1,11 '.K'AKY 
 
 '1 TIIK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 < ,1 1< N T OF 
 
 Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH. 
 
 Received October, 1894. 
 ^Accessions No . SJ 3 ^ (o . Class No. 
 
HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 LECTURES 
 
 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF PREVAILING FORMS OF UNBELIEF, 
 
 CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THE NATURE AND 
 
 CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. J. M. MANNING, D.D., 
 
 PASTOK OF THE OLI> SOUTH CltOItOII, HOSTON, AND LECTURER ON THE 
 
 RELATIONS OF CHRISTIANITY TO POPULAR INFIDELITY 
 
 AT ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 
 
 Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which 
 is Jesus Christ. 1 COR. Hi. 11. 
 
 UHIVBRSIT7 
 
 BOSTON : 
 LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 
 
 :N-E\V YORK: 
 LEE, SHEPARD AND DILLINGHAM. 
 
 1872. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, 
 
 BY LEE AND SHEPAKD, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 Stereotyped at the Boston Stereotype Foundry, 
 No. 19 Spring Lane. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Nature and spirit of the work. Definition of the word " infidelity." Char- 
 ity; its limit. Invidious use of the word. Practical infidelity. Sense in 
 which the word is here used. Etymological meaning. To be used with 
 discrimination at all times. Should be boldly applied when deserved. 
 Two sources of infidelity. Strictly but one source. Effects of the Fall. 
 Two opposite mental tendencies. Each tendency the source of a class of 
 infidelities. Scope of the present work. Suggestions in advance. Spec- 
 ulative and scientific theories not to be prejudged. Error not always to be 
 denounced. Mistake respecting astronomy. Treatment of geology. 
 Caution respecting Darwinism. Fondness of clergymen for science. 
 Man's physical nature not a subject of revelation. A true spirit of reform 
 in the church. Natural history of infidel reformers. Infidelity welcomes 
 those whom the church repels. The church not innocent. Should avoid 
 a false position. Duty of the pulpit. Congr*gations must co-operate. 
 New England pulpit to be commended. Effect of a weak pulpit. Lead- 
 ing infidels. How the exigency is to be met, The spirit of Christ in his 
 people our main reliance. Duty of ministers. The whole church must 
 have, the mind of Christ. How the spirit of Christ is to be shown. This 
 spirit peculiar to Christianity Pages 136 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 SPINOZA AND OTHER MASTERS. 
 
 A singular death-bed scene. Spinoza's parents religious refugees. His 
 childhood.. His studies. His defection. His trial. His conduct. 
 His excommunication. A fugitive. At school. His love. Bis pur- 
 pose formed. Reads Descartes.' Characteristics. His poverty. His 
 
 (v) 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 patience. His tolerance. His-casy views of all events. Vagueness of 
 ancient writers. The Alexandrine masters. Plotinus. lamblichus. 
 Proclus. Plato. ATistotle. Xeuophaues the Eleatic. Ileraclitus, 
 Pythagoras. Ilylozoists and others. The Orientals. Egyptian specula- 
 tion. Primitive monotheism. The Chinese. The Greeks. Testimony 
 from Egypt. Conclusion of Naville. Origin of Fetichism. The Totem of 
 the Indians. Spinoza our starting-point. Vagueness before- him. Course 
 of religious thought sketched. Spinoza's system the receptacle. Claims 
 of Bruno. Intellectual activity of the age favorable to Spinoza. The Ref- 
 ormation. Bacon. The Pilgrim Fathers. Richelieu and Cromwell. 
 The Dutch. Locke. Newton. Triumphs of science. Mathematics. 
 Astronomy. Optics. Literature of the seventeenth century. Theology. 
 Religious writers. Divine purpose 37 73 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 THE NATURE AND GROUNDS OF PANTHEISM. 
 
 Definition of pantheism. How it differs from theism and atheism. Wherein 
 atheism and pantheism a-ree. Language of pantheists often ambiguous. 
 Many names lor one thing. Knowledge of Spinozism which the purpose 
 of this work requires. Descartes was Spinoza's guide. This doubted. 
 Opinion of Saisset. Parentage of Descartes. Early purpose. Criterion 
 of truth. Not original vrtth Descartes. Testimony as to Descartes' posi- 
 tion. Four main points in Cartesianism. " I think, therefore I am." Crit- 
 icism of Gasseudi and Huxley. Descartes to be taken as he understood 
 himself. The Cartesian method. Descartes' first step. A foothold for 
 Spinozism. The recognition of Reid's doctrine of necessary truths would 
 have saved Descartes. The Cartesian argument for the divine existence 
 favors Spinozism. The argument for a God which now tends to prevail. 
 Descartes only seems to anticipate this. How his argument legitimates 
 pantheism. The Cartesian method aids the tendency to pantheism. The 
 tendency further strengthened by his deninl of second causes. Spinoza's 
 logic faultless. The premises of pantheism untenable. The central posi- 
 tion of Spinozism. The dogmatic result. Three kinds of knowledge. 
 Some account of the Ethics. Subject, of the Second Part. Of Part Third. 
 Of Part Fourth. Of Part Fifth. Of the First Part. Definitions. 
 Axioms. A demonstration. Perfection of superstructure. Two attri- 
 butes of substance. Bearing on question of immortality. Fatalism. 
 The a priori philosophy not to be judged by Spinozism. Malebranche. 
 Leibnitz. The safeguard 74 HO 
 
CONTENTS. Vil 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 THE GERMAN SUCCESSION 
 
 A reaction. - Empiricism. - This movement to be passed over for the present. 
 Revival of Spinozism. What is here attempted. Relation of Leibnitz 
 to the new movement. The Leibnitz-Woman philosophy. Kant's earlier 
 views. - The need of a critic suggested by Hume. - Critique of the pure 
 reason. Relation of the reason to the understanding. Space and time 
 forms of the reason. The categories of the understanding. Ideas of the 
 reason. -What they are. Their subjective nature. Where this critique 
 leaves us. - Kant's plan broader than this sphere of the reason.- Another 
 faculty. Function of the practical reason. - Result not satisfactory. - Cri- 
 tique of the judgment. The object not attained. Three distinct tendencies 
 in Kant. Reinholrl. Jacobi. His mystical tendency. - Argues against 
 Kant's first critique. - The thinkers of his time not with him. - The inter- 
 view with Lessing. Character of Jacobi. Hegel's criticism. Fichte. 
 Thought-activity the only know-able thing. The non-ego. - A product of 
 the ego. The alternative of atheism or pantheism. Accused of atheism. 
 Becomes a pantheist. Unlike Spinoza. The true wisdom. Fichte's pan- 
 
 theism considered defective. Schelling. Grand objection to Fichte. 
 Schellingian doctrine of knowledge. How Schelling reaches the position 
 of the pantheist. - His system described. Agreement with Spinoza. 
 Three potences. How they work in the evolution of spirit. Distinction 
 between nature and spirit. -How Schelling would account for Christianity. 
 The spirit of Schelliqg's system. Short continuance of this school of 
 pantheism. Schelling and Edgar A. Foe. Culminated in Hegel. The 
 best refutation of error its clear statement. An anachronism. Hegel. 
 The absolute idea. Use of Kant's antinomies. The logical movement. 
 Natural philosophy. Philosophy of spirit. Its theological result. - Hegel 
 and Kant. Consequences of the system. Strauss. Schleiermacher. Net 
 result. Lesson of the survey now taken. Testimony of Miiller. 111149 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE PANTHEISTIC CHRISTOLOGY. 
 
 Philosophy and religion inseparable. This more manifest in the a-priori 
 philosophy. Two uses of the word " religion." When pantheism is a 
 religion. Religions to which pantheism may be applied. Re- statement of 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 Hegelianism. The absolute idea. A triplicate process. Compared with 
 Comte's "three states." Illustrated in history of civilization. In art. 
 Progress and conservatism. The absolute idea in religion. Christianity a 
 form of the absolute idea. Different views of Hegelianism. The " right." 
 
