garded as forms of the universal activity. Selfhood and freedom are the only marks which can distinguish the finite from the infinite. Neither view could disturb phenomena, or things as they appear; and hence common sense cannot properly be invoked to decide the question. That material elements exist at all, is an hypothesis formed to provide an objective cause for our sensations and for their peculiar syntheses. Allowing them to exist, we have at once to supplement them by another being which conditions and mediates all their activities. If, then, beings are not to be multiplied beyond necessity, and if the simplest hypothesis is the best; then it is plain to us, that the theory of material elements is operose and needless, and should be replaced by the theory that all lifeless existence is simply a form of the activity of the infinite. Indeed, the conception of impersonal existence cannot be distinguished from that of a flowing activity. But when we come to spiritual beings, who have consciousness and personality, the theory fails to fit, except with important modifications. The thoughtless will hastily conclude that we have just as good reason for believing in the substantiality of the elements as in the substantiality of ourselves; but this will only prove that the term thoughtless is rightly applied. We do know that a sufficient cause of the phenomenal world exists; but we do not know, and have nothing like proof, that material elements exist. We do know that we ourselves exist. No one denies an objective reality; but the nature of that reality is entirely a matter of speculation. decide the question by appeals to sense-perception is

To

like attacking the Copernican theory on the same basis.

Again, the thoughtless will urge that if nature is resigned to pantheism, there is no reason for withholding the petty realm of the human spirit; but this objection totally misconceives the function of philosophy. It is akin to the claim, often heard, that because mechanical laws explain physical phenomena, they must also explain vital and mental phenomena; or that because necessity rules in the physical world, it must also rule in volition. One must always be on his guard against the imposition of extending a law from one realm into another without independent proof of its validity in that realm. Bear in mind all the while that the duty of every philosophy is to explain the facts of consciousness, and not to explain them away. When this is remembered, the impossibility of absolute pantheism is clearly seen. For the facts of personality, and volition, and individual consciousness, are the most fundamental facts of our mental life. Nothing is more indubitable, nothing is so indubitable, as these facts. How we are persons, how we can act, how we can be conscious, we know not; that we are persons, that we act, and that our volition counts for something in the course of events, we are absolutely One can break down consciousness if he will; but pantheism cannot be built up by denying consciousTotal skepticism must result from such heroic treatment. Now every pantheistic theory must recognize these facts, and modify itself accordingly. Hence if the pantheist insist that we are unsubstantial products of the divine activity, he must still allow that that

sure.

ness.

activity is such as to make and leave us persons. If the pantheist insists that God acts in all our willing, we know that we act too. However unsubstantial, then, he may declare the human spirit, it is still something which can act and be acted upon; can think, and feel, and will; but that which can act and be acted upon, is just what we mean by substance. No pantheistic theory can deny these conclusions and remain loyal to the facts or the data of the problem.

He may form what theory he chooses of the way in which these facts are possible; they still remain as facts. But the theist claims no more than this. He does not pretend to know how our personality is made; or how our activity is related to the divine activity; or how the finite can have a relative independence over against the infinite: he only insists that our will and consciousness are our own. If the pantheist attempts to get behind these facts, the theist is justly incredulous of his results; but as long as the facts are undisturbed, the theist is indifferent to the theory. If we keep in mind that the aim of philosophy is not to deny the facts, but to explain them without in any way distorting them, we see that any tenable pantheism must leave just those facts which the theist regards as distinguishing the creature from the creator. Thus pantheism, when purged of its anthropomorphisms and philosophical crudeness, and when brought into harmony with the facts, appears not as pantheism, but as idealistic theism. In it all is life. There are no fixed points of dead inertness; but personality and consciousness are every-where. The ineffable tides of the infinite are poured round all, and

The vulgar attempt

flow through all, and upbear all. to identify God and the world, which degrades God without exalting the world, must be abandoned as vilely anthropomorphic, unphilosophic, and contradictory; and in its place must be put the conception of the living God and Father of our spirits, who is never far from any one of us.

The only tenable pantheism, we said, reduces to idealistic theism. But as we did not decide absolutely for idealism, no more do we decide absolutely for idealistic theism. We have rather aimed to criticise the pantheistic doctrine so as to show the only form in which it can rationally be held. All theism must teach the immanency of God; so that religiously there is no difference between idealistic theism and immanent theism. It is also a mistake to decide positively where there are not sufficient data for a positive decision.

CHAPTER VIII.

RELATION OF GOD TO THE WORLD.

WE have reached the conclusion that all finite exist

ence depends upon a personal and intelligent be ing. We have next to inquire how we shall think of his relation to the world, and its on-going. What we shall have to say will apply equally to realism and to rational idealism. There is no need, therefore, to decide for either.

The philosophic thought of both England and America has been ruled from time immemorial by the deistic conception of a mechanical world and an outside God. According to this conception, the world was made once for all, and thereafter it was able to take care of itself. To such an extent was this independence of the finite carried, that it seemed to be held that the finite would be undisturbed, even if the infinite should entirely vanish. Accordingly, the theistic argument turned largely on such questions as that of a prime mover, the only recognized use for God being to set the world a-going. On this account, very many still regard a dynamic theory of matter as fraught with atheism. God was not only apart from the world, but it almost seems as if he were to be conceived as spatially external. This deistic theory was simply the apotheosis of the crudest notions. of common sense, in itself it belongs to the pre-critical