacher. In another chapter Renan says " The idea
which Jesus had of man was not that low idea which a cold Deism
has introduced. In His poetic conception of nature, one breath
alone penetrates the universe ; the breath of man is that of
God ; God dwells in man, and lives by man, the same as man
dwells in God, and lives by God. The transcendent idealism of
Jesus never permitted Him to have very clear notions of His
own personality. He is His Father, His Father is He ; He
lives in His disicples ; He is everywhere with them ; His dis-
ciples are one, as He and His Father are one. The idea to Him
is everything ; the body which makes the distinction of persons
is nothing.' In another place Renan seems to adopt Schleier-
macher's view of immortality, which indeed is only a part of the
same theology. *'The phrase, ' Kingdom of God,' he says ' ex-
presses also very happily, the want which the soul experiences of
a supplementary destiny, of a compensation for the present life.
Those who do not accept the definition of man as a compound of
two substances and who regard the Deistical dogma of the immor-
tality of the soul as in contradiction with physiology, love to fall
back upon the hope of a final reparation, which under an un-
known form shall satisfy the wants of the heart of man. Who
knows if the highest term of progress after millions of ages may
not evoke the absolute consciousness of the universe, and in this
consciousness the awakening of all that have lived ? A sleep of
a million of years is not longer than the sleep of an hour. S.
Paul, on this hypothesis, was x'ight in saying. In ictu ocnli I It
is certain that moral and virtuous humanity will have its reward,
that one day the ideas of the poor but honest man will judge
the world, and that on that day the ideal figure of Jesus will be
the confusion of the frivolous who have not believed in virtue,
and of the selfish who have not been able to attain to it. Ihe
favorite phrase of Jesus continues, therefore, full of an eternal
beauty. A kind of exalted divination seems to have maintained
it in a vague sublimity, embracing at the same time various
orders of truths.''*
* M. Kenan's ' Vie de Jesus,' with all its beauty — and it has some noble
passages — can only be regarded as a calamity in the Christian world. The
author started on the right princple, and the only principle on which a true
' Life of Jesus ' can be written — that of bringing out His perfect humanity.
The Church has always believed that Jesus was ' very man ' ; but the fear that
His humanity, too plainly acknowledged, would lead to a denial of the other
truth, that He is ' very God, has tended to merge His humanity in His divinity.
82S THE ABBE MaRET ON PANTHEISM.
The question, * What is Pantheism ? ' becomes more difficult
to answer the more we study books written expressly to refute
it. The Abbe Maret published a work some years ago in the
interests of the Catholic Church, in which he shows that all re-
ligions, ancient and modern, with all philosophies of religion
are Pantheistic, if not actually, yet certainly in their tendencies,
excepting the Catholic religion and philosophies sanctioned by
the Church, such, for instance, as the speculations of Augustine,
Des Cartes, and Malebranche. Not, he says, that reason
necessarily leads to Pantheism, but this is the inevitable result
of rationalism, or the denial of a Divine revelation.
By a Divine revelation^ M. Maret means an infallible church.
Without this we are left to individual reason, and as all men
have not the same development of reason, the same means of
knowing what is truth, nor the same judgment concerning it,
there cannot be for mao, on the principles of reason, absolute
truth and absolute error. ' Catholicism,' he says, ' starts with
absolute truth. Pantheism teaches that humanity will only ar-
rive at truth after a long history of progression.' We may object
to the inference that there is no absolute truth, because it is not
absolutely apprehended. As Protestants we might say that
Catholics no more than we have absolutely apprehended truth.
But M. Maret's argument is that the Church has ; and he
proves it by reason, demonstrates it, ' gives a rigorous proof of
his fundamental proposition.' ' To arrive at truth,' he says,
* we must have an idea of it.' Every method of the investiga-
tion of truth supposes the idea of that which it investigates.
Now as there are but two ideas of truth, there can be but two
methods of investigation, that of Catholicism and that of Pan-
theism. Truth is that which is ; truth and being are identical.
Unitarianism has preserved a part of the truth which Trinitarianism had par-
tially lost, but which it was under no necessity of losing. A life of Jesus from
the human side, as the child of humble parents growing in wisdom and stature,
and in favor with God and man, awaking to a consciousness of His destiny,
doing His work in the world as a man inspired by God ; and showing where the
human met the divine is the life we should have had from Renan had he been
consistent with himself. In the view of God's relation to the world set forth by
Eenan, there is no antecedent impossibility in miracles. That impossibility only
exists in the system of a cold Deism, such as the author condemns. But Renan
changes his ground as often as he has the opportunity of saying something clever.
This * Teacher of the absolute religion,' this great ' Revealer of God,' this ' first of
the sons of God,' this ' Noble Initiateur'' is after all but an enthusiast; one whose
reason seemed disturbed, and if He was not Himself an impostor. He was yet
weak enough to allow His friends to contrive impostures for Him ! The
author of Ecce Homo has taken up the subject from the same side as Renan,
if he is consistent, he will reach a different conclusion.
PANTHEISM OR CATHOLICISM, NO ALTERNATIVE 327.
We conceive being under the two great categories of the Abso-
lute and the relative, the Infinite and the fiiiite. The Infinite
gives us an image of itself, or an idea of the one absolute neces-
sary and immutable truth. The finite, by its opposition to the
Infinite, appears to us, in some way, as a negation of being ; a
true non-being. It only subsists by a real participation in the
Infinite by the living relations which unite it to God. These
relations, these laws which harmonize and unite all beings to-
gether, and the world with Grod, give us the idea of a mediating
truth between the Infinite and the finite ; the Creator and the
creature, God and the world. Now this mediating truth comes
from God ; yea, it is God, and so must be like Him, absolute,
eternal, and immutable.
This idea of truth leads to Catholicism, where we have a
living and infallible authority — a society which is the depository
of truth, and of the divine word. It is difficult to see the
force of M. Maret's argument from the vagueness of his defi-
nition of Pantheism. It is that belief which makes ' truth pro-
gressive and variable,' and he enumerates among Pantheists the
orthodox Guizot, the Eclectic Cousin, and the Saint-Simonian
Pierre Leroux, with all the German and French philosophers
who are not Catholics. It does not appear that all or any of
these men make truth in itself progressive and variable. It is
so only as regards man's relation to it. Man is a seeker after
truth, and as M. Maret admits, all men, even Catholics, are
* perfectible and progressive.' Even that incomprehensible
thing the Catholic Church, according to some of the greatest
Catholic theologians has truth only as it is developed from age
to age ; new doctrines being continually added to the sum total
of the Catholic faith.
The theory of an infallible church is without doubt a happy
invention. It puts an end to all doubts, and if it permits en-
quiry, it fixes its exact bounds. An infallible church is the de-
sired haven of every anxious and troubled mind. Had we been
the makers of revelation, that is, had it been ours to determine
in what way God should reveal Himself to man we should have
caused the words of truth to be written in the heavens, so that
all men might read them, or we should have made angels the
ambassadors, so that all men might see and hear what the im-
mediate messengers of heaven had to say, but if both of these
were denied, the next mode of revelation would certainly be
through an infallible church. But what if this, too, were de-
nied ? Is truth, then, impossible ? Is it, therefore, mutable
328 M. COUSIN, A PANTHEIST.
and uncertain ? Whatever be the ans^ver to this question we
must not invent ways for God. We cannot determine before-
hand how He should reveal Himself ; we must then enquire how
He has revealed Himself. The infallible church has never de-
termined what Pantheism is. It has applied the word to certain
doctrines, and to certain philosophies with the same indefinite-
ness that we find among Protestants. It has forbidden the
works of Erigena, and suffered to pass uncensured the writings
of the Areopagite. It has not condemned the speculations of
Des Cartes and Malebranche, the legitimate outcome of which
was the doctrine of Spinoza. It declares itself opposed to Pan-
theism, but it has neither eliminated nor explained the
Pantheistic element in the Fathers, whose works it holds for
orthodox, nor of the schoolmen who were its great doctors in its
mediaeval glory.
M. Maret's work was specially addressed to the rationalists
of France. Among whom were the Eclectic philosophers, M.
Cousin and his followers, some of them, by the way, Catholic
laymen who had distinguished themselves as refuters of Panthe-
ism. Maret found the heresy in Cousin's analysis of the mind,
which he, in some sense, identified with the Divine mind, fill-
ing up with the idea of causation the chasm between the Infinite
and the finite. The Infinite,' says M. Cousin, * is the absolute
cause which necessarily creates, and necessarily develops itself.
We cannot conceive unity without multiplicity. Unity taken by
itself; unity indivisible ; unity remaining in the depths of its
absolute existence, never developing itself into variety, is for it-
self as if it luere not. It is necessary that unity and variety
co-exist so that from their existence results reality ; and unity
admits multiplicity, because the absolute is cause.' The life in
God, Cousin describes as the movement which goes from unity
to multiplicity, making up in the Divine intelligence — the In-
finite, the finite, and the relation between them. From this idea
of the Divine causation we learn what it is for God to create. It
corresponds to the effects we can produce by the exercise of our
faculties. God is an absolute and necessary cause, He creates
with Himself, He passes into His work, remaining entire in
Himself. The w^orld then is created out of the Divine substance,
and created necessarily. Its existence is as necessary as that
of God Himself, since it is only the development of His life — the
unfolding of His unity. In human reason, Cousin says, we
have found three ideas which it did not create, but which rule
and govern it. From these ideas to God, the passage is not
cousin's disciples, pantheists. 829
diflficult, for these ideas are Cfod Himself. ' Again,' He says,
* The God of consciousness is not an abstract God — a solitary
being, banished by creation, on a throne of a silent eternity
an absolute existence, which resembles the annihilation of ex-
istence. He is a God at once true and real, at once substance
and cause, always substance and always cause, being substance
only inasmuch as He is cause, and cause only inasmuch as He
is substance, that is to say, being absolute cause, one and many,
eternity and time, space and number, essence and life, individu-
ality and totahty ; principle, end, and middle, at the summit of
being, and at its lowest degree — Infinite and finite together, a
triple Infinite, that is to say, at once God, nature, and humanity.
If God is not All, He is nothing. If He is absolutely indivisible
in Himself, He is inaccessible, and by consequence He is abso-
lutely incomprehensible, and His incomprehensibility is for us
His destruction. Incomprehensible as a formula, and in the
school, God is revealed in the world which manifests Him, and for
the soul which possesses Him and feels Him.' In accordance
with this view of the relation between God and the world, M.
Cousin propounds doctrines of psychology, of religion, and a
philosophy of the progressive development of humanity.
Thought is a Divine inspiration, a true revelation in the soul.
There is a solemn moment in which, without being sought, we
are found — when without any concourse of our will ; without
any mingling of reflection, we enter into possession of life, and
the three elements which constitute it ; the idea of the Infinite
the finite, and their relation. This fiat lux of thought is a true
manifestation of God in us. There are privileged men in whom
the faculty of inspiration has been raised to its highest power.
These men become for other men masters and revealers. Hence
the origin of prophecies, priesthoods, worships.
Cousin's disciples, Jouffroy and Damiron, Michelet and Ler-
minier, applied their master's principles to the elucidation of
the formation of dogmas ; to philosophies of history and religion •
and the last mentioned, Lerminier, to the philosophy of right!
The human mind Lerminier calls ' a perpetual and necessary
revelation of God.' Its progress is infinite and indefinite. In
it God appears on earth, constituting law and order. God
Himself is the essence of law ; and the development of this
essence is the progress of society. Maret finds the Pantheist
heresy in every idea of development^as being antogonistic to his
definition of revelation. Even M. Guizot becomes a Pantheist
in affirming that truth is not absolutely realized in human
inititutions, either political or religious.
S30 THE SAINT-SIMONIANS, PANTHEISTS.
After the Eclectics, Maret discovers the same doctrine among
the Socialists of France, the followers of Saint-Simon and Charles
Fourrier — hut especially in the school of Pierre Leroux and
the new Encyclopaedists, which was developed from Saint-
Simonism. Maret undertakes to refute them all, and to defend
and exhibit the doctrines of the Catholic Church. He has
declared the certainty of revelation as man's only guide ; but he
does not sacrifice reason. He is more a philosopher than his
theory would have led us to expect. ' When the spirit of man '
he says, ' in the silence of meditation, rises to the conception of
eternal, necessary, and immutable ideas. When it perceives
truth ; when it sees God Himself ; if it re-enters into itself after
having enjoyed this magnificent light ; if it question itself, what
will it think of its own natm-e ? Being of a day, changeable
and changing shadow of being, it will acknowledge, without
doubt, that it has not been able to draw from itself the great
idea of truth. Man will acknowledge with gratitude that this
idea has visited his soul, that it fell upon it like a ray of the
sun on the organ of sight. He will acknowledge that the great
light has been given him, that it is revealed to him.' Indepen-
dent of the Church then there is a revelation. We might go on
to ask if this revelation is fallible or infallible, if it has any cor-
respondence to the revelation in the Church. * We here take
the word revelation ' says M. Maret, * in its largest sense. We
believe that ideas and speech are revealed to man. That is the
revelation of which S. John speaks, which enlightens every man
that Cometh into the world, and which is the true source of reason.
That primitive and natural revelation, which every good
psychology establishes, is in perfect harmony with the teaching
which represents to us religion as born of a revelation, preserving
itself and developing itself by revelation. There is revelation in
the natural order as well as in the supernatural. There are
natural truths as well as supernatural truths, which both come
from God.' It was, of course, necessary that the unity between
the natural and supernatural suggested by the word revelation,
should be abandoned, for the class of things naturally revealed
might be difierently understood by diiferent minds. They led to
Pantheism. The revelation in the Church was therefore added
as the ' revelation positive and supernatural.' But even this
revelation runs back into the other, for Maret has to go to the
dim light of Judaism and the dimmer light of the Patriarchal
age which possessed only the truths of natural religion, to find
that Church which he reckons necessary for the preservation of
AMAND SAINTES' ALTERNATITE. 331
the supernatural revelation. But he has maintained that there
is such a thing as a revelation in the human mind. To this
extent he was a philosopher ; and, as such, had to accept the
same conclusions that he objected against the Eclectics and
Saint-Simonians. If there is a natural revelation, it is pro-
gressive ; yea, and the supernatural revelation, is it not pro-
gressive too ? His theory is to start with an infallible Church,
but in reality he begins with reason, and so must every man
who does reason. The new Encyclopaedists had good ground
for retorting on the refuter of Pantheism that he had the leaven
of it in himself, and though his * ecclesiastical superiors gave
encouragement to his feeble efforts for the defence of the faith,'
his brother priest, the Abbe Peltier who, it must be admitted,
was not wanting in discernment, found in Maret's definition of
God the very essence of Pantheism.*
Amand Saintes, representing the Protestant side of Chris-
tianity, says the alternative is not Pantheism or Catholicism,
but Pantheism or the gospel. This is scarcely a step towards
the solution of the question, for the gospel spoken of in this way
is as indefinite as Pantheism. We know what the gospel is as a
message of good news from God to man. We know that it is a
manifestation of God's infinite compassion — a revealing of
Him as ' our Father in heaven,' but the theology of the gospel
— the gospel as opposed to Pantheism ; what is it ? We have
seen that the great teachers of the gospel from S. Paul, and the
Alexandrian Fathers, to say nothing of S. John, down through
the great doctors of the middle ages, even to the Abbe Maret,
have been considered more or less Pantheistic. The dogmatic
teaching of the gospel is to every man what it is to his reason.
The moment we have refused obedience to the authority of a
Church, we are cast on our own responsibility. This is the fun-
damental principle of Protestantism. It is useless to ignore it.
Even when we give allegiance to a Church, it is only so far as
that Church represents the collective wisdom of its members.
The Catholic Church is a convenient refuge : for whatever a
man's metaphysics may be ; however much his philosophy may
come in collision with the Church's dogmas, he can effect the
reconciliation as Malebranche did, and indeed as every thinking
♦ The Abbe Peltier, like a good ortliodox priest as he is, says that Chris-
tians should be content with the knowledge of God given them in the Church
Catechism. He told M. Maret that his definition of God was borrowed from
Hegel and Cousin ; and he denounced Malebranche as a priest who substituted
philosophy for the doctrines of the Chxirch.
332 M. SAISSET ON PANTHEISM.
Catholic does, bj agreeing to submit to the decisions of the
Church. It is the boast of Protestantism that reason is an
essential element in all matters of religious belief.
M. Saisset representing the interests of religious philosophy
tried to show that Pantheism was not the necessary result of the
exercise of reason in religion. He criticized Des Cartes, Male-
branche, and Spinoza, with their disciples in France and
Germany. He found the poison of Pantheism secretly lurking
in the theology of Sir Isaac Newton and Samuel Clarke. The
famous passage with which Newton concludes his Prin-
cipia we have always regarded as an expression of the purest
Theism ; but M. Saisset sees in it the germs of a very dangerous
theology. * God ' says Newton ' is neither eternity nor infinity,
but eternal and infinite. He is neither duration nor space, but
He endures always, and is present everywhere and constitutes
both duration and space.' M. Saisset interprets this as teaching
that God is substance, and that infinite duration and extension
are only modes of His being. * It is true ' he says, ' that Newton
saw the danger of the theory, and tried to escape its conse-
quences ; but his qualifications are simply inconsistencies, neither
explaining the first hypothesis nor expounding another. New-
ton's doctrine was taken up by Clarke, who established his
argument for the being of God on the fact that we have ideas
of infinite time and infinite space, concluding that there must be
a Being to constitute these infinites — that they seem both to be
but attributes of an Essence incomprehensible to us. This, M.
Saisset regards as but another form of the doctrine of Spinoza,
who made extension or infinite space one of the attributes of
God. The same objection had been made by Leibnitz to Sir
Isaac Newton's definition of space as the sensorium of the Deity.
Clarke defended Newton, quoting his words more accurately
than Leibnitz had done. ' Space is, as it iuere, the sensorium
of the Deity.'