 The "left." The " centre." Strauss. His Life of Jesus. The idea 
 in religion alone important. The question of historic truth trivial. Essen- 
 tial Christianity. How the idea produced the so-called record. Criticism 
 deals with the non-essential. Evidence that Strauss was a pantheist. His 
 view of the incarnation. The origin of the Gospels. Accepts Spinoza's 
 view of Christ. Thinks his criticism true to the spirit of the narrative. 
 The gospel record a piece of cloud scenery. Advantage of this pantheistic 
 position. The Paulists. Evemerus. His method revived by Lessing in 
 Wolfenbiittel fragments. How used by Paulus. Results of the theory. 
 Regarded as a failure. Eichhorn. De Wette. Strauss finds germs of his 
 theory in them. Also in Origen and Philo. Relation to other schools of 
 criticism. Secret of popularity. Three principlos of interpretation. The 
 position of Strauss. The myth. How he makes room for it. The idea 
 produces the story. What follows if the Gospels are post-apostolic. In- 
 ternal evidence against Strauss. Also external evidence. How he would 
 evade it. The argument against him overwhelming. Baur. Differs from 
 Strauss. How he accounts for the Gospels. Traces of a conflict. Pauline 
 party favored. Peter overborne. Paul triumphs. The reasoning of Baur 
 not admissible. No special refutation needed. There were parties in the 
 early church. -- Baur's treatment unfair. An argument for inspiration. 
 Renan. Requires no special treatment. Spirit of his criticism pantheistic. 
 
 An irreverent comparison. Free religion. Its peculiarity. May be 
 traced to Hegel. Christianity triumphant 150182 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE CULTUKE WHICH PANTHEISM LEGITIMATES. 
 
 A feature of modern thought. Spontaneity. Authority. New theory un- 
 tenable. Relation to pantheism. Goethe. Why chosen. Viewed only 
 in one aspect. Relation to other thinkers of his age. Ignorance of his 
 speculative views. Early scepticism. Proofs that he was a pantheist. 
 Meets with Jacobi. Wished to be known as a Spinozist. Fatalism. Di- 
 vineness of nature. Free necessity. Tone of his writings. The two 
 Goethes. As a student of nature. Works in which he shows to advantage. 
 
 Shorter poems. Tphigenia in Tauris. Egmont. Hermann and Doro- 
 thea. Wherein his theory works evil. Faust. Goetz von Berlichingen. 
 
CONTENTS. IX 
 
 False theory of morals. Popularity of Goetz. Sorrows of Werther. 
 Its influence. Origin of the work. Complaints of his friends. Wilhelm 
 Meister. The Fair Saint. Philina. Mignon. Other characters. Elec- 
 tive affinities. Natalia and Wilhelm. Goethe's theoretical views carried 
 into his life. His faults not to be passed over. Had noble traits. Was 
 not a patriot. Goethe not consistent with his theory of culture. Would 
 have been better as a man if more inconsistent. Allowance to be made to 
 art. .The obligations of the artist. Christianity teaches the only adequate 
 theory of human culture 183226 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 PANTHEISM IN THE FORM OF HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 The representative name. Method of treatment. Carlyle's position in Eng- 
 lish literature. His style. Ethical tendency. A politic/il reformer. 
 Was he a pantheist ? Not in the dogmatic sense. Proofs of a pantheistic 
 spirit. His idea of history. Of the individual. Views of nature panthe- 
 istic. His doctrine of necessity. Of space and time. Religious views. 
 Bibles. Origin of worship. Sincerity alone essential. Accepts Goethe's 
 definition of religion. Result. How his pantheism afleets his political 
 views. Makes him revolutionary. French Revolution. Laws and com- 
 pacts not the basis of true government. Function of representative assem- 
 blies. Hates democracy as much as constitutional monarchy. Eulogy of 
 the Pilgrims. Mahometanism as good as Puritanism. No love for free 
 government in any case. Scorn of moral and social reforms. Origin of his 
 contempt for democracies. Negative side of his political creed. His polit- 
 ical and social creed positively stated. Hero-worship This the basis of 
 
 primitive governments. Urged as the only real basis. Great men a the- 
 ophany. Carlyle's ideal of a great man. Plea for his theory of govern- 
 ment. The result of the theory is anarchy. Hero-worship contrasted with 
 Christianity 227-267 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 PANTHEISM IN THE FORM OF SELF-WORSHIP. 
 
 Individualism. Represented by Emerson. Method of treatment. Con- 
 trasted with Carlyle. His excellent temper. Of purer tone than Goethe. 
 
 Monotony. Nomenclature. "Old Two-Face." Comprehensive state- 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 ments of pantheism. AH things are God. History. Literature. God a 
 gentleman. Love. Prayer. What Emerson has to say of personality. 
 An ignis fatuus. God impersonal. But one conclusion possible. Emer- 
 son's method. Consciousness the way to all truth. No mean egotism. 
 Definition of man. The varieties of genius forms of the divine conscious- 
 ness. Teaches the pantheistic fatalism. All things subject to fate. No 
 one can do otherwise than he does. All life natural. Emerson's use of 
 words literal rather than rhetorical. Even fate a mystery. The objective 
 world in the light of Emerson's philosophy. History absorbed into the 
 soul. All literature the biography of each man. A practical result. Na- 
 ture an evolution of the soul. The world man externized. Knowledge of 
 nature but self knowledge. Emerson's theory of nature that of every sub- 
 jective idealist. More specific injunctions. Duty of self-reverence. Self- 
 reliance. Self-assertion. The moral law wholly subjective. Duty of 
 self-isolation. To be wholly self-absorbed the highest blessedness. " Men 
 descend to meet." Misanthropy. Attitude towards the Bible and Christian- 
 ity. Insinuates that Christ was a pantheist. Spirit of the two contrasted. 
 
 Emerson would unsettle all things. No philanthropist. Scorn of the 
 masses. No moral distinctions. Better than his theory. Inconsistency 
 recommended. The good man forced to be a hypocrite. Transcendentalism 
 not to be judged by Emerson. Christian faith the grand safeguard. 268316 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THEISM WITH A PANTHEISTIC DRIFT. 
 
 Theodore Parker. Disliked to be called an infidel. Did not bow to Christ aa 
 the final authority in religion. Affirms that Jesus was in error on many 
 subjects. Calls Christ and the Bible idols. Unitarians denounced for 
 retaining them. What Parkerism finds in Christ. The Old Testament 
 long since outgrown. His idea of religious progress. The positive side 
 of Parkerism. Terms used to designate it. Parker less original than he 
 supposed. Three factors of the absolute religion. The sentiment. The 
 idea. The conception. The conception alone varies. Origin of religions. 
 
 Their succession traced. Parkerism to be superseded. Theory of reli- 
 gious progress refuted by history. Obscures the character of God. Weak- 
 ens our basis of hope for man. The doctrine of redemption rational. 
 Parker not simply a theist. Was he a pantheist ? A re-statement of the 
 alternative of unbelief. Parker could not be a positivist. Pantheism may 
 be mistaken for positivism. Parker not a materialist. Denies the possi- 
 bility of atheism. Denied that he was a pantheist. But his definition is 
 
CONTENTS. XI 
 
 inadequate. Acquits Spinoza. Admits the thing while disowning the 
 name. More positive proofs of pantheism. Held the Kantian philosophy. 
 
 His definition of God does not exclude pantheism. All men theists. 
 Misrepresents pantheists. Identifies God with the world. With God sub- 
 ject and object are the same. The fault of deism. His view of immor- 
 tality pantheistic. God immanent in all things. He is the substantiality 
 of matter. Men not responsible for the religion they hold. Different 
 religions a necessity of circumstances. All the same at bottom. An endlesa 
 succession of religions. The pantheistic fatalism. Absolute toleration. 
 No second causes. Creation and providence the same thing. All action in 
 nature God's action. Held to the mathematical method. God impersonal. 
 
 Makes personality the same as anthropomorphism. God personal only in 
 a rhetorical sense. Our conception of God wholly subjective. God is uni- 
 versal being. Parker to be judged by his tendency. The school of theism. 
 
 His real tendency held in check. Character of his scholarship. Relation 
 to the Unitarians. Some of his strongest supporters disowned his theology. 
 
 Early statements of his views most decided. His most scriptural preach- 
 ing best liked. The fate of philosophy when bereft of faith in Christ. The 
 Rock of Ages 317361 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OF PANTHEISM. 
 
 Recapitulation. Authors excluded from this survey. Refutation of panthe- 
 ism. This went along with the exposition. The clear statement of error 
 its best refutation. Every pantheist has something peculiar to himself. 
 Wherein they agree. Spinoza's method cannot reach ontology. Same 
 fault in Fichte and Emerson. Function of consciousness mistaken. Dif- 
 fers from the faculty of intuition. What is granted for argument's sake. 
 The infinity of God said to involve pantheism. This argument assumes 
 what the pantheist has denied. The essence of personality is free-will. 
 God the only perfect person. The assertion that the mind can act only 
 where it is. Contradicted by our necessary beliefs. Whatever else fails 
 must insist on these. The duty of mental science to these first truths. 
 The claim of comprehensiveness. This claim cannot be made good. Im- 
 portant truths which pantheism excludes. Gives precedence to an inferior 
 faculty. All the faculties of the mind should be recognized. Precedence 
 due the moral faculty. The emphasis of the soul demands this. Every 
 honest nature welcomes it. The doctrine of the divine immanency said to 
 be a source of power. Proves too much. The real power not limited to 
 
Xll CONTENTS. 
 
 this doctrine. Bryant. Thomson. Those have as much poetical vantage- 
 ground as Emerson. Source of immorality in literature. Joaquin Miller. 
 