M. Saisset criticized all erring theologians. His work has
been translated into English to check the importation of Pan-
theism into England, but not without a protest by the translator
that M. Saisset himself has retained the very essence of the
theology which he wished to refute. M. Saisset saw, as he
thought, the danger of believing in infinite time and infinite
space specially exemplified in the case of Newton and Clarke,
yet he thought it impossible not to believe that the world is
infinite and eternal. ' Away from me ! ' cries the philosophical
refuter of Pantheism, * Away from me, vain phantoms of the
AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING BEING. 333
imagination ; God is eternally all that He is. If He is tlie
Creator, He creates externally. If He creates the world, it is
not from chance or caprice, but for reasons worthy of Himself;
and these reasons are eternal. Nothing new, nothing fortuitous
can arise in the councils of eternity. The universe must express
the infinity and the eternity of God. We cannot conceive of its
having a beginning, nor can we anywhere set a bound to it. M.
Saisset does not forget that Giordano Bruno was led to Pan-
theism through this belief of the world's eternity and infinity ;
but, to save himself, he distinguishes between the infinity of
God, and the infinity of the world — the eternity of God and the
eternity of the world. The one is absolute ; the other relative.
The want of this distinction led Newton to confound eternity
and time, immensity and space. There can be no eternal time,
and no infinite space for eternity has no duration, and space
has no bounds. Eternity and immensity are the unchangeable.
Time and space the very conditions of change. The Creator
alone is eternal, immense, infinitely absolute. The creation is
scattered over space and time, subject to changes and to limits.
' Thus,' exclaims M. Saisset : — * I consider myself saved at once
from Pantheism and superstition ! '
The question of Pantheism involves several other questions.
I. It is an enquiry concerning being. What is that which IS?
There is a permanent — a something stable amid all change, at
least something which abides whatever may be its changes.
This is the first and most certain fact of the human conscious-
ness. But what is that which IS ? We do not know, we only
know our ideas about it. We find ourselves in space — we ask
what that is. Our first conception of it is a something
limited, but this conception is soon corrected, for we cannot
imagine any bound being set to space. We still ask for some-
where beyond. The highest flights of imagination never reach
the boundary wall of the universe. We go from world to world,
from sun to sun, and to imaginable worlds and suns beyond these,
but we never reach noivhere. Our idea of space is infinite, or
indefinite — call it whichever we may, it is practically the same.
We cannot define it, we cannot give it limits. It is the oppo-
site of the finite. Infinite space is to us a positive idea ; it is
that of boundless extension. This is the result of the first eiFort
of the mind to give attributes to Being or that which IS. It is
the boundless. Our idea of time follows the same law as that of
space. We first think of a part of time ; a finite part, an hour,
a day, a week, a year, a life -time. We go back to past genera-
334 A DOCTRINE OF BEING, THE FOUNDATION OF ALL THEOLOGY.
tions ; the beginning of our own nation ; the time of nations be-
fore ours ; the first nation, the first family, the first thing, but
what was there before that? Something, surely. No, there
cannot have been anything before the first thing. What then ?
Ceaseless duration, and involved in this, something which
endures ; a Being infinite as regards time or duration which is
our idea of time. That then which IS, is always, has been and
> will be always. These are the first thoughts of philosophy. They
are the most certain, the clearest, the most universal of all our
ideas. But being is still something undefined. It is not any
one of the finite things which we see. If these are anything be-
yond phenomena, they must partake of that which IS. Being
then is some unknown universal. ' Let us call it water,' said
Thales. 'Air,' said Anaximenes. 'Fire,' said Heraclitus.
' No,' said Anaximander, ' call it what it is — ' The boundless.'
' Call it the one,' said Pythagoras. ' Better still,' cried Par-
menides and all the Eleatics, 'let us call it by its true name,' ' Be-
ing,' ' the Being,' the ' One Being.' This was the foundation of all
ancient Theology. It was the first great grasp of the intellect
of man in its search for God. Yet it was only the philosophical
putting together of a universal truth. The Brahman had in-
corporated it in the legends of his gods. It was the thought
which reared the vast temples of India. As the negation of the
finite it comforted the Budhist amid the miseries of the transient
life, and as the non- Being, or the above-Being, it was the ground
of the mystic theology of Plato's Alexandrian disciples. How
it passed into the theology of the Church , and how it has leavened
all theology to the present day we have abundantly shown. It
is, in fact, the ground-work of theology. A doctrine of being is
implied, if not expressed, in every religious system. We are only
shocked when a Pionysius or an Erigena calls Being Nothing,
and identifies that Nothing with God — when a Spinoza calls it
substance, a Schelling identity, or a Hegel, an idea, and says that
God is this Substance, this Identity, this Idea. They transfer
to the Infinite, words which in our minds express only the
: finite.
Substance was not an improper name for being in general,
but in our ordinary thinking, the substance of a thing is merely
'^ that conception of it which we have from our sense-knowledge.
But the substance of a thing is properly the thing itself or that
which gives it reality. This is what Spinoza meant by sub-
stance ; but the word had been already appropriated, and it
carried with it the marks of its previous service. Bayle, who,
A QUESTION CONCERNING CREATION. 335
as we have been told a hundred times, both by Catholics and
Protestants, refuted Spinoza, did his great work of refutation by
confounding Spinoza's substance with the substance of ordinary
thinking, proving that everything has its own substance, which
in Bayle's sense was perfectly true ; but the argument had
nothing to do with Spinoza. So long as the problem of Being
is unsolved, the problem of Pantheism too will remain unsolved.
II. The question of being involves a further question — that
of creation. There are three views of creation. The first is
properly emanation, or the evolution of all things from the
essence of God. The second is that of some of the ancient
philosophers — that Grod wrought on an eternal material, external
to Himself. The third is the modern Christian doctrine of
creation out of nothing. We waive altogether the question of
the Mosaic creation. Geology has demonstrated that that was
not a creation out of nothing ; at least it was not the beginning
of material or organized existence, and the best Hebrew scholars
are agreed that the Hebrew word which we translate created does
not necessarily mean more than formed. Our enquiry is not
then concerning the Mosaic creation, but concerning the
beginning of phenomenal or finite existence, and how the In-
finite and the finite can exist together. We see at once that
they cannot, for the Infinite can leave no room for a finite to
stand over against it. We can add nothing to infinite Being.
It is already all that is or can be. If a worm, or a drop of water,
or a blade of grass has any real being by itself, that being is
subtracted from the Infinite, and it ceases to bo infinite. It
matters not whether the finite existence be a universe or an
atom of dust, a deity or a worm, the least of conceivable being
subtracted from the Infinite deprives it of infinity. * God '
said the Eleatics, ' is either all or nothing, for if there is a reality
beyond Him, that reality is wanting to His perfection.' The finite
or the Infinite must go ; either there is no God or no world. The
Eleatics were certain of the existence of God. They were certain
that Being existed and that it was infinite. They had, therefore,
but one alternative. That was to make the world merely phe-
mena. It is confessed on all sides that this is the real question at
issue. This is the argument which can not be answered. Plato
felt it, and tried to solve it by means of the ideas^ but he left the
problem where he found it. Aristotle felt it, but notwithstand-
ing his supposition of an eternal matter, and his evident leaning
to a personal creative Deity, he fell back on abstract being,
leaving the relation of God to the world undetermined, if h©
336 IMPOSSIBILITY or CONCEIVING CREATION.
: did not really identify the Divine Being with the all-life
of the universe. Malebranche felt that philosophy led him
inevitably to a doctrine of creation different from that of the
Church, but he harmonized the two on the Cartesian principle of
believing the Church's doctrine on the Church's authority ; and,
therefore, though a philosopher, he believed in the existence of
a material world and its creation out of nothing. M. Saisset
refuted Pantheism, yet at the end of the refutation he cried,
' God creates eternally.' And this is the universal utterance of
reason. ' How,' Mr. Mansel asks, * can the relative be con-
ceived as coming into being? If it is a distinct reality from the
absolute it must be conceived as passing from non-existence into
existence. But to conceive an object as non-existent, is again
a self-contradiction, for that which is conceived exists, as an ob-
ject of thought, in and by that conception. We may abstain
from thinking of an object at all ; but, if we think of it, we can
but think of it as existing. It is possible not to think of an ob-
ject at all, and at another time to think of it as already in be-
ing ; but to think of it in the act of becoming, in the progress
from not-being into being, is to think that which in the very
thought annihilates itself. Here again the Pantheistic hypo-
thesis seems forced upon us. We can think of creation only as
a change in the condition of that which already exists, and thus
the creature is conceivable only as a phenomenal mode of the
being of the creation. The whole of this web of contradictions
is woven from one original warp and woof, — namely, the im-
possibility of conceiving the co-existence of the Infinite and the
finite, and the cognate impossibility of conceiving a first
commencement of phenomena, or the absolute giving birth to
the relative. The law of thought appears to admit of, no pos-
sible escape from the meshes in which thought is entangled,
save by destroying one or other of the cords of which they are
composed. Pantheism or Atheism are thus the only alternative
offered to us, according as we prefer to save the Infinite by the
1^ r sacrifice of the finite, or to maintain the finite by the sacrifice
of the Infinite.' M. Mansel has a way of his own to escape this
dilemma of which we shall have occasion to speak again.
Another argument for emanation, or the impossibility of crea-
tion, is derived from the want of material external to God, on
which He can work. To make something out of nothing is an
act which we cannot conceive. In our idea of cause, the material
or passive element is always present. To change the nothing
into something is to give nonentity the qualities of reality. We
WHY DID GOD CREATE? 337
may, indeed, suppose that God has made the first matter of the
universe, and then wrought on it, externally, but this supposes
two substances — one of God and one of the world, which cannot
co-exist as we have already seen, that of God being infinite, and
the other finite. This argument virtually revolves itself into the
first.
A third difficulty in supposing a creation is found in the
moral nature of God. Either He creates from necessity or
voluntarily. If from necessity. He must be controlled by some
power beyond or outside of His own being, but this is contrary
to our idea of God. He must create freely. But here we are
encompassed with manifold difficulties. God's will must, like
Himself, be eternal. If He has willed, He has willed eternally.
The things produced must then, also, be eternal. It is impossible
that His will could have been without the means of being ac-
complished. There is some sophistry in this argument, for God's
will may have been that the universe be temporal and not eternal.
There is more validity in the objection from the imperfection of
the world. Why did God will what is imperfect ? If the world is
neither perfect, eternal, nor infinite as the advocates of creation
say, why, as Malebranche expresses it, has ' God taken upon
Himself the base and humiliating condition of a Creator ? ' These
are all questions we cannot solve, for the idea of creation is at
war with the idea of the Infinite.
The second doctrine of creation, that of an eternal matter, is
no longer tenable. The objection, from the impossibility of the
co-existence of the infinite and the finite is as valid against it as
against any view of creation. The third doctrine, that of crea-
tion from nothing, is the received doctrine of the Churches.
Hegel, as we have seen, like an orthodox philosopher as he was,
or at least meant to be, embraced this view, maintaining that
the denial of this was the origin of the Pantheism of Parmenides
and Spinoza. Spinoza himself thought that he escaped Pan-
theism, by saying that creation, though eternal in the sense
of never ending duration, was not eternal in the proper,
philosophical, or Alexandrian sense that eternity is distinct from
all duration, and means absolute existence or the perfection of
being. This is the sense in which it is generally used by the
more learned of the Fathers, and which seems to be sanctioned
by S. John in his Gospel. Creation out of nothing, they did
not understand. It was introduced, as Hegel says, by the later
Christian metaphysic* It does not mean that nothing was the
* It is difficult to say when the doctrine of creation from nothing was first
z
338 CREATION FROM NOTHING, IMPOSSIBLE.
entity out of which God created, but that God called into
existence by an act of His power, a new substance. The Neo-
Platonists called this new substance the phenomenal or created
as distinct from the eternal and real, and probably this was what
Spinoza meant when he said there was only one substance ; and
the moment we begin to reason on the subject we see that there
is no other conclusion consistently to be reached, but that this
substance is the reality of all phenomenal and finite existence.
•When we are aware," says Sir William Hamilton, "of some-
thing which begins to exist, we are by the necessity of our
intellio-ence, constrained to believe that it has a cause. But
what does this expression, that it has a cause, signify? If we
analyse our thought, we shall find that it simply means that as
we cannot conceive any new existence to commence, therefore
all that now is seen to arise under a new appearance, had pre-
viously an existence under a prior form. We are utterly unable
to realize in thought, the possibility of the complement of
existence, being either increased or diminished. We are unable
on the one hand, to conceive nothing becoming something, or on
the other, something becoming nothing. When God is said to
create out of nothing, we construe this to thought, by supposing
that Re evolves existence out of Himself; we view the Creator
as the cause of the universe. ' Ex nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil
posse reverti,' expresses in its purest form the whole intellectual
phenomenon of causality." In another place. Sir William says
* We are unable to construe in thought that there can be
an atom absolutely added to, or an atom absolutely taken away
from, existence in general. Make the experiment. Form to
yourselves a notion of the universal ; now, conceive that the
quantity of existence, of which the universe is the sum, is either
amplified or diminished ? You can conceive the creation of the
world as lightly as you can conceive the creation of an atom.
But what is creation ? It is not the springing of nothing into
something. Far from it ; it is conceived, and is by us conceiv-
able, merely as the evolution of a new form of existence, by the
fiat of the Deity. Let us suppose the very crisis of creation.
Can we realize it to ourselves, in thought, that the moment after
the universe came into manifested being, there was a larger
tanght. Plato makes the world to be made from the non-existent, but this with
Plato means matter, Athanasius and Arius were agreed that the body of
Christ, like all other created things, was made from the non-existent, but
Athanasius maintained that the Divinity of Christ was uncreated, and therefore
the Son was consubstantial with the Father.
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON'S PANTHEIflM. 339
complement of existence in the universe and its Author together,
than there was the moment before, in the Deity Himself alone ?
This we cannot imagine. What I have now said of our conception
of creation, holds true of our conception of annihilation. We
can conceive no real annihilation, no absolute sinking of some-
thing into nothing. But, as creation is cogitable by us only as
an exertion of divine power, so annihilation is only to be con-
ceived by us as a withdrawal of the divine support. All that
there is now actually of existence in the universe, we conceive
as having virtually existed, prior to creation, in the Creator;
and in imagining the universe to be annihilated by its Author,
we can only imagine this as the retractation of an outward
energy into power.' Mr. Calderwood in a criticism of Sir Wil-
liam Hamilton's philosophy denounces this view of causation and
creation as essentially Pantheistic. Mr. Mansel regrets that
Mr. Calderwood should ever have charged this theory with Pan-
theism ; for, if ever there was a philosopher whose writings from
first to last are utterly antagonistic to every form of Pantheism,
it is Sir William Hamilton. But what in all the world is Pan-
theism if it is not that G-od evolves the iiniverse out of Himself 9 * )^ ^
Mr. Stuart Mill denies the statement that we cannot conceive a
beginning or an end of physical existence. Its inconceivableness
belongs only to philosophers and men of science, not to the
ignorant who easily conceive that water is dried up by the sun,
or that wood and coals are destroyed by the fire. But surely a
metaphysician like Mr. Stuart Mill knows that the phenomenon of
thought is not to be taken from what the fool thinks, but from what
the philosopher thinks. The true phenomenology of mind is not
that of the ignorant unthinking mind, but of the mind which
thinks.
That the matter of the universe is * an efflux of God ' was the ,^^,
doctrine of Milton, and he maintains that it is the doctrine,
not only of the old Fathers but of the New Testament. ' It is
clear ' he says, ' that the world was framed out of matter of
some kind or other. For since action and passion are relative
terms; and since, consequently, no agent can act externally
unless there be some patient such as matter, it appears impossible
* Mr. Mansel says that Sir William Hamilton's theory represents the Pan-
theistic hypothesis as the result of a mere impotence of thought. This is Sir
William Hamilton's theory generally, at least as interpreted by Mr. Mansel, but
in what he here says of creation he seems to imply that it is impossible for us to
conceive creation except as emanation. Mr. Calderwood, in a second edition of
his work, says, " It would have been gratifying had I seen suflScient grounds to
warrant it, in deference to the opinions expressed, first by Professor Eraser,
and then after by Dr. Miansel, to withdraw the assertion that Hamilton's
z 2
340 MILTON ON CREATION.
that God could have created this world out of nothing ; not from
any defect of power on His part, but because it was necessary
that something should have previously existed capable of receiv-
ing passively the exertion of the divine agency. Since, there-
fore, both Scripture and reason concur in pronouncing that all
these things were made, not out of nothing, but out of matter,
it necessarily follows that matter must either have always existed
independently of God, or have originated from God at some
particular time; that matter should have been always independent
of God (seeing that is only a passive principle dependent on
Deity and subservient to Him ; and seeing, moreover, that as in
number, considered abstractly, so also in time or eternity there
is no inherent force or efficacy) that matter, I say, should
have existed of itself from all eternity is inconceivable. If, on
the contrary, it did not exist from all eternity, it is difficult to
understand whence it derives its origin. There remains, there-
fore, but one solution of the difficulty, /or which, 7noreover, we
have the authority of Scripture, namely, that all things are ofGod.^
But if matter thus emanates from God, if the matter of the uni-
verse proceeds immediately from the universal mind, there must
still remain some bond or ground of union between mind and
matter in their limited or finite forms. Milton is not afraid to
carry this out, perhaps as far as Schelling did. He says that
* man is a living being intrinsically and properly one, and indi-
vidual, not compound or separable, not according to the common
opinion made up and framed of two distinct different natures as
of soul and body ; but the whole man is soul, and the soul man,
that is to say, a body, a substance individual, animated, sensitive,
and rational.' This will explain the doctrine of the following lines
from Paradise Lost : —
' O Adam ! One Almighty is, from whom
All things proceed, and up to Him return,
If not depraved from good, created all
Such to perfection. One first matter all.
Indued with various forms, various degrees
Of substance. And, in things that live, of life..
But more refined, more spirituous and pure,
As nearer to Him placed or nearer tending,
Each in their several active spheres assigned,
Till body up to spirit work in bounds
Proportioned to its kind. So from the root
Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves.
More aery, last the bright consummate flower
Spirits odorous breathes, flowers and their fruit,
Man's nourishment, by gradual scale sublimed,
reasoning leads logically to a Pantheistic conclusion. But, after careful re-
consideration, I cannot see any escape from such a result, when it is main-
tained * that creation adds nothing to existence.' "
GOD, PERSONAL OR IMPERSONAL ? 341
To vital spirits aspire, to animal,
To intellectual.^
ni. The question of Pantheism is generally supposed to be
settled by saying that the Theist believes God to be personal, ,^
the Pantheist believes Him to be impersonal — not Him but It.
But what do we mean by a person ? An individual, one who
exists in relation to others, an /which evokes a Thou. But this
is just what God in His highest being cannot be, for it involves
limitations which we cannot ascribe to God without danger of
idolatry. It is a denial of the Infinite. To avoid this limitation
we are compelled to say that God is impersonal — that is, not a
person, because He must be something more than is implied in
the word person. Here language fails us, if not thought itself.
The impersonal is beneath the personal. We apply it to things
inanimate, to things destitute of life and consciousness. In this
sense it is less applicable to God than the word personal. God,
then, is neither personal nor impersonal. We cannot apply
these terms to Him as they are applied to finite beings or
finite things. His infinity negatives them both. But we can
only speak of God in human language if we speak of Him at all.
And human language being imperfect, we must often express
our meaning by a verbal contradiction. God is neither personal
nor impersonal. He is both. He is personal, because our \\
highest conception of being is as a person. Only to the personal ■ '
can we ascribe reason, consciousness, freedom of action. And
here our idea of God emerges as that of the highest personality.
God is a person absolutely free and independent. He must be
a person, for our highest idea of existence is that of spirit, and
spiritual existence is spiritual, individual personality. But,
while ascribing the highest personality to God, it is necessary to
guard this from mistake by saying that He is more than per-
sonal, and in this sense impersonal. This two-fold and apparently
contradictory view of the Divine Being underlies all theology.
The ignoring it or forgetting it is the ground of many differences, .
and the recognition of it would be the settling of many vexed
questions in theology. He who has grasped the great truth of
the impersonality of God and yet recognizes the Divine per-
sonality, has risen to that transcendental region where truth has
its origin, and yet he has a footing on the terrene where truth
is known only under the limitations of things finite, conceived
through the medium of human analogies and spoken of in the
language of the sensuous. If we look only on the infinite side,
our eyes are dazzled with the light ; if only on the finite, our
knowledge will be partial, imperfect, and even erroneous, unless
842 ATHANASIUS AND AKiUS.
we continually bring with us the remembrance that the truth
thus partially seen has also a side which is infinite. The doctrine
of the impersonality and the personality of God is acknowledged
implicitly by the Church in many parts of Christian Theology.
(1.) We have it in the doctrine of the Trinity. Every re-
ligion and every system of religious philosophy, with but few
exceptions, has been in some form Trinitarian. They have all
set forth a Being, a Mind, and a Relation ; a Subject, an Object,
and a Bond between them. The expressions are often widely
different ; but the idea is generally the same. In the Christian
religion we acknowledge a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost,
— three persons, yet one God. The Father is God, the Son is
God, and the Holy Ghost is God ; ' and yet,' adds the orthodox
creed, ' there are not three Gods, but one God.' The Arian
objected that this was a manifest contradiction. Looking only
to the finite side, and overlooking the conditions on which a
knowledge of God is possible to man, he said, — ' The Son must
be inferior to the Father ; ' but the Nicene Fathers were guarded
against ' dividing the substance.' The Sabellian, from the same
ground as the Arian, tried in another way to reconcile the
Trinitarian contradiction by saying that the three persons meant
three manifestations of the Divine Being — ' That the Monad
develops itself into a Triad in the Son and in the Spirit, and
yet there is only one essence in three different relations.' But
the orthodox Fathers were guarded against ' confoitnding the
persons.' The heresy of Arius was as much a heresy against the
Alexandrian jDhilosophy as against the doctrine of the Church.
He interpreted eternity by his idea of time, supposing that in
eternity there was temporal priority. He said that the Father
must have been before the Son. ^ There was, when the Son
was not.' But in the Neo-Platonic philosophy, eternity and
time were entirely different in kind. The process of develop-
ment or manifestation which Plotinus and his disciples placed in
the Godhead was an eternal process. 'The Being' was always
generating the * Mind ' or Divine Reason, and the Spirit was
eternally proceeding from the ' Being ' through the ' Mind.'
When Arius assailed the doctrine of the Nicene Fathers, S.
Athanasius equipped himself with the Neo-Platonic arguments
that the eternal light could never have been without its radiance
that if ' there was when the Son was not, then God was once
wordless and wisdomless.' Or, to use another of his illustrations,
' if the Fountain did not beget Wisdom from Itself, but ac-
quired it from without, there is no longer a Fountain, but a
sort of pool.' The * Mind,' Locfos, or God in His personality
GOD, NOT uni-personal. 843
must have been eternally with and in God in His impersonality,
otherwise God would not be God.
Of all the heresies on the Trinity, that of Sabellius was
nearest to the doctrine of the Church. It differed from it
only in this, that though Sabellius called all the three hypostases
persons, yet he explained that they were only three modes or
manifestations of the Divine Nature. In this way he secured
the f7"wi-personality of God. But the right faith is that God is
T^a-personal. Implicitly, then, in the orthodox doctrine of the
Trinity, personality as applied to God is not the same as per-
sonality applied to man. Trinitarian apologists have rarely
failed to show their Unitarian antagonists that ' person ' in the
Godhead does not mean a distinct individual existence, but an
indefinite hypostasis, so that the Trinitarian holds the doctrine
of the Divine Unity as firmly as the Arian, the Sabellian, or the
Unitarian. If Trinitarianism negleeted the Unity and held only
to the Tri-personality, it would be the greatest of all heresies ;
but the Creed declares, that though the three persons are each
*uncreate, incomprehensible, and eternal ; ' yet, there are not
* three uncreated,' ' three incomprehensibles,' or three eternals;'
which implies that the personality of God was something trans-
cendent ; to us an impersonality, not less but more than the
personality of man. Each of the three persons has distinct
operations ; but, even in the Scriptures, the work of the one is
ascribed to the other, so that every idea of personal plurality is
distinctly removed. The doctrine of the Trinity is not the
irrational contradiction which the Church of Rome makes the
doctrine of the Eucharist. S. Athanasius was right in calling
the Arians * insensate.' They were the least rational of the
two contending parties. The orthodox doctrine was the last
word of reason concerning God. It was the recognition of Him
in His transcendency as personal and yet as impersonal. ^
* It was common among the Alexandrians to use the word * nature ' as
synonymous with ' person.' S. Cyril so used it in the following passage as
quoted by John Henry Newman. ' Perhaps some one will say, How is the
Holy and adorable Trinity distinguished into three hypostases, yet issues in
one nature of Godhead ? Because the same in substance necessarily following
the difference of natures, recalls the minds of believers to one nature of God-
head.'" " In tills passage," continues Dr. NeAvnian, " one nature stands for a
reality, but ' three natures ' is the one eternal Divine nature, viewed in that re-
spect in which He is Three. The Son who is the Divine substance is from the
Father, who is the same Divine Substance. As we might say that ' Man is
father of man ; ' not meaning by man the same individual in both cases, but
the same nature, so here Ave speak not of the same person in two cases, but the
844 ATHANASIUS ON THE DIVINITY OF MAN.
The ultimate union of redeemed humanity with the Divine
Essence, as taught by S. Athanasius, transcends all human ideas
of personality. It is to be accomplished by Jesus Christ, in
whom the eternal Logos was incarnate. Jesus Christ was not
God. He was created. He was among those creatures, of
whom Arius said that they were made from nothing, or out of
the non-existent. But the eternal "Wisdom of God was incar-
nated in Him, so that He was wholly God and wholly man ;
as simply God as if He were not man, and as simply man as if
He were not God. He deified His human nature, and He will
deify us. It was an essential part of the Arian heresy to deny
that men could be truly the sons of God. Christ, not being of
the same substance with the Father, neither He nor His dis-
ciples could ever truly participate in the Divine. But Atha-
nasius says that in the Word we become truly the sons of God,
for since the Word bore our body, and came to be in us,
therefore, by reason of the Word in us, is God called our Father.
For the Spirit of the Word in us, names through us His own
Father as ours, which is the Apostle's meaning when he says
God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts^ crying
Abba, Father. And again " we all partaking of the same be-
come one body, having the one Lord in ourselves. Had He said
simply and absolutely * that they may be one in Thee,' or ^ that
they and I may be one in Thee, God's enemies had had some
plea, though a shameless one ; but, in fact, He has not spoken
same individuum. All these expressions resolve themselves into the original
mystery of the Holy Trinity, that person and individuum are not equivalent
terms, and we understand them neither more nor less than we understand it.
In like manner as regards the incarnation, when S. Paul says, ' God was in
Christ,' he does not mean absolutely the Divine nature, which is the proper
sense of the word, but the Divine nature as existing in the person of the Son."
In another place he adds, ' though we sat/ three persons, person hardly denotes
an abstract idea, certainly not as containing under it three individual subjects,
but it is a tenn applied to the one God in three ways. It is the doctrine of the
Fathers, that, though we use words expressive of a Trinity, yet that God is
beyond number, that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, though eternally distinct
from each other, can scarcely be viewed together in common except as one sub-
stance, as if they could not be generalized into three Any whatever ; and
as if it were strictly speaking incorrect to speak of a person as otherwise than
of the person, whether of Father or of Son, or of Spirit. The question has al-
most been admitted by S. Augustine, whether it is not possible to say that God
is one — one person.' The 'preface ' in our Communion Service for the Feast of
Trinity says that God is ' not one only person, but three persons,' and this is
the Catholic faith. Archer Butler, in a sermon on the Trinity, says ' there is
no more difficulty in supposing a thousand persons in the Godhead than in
supposing a single person.' All Trinitarians feel that it is only in a qualified
sense that personality can be predicated of God.
THE ATONEMENT. 346
simply, but, as Thou^ Father^ art in Me, and I in Thee, that they
may be all one."^^'
(2.) This unconscious recognition of the impersonaUty of God
may be further illustrated by the doctrine of the atonement, and
the different views which theologians take of what it is. The
popular, and we may say, orthodox, teaching on this subject, is
that man having sinned of his own free will, God devised a
scheme of redemption, a plan of salvation. There was a great
emergency and God provided for it. He was angry against sin,
for He is a righteous God. Yet, being full of pity. He had
compassion on the sinner, and sent His Son into the world to be
a propitiation for our sins. Justice being satisfied, God may
now be just and yet the justifier of them who believe. This is
the ordinary and popular form of the theology of the atonement.
There are some variations which have at least a verbal sanction
in the Holy Scripture. Such is that view which makes God the
angry Father and Christ the loving Son. The Father is full of
terror, suspending the sword of justice over the head of the
sinner ; but the Son intercedes and pleads that the evil done may
be pardoned or the sinner have time for repentance. The Son
dies on the cross to reconcile God to us, and so we have redemp-
tion, through
* The streaming drops of Jesus' blood,
Which calmed the Father's frowning face.*
♦ The reality of our sonship was a strong point with the Alexandrian Fathers.
The definition of sonship was ' of the same substance with the Father.* This
could be said only of the eternal Son — the Word of God, But as 'being of the
same substance ' is that which constitutes sonship, and as they were eager to
maintain the real sonship of believers, it was not easy to express their meaning
without saying either that believers were of the same nature with God or that
we are only called sons of God by a figure of speech, as the Arians said. S.
Basil says that we are sons ' properly ' and ' primarily ' in opposition to figura-
tively. S. Cyril says that we are sons ' naturally,' as well as ' by grace.' 'Truly and
naturally the Son of God' is generally reserved by S. Athanasius for Christ alone,
as ' we are sons not as He was by nature and grace.' " S. Basil and S. Gregory
Nyssen " says John Henry Newman, " consider son to be ' a term of relationship
according to nature.' The actual presence of the Holy Spirit in the regenerate in
substance, constitutes this relationship of nature, and hence S. Cyril says that
* we are sons naturally because we are in Him, and in Him alone.' ' And
hence Nyssen lays down, as a received truth, that ' to none does the term
properly apply but to one in whom the name responds in truth to the nature*'
And he also implies the intimate association of our sonship with Christ's
when He connects together regeneration with our Lord's eternal generation
neither being of the will of the flesh." S, Augustine says ' He called men gods
as being deified of His grace, not as bom of His substance.' It is re-
markable that the eight-,eenth century divines, who were mostly disciples of
Locke, and like him, Arian in their tendencies, generally denied the reality of
the sonship, except as applied to Christ. Earnest religion came back with 'the
re-assertion of a real and true sonship. Those who deny this reality may be
846 PROPITIATION.
Some Calvinists add to this, that only a chosen number of
the human race, are elected to be saved, and, only for them did
Jesus pay the price of redemption, and the price having been
paid, it would be unjust in the Father not to save them. The
last view as it relates to the extent of redemption, can only be
advocated on the ground of a certain view of the nature of the
atonement. Taking the words ' price,' ^ propitiation,' ^ * redemp-
tion ' literally, it is a contradiction to speak of Christ having
died for all men unless it is allowed that all men will be saved.
The advocates of a universal atonement, do not seem to have
known that they differed from their opponents, on the question of
the character of the atonement. They were agreed to take the
words literally, and to say that a real satisfaction had been
made to the Father by the Son. And they were amply j ustified
by the whole tenor as well as by the words of the Apostolic
writings. There is wrath in God. The arrows of His justice
are terrible. He is a consuming fire, and to fall into His hands
is a fearful thing. But in Jesus Christ, He is reconciled. Yet
there are many texts which show that the Divine love to man
was in the Father, as well as in the Son, for God is love. He did
Trinitarians in name, but they are either Arians or the Trinity is -vvith them
some fearful contradiction like transubstantiation in the Church of Rome.
» No believer in the universality of the atonement can consistently believe
in the death of Christ as a literal substitution in the sense of price or compen-
sation. The Calvinist objection is valid, that it would be unjust in the Divme
Being to suffer anyone to be lost after the price had been paid. Mr._ Rigg, a
Weslevan minister, has written a book on Modern Anglican Theology, in which
there is some severe criticism on Mr. Maurice, and especially on his doctrine of
the atonement. A great deal of this would have been spared had Mr. Rigg
been better acquainted with the character and tendency of Wesley's Theology,
which in many points is more allied to Mr. Maurice's than is generally supposed.
Wesley's Theology was essentially Alexandrian. Witness the place where he
calls Socrates' demon, * a ministering angel,' and includes him with Marcus
Antoninus, and some other good Heathens, among those who were inspired.
Southey quotes Wesley as endorsing the words that ' what the Heathens called
Reason; Solomon, Wisdom; S.Paul, Grace; S. John, Love; Luther, Faith;
Fenelon, Virtue was all one and the same thing.— The light of Christ shining
in different degrees under different dispensations.' Southey again quotes Wes-
ley, describing a mystical faith as ' the internal evidence of Christianity, a per-
petual revelaiion equally strong, equally new, through all centuries, whicli have
elapsed since the Incarnation, and passing now even as it has done from the be-
ginning directly from God into the believing soul.' ' The historical evidence
of revelation,' Wesley goes on to say, ' strong and decisive as it is, is cognisable
by men of learning only, but this is plain, simple, and level to the lowest
capacity. The sum is, one thing I know, whereas I was blind now I see, an argu-
ment of which a peasant, a woman, a child may feel all the force.' The position
which Mr. Maurice has taken up as to reason and revelation is the very ground
on which Wesley stood in his controversies with the Calvinigts.— CSee/^a^e 354. J
PROVIDENCE, GENERAL AND SPECIAL. 347
not love men merely because Christ died for them, but He so
loved the world that He gave his Son. It is evident that both
views are true. The apparent contradiction lies only in a too
literal application to God of the idea of personality, a forgetting
that God is impersonal as well as personal. The second of our
^ Articles,' distinctly says that Jesus Christ truly suffered, was
crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile His Father to us, and
yet the first Article says that God is 'without body, parts, or
passions.'* If God is without passions, how could He be capable
of anger — what need for reconciling a God of whom we cannot
predicate either hatred or love ? Is not the answer to be found
in this that God transcends personality as we understand it
that the atonement, too, is in some way transcendental, that it
is a process in God, and that the true reconciliation is in the
' Lamb slain from the foundation of the world ? '
(3.) This two-fold conception of God again appears in the
opposing views of Divine providence. Does God preserve the
world by general or by special laws ? One of the most certain
things in the world appears to be our dependence on an absolute
inviolable order in which the universe exists. We see this order
reigning everywhere. It subjects us to conditions. It requires
us to keep its commandments. If we break them, we suffer as
certainly as if the law Maker Himself put them into immediate
execution. Nor is there any apparent discrimination as to
moral worth. The good man does not live longer than the
vicious man, except so far as he has kept physical laws. Due
retribution so manifestly follows the breaking of physical laws
in the natural world, that it has been justly inferred that in the
long run evil doing may as certainly entail its own punishment
as if there were no living personal Judge to inflict it. 'I he
impersonal Deity is plainly the Ruler of the world. Eut would
it be worthy of an omnipotent God, or would it be like an every-
where present and all-knowing God so to govern the universe as
to exclude His own special working. Man might work in this
way, but it is incredible that God would. His general and His
speci-dl working are both true as to us, but general and special
lose their meaning when applied to Him. That inexorable
law which governs the world is never suspended —
' When the loose mountain trembles from on high,
Shall gravitation cease if you go by ?
Or some old temple, nodding to its fall,
For Chartres' head reserve the hanging Avail?*
Yet the very hairs of our head are all numbered. His hand
feeds the ravens when they cry. His Spirit gives breath to every
y^f
348 PRAYER.
living thing. Whatsoever is done in the earth He doeth it
Himself. If science teaches us of the general law, religion
teaches us of the ever-present God; and, however men may
dispute about the mode of the Divine government in the world,
some abiding by the general, and others acknowledging only the
special laws, all truly religious minds practically admit both.