 Good men exposed to peril. The doctrine of the divine immanency a 
 weakness of pantheism. The argument from great men. Pantheism can- 
 not claim these. Transcendentalism can. They have escaped the perils of 
 that philosophy. Metaphysics in education. Better than physical science. 
 
 Opinion of Hamilton. Scientific eras barren of literature. The vaunted 
 honors stolen. Purity of life in the teacher not a test of his doctrine. The 
 ethical criterion. Christianity above patronage. How men may become 
 pantheists. Times in which pantheism may be popular. Legitimates dis- 
 order. Our exposure to the peril. Our defence. Something better than 
 pantheism offers. Conclusion. A feeling of relief. Richter's dream. 
 Pantheism cannot reach what is best in us. The prayer of Schiller's father 
 surpasses anything in Goethe. Power of the twenty-third Psalm. 362398 
 
UNI7BESIT7 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 MY purpose, in the lectures which follow, is to Nature and 
 
 spirit of the 
 
 treat of popular infidelity, its sources, its devel- work - 
 opment, and its relation to what is known as the Biblical 
 or Christian system. This work is not undertaken in a 
 controversial or partisan, spirit. I am no dogmatist or 
 polemic, though my point of view, to which much patient 
 study has led me, is the supernaturalism of Jesus of Naz- 
 areth. It seemed needful to say this at the outset, owing 
 to the acrimonious and denunciatory style in which, for 
 the most part, the questions between Christianity and its 
 assailants have been hitherto debated. The natural pre- 
 sumption, in view of the past, is, that whoever appears on 
 this field has only entered into the strifes of other zealots ; 
 that he comes as a warrior thirsting for victims, and in no 
 sense as an inquirer. The terms which this ancient de- 
 bate has bequeathed to us, and to some of which a certain 
 odium still adheres, cannot be now laid aside. They have 
 such a currency, in the language of the day, that no can- 
 did person will charge it to bigotry or unfairness, but 
 purely to the necessity of the case, that they continue to 
 be used. It will be seen, in the title which I have chosen 
 
 1 
 
Z HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 for this work, that I regard many forms of infidelity as 
 half truths, at least in their origin. Believing that the 
 human intellect naturally craves truth, I shall not easily 
 be persuaded that any body of doctrines, which has been 
 put forth by earnest thinkers, is unmixed error; nor shall 
 I fail, so far as the nature of my undertaking will permit, 
 to point out the merits of writers whom, as to their main 
 tenets, I may feel bound to condemn. Some of those 
 writers manifest, at times, a, calm spirit of inquiry which 
 their critics would do well to emulate. It is not only law- 
 ful, but often greatly for our advantage, to learn from 
 those with whom we disagree. Truth has not as yet re- 
 vealed itself wholly to any finite mind ; and the remark 
 of Him who was the Truth, about the beam in the eye 
 which sees the mote in a brother's eye, is not altogether 
 inapplicable to those who are defending scriptural doctrine 
 against the assaults of infidelity. 
 Definition The word " infidelity " is so loosely used by 
 
 of the word 
 
 "infidelity." the writers and speakers of our time, that one 
 might almost despair of being able to define it. And yet, 
 owing to this great variety of usage, there seems all the 
 more need, if we would understand each other in what is 
 to follow, that its meaning should be brought within 
 some tolerably well settled limits. We certainly 
 
 Charity, . . -IT 
 
 ought, in simple justice, to distinguish between 
 systems of infidelity and the persons who confess them- 
 selves more or less in accord with those systems. In no 
 way, perhaps, is it more easy to overstep the bounds of 
 charity, than in identifying individuals with theories which 
 they cannot make up their minds to reject utterly, or for 
 which they express a partial sympathy. The intercourse 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 of life puts us in contact with many men and women 
 holding theoretically to what is called infidelity in the lan- 
 guage of the schools, yet our personal acquaintance with 
 whom convinces us that to call them "infidels " would be 
 the grossest injustice. We are constantly running against 
 infidelities, yet are forced to own that there is an amazing 
 scarcity of infidels. This may be accounted for And it8 
 in part by the odium attaching to the word, llmlt ' 
 which causes most persons to dread it, and to resent 
 the application of it to themselves. Therefore our char- 
 ity should have a limit. Though many are raised above 
 their theoretical unbeliefs by a natural and acquired good- 
 ness, yet there are those whom the word " infidel " alone 
 can properly describe to us ; nor should we hesitate thus 
 to distinguish such, wherever we find them. 
 
 The invidious use of this term in theological contro- 
 versy must strike all fair minds as the extreme of invidious 
 
 use of the 
 
 meanness and cowardly un manliness. It always word, 
 injures the cause in whose behalf it is employed. When 
 not a confession of weakness, it is a blunder. All are 
 repelled by it, save those whom prejudice or rude pas- 
 sion has blinded ; nor does it influence even these, except 
 for the time being. Though the poisoned arrow with 
 which a prostrate antagonist seeks to wound his con- 
 queror, though the desperate cry by which he summons 
 to his rescue the pack of ignorant and noisy zealots, yet 
 it ever fails to deliver him, while at the same time it 
 makes his defeat doubly disgraceful. 
 
 We often have occasion to use the phrase "practical 
 infidelity." These words, whether used in the ,. rac , ti( .., 1 
 pulpit or religious literature, point especially J 
 
4 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 to those persons in the Christian church who practise the 
 forms of a godly life while destitute of its power. They 
 lack sincerity in their confessions and worship. Amid all 
 their attention to the formalities of religion, their rigid 
 orthodoxy of opinion, and punctilious regard for what is 
 outward and ceremonial, there is in them an evil heart of 
 unbelief. Inwardly, and so far as witnessing for Christ 
 before men goes, they are full of heresy and alienation 
 from the truth. The fruits which they produce in their 
 lives are no better than if they made no pretence of be- 
 lieving the doctrines which Christ taught. This is the 
 infidelity which God visits with his special abhorrence. 
 It was the great sin of the Jews, bringing upon them u 
 worse fate than overtook Sodom and Gomorrah. The 
 gospel, with its doctrine of the new birth and freedom 
 from external rites, was given to rescue man, if possible, 
 from this demon of doubt, which is so apt to creep into 
 the heart of the formal religionist. 
 
 sense in ^ut * ne use ^ tne word "infidelity" does 
 
 worcHs'now n(>t j ln anv ^ tne cases now noticed, touch the 
 subject-matter which I propose to treat. We 
 are concerned with the unbelief which has become an in- 
 tellectual theory ; to the support of which logic and argu- 
 ment are summoned ; which assails the Christian system, 
 aifects to be in some real sense its rival, and seeks, by dint 
 of philosophical reasoning, to displace it. I should say 
 that any person who does not recognize the authority of 
 Christ as final on all questions of religious faith, is, in the 
 judgment of the largest charity, an infidel. Even Profess- 
 or Newman, the radical religionist, is candid enough to 
 say, " It is evident that we must either quite disown the 
 
INTRODUCTION. O 
 
 Gospels, or admit that Christ regarded men as impious 
 who did not bow before him as an authoritative teacher." 
 
 Strictly speaking, an infidel is one who has Etymologi- 
 cal mean- 
 apostatized. This is according to the etymology lug. 
 
 of the word. The first Christians used it, I suspect, as 
 those in later times certainly did, to designate one who, 
 after attaching himself to Christ, had become unfaithful, or 
 had forsaken him. A distinction is thus made between 
 the infidel and such as have never believed on Christ's 
 name. He is a far baser person than the pagan, who, 
 having no knowledge of Christ, nor at any time confessing 
 him as Lord, cannot be charged with unfaithfulness to 
 him. But we need not use the term in this harsh sense. 
 Though the infidel of to-day is one who dwells where 
 Christ is preached, and who therefore may have fallen 
 away from the Christian faith into his present state of 
 unbelief, yet his heart does not plead guilty to the charge 
 of treachery. He may have a conviction of honesty, and 
 the approval of conscience, in what he has done. All this 
 we are ready to grant him ; nor do we, in applying to him 
 a term which usage has made current, mean anything be- 
 yond what he is ready to acknowledge ; namely, that he 
 has rejected Christ as the supreme authority in matters of 
 religious faith. Such, I take it, is the most legitimate 
 application of the word at present. I do not propose 
 to employ it, save in this perfectly fair and honorable 
 method. 
 