(4.) The same question returns when we enquire into the
nature of prayer. If there is no special providence, it seems
useless to pray. Shelley said of the ' Spirit of Nature ' that,
* unlike the God of human error, it required no prayers
nor praises.' If all is inviolably fixed, it is idle to pray. If
God has put within our own reach all which He intended
that we should have, why ask Him for more ? Can our pe-
titions change His order ? Will He be moved by our impor-
tunity ? Reason tells us that He cannot. Yet we pray. Religion
teaches men to pray. Those who try to explain it say
that it is God's will that we should pray — His will to give us
things on condition that we ask them, as a father gives his
children gifts, yet requires of his children that they ask them
from him. Thus prayer becomes a religious exercise, profit-
able to ourselves by raising and cherishing in us good dispositions.
And so rational men fall back on the worship of God in His
impersonality. Prayer becomes lost in praise. Awful feelings
of reverence overpower the soul. Prayer becomes a life,
a love, a longing, a feeling of the Divine within us. ' The best
of all prayers ' said Fenelon, ' is to act with a pure intention,
and with a continual reference to the will of God. It is not by
a miracle, but by a movement of the heart that we are benefitted,
by a submissive spirit.' Hence petitions to God are not like
petitions to men. We repeat the same words in liturgies.
Men repeat them for centuries. They are never old. They
never change God. They are not meant to change God, but
they produce good dispositions in the sincere worshipper. And
thus we sometimes sing our prayers as well as our praises, for
rational prayer cannot be other than praise. Is not this the
reconciliation of Wordsworth's Pantheism with his High
Churchism? The cathedral is not the dwelling place of God,
but it helps us to realize the presence of the Ever-Near. The
very stones are made to sing psalms to God. We project the
Divine within us, and that externally realized, speaks to the
Divine in others. Even in our prayers we worship God per-
sonal and impersonal.
(5.) The question of general and special laws is nearly the
MIRACLES. 349
same as tlie question of miracles. A miracle supposes a per-
sonal Deity. The impossibility of miracles exists only on the
supposition of the Divine impersonality. Those to whom Deity
appears simply as an individual distinct from themselves, only
greater than themselves, have no difficulty in believing miracles.
Yea, they expect miracles. As knowledge advances, men become
conscious of a universal order, and they see more of God in this
order than in its violation. Miracles, then, become doubtful,
for why, as Leibnitz said, should the Creator have made His
work so imperfect as to require His continual interference. If
the Deity is all-powerful and all-wise, why should He violate the
laws which were made in infinite wisdom. Through these con-
siderations scientific men conclude the improbability, if not the
impossibility of any violation of the order of nature. The idea
of miracle as a violation of law is generally renounced by en-
lightened men. This definition, or this view of a miracle, gave
to Hume's argument against the miracles of the gospel, the only
strength which it had. It is more likely that the testimony
concerning miracles is false than that miracles should have
occurred. It is more likely that men were deceived as to what
they saw, than that God should violate His own order. There
can be no changeableness in God. The supposition that He
capriciously violates His own laws exists only by our ascribing
to Him the limitations of human personality. The moment we
have seen that God must transcend such personality all objec-
tions to the possibility of miracles cease. We have been
confounding our view of the order of nature with that order in
itself. We have been interpreting the works of God as if they
were human works. In the transcendent impersonality of God
the natural and the supernatural become one. Nature exists in
Him. What is miraculous to us is no miracle to God, for His
being constitutes what we call the order of nature. It is all
miraculous, and if He hastened the operation of His laws or did
something in our view difierent from them, it would still be
order. ' A miracle ' says Bishop Butler, ' is something different
from the course of nature as known.' It may be in harmony with
that course as unknown to us. ' The difference ' says Mr.
Rogers ^ between the natural and the supernatural is relative
not absolute — it is not essential. . , . These miracles, so
w^e on earth must call them, and which we are accustomed to
speak of as inroads upon the course of nature, are, if truly con-
sidered, so many fragmentary instances of the eternal order of
an upper world.' Thomas Oarlyle, with a deeper view of tho
350 GOD IS BOTH PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL.
Divine impersonality than was possessed either by Bishop Butler
or Mr. Rogers, teaches the same doctrine concerning miracles.
In Sartor JResartus the question is asked, ' Is not a miracle
simply a violation of the laws of nature ? ' 'I answer ' says
Teufelsdroeck, ^ by this new question, what are the laws of
nature ? To me, perhaps, the rising of one from the dead were
no violation of these laws, but a confirmation, were some far
deeper law now first penetrated into, and by spiritual force even
as the rest have all been, brought to bear on us with its material
force. . . They (the laws) stand written in our works of
science, say you, in the accumulated records of man's experience ?
Was man with his experience present at the creation, then, to
see how it all went on ? Have any deepest scientific individuals
yet dived down to the foundations of the universe and guaged
everything there ? Did the Maker take them into His council ;
that they read His ground-plan of the incomprehensible All, and
can say, — This stands marked therein and no more than this ? '
Alas ! not in any wise. These scientific individuals have been
nowhere but where we also are, have seen some handbreadths
deeper than we see into the Deep that is infinite without bottom
and without shore.'
We must predicate human attributes of Grod, and yet we must
again deny that any human attributes can be truly predicated
of Him. He has them, and yet He has them not, for the mode
of His possessing them transcends our knowledge. God is not a
person as we are persons, yet, as Schleiermacher says, ' the pious
soul craves a personal God,' and the very conditions on which we
know God, carry with them, in some way. His personality. We
may deny Him will, and yet He wills. He is not intelligent. He
is intelligence itself. He has no designs, the idea of infinite
wisdom excludes that of design, and yet to us He is the vast
Designer. He is not hoary with time, for eternity is ever young,
and yet He is the Ancient of Days. He is not our Father, be-
cause we are not infinite as He is, nor consubstantial with Him,
and yet He is most truly ' Our Father in Heaven.' He is not
a king, for that is a human term, and a human ofiice. He sits
on no material throne. He holds in His hand no material
sceptre, and yet He is King of kings, and Lord of lords. He
is incorporeal, ' without body or parts,' and yet He fills heaven
and earth. He is ' without passions ;' yet He is a jealous God,
and angry with the wicked every day. His name is love. He
is an immutable will to all good, yet to all workers of un-
righteousness, He is, by the necessity of His nature, a consuming
fire.
GOOD AND EVIL. 851
IV. Pantheism is sometimes defined as a doctrine which de-
nies the distinction between good and evil. But this definition
is too indefinite to be of any service. Religious philosophy in-
variably interprets the Mosaic account of the fall of man as a
mythical form of a fact of human nature. Evil or sin is
generally identified with imperfection. Man comes short of the
supreme good, and therefore evil exists, which is only the nega-
tion of good. Every explanation of sin which has been made
virtually denies that there is anything positive in it. Even the
Greek word, which the Apostles use to express it, is said to
mean primarily * failure ' or ' short-coming,' omission rather
than commission. The theory of Leibnitz, which is adopted by
some writers on Natural Theology m ikes sin nothing more than
a metaphysical imperfection. In this, Leibnitz did not differ
from Spinoza, nor Spinoza from S. Augustine, though the Abbe
Maret boasts that ' Leibnitz and the Catholic theologians ' have
settled the question of evil long since. They have settled it
only by showing that ^ whatever is, is right,' and that ' partial
evil ' is ' universal good.' S. Augustine; had no other argument
but this against the Manichean Dualism ; and rational theology
has, as yet, found no other vindication of ' the ways of God to
man ' Instead of leading to the Catholic doctrine of original
sin, it leads where it led Dr.* Pangloss to the denial of sin
altogether. Pantheism in this sense is nothing more than the
theology of reason — the theology of ' all for the best ' as taught
by Pope in the Ussmj on Man, by Archbishop King in his sermon
on Predestination, by Thomson in his ^uhVimQ Hijmn on the Seasons,
and by Emerson in one of his ^ Pantheistic sermons ' where he
says ' that the Divine efibrt is never relaxed ; the carrion in the
sun will convert itself into grass and flowers; and man, though
in brothels or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all that is
true and good.' *
V. The question of the existence of evil is inseparably con-
nected with the doctrine of predestination which, with the old
philosophers, was called * necessity,' or ' fate.' If evil has not
come into the world through the free will of man, it must have
come from the will of God, or through necessity. The ancient
* This subject is treated of at large bjDr. Julius Miiller in the second book
of his ti-eatise on ' the Christian doctrine of sin.' There are some judicious re-
marks on it in Principal Tulloch's * Burnett Prize Essay.' The author says ' it is
clear that this theory (that of Leibnitz) pushed to its fair logical results, onl/
escapes Pantheism by making sin eternal. Man only ceases to be a sinner br
becoming God.'
352 PREDESTINATION.
philosophers were strong predestinarians. Predestination en-
tered into their conception of God. It was God's providence
considered absolutely. They did not always distinguish between
the Divine will and necessity. And yet each is distinctly
acknowledged. The union of them, if in any way they can be
harmonized, would correspond to the ' free-necessity' of Spinoza.
The recognition of a Divine will is the recognition of a personal
Deity. Fate is the silent impersonal power through which the
purposes and designs of God are accomplished. This Fate is
often identified with the being of God, as in Seneca, where he
says, ' Will you call Him Fate ? You will call Him rightly, for
all things depend on Him. He is the cause of causes.' It is
sometimes called law. Seneca again says, ' All things go on
for ever according to a certain rule, ordained for ever.' To this
agree the words of Cicero * All things come to pass according
to the sovereignty of the eternal law ; ' and those of Pindar,
where he calls law * the ruler of mortals and immortals.' But
this fate or law was yet in some way the expression of a mind.
* Nothing is more wonderful in the whole world,' said Manilius,
' than Reason, and that all things obey fixed laws.' The
reason manifest in the world is so inseparably connected
with the laws that the one seems to be always assumed when
the other is mentioned. ' I am firmly of opinion ' says Sophocles,
in the Ajax, ^ that all these things, and whatever befals us, are
in consequence of the Divine purpose. Whoso thinks otherwise
is at liberty to follow his own judgment, but this will ever be
mine.' Chyrsippus, the Stoic, defined fate as ' that natural
order and constitution of things from everlasting, whereby they
naturally followed upon each other in consequence of an immut-
able and perpetual complication.' The Stoics, more than all
the philosophers of antiquity, connected the Divine Being with
the universe. He was the active principle in nature or the first
nature, corresponding to the ^ nature-producing ' of Spinoza,
while created things were ^nature produced.' Laertius says that
they defined fate as ^ the Logos whereby the world is governed
and directed.' God Himself is subjected to fate, yet He is the
maker of that fate to which He is subject. ' The same necessity '
says Seneca, 'binds the gods themselves. The Framer and
Ruler of all things made the fates indeed, yet He follows.
He always obeys. He commanded once.' And Lucan to the
same efiect. — ' He eternally formed the causes whereby He con-
trols all things, subjecting Himself likewise to law.' This inter-
pretation of the fate of the Stoics has the sanction of S.
JSPINOZA AND TOPLADY. 353
Augustine, who says * we acquiesce in their manner of expres-
sion, because tliey carefully ascribe this fixed succession of
things, and this mutual concentration of causes and effects to
the will of God.' Nothing could be nearer Spinoza's necessity
than that of the Stoics. The very words of Seneca enter into
his definitions of freedom and necessity. ' A thing is free^
said Spinoza, ' when it exists by the sole necessity of its nature,
and is determined to action only by itself.' * Outward things
cannot compel the gods,' said Seneca, * but their own eternal will
is a law to themselves.' ' God acts by a free necessity,' said
Spinoza, and Seneca, to the same effect, said ' God is not hereby
less free, or less powerful, for He Himself is His own necessity.'
In the doctrine of predestination as received by Christians,
the idea of a necessity which binds the Deity is eliminated. God
Himself is absolutely free. All things proceed from His will,
and are directed by His will in all apparent contingencies. With
the old Calvinist divines of the Church of England this was a
tangible doctrine of the special providence of God. ' A sparrow,'
says Bishop Hopkins, * whose price is but mean, and whose life,
therefore, is but contemptible, and whose flight seems giddy
and at random, yet falls not to the ground, neither lights
anywhere without your Father. His all- wise providence hath
before appointed iciliat hough it shall pitch on ; what grains it
shall pick up ; where it shall lodge, and luhere it shall build ; on
what it shall live and when it shall die.' All things are predes-
tined— every event and every action in the life of every indi-
vidual. It is unchangeably determined to whom salvation shall
be offered, who shall accept it, and who shall neglect it. But
does not this destroy all distinction between good and evil ?
Does not this take away responsibility from man, and make
God the Author of good and evil, salvation and condemnation?
Yes, according to our reasoning. And is not this the very ob-
jection which was made to Spinoza? And what was Spinoza's
answer ? Nearly in the words with which Toplady answered
Wesley. The wicked must be punished because they are
wicked, just as men destroy vipers because they are hurtful,
though it is by no choice of theirs, but by their nature, '' Zeno,
the founder of the Stoics,' says Toplady, ' one day thrashed his
servant for pilfering. The fellow knowing his master was a
fatalist, thought to bring himself off by alleging that he was
destined to steal, and therefore ought not to be -beat for it.
' You are destined to steal, are you V answered the philosopher,
* then you are no less destined to be thrashed for it,' and laid
354 IMMORTALITY'.
on some hearty blows accordingly. What is objected to the
predestination of Spinoza may be equally objected to the pre-
destination of the genuine Calvinist. ^ Christ, according to
Spinoza, was good by necessity, but He did not, therefore, cease
to be good. Judas was predestined to betray Jesus, but he was
not, therefore, less Judas, or less culpable. This was virtually
leaving the question where Bishop Butler left it when he said,
* And, therefore, though it were admitted that this opinion of ne-
cessity were speculatively true ; yet, with regard to practice, it
is as if it were false, so far as our experience reaches ; that is to
the whole of our present life. For the constitution of the pre-
sent world, and the condition in which we are placed, is as if we
were free.' f
VI. The question of Pantheism involves the question of
immortality, not, indeed, as to its reality, but its character.
Our first thought of the life everlasting is that of dwelling as
conscious individuals in the immediate presence of God. And
as we cannot conceive that the sum of our being can be less in
the eternal world than in the present, we cling eagerly to the
hope of ' the resurrection of the body.' But how can the same
body be raised again ? We change the materials of the body
many times in the course of our lives. Yea, the same materials
which constitute our bodies have constituted other bodies, and
will constitute yet others, we know not how often. In the
resurrection day whose shall the bones be, the particles of which
have formed the bones of many individuals ? The physical fact
destroys belief in the literal resurrection of the body. ' Thou
fool,' says S. Paul, ' thou sowest not that body which shall be,
but bare grain, but God gives it a body, to every seed its own
* What is here said of predestination refers only to the philosophical part of
it — that which relates to necessity. Christians who receive this doctrine,
generally receive it because they find if, or think they find it in the Scriptures.
Supposing it is there in any absolute sense, either Sublapsarian or Supralap-
sarian, its reception or rejection becomes then a question of authority or reason.
Wesley, in his celebrated sermon on Free Grace, says that ' no scripture can
prove predestination.' He means that the doctrine of election — the choosing of
some to eternal life, and the pretention or reprobation of others is so opposed to
the character of God as the good, the merciful, the just, that no external
authority can establish it. So far as we can see, it is not justified by reason.
Hence all rational theologians who have been predestinarians, such as Erigena,
Spinoza, and Schleiermacher believed in the predestination of all men to eternal
life. This is the only view that consists with reason.
f ' If,' says Spinoza, ' we look to om- nature, we shall understand clearly that
in our actions Ave are free. But if we look to the nature of God, we shall see
as clearly and distinctly that all things depend on Him, and that nothing exists
but that which God has decreed eternally should exist.'
THE DIVINE IMMANENCY. 355
body/ The stalk of wheat is in reality the wheat seed Avhich
was sown. They are to appearance altogether different, but the
substance of the seed has passed into the plant, and they are in
an important sense the same. Such will be the identity and
difference between the present body and the resurrection body.
It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. S.
Paul has tried to explain the resurrection, but how rapidly does
his reasoning change the whole aspect of our first belief. A
spiritual body ! At once every idea of materialism is removed.
The material body is left in the earth as the seed sown is ieft to
die and decay. Like a worn-out garment that has served its
time, it is cast away. But there was something in it which
could not die. Something which could not be lost. Something
that was spiritual, and which grew up a spiritual body. What
do we know of the mode of immortality ? As little as we know of
being ; as little as we know of matter or of spirit. Yet we be-
lieve in immortality because we believe that God has given us
something of true being. Spinoza says we are but modes of
God. If in this life we are but modes, what matters it if our
present mode of being shall end that we may exist as higher
modes ? Schleiermacher associated our individual existence with
our imperfection and our separation from God ; and, therefore,
he denied an individual immortality. This, certainly, was to make
the idea of immortality less distinct to ordinary minds ; but
to him, immortality was something greater than ordinary minds
conceive it to be. When we cannot follow the philosopher he
seems to us to be losing his grasp of the truth, but is he not
striving to give emphasis to what S. John felt so deeply when he
said, * Now are we sons of God, but it doth not yet appear what
we shall be ' ? S. Athanasius says that Christ did not lose the .,
proper substance of His divinity when He became man, and so
we shall not lose our proper humanity when we become God.
VII. The difference between ordinary Theism and what is
called Pantheism, is perhaps most distinctly seen in the question y y
of God's immanency in the universe. Does God abide in His
creation, or is He seated on a siient throne in some far distant
region beyond the boundary wall of the universe ? This ques-
tion is evidently in close connection with some others, which we
have already considered. It is but another form of the Divine
personality, or impersonality. We are but repeating the ques-
tion,— if God has created only once, or if He creates unceasingly.
So far as we look upon God as made in the likeness of man, wo
conceive Him as altogether separate from all created things. He
AA 2
856 SOUL IN NATURE.
sees all, and with unerring wisdom He guides all, but He Him-
self is far distant, dwelling in some special Leaven, filled with
unspeakable splendor. So feeble are our thoughts that we as-
sociate happiness with places as if spiritual beings were influenced
by material phenomena. When we have seen that God must
transcend human personality, we see, also, that He needs no
throne and no heaven, for ' the heaven of heavens cannot con-
tain Him.' He must be in His universe as well as out of it —
•^ immanent in the world, yet transcending the world.'
The belief in the Divine immanency is another of the doc-
trines which are implied, if not expressed, in all theology and all
men's thoughts of God. This is obviously the Pantheism of
the poets, as expressed for instance in Cowper's lines already
quoted : —
* There lives and works
A soul in all things, and that soul is God.'
There is a soul in nature — a soul which in some way is God
Himself. A dim conception of this was the foundation of the
ancient mythologies, which peopled all nature with living
spirits, connected a deity with every field and forest, every
road and river. This conception placed Jupiter on Olympus,
Apollo in the sun, Neptune in the sea, Bacchus in the vintage,
and Ceres among the yellow corn. It filled the fountains with
Naiades, the ^oods with Dryades, and made the sea to teem with
the children of Nereus. At last, advancing reason became dis-
satisfied with the multitude of divinities, and poets and philoso-
phers treated them as the creations of fancy, yet as embodying
the higher truth, that * all things are full of God.'
That the soul which lives and works in nature is God, is the
the partial truth of all the theories of progressive development
which have prevailed in the world. These theories were the in-
evitable result of the study of nature. There, all is progress.
Every thing unfolds. The highest organism has its beginning
in the smallest form of hfe. The visible starts from the invisible.
The things which are seen are made from things which are not
seen.
The oldest cosmogonies recognized the law of progress in
nature. The ancient Brahman looked upon creation as the out-
beaming of the Deity — the going forth of Brahm. It was not a
work, but an unfolding ; a manifestation of mind in matter ; a
development of the One into the many. The spiritual shone out
in the material. The real was visible in the phenomenal. It
was a strange dream, but it has been the dream of poetry, and
THE ANCIENTS ON DEVELOPMENT. 357
the romance of science. The Egyptian did not materially differ
from the Brahman. Nature was the emanation of Osiris and
Isis; the gushing forth of Nilus ; the one Deity, whatever was
His name, for He was called by all names, passing into the
manifold. The Greeks who may have got their knowledge from
Egypt's priests, had the same thoughts of nature. Qlie old
Ionics were on this track when they sought for the first element
out of which the all was formed. The Atomic philosophers,
whom Plato describes as ' sick of the Atheistic disease ' — Demo-
critus and Epicurus, and in later times Lucretius, were all, after
a fashion, enquirers concerning the progress of nature. Atoms
wandering in the vacuum of infinite space, like motes dancing
in a sunbeam they supposed to be the first matter. These
atoms, in the lapse of ages, gathered into a solid mass, and be-
came suns and moons, stars and worlds. Through the blending
of all things with all things, the waters brought forth vegetables,
and animals. These took their form and character from the
climate in which they lived, and the conditions on which life
was permitted them. Special organs, and particular members
of the body took their origin from the same conditions. By long
practice they learned to fulfil their offices with a measure of per-
fection. Birds learned to fly, and fishes to swim. Eyes became
skilful in seeing, tongues in talking, ears quick to hear, and
noses to smell. Plato, indeed, in the Timaeus confounds this de-
velopment with creation. After describing how Oceanus and
Tethys sprang from Heaven and Earth, and from them Phorcys,
Kronos, and Rhea, from whom sprang Zeus and Hera, he says,
* the Artificer of the universe commanded them to create mortal
natures as He had created them.' Ovid, too, gives an account
of creation which resembles that of Moses, but Horace represents
the general belief of antiquity, where he thus describes the origin
of men, ' When animals first crept forth from the newly-formed
earth, a dumb and filthy herd, they fought for acorns and lurking
places with their nails and fists, then with clubs, and at last
with arms, which, taught by experience, they had forged. Then
they invented names for things, and words to express their
thoughts, after which they began to desist from war, to fortify
cities, and to enact laws.' All the old philosophers were agreed
that the working of nature was a process of advancing develop-
ment, but Democritus and his disciples left the evolution ^ to
chance, while the wiser philosophers regarded it as the working
of God, or of God as the soul of nature.
The development doctrine was revived in the beginning of the
358 DE MAILLET.
last century by De Maillet, an eccentric Frenchman.* It is
scarcely evident that De Maillet believed all he said, for what he
calls his facts are, some of them, fictions wild enough ; and his
analogies and correspondences in nature are often not only fan-
ciful but merely verbal. With Homer, Thales the Milesian, and
the Nile worshippers of Egypt, he traced the origin of all things
to the element of water. He quotes Moses as teaching the same
thing, where he speaks of the Spirit brooding over the face of the
deep. He argues from geology that the ocean must once have
swept over the entire globe, and nourished nature in its cool em-
brace. It treasured up the seeds of plants and flowers. It
watered the undeveloped monads of fishes and foxes, mammoths,
and men. All things rejoiced in the rolling wave and ' the
busy tribes of flesh and blood ' slept as softly on beds of sea-
weed as dolphins and mermaids on the bosom of Galatea. The
ocean, said De Maillet, still witnesses to its universal father-
hood. Its kingdoms, animal and vegetable, are closely analo-
* De Maillet puts his discourse into the month of an Indian philosophei-,
Telliamed (his own name backwards). The first dawnings of geology were
rising on the world, and threatening to overthrow the established beliefs and
unbeliefs. Petrified shells were found on the top of Mount Cenis, from which
De Maillet argued that the mountains must once have been submerged.
Voltaire, afraid that this might establish the fact of Noah's flood, thought the
pilgrims to Rome who crossed Mount Cenis might have carried oyster shells in
their bonnets. De Maillet, certainly with more science than Voltaire, said that
all these petrified shells, plants, bones, reptiles, fishes, &c., which were found
in the hard rocks must have been placed there when the mountains were soft
liquid. The ocean must for long ages have covered the face of the earth. The
vision of Pythagoras was true, as Ovid has it —
' Where once was solid land, seas have I seen,
And solid land, where once deep seas have been.
Shells far from seas, like quarries on the ground ;
And anchors have on mountain tops been found.
Ship keels, anchors, and even entire ships in a state of petrifaction had I'e-
cently been dug up in the Alps and the Appenines, and in the deserts of Lybia
and Africa. On a Swiss mountain had been discovered the petrified bodies of
sixty mariners who had suffered shipwreck in a tempest that drifted the wild
surges over the highest peaks of the Ural and the Caucasus somewhere about
the year two million before Adam and Eve were in Paradise. De Mailet had
some other wonderful stories to tell about Mer-vcvQn and ikfer-maids that had
been caught in the sea. The most wonderful of these Avas an extraordinary
manifestation of our sea-faring brethren at Greenland. The crew of an English
whaler saw about sixty sea-men rowing to the ship in boats. But when the
sea-men discovered that there were /anc?-men in the ship, they all plunged
under the water, boats and all, except one poor fellow who broke his oar and
could not get under. He was taken on board, and was found to be covered all
over with scales. He could not speak a word of English, nor would he eat sea-
biscuit nor anything on board, and so he died. His boat and fishing tackle
were curiously made of fish bones. They were all brought to England, and
may yet be seen in the Town Hall of Hull !
J. B. EOBINET.
359
gom to those on dry land. We have the same unity of tvn.
and in many cases the species correspond. The sea L fl^^ '
ttrL^tL':' ^"™' '' ^^<= °" '-^ and c:n:;tdi;gT
Varieties of plumage and form in birds have thir Inalo'Sl'n-
the shape color, and disposition of the scales of fish s%he
fwe-^attSrtl-g^S^^^^^^^
sea animals. When the waters left tho Un^ +1.1 rl . ^^^^. ^^,^
had no alternative but to becom:lnd Sit aTdTouTti:
ocean agam overflow the world, what could thev do W ,
betake themselves to the sea? In the s iu..^lTfnv rl ^'""
would doubtless perish, but some would ea tff herb of n ""'"^
and when used to the new element woul?fi, da etg JiSZ^^'
with^their ancient marine relatives, the children of Sus and
rather than serious enqufrV But th. Iv^ ™f amusement
ir«.re woStSht^d ruSmtroToSesl: t ^"
greater merit than the famous ' Systera of N^^w ' '' i<^^^^ -^
the name of Mirabaud. Brouo-ham savs thnt l^f' ., ^^""^^
have the same tendency, but tC" 'eTiiltya mi^t Jf Za'
baud's, or rather D'Holbach's ' Svst^™ ,.f w t ™f tase. Mira-
Atheistic, Robinet's warlvowedCThe si % C- 'T^''^
the leaderof the French Atheisms fS'et SSlt ul
religious pnilosopher all his life mh^^UHa^ ^i^imeci to be a
a Catholic^ and ciied in the fai5r;f"tht'cit iJ^Sh '"^"^
Nature, Eob.net said, is not God, nor any mrt of God
yet It results, necessarily, from His Di -ine Essence It\.v;'
had a moment which was not preceded bv anofW t". 1 ! ^^^'^
will have a moment to which another wi(l nnf ' ,f '^ "'^?
360 NATUBE, 'PROGRESSIVE.
that is, out of time, in that abyssal eternity, which is not con-
stituted by duration. It will never have an end. Netu heavens
and netv earths mean only that the heavens and the earth will be
changed. The matter is the same, they are new as contrasted
with previous forms.
Nature thus co-existing, necessarily and eternally, with the
Divine Essence developes unceasingly its types and forms, ac-
cording to its own eternal laws. This development is progres-
sive. The first axiom in natural philosophy is this — ' nature
makes no leaps.' Everything begins to exist under a very little
form — ■the smallest possible. It passes, necessarily, from the
state of seed to that of species. The more complete the organi-
zation, the longer the time required for development. An insect
reaches its perfection in a day. A man requires many years ;
an oak, centuries. The difference betv»'een the acorn and the
oak, the germ cell and the full-grown man is vast, but vaster
still between the seed of the world and ' the world formed.' How
immense, then, the length of time required by the law of de-
velopment to bring the universe to the point of increase which
it had reached, when our earth was formed.
Robinet could see in nature no mode of operation, but this of
progressive development. He could find no trace in the past, of
a working different from what he saw going on in the world now.
This unceasing law forms the universal all. This all is infinitely
graduated. It is without bounds, and its divisions are only ap-
parent. Nature has individuals, but no kingdoms, no classes,
kinds, or species. These are artificial — the work of man ; but
having no existence in nature. Originally there is but one be-
ing— the prototype of all beings, and of this one all are varia-
tions, multiplied and diversified in all possible ways. This seemed
to Robinet so obviously true that he wondered any naturalist
should dispute it. But he complained chiefly of those who
did not acknowledge any absolute difference between animals and
vegetables, and who yet made a bridgeless chasm between the
lower animals and man. Why, he asked, this great stride ?
Why should the law suffer an exception ; why be deranged here ?
Have we not the links of the chain to complete the conthiuity
of the gradation of being ? Robinet, indeed, was not convinced
of the consanguinity of apes and men, but there were the sea-
men of whom De Maillet had spoken. There was, moreover,
the ourang, which Robinet supposed to be more nearly allied to
men than to apes, but its existence had not yet been satisfactorily
proved to the naturalists of France. The links of the complete
NATURE le ONE. * 361
chain, he thought, could not be far off; if not actually discovered
science must soon discover them.
Nature has had her eye upon man from her first essays at
creation. We see all beings conceived and formed after a single
pattern. They are the never-ending graduated variations of the
prototype — each one exhibiting so much progress towards the
most excellent form of being, that is, the human form. Man is
the result of all the combinations which the prototype has under-
gone in its progress through all the stages of progression. All
were types of man to come. As a cave, a grotto, a wigwam, a
shepherd's cabin, a house, a palace, may all be regarded as varia-
tions of the same plan of architecture, which was executed first
on a simple and then on a grander scale, so in nature. The
cave, the grotto, the wigwam, the cabin, and the hoase are not
the Escurial nor the Louvre^ yet we may look upon them as
types ; so a stone, a vegetable, a fish, a dog, a monkey, may be
regarded as variations of the prototype, or ideal man.
Kobinet's theory was vastly comprehensive, uniting all king-
doms, classes and species. He believed that he had found the
key of the universe, and that he had laid the foundation of all
true science, in being able to say, ' Nature is one.' He had
fewer fictions than De Maillet, but his analogies were not
altogether free from fancy. Beginning with minerals, he found
stones that in shape resembled members of the human body
— the head, the heart, the eye, the ear, the feet. Among
vegetables, he found plants resembling men and women ; these,
however, were not, he admitted, normal growths. Among
zoophytes, he found many points of resemblance to the human
form, as the names indicated ; such are the sea-hand, sea-chest,
and the sea-kidney. Among fishes, he found some of human
shape ; but these were in distant seas. The fish of S. Pierre,
which is caught on the coasts of America, engenders in its body
a stone which has the shape of a man. The Pece Miiger, as
the Spaniards call it, has a woman's face. Some sea monsters
are two-handed, as the whale, the sea-fox, and the sea-lion.
Coming to land animals, Robinet traced the same gradation from
the lowest form of life to the highest, to the topstone of nature's
efforts — the being nobler than all others, with an erect look and
a lofty countenance, the lord of creation — Man.
Robinet's principles were taken np and illustrated by another
Frenchman — the famous naturalist, Lamarck. He was more
scientific than Robinet, and mingled with his enquiries less
theology and metaphysics — less of Plato and interpretations of
362 * LAMARCK.
Moses, yet lie recognized the same relation between nature and
the Divine Essence that had been set forth by Robinet.
Nature he said, is a work, and its great Author is the ever-
present Worker. It can do nothing of itself; it is limited and
blind. But, though nature is a work, it is yet in a sense a
laboratory. In this laboratory the Author of nature works
incessantly. He never leaves His creation. We say that He
gave it laws; but He is Himself ever-present, the immediate
Executor of all law, the Doer of all nature's works.
Lamarck discarded all the divisions and subdivisions of plants
and animals, which other naturalists had made. Like Robinet,
he regarded them as having no real existence in nature, being
only the arbitrary arrangements of man. Nature is one and
undivided. It knows of no orders but the order of progression.
Nature makes nothing great at once. Unnumbered ages are
required to bring to perfection the workmanship of her laboratory.
Lamarck takes the fluid which impregnates an egg, and gives
vitality to the embryo of a chick, as the principle analogous to
that by which life presses into the world. A seminal fluid per-
vades all nature, and impregnates matter when placed in cir-
cumstances favourable to life. Nature begins with the humblest
forms. It produces ^ rough draughts,' — infusoria, polypi, and'
other similarly simple forms. When life is once produced, it
tends to increase the body that clothes it, and to extend the
dimensions of every part. Variations are the result of circum-
stances. A plain proof of this is seen in the production of new
species. Dogs, fowls, ducks, pigeons, and other domesticated
animals have superinduced qualities which did not belong to
them in their wild state. These have arisen entirely from the
circumstances and conditions of their existence as domesticated
animals. The same law prevails in the vegetable kingdom.
The wheat from which we make bread is originally a wild grass.
It is due to cultivation that it has become wheat.
The characteristic part of Lamarck's doctrine is the way in
which he endeavours to account for the possession of senses and
special bodily organs. They were acquired by what he calls
* an internal sentiment.' Bj this ' sentiment,' animals have
desires ; and, by frequent endeavours to gratify these desires,
the organ or sense necessary for their gratification was produced.
The duck and the beaver, for instance, had an ^ internal senti-
ment ' to swim ; and, after long and persevering efforts, webs
grew on their feet, and ducks and beavers learned to swim. The
antelope and the gazelle were naturally timid, and, being often
QEOFFROY S. HILAIRE. ' 363
pursued by beasts of prey, they had an ' internal sentiment ' to
run fast, and much practice in running, the result of which was
that suppleness of limb which is their only resource in times of
danger. The neck of the camel-leopard became elongated through
stretching its head to the high branches of the trees on which
its food is found. The dumb race of men had an ' internal
sentiment * to speak. They exercised their tongues till they
could articulate sounds ; these sounds became signs of thoughts,
and thus arose the race of articulate speaking men. The senses,
capacities, and organs thus acquired by the efforts of many
successive generations were transmitted to their offspring, and,
in this way arose those differences and resemblances on which
naturalists ground the idea of species.
The doctrine of development, even with Lamarck, is still in
the region of romance. His illustrious contemporary and
fellow-laborer, Geoffrey S. Hilaire first gave it a really scientific
form. Lamarck's studies were chiefly in botany. S. Hilaire
applied himself to zoology. In this he was joined by Cuvier.
Hitherto there had been no serious effort at a scientific classifica-
tion of the animal kingdom. The old writers on natural history
were content with a general division of animals into wild and
tame, or animals living on land and animals living in water.
Until Linn^us, no naturalist had got beyond the divisions of
beasts, birds, fishes, and reptiles. And Linnaeus himself could
find no better principle for the classification of mammals than a
purely artificial arrangement, grounded on the number and shape
of the teeth. Cuvier and S. Hilaire endeavoured to discover
the natural classification that they might classify the animal
kingdom as they found it in nature. They eo-operated har-
moniously for many years, scarcely conscious that they were
each pursuing widely different principles, and when they did
find out how and where they differed, neither of them seemed
conscious of the magnitude or importance of the difference.
They were seeking the natural classification, but that classification
eluded their search. S. Hilaire doubted its existence. Cuvier
confesses that he could not find it, but he believed it was to be
found. S. Hilaire was at last convinced that the search for it
was as vain as the search for the philosophers' stone — that the
lines supposed to separate between genera and species are as
imaginary as the lines of latitude and longitude which divide
the globe. This was the first manifestation of difference between
Cuvier and S. Hilaire, but the difference had roots as yet
unseen, and branches undeveloped. Cuvier said that the
364 S. HILAIRE AND CUVIER.
business of a naturalist was simply to observe nature and try to
discover nature's classification. S. Hilaire said it was more
than this. The naturalist must also reason from his facts. He
must draw inferences from his observations. There must be
room for the noble faculty of judgment. When the facts are
established, scientific results follow, as stones that have been
quarried and dressed are carried to their places in the building.