 If the word " infidelity " be odious to-day, the odium is 
 in the character of those who have been its advocates. 
 To be an infidel is no more a shame now, than to be cru- 
 cified was a shame in the time of Christ. But Christ and 
 
6 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 his followers have made the cross glorious. If infidels 
 cannot thus transfigure their reproach, this but proves the 
 TO be care- absurdity of their claims. Those who set up no 
 even huts' claim in opposition to Christ, who acknowl- 
 
 milder sense, j i ,1 i v 
 
 edge him as the supreme authority in religion, 
 who accept his word as that by which any religious doc- 
 trine is to be judged, are improperly called infidels. It, 
 is an abuse of language, as well as contrary to the " new 
 commandment " in the gospel, when the various Christian 
 bodies thus brand each other. Some of those bodies may 
 seem to us to teach fatal error, and we may conscien- 
 tiously refuse to have fellowship with them ; but so long 
 as they make Christ their Master, we have no good right 
 to call them infidels. To misinterpret the divine Teach- 
 er's words is not the same thing as denying his authority. 
 Men may differ widely as to what Christ taught, so 
 widely as to be unable to dwell together 'in ecclesiastical 
 fraternity, and yet be equally earnest in maintaining 
 Should be tnat Christ is Lord. Where this supremacy is 
 pliedfwRere not accorded, however; where any one has 
 
 rejected Christ, after full opportunity to know 
 him; and not only that, but has framed this his denial 
 into a positive creed, and is seeking to establish it as true by 
 what he regards as rational argument, there we should 
 recognize infidelity, in the proper sense of the term. He 
 has investigated and reflected, till he has come to certain 
 conclusions ; and those conclusions are entirely subversive 
 of Christianity as an authoritative religion. This their 
 logical effect he sees, and not only makes no effort to 
 avoid it, but stoutly insists upon it. What the treatises 
 are, which come within this definition, I do not now under- 
 
IXTRODUCTION-. 7 
 
 take to say. The catalogue of modern infidelities need 
 not be given. Any list which I might draw up would be 
 regarded by some as incomplete; whil others might 
 accuse it of injustice, saying that it included speculations 
 worthy of better company. It is enough to have given a 
 criterion, entirely fair, I think all must admit, by 
 which we may each determine the religious bearing of any 
 book or utterance that meets us. Whatever claims pre- 
 eminence over Christ, or denies to him the supremacy in 
 matters of religious faith, or lays down propositions known 
 to be subversive of his authority, is an infidelity. In that 
 view of it, although associated with much that we admire, 
 and even approve, it deserves no quarter at our hands. 
 As the disciples of Christ, believing that he spoke the ab- 
 solute truth, and concerned for the well-being of men as 
 truly as for his honor, we are bound to unmask the in- 
 truder, and battle against it under its proper designation. 
 
 As to the sources of these various infidelities Twosouree8 
 which are'aroiind us, and throughout the Chris- of infidelit y- 
 tian world, one need feel less hesitation in speaking. 
 They seem to me to be reducible to two sources Pan- 
 theism, represented by Spinoza, and Positivism, repre- 
 sented by Comte. Some may be inclined to add a third 
 source, namely, Deism. But this is hardly more than a 
 dependent form of infidelity. It rests on no steady foun- 
 dation of its own, but is always falling away into either 
 Pantheism or Positivism, where it is not happily exalted 
 into Christianity. 
 
 But even this statement may be simplified; strict i ybu t 
 for, in the last analysis, all forms of religious 
 
 one source. 
 
 HUTEBSITT 
 
O HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 error may be brought to a single source the separation 
 of man from God. It was in the garden of Eden that 
 these poisonous waters, still polluting the earth, took their 
 rise. When man fell from his Maker's embrace, then 
 immediately infidelity began. It is evident, since man 
 came forth from God, that his faculties must have acted 
 abnormally, leading him astray constantly in all his 
 searches after truth, as soon as he had separated himself 
 from God. This may seem to be a sweeping remark ; for 
 it might be said that many persons, into whose thoughts 
 the idea of a God almost never enters, have yet been suc- 
 cessful students of nature, of history, of the human mind ; 
 have shown excellent judgment in matters of business, 
 and in all that concerns the welfare of the state. But this 
 latter remark seems to me to need qualification, rather 
 Effects of than the other. If we look at human conduct 
 the Fail. comprehensively, if we 'consider it in all its 
 relations, and follow it on to its remoter issues, we shall 
 find that it is never thoroughly wise while acting indepen- 
 dently of God. The statesman does not plan what is best 
 for the state, the reformer mingles much of evil with his 
 good, and the most successful man of business fails in 
 certain important respects while not inspired and kept by 
 a divine influence. In no partial sense, but in the broad- 
 est sense, it is true that " the fear of the Lord is the be- 
 ginning of wisdom." We cannot separate material inter- 
 ests from spiritual, or temporal from eternal. Profitable- 
 ness and ungodliness, wisdom and atheism, are never 
 joined together. The human mind acts abnormally on all 
 subjects, mistaking error for truth, and confounding suc- 
 cess with failure, as soon as it has departed from God. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 The finite is safe only in the embrace of the infinite. 
 "Were God, and man's relation to God, to become the 
 central and informing soul of all knowledge and all stud- 
 ies," says Dr. John Young, of Edinburgh, " then philos- 
 ophy would spring into new life, and become at once more 
 ennobling and more profound ; science would become 
 more luminous and more quickening; literature would 
 catch a new glow and flush from the breath of heaven, 
 and be more enkindling and more beauteous; art would 
 be radiant with a sweeter, a holier, and a diviner grace. 
 It is the most fatal of all mistakes to judge that the lov- 
 ing sense of God, in the soul, is one which we may have 
 or want, indifferently. It is an absolute necessity to our 
 being. Religion is not a separate department of human 
 knowledge a branch, like other branches of human 
 inquiry. It is rather the all-encompassing atmosphere, in 
 which, whatever be our studies or works, we can alone 
 truly breathe and live ; the one inspiring influence, which 
 alone puts a soul into our efforts, and gives them a divine 
 meaning. Religion is the sum of the whole inner nature, 
 intellectual, moral and spiritual, without which all is ster- 
 ile, cold, and dark." l 
 
 But this primal source of infidelity, of all TWO oppo- 
 site mental 
 errors in religion, whether modern or ancient, tendencies. 
 
 transcends the purpose of our present inquiry. We are 
 concerned with the two heads Pantheism and Positiv- 
 ism into which it has become divided. The human 
 mind, being separate from God, wanders ; and it wanders 
 in two different paths, or by two opposite methods, ac- 
 cording to certain inherent tendencies. Coleridge has 
 
 1 ' Light and Life of Men (London and New York, 1800), pp. 495, 496. 
 
10 . HALF TJJUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 remarked that all men are born either Aristotelians or Pla- 
 tonists. Perhaps it would be stating the case more intel- 
 ligibly to some, to say that all men are born either Baconi- 
 ans or Cartesians. All who think are a-posteriori or 
 a-priori thinkers. They either make the outer world of 
 sense and experience, or the inner world of consciousness, 
 their starting-point ; reason from effects to causes, or from 
 causes to effects. Emerson expresses this fact by say- 
 ing, "Mankind have ever been divided into two sects, 
 materialists and idealists ; the first class founding on ex- 
 perience, the second on consciousness ; the first class 
 beginning to think from the data of the senses ; the sec- 
 ond class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, 
 the senses give us representations of things, but what are 
 the things themselves they cannot tell. The materialist 
 insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances, 
 and the animal wants of man ; the idealist on the power 
 of thought and of will, on inspiration, on miracle, on indi- 
 vidual culture." 1 This language overstates the distinc- 
 tion in some particulars, though the brilliant essayist was 
 right as to the existence and universality of the fact. It 
 may be doubted whether any thinker ever does, or ever 
 can, pursue one of these methods to the exclusion of the 
 other ; but they are sufficiently distinct to mark two con- 
 flicting schools of thought, to indicate two radically dif- 
 ferent intellectual tendencies in men. " Not of choice," 
 says Dr. Young, " but in consequence of a real necessity, 
 occasioned by their individual structure, men are materi- 
 alistic or spiritualistic, logical or philosophical, argumen- 
 tative or intuitional, the one and the other alike being 
 
 i Miscellanies (Boston, 1858), pp. 320, 321. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 simply the effect of original mental conformation. They 
 limit themselves to the range of the understanding, and 
 to what can be submitted to its processes and decisions ; 
 or they love to ascend to the region of the supersensual, 
 and covet intensely the higher revelations of a disciplined 
 faith. The two orders are ever ranged on opposites, in 
 theology, in philosophy, and in real life. Respecting the 
 origin of the universe, the question of a First Cause, the 
 being and character of God, the introduction of evil into 
 the universe, the nature of volition, the final destiny of 
 man, they are always essentially divided, and are rightly 
 distinguished as empiricists and transcendentalists." l 
 Now, both these tendencies, which would ever Each ten- 
 