S. Hilaire was well-known as a naturalist before his doctrines
were formally announced to the world, but the careful reader of
his early essays may find it there without any formal declaration
of its presence. S. Hilaire waited, it is said, for the publication
of Cuvier's ' Animal Kingdom ' that the world might be in pos-
session of the facts necessary to secure for his doctrine an im-
partial hearing. This may be true, but in one of his earliest
cesmpositions, that ' On the frontal prolongation of Ruminants '
he compares the neck of the girafie with that of the stag, ex-
plaining the difierence by the inequalities of development — a
prophetic intimation of what was afterwards known as * The
theory of Arrests.' In another piece of the same date he clearly
evinces his belief in the essential unity of organic composition.
Nature, he says, has formed all living beings on a unique
plan, essentially the same in principle but varied after a thousand
ways in all its necessary parts. In the same class of animals,
the difierent forms under which nature is pleased to give exis-
tence to each species, are all derived from each other. When
she wishes to give new functions, she requires to make no other
change but that of the proportion of the organs — to extend or
restrain the use of these, suffices for her object. The osseous
pouch of the Allouat, the organ by means of which it makes its
strange howl, is but an enlargement of the hyoid bone — the purse
of the female opossum is but a deep fold* of the skin ; the trunk
of the elephant, an excessive prolongation of the nostrils ; and the
horn of the rhinoceros, a mass of adherent hairs. In this way,
in every class of animals, the forms, however varied, result from
a common organism. Nature refuses to make use of novelties.
The most essential differences which affect any one family come
solely from another arrangement, complication, or modification of
the same organs. The doctrine thus early announced is distinctly
avowed in S. Hilaire's later compositions. By it he accounted for
the existence of vestiges and rudiments of organs. The ostrich, for
instance, though it does not fly, has rudimentary wings, because
this organ played an important part in other species of the same
family. Similar rudiments, unseen by ordinary observers, are
CUVIER AND GOETHE. S65
yet seen by all careful anatomists. In some quadrupeds, and
in most birds, there is a membrane which covers the eye in sleep.
Anatomists find a rudiment of this membrane at the internal
angle of the human eye. ' So numerous ' said S. Hilaire, ' are
the examples of this kind disclosed by comparative anatomy,
that I am convinced the germs of all organs which we see, exist at
once in all species, and that the existence of so many organs
half-effaced or totally obliterated is due to the greater develop-
ment of others— a development always made at the expense of
the neighbouring organs.'
In 1830, Cuvier and S. Hilaire had their famous discussion
before the French Academy. The chief subject was the
mutability of species, — Cuvier maintaining that the same forms
had been perpetuated since the origin of things ; and S. Hilaire
that all species are the result of development. Never were
disputants more equally matched. Never was evidence more
equally balanced. Never had disputants a wiser Palcemon. ' I
do not judge ;' said Goethe, ^ only record.' So great 'was
the interest in this discussion that it pre-occupied the public
mind, though France was on the very eve of a great political
revolution. 'The same year — almost the same month' says
Isidore S. Hilaire, in the biography of his father, ' took away
Goethe and Cuvier. Unity of organic composition — admitted by
the one, denied by the other, had the last thoughts of both.
The last words of Cuvier answer to the last pages of Goethe.'
Forty years before the discussion between Cuvier and S.
Hilaire, Goethe had announced the doctrine of development as
the law of the vegetable kingdom. In his ' Metamorphoses of
Plants,' he supposes nature to have ever had before her an ideal
plant — an idea corresponding to Robinet's more general con-
ception of an ideal man. To realize the ideal plant was the
great object of nature. Every individual plant is a partial
fulfilment of the ideal — every stage of progress an advancement
of the concrete to the abstract. Not only are all plants formed
after one type, but the appendages of every individual plant are
repetitions of each other. The flowers are metamorphosed leaves.
Goethe's doctrine was afterwards taken up by Schleiden, but in
a modified form. He supposed every plant to have two repre-
sentative organs, the stem as well as the leaf. The leaf is
attached to the ascending stem, and, besides its common form
it takes other forms, as scales, bracts, sepals, petals, stamens'
and pistils.^ What seemed at first but the fancy of a poet is
now the scientific doctrine of vegetable morphology.
366 VESTIGES OF A NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION.
The French naturalists reached the doctrine of development
through the study of external nature. But, with the Germans,
it followed upon their transcendental philosophy. Spinoza's
theology recognized a bond between God and nature, unknown
both to the theologians and the naturalists of that day. In his
theology, creation was the emanation of the Deity as well as
His work. This had been the dream of the Brahman ; and,
though the dream might not be true, the Transcendentalists
thought that there was truth in the dream. * Nature produced '
was the mirror of ' Nature producing.' The One who was
working in nature, produced in nature the image of Himself.
In Schelling's philosophy, nature was the counterpart or the
correspondent of mind. * The final cause ' said Schelling, ' of
all our contemplation of nature is to know that absolute unity
which comprehends the whole, and which suffers only one
side of itself to be known in nature. Nature is, as it were, the
instrument of the absolute Unity, through which it eternally
executes and actualizes that which is prefigured in the Absolute
understanding. The whole Absolute is therefore cognizable in
nature, though phenomenal nature only exhibits it in succession,
and produces in an endless development that which the true and
real eternally possesses.' Lorenz Oken, a disciple of Schelling's,
found in actual natm-e what his master found in ideal. Nature
was a divine incarnation — the progress of Deity in ^ His other
being '—from imperfection to perfection. Deity reaches its full
manifestation in man, who is the sum total of all animals, and
consequently the highest incarnation of the Divine. ^
The doctrine of development was first made popular in Eng-
land by the ^ Vestiges of a Natural History of Creation.' The
author of the ' Vestiges ' rejected, as vicious, Lamarck's notion
of an ^ internal sentiment.' But even S. Hilaire had seen that
the function followed the organ, and not the organ the function.
He adopted Robinet's principle, that the phenomenon of re-
production was the key to the genera of species. This, to some
extent, had been accepted by Lamarck, but more fully by
Robinet, who, like the author of the ' Vestiges ' in showing the
progress of the development of men from animalcules, illustrated
it by the changes which the tadpole undergoes in its progress
towards being a perfect and complete member of the Batrachian
* Lorenz Oken saw the bleached skull of a deer in the Hartz forest, and he ex-
claimed ' it is a vertebral column.' Anatomists are now agreed that Oken was
right — the same plan that served for the back bone served also for the skull.
QOD WORKING IN NATURE. 367
order. Oken, too, had adopted the same principle, ilkistrating
the stages of development from vesicles to men by correspondinS
stages in intero-uterine life.
To make earth, according to this analogy, the mother of the
human race, it was necessary to suppose that the earth had
existed long before man appeared. That such had been the
case was now evident from geology. The earth had travailed in
birth, from the earliest of the geologic ages till the close of the
Tertiary, when divine man, her noblest child, was born. La
Place had shown in his nebular theory, how the earth and other
planets were first formed by the separating and condensing of
nebular matter. Supposing his theory to be true, it was only
necessary to show the continuation of the same progressive
movement, and the same working of natural laws. La Place may
have thought it unnecessary to suppose that the Divine mind
was directing this natural law in its operations. But the author
of the ' Vestiges ' saw in this progressive working the mode of
operation most becoming the Divine Being, and most analogous
to all that we know of His ordinary working. In nature, there
are no traces of * Divine fiats,' nor of ^ direct interferences.'
All beginnings are simple, and through these simples nature
advances to the more complex. The same agencies of nature
which we now see at work are sufficient to account for the
whole series of operations displayed in organic geology. We
still see the volcano upheaving mountains, and new beds of
detritus forming rocks at the bottom of the sea. ' A common
furnace exemplifies the operation of the forces concerned in the
Giant's Causeway, and the sloping ploughed field after rain
showing at the end of the furrows, a handful of washed and
neatly composed mud and sand, illustrates how nature made the
Deltas of the Ganges and the Nile. On the ripple bank or
sandy beaches of the present day we see nature's exact repeti-
tion of the operation by which she impressed similar features on
the sandstones of the carboniferous era. Even such marks as
wind slanted rain would in our day produce on tide deserted
sands have been read on the tablets of the ancient strata It is
the same nature — that is to say, God, through or in the manner
of nature, working everywhere and in all time, causing the wind
to blow, and the rain to fall, and the tide to ebb and flow,
immutable ages before the birth of our race, the same as now.'
The author appeals to the astronomical discoveries of Newton
and La Place ; and to the facts in geology attested by Murchi-
son and Lyell, as afi'ording ample ground for the conclusion that
368 MR. CHARLES DARWIN.
the Creator formed the earth by a complicated series of changes
similar to those which we see going on in the present day.
As He works now, so has He wrought in the ages that are past.
The organic, indeed, is mixed up with the physical, but it is not,
therefore, necessary to suppose that because there are two classes
of phenomena, there must be two distinct modes of the exercise
of Divine Power. Life pressed in as soon as there were suitable
conditions. Organic beings did not come at once on the earth
by some special act of the Deity. The order was progressive.
There was an evolution of being, corresponding to what we now
see in the production of an individual. That life has its origin
from inorganic bodies is shown by the very constitution of
organic bodies, these being simply a selection of the elementary
substances which form the inorganic or non-vitalized.
The development doctrine has found a rigidly scientific advo-
cate in Mr. Charles Darwin He has not been content with
general principles and theories, but has collected a multitude of
observations or facts which tend to show not only that all com-
plex organisms have undergone changes, but how the changes
were effected. Any naturalist, he says, reflecting on the natural
affinities of organic beings, their embryological relations,
geographical distribution, and geological succession might reason-
ably come to the conclusion that each species had not been in-
dependently created but, had descended, like varieties from other
species. But the conclusion would not be satisfactory till it
could be shown how the different species were modified so as to
acquire that perfection of structure and co-adaptation which ex-
cite our admiration. Mr. Darwin admits that external condi-
tions, such as climate and food, may have had some influence,
but he thinks them insufficient to account for all the changes,
and so he adds what he calls the principle of ' natural selection.'
Among the multitude of beings that come into existence, the
strong live and the weak fail in the struggle for life. As the
struggle is continually recurring, every individul of a species
which has a variation, in the way of a quality superior to the
others, has the better chance of surviving the others. And as in-
dividuals transmit, to their descendants, their acquired variations,
they give rise to favored races, which are nature's ' selections.'
The neck of the giraffe has not been elongated by having made
efforts to reach the branches of the lofty trees, but in a time of
scarcity a longer-necked variety being able to obtain food where
others could not obtain it survived the other varieties and thus
become a species.
SIR CHARLES LYELL AND PROFESSOR HUXLEY. 369
Mr. Darwin's doctrine of natural selection was suggested by
the varieties produced in domesticated animals through man's
selections. But the deeper principle is the great tendency to
variation, which is found in all plants and animals. Variations
determine the selection. The early progenitor of the ostrich,
for example, may have had habits like the bustard, and as
natural selection increased in successive generations the size
and weight of the body, its legs were used more, and its wings
less, until they became incapable of flight. In Madeira there
are two species of one kind of insect. The one has short wings,
and feeds on the ground, the other has long wings, and finds its
food on trees and bushes. The wings of each have been deter-
mined by the conditions on which they could live in the island.
Those w^hich were able to battle with the winds continued to fly,
and their wings grew larger, those that were unable to battle
with the winds found their food on the ground, and rarely or
ever attempted to fly. Animal life will adapt itself to any
climate, and become adapted to any conditions of existence pro-
vided the changes are not effected suddenly. The elephant and
the rhinoceros, though now tropical or subtropical in their
habits, were once capable of enduring a colder region ; species
have been found in glacial climates. This capacity for varia-
tion is not denied by any naturalists. Some suppose it to have
limits beyond which nature never passes, but these limits can-
not be defined. Mr. Darwin can see no trace of them, and for
the facts which he has noticed he can find no explanation but in
the doctrine he advocates, that nature forms varieties, and these
in time, through natural selection, become new species.
The development doctrine has received but little additional
illustration since Mr. Darwin's work. From a more extensive
study of the mode of nature's working connected with researches
in geology, Sir Charles Lyell has been led to adopt Mr. Darwin's
doctrine of the mutability of species ; and Professor Huxley has
endeavoured to find the missing and most missed link in the
development chain — that which connects man with the brute
creation. This intermediary was the great want of De Maillet
and Robinet. The sea-man was legendary, and the ourang was
little known, and M. De Chailluhad not yet invaded the territory
of the gorilla. Professor Huxley finds most himianity in the
chimpanzee. He has, perhaps, demonstrated that monkeys as
well as men have the ' posterior lobe ' of the brain, and the
' hippo-campus minor' — that they are no longer to be classed
as ' four-handed ' animals, but as having two feet and two hands;
SB
870 PROFESSOR OWEN ON HOMOLOGIES.
the feet consisting, like a human foot, of an os calcis, an astra-
lagus, and a scaphoid bone, with the usual tarsals and metatarsals.
"The doctrine of development may be denied, but the facts
which have led to a belief in it remain the same, and require to
be explained. These facts are an obvious unity in the plan of
nature's works, which is now acknowledged by all scientific men.
Professor Owen says that he withstood it long, but he was
finally compelled to yield. The remarkable conformity to type
in the bones of the head of the vertebrate animals led him to a
re-consideration of the conclusions to which he, as a disciple of
Cuvier, had previously come. On reviewing the researches of
anatomists into the special homologies of the cranial bones, he
was surprised to find that they all agreed as to the existence of
the determinable bones in the skull of every animal down to the
lowest osseous fish. That these bones had, in every case, similar
functions to perform, was a supposition beset with too many
difficulties to be entertained for a moment. There are marked
sutures in all skulls, but these sutures cannot serve the same
end in marsupials, crocodiles, and young birds, which they are
supposed to serve in the head of a child. According to Pro-
fessor Owen, more than ninety per cent of the bones in the
human skeleton have their homologies recognized by common
consent in the skeletons of all vertebrata. The same uniformity
as recognized in the animal structure, is acknowledged by
botanists to prevail in the vegetable world. Even the duality of
Schleiden has been rejected, and scientific botanists have adopted
the unity of Goethe. 'Every flower' says Professor Lindley,
with its peduncle and bracteolss, being the development of a
flower bud, and flower buds being altogether analogous to leaf
buds, it follows as a corollary that every flower, with its peduncle
and bracteolse is a metamorphosed branch. And, further, the
flowers being abortive branches, whatever the laws are of the
arrangement of branches with respect to each other, the same
will be the laws of the flowers with respect to each other. ^ In
consequence of a flower and its peduncle being a branch in a
particular state, the rudimentary or metamorphosed leaves which
constitute bracteolse, floral envelopes, and sexes, are subject to
exactly the same laws of arrangement as regularly shaped leaves.'
The recognition of typology and morphology would not have
been so tardy but for the belief that it came in collision with
the obvious fact that nature is Avorking for an end. The
disciples of Cuvier have been compelled to acknowledge the
principle of archetypal order, so precious in the eyes of S.
CORRELATION OP PHYSICAL FORCES. 371
Hilaire, a principle originally connected with tlie mental
philosophy of Plato, and the mystical dreams of the later
Platonists, but now established by observations on external
nature. And the lesson which Cuvier's disciples have learned
is, not that the doctrine of special ends or ' final causes ' is lost
or obscured ; but that it receives new illustrations and a new
form. They have learned that, though the works of God
resemble the works of man, there is a point where the resem-
blance ceases, and the w^orking of the Divine is no longer
analogous to that of the human worker.
The unity of nature does not cease with that of animal or
vegetable, structures. Matter, as a substantial existence inde-
dendent of the forms and qualities it assumes, has been banished
from the world by all genuine metaphysicians since the days of
Plato. It has a supposed existence in the laboratory of the
chemist, but it ever eludes his grasp, like the sunbeam through
the window or the phantasmagorian images on the canvas. It
is the supposed something which is beyond all analysis. A mind
at work is the most obvious fact in nature alike to the meta-
physician, and the natural philosopher. 'The attentive study,'
says Robert Hunt, * of the fine abstractions of science lifts the
mind from the grossness of matter, step by step to the refinements
of immateriality, and there appear shadowed out, beyond the
physical forces which man can test and try, other powers still
ascending until they reach the source of every good and every
perfect gift.'
Even the forces of nature lose themselves in each other, and
are reduced to one force ; its nature and essence escaping obser-
vation. Heat, light, electricity, magnetism, chemical affinity,
motion are all correlative or have some reciprocal dependence.
No one of them by itself can be the essential cause of the
other, and yet it may produce, or be convertible into, any of the
other. Heat may produce electricity, electricity may produce
heat. Chemical affinity may produce, motion, and motion
chemical affinity. Each force as it produces, merging itself as
the other is developed. ' Neither matter nor force,' says Dr.
Grove, ^ can be created or annihilated — an essential cause is un-
attainable— causation is the will, creation the act of God.' Life
itself is supposed to be but a higher degree of the same power
which constitutes what we call inanimate objects — * an exalted
condition of the power which occasions the accretion of particles
in the crystaline mass,' the quickening force of nature through
every form of existence being the same. When we say life is
BB 2
8-72 THE COGNITION OF THE INFINITE.
present or absent we only mean' the presence or absence of a
particular manifestation of life. The all-life of the universe is
the Deity energizing in nature —this is the theology of science.
The conception of the universe is incomplete if it is not conceived
as a constant and continuous work of the eternally-creating
Spirit. 'External nature,' says Mr. Ruskin, *has a body and
^"' soul like man, but the soul is the Deity.' Though nature be not
God, the thoughts of nature are God's thoughts. Religion,
poetry, and science all demand that however much God may
transcend His creation. He must in some way be immanent
therein."^
Vin. Lastly, Pantheism involves the question of the capacity
y of the human mind to know God. It is a question of the validity
of reason in theology. Can we without any external revelation
through a church, a book, or otherwise, know that there is a God ?
and can we know anything whatever of wliat He is ? Have we
any capacity in any way competent for such knowledge ? Some
will answer that we can know there is a God, because we see His
works, and from His works we infer His existence, but we do not
know what He is. We may know that there is a Creator — an
Author of nature, but we cannot know Him as the Infinite and
the Absolute. Some jealous defenders of the authority of exter-
nal revelation have impugned all arguments addressed to reason
* The scientific feeling of the Divine Immanency has been made popular by
Robert Hunt in his Panthca, or Spirit of Nature. The name, as well as the
idea, is taken from Shelley. Julian Lord Altmont, the hero, comes under the
powerful intiuence of Laon and his daughter Aeltgiva, worshippers of the Spirit
of Nature. Altmont is initiated. " Aeltgiva exclaimed, in a tone of command,
' Julian Altmont ; let the eyes of the mind look through the other senses and see
the spirit of the law.' She continued in a calmer tone : — ' Those curving waters,
line with line commingling to form that flowing sheet on either side of the
translucent n)ass, which shines moie brightly than any artificial mirror, glide
adown the sun-Avoven tresses of the mighty Panthea, by which they are restrained.