 ' . dc-neythe 
 
 proceed aright and harmoniously in union with source of a 
 
 r f t class of in- 
 
 God, being without that inspiration and guid- fidelities. 
 ance, are Constantly going astray. Thus it is that each 
 tendency becomes the source, or creates the centre and 
 root, of a distinct class of infidelities. If the mental ten- 
 dency be transcendental, it ultimates itself in Pantheism ; 
 if it be empirical, it ultimates itself in Positivism. Such 
 I conceive to be, in each case, the genesis of the two oppo- 
 site sources of modern infidelity. All religious errors, 
 which are subversive of Christianity in their aim, have 
 either no claim on our notice, do not even deserve to be 
 refuted, or maybe traced, to one of these two fountains. 
 Between these two extremes the irreligious mind of the 
 race has been ever swinging, wearily swinging, with a 
 pendulous motion, while the hand on the dial has marked 
 the steady advance of the kingdom of Christ. Whenever 
 the prevailing philosophy of the world has been transcen- 
 
 i Light and Life of Men, p. 102. 
 
1*2 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 dental, the prevailing infidelity has been pantheistic; and 
 when that philosophy has been empirical, the infidelity has 
 had in it more or less" of positivism. Ancient Buddhism 
 is associated with the philosophy of the senses, Brahman- 
 ism with that of consciousness. Descartes gave the a-pri- 
 ori method to Europe, and out of that method sprang 
 Spinozism ; Bacon and Locke gave the a-posteriori, which 
 was pushed forward into sensationalism. Kant taught a 
 spiritual philosophy, and Hegel was, in some real sense, 
 his successor; the prevailing philosophy of the present 
 time is materialistic, and Comtism .is the infidelity which 
 claims its protection. In Germany, where thinking has 
 had more to do with ideas than with facts, pantheism has 
 had a prodigious growth ; in France, where the study of 
 what is outward prevails, positivism finds its home and 
 stronghold. Infidelity has existed all along through the 
 history of our race, ever since man first departed from 
 God; and it will continue to exist, in every nation and 
 age, till men are restored to God in Christ. In ages and 
 countries where thought is chiefly concerned with the 
 material and outward, the forms of infidelity will have 
 their ground in positivism; in those times and places 
 where truth is sought chiefly in .consciousness, pantheism 
 will be the informing spirit of unbelief. One or the other 
 of these two yokes of bondage men will wear, until deliv- 
 ered into the glorious liberty of the children of God. 
 Scope of the A full and adequate treatment of the topics 
 work. contemplated in these lectures would include, 
 
 therefore, 
 
 I. A CRITICAL HISTORY OF PANTHEISM, WITH A 
 
 REFUTATION OF IT UPON PHILOSOPHICAL GROUNDS ; 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 II. A SIMILAR HISTORY OF POSITIVISM, WITH A LIKE 
 REFUTATION; AND 
 
 III. A STATEMENT OF THE MANNER IN WHICH CHRIS- 
 TIANITY MEETS THAT HUMAN WANT WHICH THEY ARE 
 FOREVER FLATTERING ONLY TO DELUDE. 
 
 This whole vast field is more than I can hope to ex- 
 plore, in the series of lectures which here follows. It 
 will be enough, and more than I dare promise, if even 
 tolerable justice be done to the first main department 
 namely, Pantheism. And inasmuch as there is a wide 
 field of examination to go over, requiring us to eliminate 
 and define the errors which may be classed under this 
 head, thus at length preparing the way for argument 
 against them; considering, I say, that we must wait so 
 long without formally replying, while the authors on trial 
 are allowed to speak for themselves in large part, I deem 
 it proper, in the remainder of this Introduction, SufT0 . e8tion8 
 to make a few suggestions of general import, m advance - 
 as to the most effective methods of meeting and fore- 
 stalling any forms of religious error. 
 
 1. In the first place, the defenders of the speculative 
 
 ~. . ITT and scien- 
 
 Christian system should not be too ready to tific theories 
 condemn, as a form of infidelity, every new spec- prejudged, 
 ulation, or scientific theory, which may happen to be put 
 forth. This premature judgment may be reversed by a 
 later and more intelligent verdict. The friends of Chris- 
 tianity will then be convicted of hindering the cause they 
 sought to forward ; of ignorantly putting forth their hand 
 to steady the sacred ark where it was in no danger. The 
 new theory or speculation may be yet in its infancy, crude, 
 
14 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 broached in the tentative rather than the dogmatic form. 
 If alarmists within the church would be at pains to know 
 the author personally, they might find him a devout and 
 reverent thinker, as much concerned for the honor of 
 Christianity as themselves. Perhaps he has carefully con- 
 sidered the very points at which they stumble, and sees a 
 way of justifying them to his Christian faith which has 
 not occurred to his critics. Why should they stultify 
 themselves by raising a false alarm ? Very likely he only 
 puts his views into the form of an inquiry at first, and 
 leaves them at the tribunal of reason and common sense. 
 Why need we, in our concern for the Bible, rush upon 
 them frantically, or blow our trumpets for a warning, be- 
 fore those theories have won a sure foothold, even in the 
 scientific or philosophical world ? When they have passed 
 over that frontier, coming safely out of every struggle, 
 and surviving every attack on their proper ground, then 
 it will be early enough for us to conclude whether or 
 not our batteries should open upon them. Multitudes of 
 them are overthrown and trodden down, while running 
 the gantlet wholly outside of our domain; and if here 
 and there one escapes, surviving the opposition of rival 
 theories, and overcoming the severest scientific criticism, 
 this fact should be taken as presumptive evidence that it 
 comes to us, not as an enemy, but as a friend ; for truth 
 cannot be the foe of truth. 
 Error not ai- Even where we detect grave signs of error, 
 
 ways to be 
 
 denounced, it may be wiser to seek fellowship than to with- 
 draw it. It was Judaism that said, " Get thee out of thy 
 country, and from thy kindred ; " Christianity says, " Go 
 ye into the world." Perhaps Luther was wrong in think- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 ing that the Reformers could do most for their cause by 
 staying in the Papal church. Perhaps they are mistaken 
 who think that the churches of New England lost ground 
 by withdrawing from Arianism in Dr. Channing's time. 
 But as long as the honor of Christ will permit, we should 
 avoid driving any new error into an open declaration of 
 war. It may be no more than the pet delusion of a few 
 individuals, and, at the worst, will live only while they 
 live, if let alone. By assailing it we provoke it to take 
 positive ground ; at once put its advocates out of the reach 
 of our Christian influence ; enable it to raise against us the 
 cry of persecution, which will be sure to bring crowds of 
 curious and sympathetic people to its support ; and thus a 
 party may be organized, through which its influence will 
 be vastly widened, and prolonged far beyond the term of 
 its natural life. A broad wisdom, gleaned from the fields 
 of history and experience, admonishes us to brand no man 
 as a teacher of infidelity, till absolutely compelled to by 
 our loyalty to Christ. Whoever does not insist on being 
 the enemy of Revealed Religion, should be esteemed its 
 friend. 
 
 
 
 Great harm was done to the cause of Christ, Mistake re- 
 
 specting 1 As- 
 
 when his church condemned, as of infidel ten- tronomy. 
 dency, some of the earlier astronomical discoveries. We 
 are amazed now, that the fathers of the church should 
 make themselves a tribunal to judge the Copernican theory, 
 and that they should proceed to condemn it, declaring it 
 to. be a damnable heresy. Not that Copernicus himself 
 was thus condemned. Being one of the devoutest men of 
 his times, living amidst powerful friends who wisely guarded 
 his reputation, and not publishing his great discovery till 
 
16 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 just as he died, he escaped ecclesiastical censure. It was 
 reserved for Galileo, his follower in the next century, to 
 bear the Papal condemnation ; by which his name has been 
 lifted up, as an everlasting warning to theologians, not to 
 make their own ignorance a throne of judgment, from 
 which to hurl anathemas at the novelties of science and 
 philosophy. 
 
 Treatment of Yet that warning has not been always heeded. 
 sy ' The blunder of those Romish doctors was re- 
 peated as late as the present century, when the theories of 
 geologists began to challenge attention. How many stu- 
 dents of the new science were thus repelled, from what 
 they mistook as the narrowness and bigotry of Christianity, 
 until they became open opposers of the church and its 
 teachings, we shall know only in the day of the revelation 
 of all things. It is not these denunciatory champions, who 
 seem to be born with the scent of religious error in their 
 nostrils, that Christianity needs. They do much harm to 
 her sacred cause. Such men as Thomas Chalmers are the 
 rather our examples. When the ministers of Scotland 
 were beginning to raise their hue and cry against geology, 
 he exclaimed, "This is a false alarm. The writings of 
 Moses do not fix the antiquity of the globe. If they fix 
 anything at all, it is only the antiquity of the species." 
 These great words produced a revolution, and prevented a 
 revolution. They were caught up, and shouted throughout 
 the United Kingdom, till geologists saw they had no cause 
 to rebel against the church, and the church saw she had 
 no occasion for denouncing geology. It was this noble 
 stand which made Chalmers the champion, at once, of both 
 the new science and Christianity. From that time forth 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 geology was mainly a Christian science in Great Britain ; 
 whereas, but for that grand utterance and leadership, it 
 would, from all that now appears, have speedily fallen into 
 infidel hands. 
 
 At the present day there is a controversy, caution 
 
 respecting 
 
 going on in the scientific world, respecting Darwinism, 
 which the friends of Christianity need to beware. I 
 refer to the Darwinian theory of the origin of species 
 through natural selection, which argues that all the animal 
 races now on the earth have been developed out of one 
 central mass of life ; and its opposing theory, held by 
 Agassiz among others, according to which there are many 
 such centres, so distinct in the near past that even the races 
 of men could not all have descended from a single pair. 
 The nature of this controversy, and its attitude towards 
 certain portions of the Bible, are thus stated by Professor 
 Huxley : " The hypotheses respecting the origin of species 
 which profess to stand on a scientific basis, and, as such, 
 alone demand serious attention, are of two kinds. The 
 one, the 'special creation' hypothesis, presumes every 
 species to have originated from one or more stocks, these 
 not being the result of the modification of any other form 
 of living matter, or arising by natural agencies, but being 
 produced, as such, by a supernatural creative act. The 
 other, the so-called ' transmutation ' hypothesis, considers 
 that all existing species are the result of the modification 
 of pre-existing species, and those of their predecessors, by 
 agencies similar to those which, at the present day, pro- 
 duce varieties and races, and therefore in an altogether 
 natural way ; and it is a probable, though not a necessary 
 consequence of this hypothesis, that all living beings have 
 2 
 
18 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 arisen from a single stock. The doctrine of special 
 creation owes its existence very largely to the supposed 
 necessity of making science accord with the Hebrew cos- 
 mogony; but it is curious to observe that, as the doctrine 
 is at present maintained by men of science, it is as hope- 
 lessly inconsistent with the Hebrew view as any other 
 hypothesis." l The relative merits of the two theories, as 
 judged by our scriptural standards, are certainly well 
 stated in the closing words of this paragraph, though 
 Huxley is inexcusably reckless in assuming that he knows 
 precisely what the Hebrew view, as he calls it, was. It is 
 plain that those who adhere to the common interpretation 
 of the first of Genesis must reject both these theories. 
 When they applaud Agassiz for some hard blow given to 
 Darwin, they ought not to forget that Agassiz is no cham- 
 pion of theirs, but quite as hostile to them as his opponent. 
 And are we yet sure that either of them is hostile to the 
 inspired record, so much as.to what translators and inter- 
 preters have made that record say? One or the other of 
 the two theories may be destined to prevail ; and we can 
 afford to wait undisturbed, while the battle goes forward 
 in the outer court of science, not taking up our weapons 
 till either " special creation," or " transmutation," having 
 been declared victor there, shall assail the sanctuary of our 
 religious faith. Why should we excommunicate zoology, 
 even after its own friends are at peace, so long as it is sure 
 that our sacred philology has yet a great deal to learn ? If 
 it becomes the settled creed of the scientific world, as few 
 anticipate, I suspect, that the races of men sprang from 
 
 1 Lay Sermons and Addresses (Appleton & Co., New York, 1871), pp. 279,^0. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 several distinct origins, the laws of language may be trusted 
 to show us that no word of the Bible, claiming to come 
 from God, contradicts that creed. And on the other hand, 
 if some improved form of Darwinism becomes established, 
 as is now extremely probable, the task of the Bible inter- 
 preter will be comparatively easy. I have no expectation 
 that this Development theory will be proved true, as it is 
 held and applied by some of its advocates. But if it fore- 
 shadows a natural truth, respecting the origin of the human 
 race, which may yet be brought out by scientific research, 
 we have every reason to believe that that truth, whatever 
 it is, will not contradict, but establish the words of God. 
 We should not too hastily assail it, even though it may 
 have seemed thus far to be against us ; remembering as 
 Coleridge so nobly says that an error is sometimes the 
 shadow of a great truth yet below the horizon. Let us 
 not bequeath to the future a fresh instance of theologi- 
 cal blundering, compelling those after us to look back on 
 our treatment of zoology with as much shame as we 
 now look back on the ado made about geology and as- 
 tronomy. 
 
 It has been too much the fashion to charge Fondness of 
 
 Clergymen 
 
 upon the clergy this prejudice against science for Science, 
 which I now deprecate. In one view of the case there 
 could hardly be a greater injustice. Whatever may 
 have been true in the past, no class of men are now more 
 tolerant of scientific theories, or give them more respectful 
 attention. Suspicion is not the rule, but the exception, 
 and rarely appears, save in those least enlightened. Every 
 new truth in science is another pillar of theology. It can 
 
20 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 be shown that even the persecutions of Galileo were not 
 due to the clergy so much as to the jealousy of certain 
 other philosophers ; and a full knowledge of all the facts 
 would no doubt prove, in similar cases, that wrong has 
 been done in representing Christian ministers as hostile 
 to scientific pursuits. They show an interest in such 
 studies which naturalists have been slow to reciprocate. 
 They have done more than any other class to familiarize 
 the public with the best science of the times. And I am 
 happy, in making these statements, 'to find that no less a 
 personage than Professor Tyndall is ready to confirm them. 
 What he says of the clergy of England, and especially of 
 the clergy of London, is still more emphatically true of 
 the better part of the profession in America. " They have 
 nerve enough," says Tyndall, addressing his brother scien- 
 tists, " to listen to the strongest views which any among us 
 would care to utter ; and they invite, if they do not chal- 
 lenge, men of the most decided opinions to state and stand 
 by those opinions in the open court. No theory upsets 
 them. Let the most destructive hypothesis be stated only 
 in the language current among gentlemen, and they look it 
 in the face. They forego alike the thunders of heaven and 
 the terrors of the other place ; smiting the theory, if they 
 do not like it, with honest secular strength." Such I be- 
 lieve to be the feeling of the best Christian ministers, at 
 least in the present age. By continuing to cherish this 
 spirit they will be kept from the mistakes of former times 
 the mistakes of a few men, not always clergymen, which 
 have been made in such circumstances, and so thrust 
 forward, that the whole church has had to bear the 
 odium. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 It is altogether unworthy of Christians at this 
 day, be they clergymen or laymen, to be dis- 
 tin-bed about the progress of science, or to Stion. 
 attempt to discredit it with denunciation and sneers. 
 In regard to Darwinism, what force can stale jests 
 about ancestral apes and tadpoles have, from those who 
 confess to. being, in their mortal make, brothers of the 
 worm ? All in us that can perish was taken out of the same 
 ground from which they came forth ; is no less dust than 
 the reptile we bruise with our heel, and to the dust it shall 
 return. We sow not that body that shall be. There is a 
 natural body, and there is a spiritual body. Who knows 
 but the researches of zoology may yet so enlighten our 
 criticism and exegesis, that we can fearlessly say, speaking 
 of that natural body, The writings of Moses do not fix 
 the antiquity of man ; if they fix anything, it is only the 
 time when, by the inbreathing of the spirit of God, he 
 became an immortal and morally responsible being ? Then 
 the discovery of lake-dwellings in -Europe, and of human 
 remains in ancient caves and geological formations, such 
 as have been adduced by Lyell and others, will cease to 
 hold any hostile attitude towards the Christian revelation. 
 Certainly we shall not give up anything by taking the 
 simple ground that the Scriptures were not meant to teach 
 zoology, to give us the natural history of a race which 
 is crushed before the moth. Certainly we shall keep all 
 that is essential to the integrity of our faith, by simply 
 maintaining that the divine oracles are concerned with that 
 spirit, made in the image of God, which is his child, and 
 which, through disobedience, has fallen away from his 
 fatherly embrace. Herein are the true glory and eternal 
 