Can you not trace their myriads of silver threads weaAing through all, and
binding that mass of Avaters ? But gaze on, — Aeltgiva was suddenly silent.
She clasped her hands upon her bosom, still pressing the Avater lily. She bowed
herself reverently, and sank one knee slowly to the ground. ' Kneel, Julian,'
she continued, ' kneel,' the revelation of those heaven-illumined eyes, dimming
the moon Avith their lustre, is to be received Avith humility, and met AA'ith human
adoration. Mighty Spirit, kiridly looking from thy throne of AA^aters, permit me
to hope that by this manifestation of Thine eternal presence to the earth-born,
Thou art pleased to receive the votary we bring Thee ! Panthea speaks through
me, and bids me say, — ' To knoAv nature thou must be true to nature. To be
true to nature thou must live looking for ever with purest love unto the Mighty
Spirit Avho presides. The love of the sensual must rise into the love of the
spiritual. On the earth thou must cease to be of the earth. In the body the
purified soul must become bodiless ; and then the ra])ture of that holy life shall
be given thee, and, mounting the car of mind, thou shalt knoAV the mystery.' "
WHAT IS REVELATION ? 873
to prove the existence of God ; but these are few, and not deservino*
of any notice. The question is between those who say we can
know God as the Infinite, and those who deny that we are
capable of such knowledge. By knowing God is not meant
comprehending His Essence. This, perhaps, we shall never
know. We do not know any essences. All our knowledge is
relative. The question is. Do we know God as we know other
beings ? Have we a knowledge of the Infinite as well as of the
finite ? On the assumption that we have this knowledge, all
rational theology is founded. Sir William Hamilton, and after
him Mr. Mansel, with a clear perception of the inevitable result
of the admission that the human mind has a cognition of the
Infinite, denied the possibility of our knowing God. This was
laying the axe to the root of Pantheism, and had it cut down
nothing more than the theologies of the Pantheists, Sir W.
Hamilton's doctrine, as applied by Mr. Mansel, might have been
accepted in all its simpUcity. But it did not stop there. It de-
prived theology of all foundation in reason. We speak only of
Mr. Mansel's doctrine if legitimately carried out. He admits,
we imagine, that no man ought to receive a religion unless there
was something rational in it, and if it contained a doctrine which
made God cruel or unjust he would surely say as Wesley did of
predestination; ' No Scripture caw prove this.' But Mr. Man-
sel's mode of refuting Pantheism is to expel reason to make
way for revelation. The Abbe IMaret did the same thing to
make way for the infallible church, and then he returned to
reason, not only to show the reasonableness of believing in the
Church, but to shoAV that natural religion was really a kind of
revelation. Before Mr. Mansel's argument can have any weight
the question which Mr. Maurice asked must be fully settled.
What is Revelation ? The external evidences of the infallible
Church we, as Protestants, at once reject not only because of
their own weakness, but because the Church of Rome teaches
doctrines too monstrous to be believed. The external evidences
of the Scriptures — what are they when deprived of the moral
or internal evidence ? Had the character of Jesus been the
contrary of what it is could any miracles have established His
divine mission, or any testimony been sufficient to authenticate
the inspiration of those who wrote the books of His life and doc-
trines ? It is evident that an appeal to reason, and the moral
conscience of mankind enters into the evidences of revelation.
Christianity has made its way in the world just because
its truth commends itself to the hearts of men. Few people
374
are capable of understanding the external evidences, and
of those who do still fewer are convinced by them. It
is not the objective doctrine nor the objective revelation that
turns men from darkness to light and fills their souls with faith
in a Father infinitely good, in a Son who bears the per-
fection of our nature, or a Holy Spirit who sanctifies and leads
into all truth. The multitude of Christians who know and
believe these things could not prove the genuineness, the authen-
ticity, nor the inspiration of any book in the Bible, nor state
with any measure of accuracy the argument from prophecy or
miracles. Revelation is subjective. It is God speaking in
man. The record of God's speaking to the saints in times past
is objective revelation. To suppose that this can be opposed to
the reason or the moral conscience, is to suppose a contradiction.
It could not be revelation if it were. But the Scriptures do not
mark out those limits of religious thought which are marked
out by Mr. Mansel. And Mr. Mansel knows this. He knows
that the Scriptures do speak of God as the Infinite. They do
not seek to crush reason, but to exalt it, to exercise it, to raise
it to the Infinite. * Surely ' he says, * there is a sense in which
we may not think of God as though He were man, as there is
also a sense in which we cannot help so thinking of Him.
When we read in the same narrative, and almost in two con-
secutive verses of Scripture — The Strength of Israel will not
lie nor repent, for He is not a man that He should repent ;
and, again, the Lord repented that He made Saul king over
Israel ; we are imperfectly conscious of an appeal to two dif-
ferent principles of representation involving opposite sides of the
same truth ; we feel that there is a true foundation for the
system which denies human attributes to God ; though the
superstructure which has been raised upon it logically involves
the denial of His very existence.' It is evident then that the
Scriptures agree with reason, and that both give a foundation
for Pantheism. Mr. Mansel cannot change revelation into
something else than what it actually is, and however bad Pan-
theism may be we cannot, in order to escape it, give up both
reason and revelation.
Pantheism is, on all hands, acknowledged to be the theology
* ^ of reason — of reason it may be in its impotence, but still of
such reason as man is gifted with in this present life. It is
the philosophy of religion ; the philosophy of all religions. It
is the goal of Rationalism, of Protestantism, and of Catholicism,
for it is the goal of thought. There is no resting place but,
Plato's pantheism reconciled with his TELEOLoaY. 375
by ceasing to think or reason on God and things divine. Indi-
viduals may stop at the symbol, Churches and sects may strive
to make resting places on the way by appealing to the authority
of a Church, to the letter of the Sacred Writings, or by trying
to fix the ' limits ' of religious thought, when God Himself has
not fixed them. But the reason of man in its inevitable de-
velopment and its divine love of freedom will break all such
bonds and cast away all such cords. They are but the inventions
of men, and the human soul in its progress onwards will hold
them in derision. It knows that God is infinite, and only as
the Infinite will it acknowledge Him to be God.
But what is Pantheism ? Substantially and primarily, Pan-
theism is the eff"ort of man to know God as Being, infinite and
absolute. It is ontological Theism — another, a necessary and
an implied form of rational Theism. The argument frcm
teleology proves a God at work ; the argument from ontolo<:y
proves a God infinite. We cannot take the one without the
other, whatever may be our difficulties in reconciling the con-
clusions to which each leads us. The difficulties arise from
the vastness of the subject ; and, though we cannot see further
than we do see, that is no reason for shutting our eyes to what
is manifest.
And is not this the reconciliation of the supposed contra-
diction in Plato's theology ? Who was more decidedly Pan-
theistic than Plato ? Is he not the great ancestor of all
rational or Pantheistic theologians ? And yet who is clearer
on teleology than Plato ? In the Timams God is a Creator
distinct and separate from creation, and apparently, too, from
the ideas, * after which creation was modelled. From nature
and its regulation according to laws, Plato derives his principal
reasons for the conviction of the Divine existence, and from
the constant mobility of nature he concludes the necessity of
an originating, moving principle. Every doubt as to Plato's
belief in a personal Deity who works in nature for speci d ends
must be removed by the following passage from the Sophistes : —
" Guest of Elea, — But with respect to all living animals and
plants which are produced in the earth from seeds and roots,
together with such inanimate bodies as subsist on the earth,
* We have assumed throu.t^hout that Phito's 'ideas ' are the thoughts of
God. Professor Thompson says ' this is a eommon misrepresentation, but as-
suredly it is one. In the Parmenides Plato denies that ideas are thoughts, and
refutes the position dialcctically. If they arc not ' thoughts,' of course they can-
not be ' God's thoughts,' The theoiy is not Plato, but Plato mude easy.''
376 i»LATO REPROACHED WITH ANTHROPOMORPHISM.
able to be liquified or not, can we say that, not existing
previously, tbey were subsequently produced by any other
than some fabricating God ? or making use of the opinion and
the assertion of the many.'
Thesetetus,— 'What is that?' '
Guest, — ' That nature generates these from some self-acting
fortuitous cause and without a generating mind, or (is it) with
reason and a Divine science originating from God ? '
Thesetetus. — ' I, perhaps through my age, am often changing
my opinion to both sides. But, at present, looking to you
and apprehending that you think these things are produced
according to (the will) of a Deity, I think so too.'
Guest, — ' It is well, Thesetetus ? and if we thought that you
would be one of those who, at a future time, would think
diiferently, we should now endeavour to make you acknowledge
this by the force of reason, in conjunction with the persuasion
of necessity. But, since I know your nature to be such, that
without any arguments from us, it will of itself arrive at that
conclusion to which you say you are now drawn, I will leave
the subject, for the time would be superfluous. But I will lay
this down, that the things which are said to be made by nature
are (made) by divine art, but the things which are composed
from those of men, are produced from human (art) ; and that,
according to this assertion, there are two kinds of the making
art — one human, and the other divine.' "
Plato's teleolo2;y exposed him to the reproach of anthropo-
morphism as much as his ontology to the reproach of Pan-
theism. Plutarch says ' Even Plato, that magnificent reasoner,
when he says that God made the world in His own mould and
pattern, savors of the rust and moss of antiquity He
represents the Divine Architect as a miserable bricklayer, or a
mason, toiling and sweating at the fabric and government of
the world.'
But the elements which Plato inherited from Parmenides
were never renounced. God was still ' the Being ' — exist-
ence itself. He was without passions, incapable of repentance,
anger, or hatred. He was best worshipped by pious feeling
and upright conduct. Ceremonies, prayers, sacrifices were no
honor to Him. They did not secure His favor ; they did not
change God. Not only was God ' the Being,' but He was ' the
Good ' — absolute Goodness. Plato's modern disciples have been
perplexed by the identification of God with ' the Good,' and have
tried to explain that this was not his meaning, but all his ancient
THE REAL ERROR OF THE PANTHEISTS. 377
followers, Platonists and Neo-Platonists alike, so understood him.
• This opinion,' says Professor Thompson, ' is evidently difficult
to reconcile with the personality of the Divine Essence, and with
those passages in the Tlmceus and elsewhere, in which that per-
sonality seems to be clearly asserted. Are we to suppose that
such passages are to be taken in an exclusively mythical sense,
and that we are to look to the Republic and Philehus as convey-
ing Plato's interior meaning ? ' But what need for all this critic-
ism and these suppositions, if the Theism of ontology is a neces-
sary part of all rational Theism ? That which reconciles Plato
with himself, reconciles Schleiermacher, the modern Plato,
with himself. His short-sighted critics talk piteously of the
Pantheism of his youth, and express rejoicing that in his later
years he saw more distinctly the personality of God. But that
great spirit who had a genius for theology, such as is rarely to
be found in the course of ages, saw clearly that the theology of
the ' Discourses on Religion,' was the same as the theology of his
sermons. He knew that God was impersonal and yet personal ;
that He was without parts or passions, and yet that He was our
Lord, our King, and our Judge.
We have already proposed that the words ' material Pantheism '
should be no longer used, and as the other form of Pantheism is
nothing more than belief in the ontological Deity, we might pro-
pose that the word Pantheism be entirely laid aside. Indefinite
or ambiguous words are the greatest enemies to clear thinking.
But there is an important sense in which some of those who are
called Pantheists have fallen into error. The source of this
error is an ignoring of the conditions under which what may be
known of God is known. Our knowledge is always relative.
We do not know essences, least of all the transcendent essence
of God. The dread of anthropomorphism has led some theologians
to a denial of the likeness between God and man. They have
preferred worshipping a God without attributes, of whom no-
thing can be predicated, to ascribing to God any attributes which
would seem to limit Him. This is dividing the truth, yea it is
running against it, for man is made in God's image, and the
qualities of love, goodness, justice, with many others which, are
in man, are also, in some way, in God. Every philosophy, and
every religion has returned to acknowledge this, however much
they may have denied it. What but this is the meaning oF all
Polytheism, and the incarnations of the gods ? In all religions
there is a human deity corresponding to the wisdom of God.
A Brahma, a Budha incarnate, a Hermes, a Honover or a
878 CHRIST, THE VISIBLE IMAGE OF THE INVISIBLE.
Logos. In the Hebrew religion, though God was the impersonal
' I Am,' He was yet a personal God, appearing to the patriarchs
iti a human form, leading forth the people out of Egypt, abiding
in the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. All religions,
even those which have speculated most on the Infinite have yet
conceived God under a human form and as possessing human
attributes. Nor is this wonderful when we consider that man is
the highest being of whom the mind can form a distinct image.
Man is to himself the representative of all that is great ; the ex-
amplar of mind ; the highest manifestation of spirit. Provisional,
the conception of God as personal may be, corrected by the other
it must be, yet it is necessary to a true knowledge of God. * The
pious soul craves a personal Deity.' We crave to worship man.
It is equally true that God is infinite and that He can be repre-
sented under the form of the finite. So has He been represented
in Him who is the visible ' image of the invisible God ' —
Him we can worship without idolatry, for in Him the Divine
was clothed in the human form. Man is made in the likeness
of God, and the converse is fully true that God is in the like-
ness of man. He wills and designs. He has passions — anger,
jealousy, love, and hatred, but He has them without the limita-
tions and infirmities which they imply when predicated of men.
So long as we hold fast by this we are free to indulge in the
widest and fullest speculations concerning the being of the In-
finite God. He invites us to such enquiries. They are natural
to the human mind. They are connected with the highest theo-
logies and the deepest and most devout feelings of men. We
could not believe in a Logos, did we not believe in a ' Being,' or
a ' Bythos ' beyond ; or to use more Christian language we could
not believe in Christ who is the Son, but for our belief in God
who is the Father. We could not believe in a personal God
who creates the world and rules it as a king or judge, but for
our belief in a Spirit which is everywhere, and yet nowhere.
The argument from final causes proves the existence of a world-
maker. It demonstrates that there is a mind working in the
world. It is a clear and satisfactory proof to the ordinary un-
derstanding of man, but it proves nothing more than a finite
God, We must supplement it by the argument from ontology.
The one gives a mind, the other gives Being, the two together
give the infinite God, impersonal and yet personal — to be called
by all names, or, if that is irreverent, to be called by no name.
Our thoughts concerning God reach a stage where silence is the
sublimest speech. Like the little child that at even time lifts
CONCLUSION. 379
its eyes to the great blue vault of heaven and says of the ten
thousand stars that are twinkling there, these are God's eyes, He
is the silent Witness and Watcher of my deeds ; so must we say of
the great world, that God is everywhere, in all things He sees us,
in all things we may see Him. . The profoundest philosopher,
the man most deeply learned in science, returns to the creed of
the world's infancy, and hears in the roar of the thunder that
voice which is fall of majesty, sees in the lightning the flashes
of tlie Divine Presence, and in all the operations of nature's
manifold laws, the working of an ever-present God.
CONCLUSION.
WE have already said that Pantheism is a question of the
right of reason to be heard in matters pertaining to re-
ligion. We have seen the conclusion to which reason inevitably
comes. Is what is called Pantheism anything so fearful that to
avoid it we must renounce reason ? To trace the history of
theology from its first dawning among the Greeks, down to the
present day, and to describe the whole as opposed to Christianity
is surely to place Christianity in antagonism with the Catholic
reason of mankind. To describe all the greatest minds that have
been engaged in the study of theology as Pantheists, and to mean
by this term men irreligious, unchristian, or Atheistic, is surely
to say that religion, Christianity, and Theism have but little
agreement with reason. Are we seriously prepared to make
this admission ? Not only to give up Plato and Plotinus,
Origen and Erigena, Spinoza and Schleiermacher, but S. Paul
and S. John, S. Augustine and S. Athanasius. It may be said
that the philosophy of the Greeks and Alexandrians corrupted the
simplicity of the gospel of Christ, and that an apostle says, Hhe
world by wisdom kneiv not God.' It might be enough to answer
with S. Augustine that by wisdom S. Paul here means the
philosophy of such as Democritus and Epicurus, not that of So-
crates and Plato. Yet there is an important sense in which
philosophy corrupted the simplicity of Christ's gospel. That
gospel was a religion, not a theology ; a rule of life rather than
a code of faith. It was corrupted when theology took the
place of religion, and certain dogmas were declared necessary
to salvation, and substituted for a godly life. But the first
B80 S. PAUL AND THE PANTHEISTIC POET.
teachers of Christianity — those who had their commission im-
mediately from Christ appealed to the truths of natural religion
and incorporated as their own all that was true in the teaching
of the Heathen world. S.Paul quoted and sanctioned the Pan-
theism of one of the most Pantheistic of the Greek poets. He
did not stop to explain in what sense we are the offspring of
God. He took the words of Aratus as they stood. He did not
explain the Monotheism of the Greeks as a spurious Theism^ nor
did he say that the God whom the Greeks worshipped was not
the same God whom Jesus revealed. He quoted the words of the
philosophical poet without qualification or explanation. He made
use of Heathen wisdom to refute Heathen folly. Christianity,
indeed, clothed itself in the Greek forms of speech. It adopted,
corrected, or modified the great truths of natural religion that
were known to the Heathen world. Even the Logos which in S.
John is the desigration of the Son of God, previous to His in-
carnation, was in familiar use in the theology of the schools.