22 HALF TRUTHS AND THE THUTH. 
 
 peril of man. What science has to do with is vanity; it 
 wastes away with the grass and flowers, and the places which 
 
 Jal ' 1 *" kn6W ifc sha11 kllOW it( DO m re ' That divine 
 
 Senco. likeness it was, not this frail tenement, which 
 died in Adam ; w r hich has lain dead in trespasses and sins, 
 all through the long generations ; Avhich is made alive in 
 Christ, and which, living and believing in him, shall never 
 die. We need have no fear of zoology while it stays 
 within the range of natural law; we may but immortalize 
 our own ignorance, and degrade our cause, by assaulting it 
 in the name of Revelation ; it can never reach the truth 
 of a spiritual creation, to which our consciousness testifies, 
 and which is the citadel of the Christian faith ; and, by 
 not disowning it, but throwing around it the warm atmos- 
 phere of a brotherly interest and charity, we may save both 
 it and ourselves. 
 
 reformpre- ^" ^ n ^ e secon( ^ place, we may meet or fore- 
 deSty. infl Sta ^ manv religious errors of our times by own- 
 ing all true charities and reforms about us as branches of 
 the one great work committed to the Christian church. 
 The rise and progress of not a few infidel tendencies, all 
 along in Christian history, may be easily traced. There is, 
 in almost every instance, a natural history of the revolt, 
 which bears a striking lesson for us. Certain philanthrop- 
 ical movements have begun in the church, or under its 
 immediate notice. Where else did they ever begin ? The 
 leading membership, perhaps also the ministry, watched 
 Natural his- the new development with a disturbed feeling. 
 
 tory of infi- 
 
 del reforms. It jostled opinions they had long held, so long 
 as for that reason to believe them true. The rising charity 
 or reform found its more ready advocates among the incon- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 spicuous and less refined of the brethren. Might not those 
 who seemed to be somewhat lose their prestige, and be- 
 come followers or only equals where they had been wont 
 to lead, if they gave place to the innovation ? That 
 control which they had enjoyed till it seemed to them a 
 natural right, depended on keeping all things as they were. 
 There might be a Christian spirit in some of these philan- 
 thropists, it was admitted ; possibly they were of that 
 open-minded, unprejudiced class of men who, even in the 
 time of Christ, welcomed truths which the learned would 
 not receive. But they gradually acquired a habit of for- 
 wardness in the church, wholly out of keeping with their 
 former modesty ; and they had a blunt way of stating new 
 views, out of season oftener than in season, which neither 
 pleased delicate ears, nor became the place where all should 
 be done decently and in order. Under this strong temp- 
 tation the damaging step was taken. That new enter- 
 prise, the child of Christian impulse, was voted a mis- 
 chievous intruder; was disowned, frowned upon, requested 
 to take itself out of the way. The attempt was made to 
 soothe the feelings of those who had thus been wounded, 
 by assuring them that no doubt they were right in their 
 motives. They were only a little too fast. It would be 
 wiser in them to wait God's time, or till society should be 
 ripe for their enterprise. This, however, so far from 
 quenching the flame, was but adding fresh fuel to it. For, 
 these aggrieved brethren justly argued, how is society 
 ripened for any reform save by constant hearing of it ? or 
 how does God make known his time, if not by laying a 
 necessity on the hearts of his people ? Such are the evil 
 devices by which, in instances sadly numerous, the church 
 
24 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 has alienated her own children, and, like the god in pagan 
 
 mythology, sought to devour them. 
 
 i u fidelity But while the church has been displaying this 
 
 welcomes 
 
 those whom centrifugal force within herself, there have risen, 
 
 the church 
 
 repels. on the border-land between her and the world, 
 
 certain rallying-points for these same discarded philan- 
 thropies. There the disowned and ostracised brethren 
 meet, tell the story of their persecutions at home, and form 
 new alliances fbT'the common advantage and safety. 
 Shrewd observers, men of ability and ambition, who are 
 seeking a constituency, and who bear the church no love, 
 here begin to take up the injured cause. These leaders, 
 going too far in their tirades against Christianity, repel the 
 more devout or timid of their new followers, who flee 
 back into the church from what they regard as a half-way 
 house to infidelity. But though returning themselves, they 
 do not bring with them the cause for which they went out. 
 That stays among those with whom they found temporary 
 refuge. Such is the way, briefly told, in which we are 
 often furnished with that strange and monstrous spectacle, 
 the work of the church ostensibly going forward under 
 infidel auspices ; Christ's enemies, apparently, saving him 
 from his friends. If the good man had not been asleep, 
 the spoiler had not broken up his house. People look on 
 the outward appearance ; and the church has not avoided 
 the appearance of evil, while these unbelievers seem to be 
 carrying out the Saviour's express commands. 
 The church Thus it is that the infidelity which might have 
 
 not inno- 
 cent, been forestalled, springs forth and thrives. We 
 
 must confess, in looking over the history of the church, 
 that Christians have many times abandoned their o wn 
 
INTRODUCTION. 25 
 
 arsenals to their foes. Christianity has furnished to infi- 
 dels the weapons with which they have assailed Chris- 
 tianity. The enemy, watching for occasion against our 
 cause, did not fail to strike when the occasion was given. 
 Identifying the Bible with those who professed to be 
 builded together on it, he could readily make it abhorrent 
 to undiscrirninating minds. Did churchmen find argu- 
 ments in the Bible in favor of systems of injustice? Did 
 they quote its words on the side of slavery, as favoring 
 the indulgence of appetite in strong drinks, against efforts 
 of woman to improve -her condition? This was just the 
 opportunity which the wary adversary sought. He took 
 their interpretation of the Book for the Book itself. Their 
 commentary on divine truth was the war-club with which 
 he assailed that truth. 
 
 We who are Christian believers ought not to should avoid 
 allow ourselves to be thus driven into a false tion. h 
 position. It is better to stay in the church, and bear 
 much opposition from our own brethren, than yield up the 
 sword of truth into the hands of the enemy. All real 
 charities are the children of Christianity. Where they 
 are we have a right to be, and ought to be. We may be 
 suspected, avoided, and threatened for a time, by those 
 Avho make their own traditions the sole criterion of truth, 
 but if we save these charities from falling into infidel 
 hands, if we keep them safely housed, folded within the 
 fold of the Good Shepherd, breathing there a more con- 
 genial atmosphere than they can find without, our reward 
 shall not be always wanting. Then religious error will 
 have no chance to clothe itself in the garments of truth. 
 We shall keep those garments where they belong. Then 
 
26 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 infidelity will not be able to steal from us that charm 
 which gives it its power. Then Christianity will not 
 repel, but attract, those who are enlisted in any cause of 
 good will to men. Then it will be seen with a clearness 
 which none can gainsay, will shine forth with a brightness 
 from which infidelity shall flee confounded, that faith in 
 Christ, and the fellowship of his gospel, are the way to all 
 that is loving, or just, or kind between man and man. 
 The church has only to be true to her divine Founder, 
 walking in his own blessed footsteps of beneficence, and 
 occupying all the ground that is hers by the terms of her 
 great commission, and infidelity, shut out upon the bleak 
 and barren rock where it was born, will soon starve or 
 freeze to death. 
 
 Duty of the ^' ^ n ^ ie ^hd place, those who are called 
 pulpit. to preach toe gospel can do much to prevent 
 
 the growth of religious error, by compelling thoughtful 
 persons to respect them as men of culture and power. I 
 offer this remark partly as a balance to what has just been 
 said. Whatever Christian ministers may do on the plane 
 of common charity, they should strive to perform their 
 especial work with a masterly hand. Hard study and 
 thinking, which, after all, are the true secret of intellectual 
 power, must nerve them daily, or their grasp on the better 
 class of minds will be neither strong nor permanent. If 
 Paul had wished to teach Timothy how to save men from 
 infidelity, he could have written nothing better than the 
 charge, " Let no man despise thee." It should be said, 
 however, that the power of the pulpit, in this respect, does 
 not rest altogether with the ministry. Congro- 
 
 tions must 
 
 co-operate, gations are largely responsible. -Not all of them 
 
INTRODUCTION. 27 
 
 will bear, without restiveness, such a style of preaching as 
 would satisfy more thoughtful listeners. Instead of mak- 
 ing the preacher feel that he must exert himself to write 
 up to their capacity, they are constantly tempting, and 
 almost dragging him down to a lower level. They pack 
 the house of God with a miscellaneous crowd, who come, 
 not to be instructed, not to grapple with themes which tax 
 the attention and reason, that their moral nature may 
 be profoundly and healthfully aroused, but who must be 
 amused, and superficially excited in such a way as shall 
 incline them to come again. The preacher's office is thus 
 made a kind of advertising agency, in the interest of 
 those who own the pews and pay the parish expenses. 
 He cannot be a growing man, in any worthy sense ; nor is 
 he allowed to practise, but must neglect, and gradually 
 forget, those deeper investigations of truth which alone 
 win the respect of the intelligent, and which all men need 
 to have pressed on their attention, whether they think so 
 or not. There should be an atmosphere of intellectual 
 vigor around the minister, which shall not only stimulate 
 him, but compel the sluggish and ill-disciplined among his 
 hearers to exert their latent powers. Thus alone can the 
 weak be made strong, or the strong who are of the oppo- 
 site party have any chance to be convinced. On this 
 score, thanks to a faithful ministry and their earnest 
 flocks, we find much to honor in the Puritan pulpit of 
 New England. Wendell Phillips, the distinguished pop- 
 ular orator, once confessed to a friend that Dr. Ne ^ Y Eno . 
 Lyman Beecher taught him how to argue. In- to^M-om* 
 fidels went to hear Nathaniel Emmons preach, 
 not because they liked his doctrines, but because, in the 
 