Throughout S. Paul's Epistles, and the Epistle to the Hebrews,
close parallelisms may be traced both in thought and language
between them and the writings of the Alexandrian philosophers
and especially those of Philo, the Jew, who preceded the Apostles
in translating Hebrew thoughts into Greek forms. ' Alexan-
drianism ' says an able and earnest wi'iter, * was not the seed of
the great tree which was to cover the earth, but tlie soil in
which it grew up. It was not the body of which Christianity
was the soul, but the vesture in which it folded itself — the old
bottle into which the new wine was poured. When with
stammering lips and other tongues the first preachers passed
beyond the borders of the sacred land Alexandrianism was the
language which they spoke, not the faith they taught. It was
mystical and dialectical, not moral and spiritual ; for the few,
not for the many ; for the Jewish therapeute not for all mankind.
It spoke of a Holy Ghost, of a Word, of a Divine Man, of a
first and second Adam, of the faith of Abraham, of bread which
came down from Heaven ; but knew nothing of the God who
had made of one blood all nations of the earth, of the victory
over sin and death, of the cross of Christ. It was a picture, a
shadow, a surface, a cloud above, catching; the risino: lidit ere
He appeared. Christianity recommended itself by its reason-
ableness to the philosophers of Alexandria. These passed into
the Church and became its first great teachers after the days
of the Apostles. Their deep longing for yet higher and clearer
truth was satisfied in Christianity. The gospel became to them
REASON AND REVELATION. 381
the true Gnosis — the knowledge which Plato had taught men
to seek after as the highest good.
To separate between reason and revelation is to put asunder
what God hath joined together. To speak of their harmony is
but to enunciate a truism, for revelation is made to reason —
that is, it appeals to man as a moral and rational being. It is
in itself the highest reason, for it is the Divine reason speak-
ing to the reason of man. Man may apprehend it but imper-
fecfly; some men more, others less. If we start with the
assumption that revelation is an infallible Church, or if we
make the Bible that reasonless and indefinite authority which
Catholics make the Church, we shall end in inextricable con-
fusion. The exile of reason will be a necessity, and the only
substitute left, a blind and unenquiring faith, which, in other
circumstances, would have been given to the religion of Budha or
Mahomet as readily as it is given to that of Jesus. ' That
would be an evil day ' says the Bishop of London, ^ for the
Christian religion and the Christian Church, in which theolo-
gians granted that the truths which they taught were not to be
tested afid maintained by reason. Where should we have
anything to save us from launching on the shoreless sea of
superstition, which, in a vague way, satisfying unthinking
minds, is for those who think, but another name for Scepticism ? '
Come what may, let us hold fast to reason. Let theology be
brought out into the field of a full and searching enquiry. In
such an ordeal, like other sciences, it will be purged of much of
its dross, but it will come forth all the better and brighter and
worthier in the eyes of men. It skulks now behind authority,
tradition, and ignorance, for its advocates are afraid that it
cannot bear the light. Vanish all such fears ! Let men be
honest with themselves, honest with their own minds; and God,
too, will be honest with them. The search for light is our
earthly vocation, and God Himself is leading us on. He is
holding before us the golden lamp. Often we see it but dimly,
and often the very brightness of our vision is dazzling to the
eyes of other men. ' The most precious truth ' said Richard
Baxter, ' not apprehended doth seem to be but error and fan-
tastic novelty.' But for all this seeming, it is not less * precious
truth.' Reason has had many wanderings and many guesses.
She has often been right when she seemed to be wrong, and
wrong when she seemed to be right. The Catholic Baronius
wished to expel ' the Hagar ' with ' her profane Ishmael ; ' but,
with all her conjectures, her dreams^ her air castles, that is true
882 WISDOM JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN.
which was said by One wiser than Baronius even by Him who
was the incarnation of the Divine Reason. — Wisdom is jusUriecl
of all her children.
The following works have becn^used more or less in the composition of this
chapter ; some of them have reference to all the chapters.
Essai sur le Pantheisme ; par H. L. C. Maret.
Theodicee Chretienne ; par H. L C. Maret.
La Theodicee Chretienne de M. L' Abbe Maret comparee avec la
Theologie Catholique ; pai* M. L'Abbe Peltier,
Modern Pantheism; by M. Saisset. Translated from the French.
Der Pantheismus nach seinen verschiedenen Hauptformen, seinen Ur-
sprung und Fortgange &c ; von G. B. Jasche.
Reden iiber die Religion ; von Dr. F. Schleiermacher.
Der Christliche Glaube ; von Dr. F. Schleiermacher.
Schleiermacher on the Gospel of S.Luke translated by Bishop Thirl -
wall.
Weihnachtsfeier ; von Dr. F. Schleiermacher.
Essay on Schleiermacher ; by R. A. Vaughan.
Sengler's Idee des Gottes.
Amand Saintes on German Rationalism.
Theodore Parker's Sermons on Theism, Atheism &c.
Theodore Parker's Discom'se on Religion.
Robertson's Sermons.
Vie de Jesus ; par M. Renan.
Essays and Lectures ; by R. W. Emerson.
Mansel's Bampton Lectures.
Mansel's Metaphysics.
Professor Mansel on M. Saisset's 'Modern Pantheism' in the Coteni-
porary Review, May, 1866.
Sir William Hamilton's Lectures and Discussions.
Professor Ferrier's Institutes of Metaphysic.
What is Revelation ? ; by the Rev. F. D. Maurice.
Philosophy of the Infinite ; by H. Calderwood.
Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy ; by J. S. Mill.
Channing's Essay on Milton.
S. Athanasius against the Arians in the Library of the Fathers.
Kingsley's Sermons.
Wesley's Sermons.
Toplady's More work for John Wesley.
Thompson's Burnett Prize Essay.
Tulloch's Burnett Prize Essay.
Robert Hunt's Panthea, or Spirit of Nature.
Robert Hunt's Poetry of the Sciences.
Correlation of Physical Forces ; by Dr. Grove.
Oersted's Soul in Nature.
Life and its Varieties ; by Leo. H. Grindon.
Life and Death ; by W. S. Savory.
Vie, Travaux et Doctrine Scientifique d'E. Geoffroy S. Hilairc par
son Fils.
Owen on the Archetype and Homolgies of the Vertebrate Skeleton.
M'Cosh on Typical Forms in Creation.
Oken's Physico-Philosophy.
Cuvier's Animal Kingdom.
De la Nature ; par J. B. Robinet.
La vraie Philosophic; par J. B* Robinet.
Origin of Species ; by Charles Darwin.
Vestiges of a Natural History of Creation.
Man's Place in Nature ; by Professor Huxley.
Professor Lindley's Botany.
Goethe's Versuch die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklaren
Plant, A Biography ; by Professor Schleiden.
Ruskin's Modern Painters.
Ackermann on the Christian Element in Plato.
Plato's Republic, Sophistes, and Timoeus.
Professor Jowett on S. Paul's Epistles.
Dr. Irons on the whole Doctrine of Final Causes.
Esquisse d'une Philosophic ; par M. Lamennais.
De I'.Humanite, son Principe et de son Avenir ; par M.Leroux.
Fragments Philosophiques ; par M. Cousin.
De la Philosophic du Clerge ; Revue des deux.Mondes, Mai, 1844.
Melanges Philosophiques ; par M. JoufFroy.
Essai sur I'histoire de la philosophic en France au xix^ siecle; par M.
Damiron.
Philosophic de Droit; par M. Lerminier.
Nouveau Christianisme ; par Le Comte Henry de Saint-Simon.
Exposition de la Doctrine saint-simonienne premiere et deuxi^me
annees.
L'EncyclopedieNouvelle ; Articles— Christianisme, Ciel, Thgologie.
L'Origine des Cultes ; par M. Dupuis.
Dictionaire Catholique par M. Goschler ; Art,-Panth6israe.
Histoire naturelle des Animaux ; parM. de Lamarck.
History of Civilization ; by T. H. Buckle.
Bishop Warburton's Divine Legation of Moses.
Cudworth's Intellectual System of the Universe.
Bishop Berkeley's Minute Philosopher.
Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary ; Art. — Shells.
Hume's Essays.
Sir Charles Lyell on the Antiquity of Man.
Farrar's Bampton Lectures.
Bayle's Dictionary ; Articles — Spinoza and Manichseism.
Baden Powell on the Order of Nature.
Natural Eeligion ; by M. Jules Simon. Translated from the French
by J. W. Cole.
Bishop Beveridge on the XXXIX Articles.
Exposition of the XXXIX Articles ; by the Bishop of Ely.
Claims of the Bible and of Science ; by the Rev. F. D. Maurice.
Harmony of Kevelation and the Sciences ; by the Bishop of London.
THE END.
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INDEX.
Abbott on Sight and Touch •>
Acton's Modern Cookery 19
Alcock's ivesidence in Japan 15-
Allies on Formation of Christianity 13
Alpine Guide (The) 15
Apjohn's Manual of the Metalloids 8
Arago's Bio;?raphies of Scientific Men .... 4
Popular Astronomy 7
Arnold's Manual of English Literature. ... 5
Arnott's Elements of Physics 7
Arundines Caml 17
Atherstone Priory 16
Autumn Holidays of a Country Parson .... 6
Ayre's Treasury of Bible Knowledge 13
Bacon's Essays, by Whately 4
Life and Letters, by Si'EDDiNG 3
Works 4
Bain on the Emotions and Will 7
on the Senses and Intellect 7
on the Study of Character 7
Baines's Explorations in S.V.'. Africa .... 15
Ball's Guide to the Central Alps 15
Guide to the Western Alps 15
Barnard's Drawing from Nature 11
Bayldon's Rents and Tillages 12
Beaten Tracks .^ 15
Becker's Charlcles and Gallus .....* 16
Beethoven's Letters 3
Ben FEY 's Sanskrit-English Dictionary .... 5
Berry's Journals 3
Black's Treatise on Brewing 19
Blackley and Friedlander's German
and English Dictionary 5
Blaine's Rural Sports 17
Veterinary Art 18
Blight's Week at the Land's End 16
Boase's Essay on Human Nature 6
Philosophy of Nature 6
Boner's Transylvania 15
Bonney's Alpsof Dauphind 15
Booth's Epigrams 6
Bourne on Screw Propeller 12
Bourne's Catechism of the Steam Engine.. 12
Handbook of Steam Engine 12
Treatise on the Steam Engine. ... 12
Bowdler's Family Shakspeare ... 17
Boyd's Manual for Naval Cadets 18
Bramley-Moore'sSIx Sisters of the Valleys 16
Brande's Dictionary of Science, Literature,
and Art 9
Bray 's (C.) Education of the Feelings 7
■ Philosophy of Necessity 7
Brewer's Atlas of History and Geography 20
Brinton on Food and Digestion 19
Bristow's Glossary of Mineralogy 8
Brodie's Constitutional History
Brodie's (Sir C. B.) Works 10
. Autobiography 10
Browne's Ice Caves of France and Switzer-
land 15
Exposition 39 Articles 12
Pentateuch 1
Buckle's History of Civilization 2
Bull's Hints to Mothers 19
Maternal Management of Children.. 19
Bunsen's Ancient Egypt 2
BuNSKN on Apocrypha 13
Burke's Vicissitudes of Families 4
Burton's Christian Church 3
Butler's Atlas of Ancient Geography 20
Modern Geography 20
Cabinet Lawyer 19
Calvert's Wife's Manual 14
Campaigner at Home 6
Cats and Farlie's Moral Emblems 11
Chorale Book for England 14
Clough's Lives from Plutarch 2
CoLENso (Bishop) on Pentateuch and Book
of Joshua 13
CoLLiNs's Horse Trainer'slGuide 18
Columbus's Voyages 15
Commonplace Philosopher in Town and
Country 6
Conington's Handbook of Chemical Ana-
lysis 9
CoNTANSEAu's Two Frcnch and English
Dictionaries 5
Con YBEARE and Howson's Life and Epistles
of St. Paul 12
Cook's Voyages 15
Copland's Dictionary of Practical Medicine 10
Cox's Tales of the Great Persian War 2
Tales from Greek Mythology 15
Tales of the Gods and Heroes 16
Tales of Thebes and Argos 16
Cresy's Encyclopedia of Civil Engineering 11
Critical Essays of a Country Parson 6
Crowe's History of France 2
CussANs's Grammar of Heraldry 11
Da rt's Iliad of Homer 17
D'AubignL's History of the Reformation in
the time of Calvin 2
Dayman's Dante's Divina Commedia 17
Dead Shot (The), by Marksman 18
De la Rive's Treatise on Electricity 8
Delmard's Village Life in Switzerland.... 15
De la Pr y m e's Life of Christ 13
De Morgan on Matter and Spirit 6
De TocauEViLLE's Democracy in America 2
Dolson on the Ox 18
22
NEW WORKS PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS and CO.
Duncan and Millard on Classification,
&c. of the Idiotic 10
Dyer's City of Rome 2
Edinburgh Review (The) 20
Edwards's Shipmaster's Guide 18
Elements of Botany 8
EUice, a Tale 16
Ellicott's Broad and Narrow Way 13
-^ Commentary on Ephesians .... 13
— ^^ Destiny of the Creature 13
— Lectures on Life of Christ 13
Commentary on Galatians 13
Pastoral Epist. 13
Philippians,&c. 13
Thessalonians 13
Essays and Reviews 13
on Religion and Literature, edited by
Manning 13
Fairbairn's Application of Cast and
Wrought Iron to Building 11
Information for Engineers .. 11
. Treatise on Mills & Millwork 11
Fairbairn on Iron Ship Building 11
Farrar's Chapters on Language 5
Ffoulkes's Christendom's Divisions 13
Fraser's Magazine 20
Freshfield's Alpine Byways 15
Tour in the Grisons 15
Fkoude's -History of England 1
Garratt's Marvels and Mysteries of Instinct 8
Gee's Sunday to Sunday 14
GiLBERxand Churchill's Dolomite Moiin-
tains 15
Gilly's Shipwrecks of the Navy 16
Goethe's Second Faust, by Anster 17
Goodeve's Elements of Mechanism 11
Gorle's Questions on Browne's Exposition
of the 39 Articles 12
Grant's Ethics of Aristotle 4
Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson 6
Gray's Anatomy 10
Greene's Corals and Sea Jellies 8
Sponges and Animalculae 8
Grove on Correlation of Physical Forces . . 8
Gwilt's Encyclopaedia of Architecture .... 11
1 Holmes's System of Surgery 9
Hooker and Walker-Arnott's British
j Flora 8
Horn e's Introduction to the Scriptures,... 13
I Compendium of the Scriptures . . "" "^ •
i Horsley's Manual of Poisons 9
Hoskyns's Talpa 12
How we Spent the Summer 15
Howitt's Australian Discovery 15
Rural Life of England 16
Visits to Remarkable Places .... 16
Howson's Hulsean Lectures on St. Paul. ... 12
I Hughes's (E.) Geographical Atlas 20
i (W.) Geography of British His-
i tory and Manual of Geography 7
I Hullah's History of Modern Music 3
Transition M usical Lectures 3
Humboldt's Travels in South America. ... 16
Humphreys' Sentiments of Shakspeare. ... II
Hutton's Studies in Parliament 6
Hymns from Lyra Germanica 14
Ingelow's Poems 17
Icelandic Legends, Second Series 16
Idle's Hints on Shooting 18
Jameson's Legends of the Saints and Mar-
tyrs 11
Legends of the Madonna 11
Legends of the Monastic Orders 11
Jameson and Eastlake's History of Our
Lord 11
Johns's Home Walks and Holiday Rambles 8
Johnson's Patentee's Manual 12
Practical Draughtsman .... 12
Johnston's Gazetteer, or General Geo-
graphical Dictionary 7
Jones's Christianity and Common Sense . . 7
Kalisch's Commentary on the Bible 5
Hebrew Grammar 5
Kesteven's Domestic Medicine 10
Kirby and Spence's Entomology 8
KuENEN on Pentateuch and Joshua 13
Handbook of Angling, by Ephemera 18
Hare on Election of Representatives 5
Hartwig's Harmonies of Nature f 8
■ Sea and its Living Wonders. ... 8
Tropical World 8
Haughton's Manual of Geology 8
Hawker's Instructions to Young Sports-
men 17
Heaton's Notes on Rifle Shooting 17
Healey's Chess Problems 19
Helps's Spanish Conquest in America .... 2
Hersch el's Essays from Reviews 9
Outlines of Astronomy 7
Hewitt on the Diseases of Women 9
Hints on Etiquette 19
Hodgson's Time and Space 7
Holland's Essays on Scientific Subjects .. 9
Lady's Tour round Monte Rosa 15
Landon's (L. E. L.) Poetical Works 17
Latham's English Dictionary 5
Lecky's History of Rationalism 2
Leisure Hours in Town 6
Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy 2
Lewin's Fasti Sacri 13
Lewis on Early Roman History 4
. on Irish Disturbances 4
on Observation and Reasoning in
Politics *
. on Political Terms 4
Lewis's Essays on Administrations 4
Fables of Babrius 4
LiDDELLandScoTT'sGreek-EnglishLexicon 5
Abridged ditto 5
Life of Man Symbolised 10
LiNDLEY and Moore's Treasury of Botany 8
NEW WORKS PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS and CO.
Longman's Lectures on History of England 1
Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Agriculture 12
Gardening 12
Plants 9
^ Trees and Shrubs 9
;Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture 12
Lowndes's Engineer's Handbook 11
Lyra Doraestica 14
Eucharistica 14
Germanica 10, 14
Messianica 14
Mystica H
Sacra H
MACAULAY's(Lord) Essays 2
History of England 1
Lays of Ancient Rome 17
. Miscellaneous Writings 6
Speeches 5
Works 1
Macdougall's Theory of War 12
Marshman's Life of Havelock 3
McLeod's Middle-Class Atlas of General
Geography 20
Physical Atias of Great Britain
and Ireland 20
McCuLLOCH 's Dictionary of Commerce 18
Geographical Dictionary 7
Macfie's Vancouver Island 15
Maguire's Life of Father Mathew 3
Rome and its Rulers 3
Maling's Indoor Gardener 9
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