28 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 handling of them, he showed himself to be a master. 
 Preachers of this stamp were wont to reason till their 
 hearers trembled. Nor were those hearers repelled ; but, 
 delighting in sermons which taxed their powers of thought, 
 they were drawn, as by a spell, to the ever fresh displays 
 of intellectual strength. Such preaching made its adver- 
 saries ashamed, drew a charmed circle about those who 
 took pleasure in profound thinking and sound logic. They 
 had no inducement to wander off after the teachers of 
 scepticism. Their religious doubts were not a matter on 
 which they set any great value,, but, at the best, only 
 secondary. What they craved, and must have, as what 
 alone almost all doubters are ever earnest about, was 
 mental food and quickening. They were not restive, nor 
 was their sceptical bias strengthened. The germs of infi- 
 delity in them could not grow, having nothing to feed upon, 
 while they were held by this magic power of argument. 
 Though they came to scoff, not unfrequently they left to 
 pray, being awed into a respect which deepened to godly 
 sorrow, faith, and repentance not .to be repented of. A 
 Effect of a jejune, slipshod style of thinking in the pulpit, 
 weak pulpit. though careless heads like it, and fill the news- 
 papers with praises of it, can never win these higher vic- 
 tories. The same stale thoughts, however variously the 
 changes be rung on them, and though they be set off with 
 an odd text, many scraps of poetry, and humorous allu- 
 sions, will not go down, Sabbath after Sabbath, with really 
 sensible men. The multitude of those who desire simply 
 to be put on good terms with themselves, may increase ; 
 but another class, serious-minded though inclined to doubt, 
 will scatter away into solitude, or where there is some 
 
INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 appearance of intellectual life. " These crudities and ex- 
 travagances," say they, "are not what we come to the 
 house of God for. Empty buckets, forever going into the 
 well and fetching nothing up, do not meet our case. 
 Whatever interest we may have in religious discussions, 
 our time is valuable ; nor do we wish to put ourselves too 
 much under the influence of such an intellectual standard, 
 avoiding weak preachers just a.s we do weak books, lest 
 our own standard of style and thought should be uncon- 
 sciously lowered." Thus it is that some of the best minds, 
 in search of a high culture, though doubtful respecting the 
 Christian faith, are repelled till they quit the church to go 
 where their minds shall at least get some sort of nutriment. 
 Men thus repelled fall an easy prey to the Loadinfr j n a_ 
 higher forms of infidelity. They often become dcls> 
 leading propagators of religious error. Or if kept from 
 this by some absorbing pursuit, their withdrawal from 
 Christian relations tells against the truth, and serves to 
 point the sneer of the open opposer. We are not to be 
 servile imitators of those who triumphed in a past age. 
 Very likely the style of preaching which prevailed then 
 would be unsuited to the present times. We, HOW the ex- 
 
 11- i iji-ency is to 
 
 whom Christ is now calling to give the gospel be met. 
 to men, should serve our own age as the faithful of other 
 days served theirs. We need to be like them chiefly in 
 knowing the habits of mind, the literature, the science, the 
 theology amidst which we live; need to understand the 
 present spirit and tone of all thinking, and catch the 
 enthusiasm of our great forerunners, so as to meet error 
 effectually and wield the truth with power. Therefore, 
 beyond any collateral good which he may seek to acconi- 
 
30 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 plish, the preacher should strive to make men respect him 
 in his sacred office. The overshadowing fact in his min- 
 istry should be, not that he is active in the charities and 
 philanthropies of his time, but that he brings home to 
 men's hearts, with an honest strength which they can- 
 not resist, the gospel of the Son of God. This must be 
 his grand business, and no popular demand must hinder 
 him from consecrating to it all his energies. Pastors of 
 churches can show their sympathy with reforms without 
 becoming pack-horses for all the societies which propose 
 to aid or relieve somebody or something. They can show 
 a tender interest in every parishioner, a good will towards 
 the public enterprises of the day, love for their friends, a 
 kind regard for the sick, the sorrowing, the poor of the 
 outlying districts, without becoming ministerial vagabonds. 
 Let some one else do the canvassing for needy colleges 
 and theological schools, for churches unable to pay their 
 debts, and mission societies whose treasuries are empty. 
 It is not reason, said the apostles at the time of Pen- 
 tecost, that Christ's ministers should leave the word of 
 God, and serve tables. Deacons are appointed to the 
 offices of parochial charity a fact which must be em- 
 phasized, and made to cover as much ground as possible, 
 or what chance can ministers have, in an age of great 
 mental activity, to magnify their calling? They should be 
 free to act upon their own deep conviction that they are 
 nothing while they are not preachers of the gospel. This 
 is the necessity which the Spirit, if he ever called them to 
 their work, laid on them at the beginning. And woe unto 
 them if they preach not the gospel ; if they do not so 
 preach it as to make it respected ; so as to silence the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 31 
 
 gainsayer; so as to hold sturdy thinkers firmly to the 
 truth, giving them no occasion to wander from it, till they 
 shall be convinced that it is the only bread which they 
 can eat and never hunger. 
 
 4. In the fourth place, Christ's followers may The spirit 
 
 J of Christ in 
 
 do much to prevent the rise and spread of infi- iiis people 
 
 our mam 
 
 delity, by proving to men that their discipleship reliance, 
 is not prompted by selfishness or self-seeking, but is purely 
 a filling up of the blessed ministry to others which Christ 
 began. Let it appear to the unbelieving that we are in 
 nothing their beneficiaries, but in all things their benefac- 
 tors. Christ said, " I am among you as one that serveth ; " 
 and again, " I came not to be ministered unto, but to min- 
 ister." God reigns over the universe because he is love ; 
 it is being the servant of all, as no other can be, that 
 makes him Lord of all. In such royal and godlike ser- 
 vice, according to the capacity given us, is the hiding of 
 our strength the main secret of any ability we may 
 hope for to make the truth mightier than error. "Do 
 good, hoping for nothing again,'' is the sublime precept, 
 " and ye shall be like your Father in heaven." 
 
 As regards the ministry, though we who preach Duty of 
 the gospel may live of the gospel, yet we should, 
 like Paul, suffer loss rather than have our glorying made 
 void. We should preach as debtors to all men, and not as 
 those who look for a reward. It should be our boast that 
 we have no hire but souls ; that the slight provision which 
 we receive for present needs is not of the nature of pay, so 
 much as an expression of gratitude on the part of those 
 who" contribute it; that our entire ministry is a witness 
 to all men that we seek not theirs, but them. If left to 
 
32 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 suffer for this world's comforts, it is better to remember 
 Him who had not where to lay his head, the Good Shep- 
 herd who gave his life for the sheep, than to be suspected 
 of any mercenary motive. When those who reap our 
 spiritual things do not let us reap their temporal things, it 
 is wiser to rebuke them manfully, or depart out of their 
 city shaking the dust from our feet, if the privation can be 
 no longer endured, than to be all the time breathing a 
 spirit of complaint. That brooding discontent, if indulged, 
 will gradually infect our whole ministry; and then the 
 power and glory of our office will be gone. Rather than 
 sink down into this state of mind, than have the sense of 
 unrequited service grow to be a chronic disease, it would 
 become us, like Christ and the apostles if need be, not to 
 enter on our ministry till we have made provision for our 
 temporal support ; to be able to cultivate a farm, deliver 
 lectures, practise some handicraft, or have other means of 
 supplying our few temporal wants, which shall stand us in 
 stead when they that are taught forget to " communicate 
 with" him that teacheth. It becomes the ministers of 
 Christ to avoid, in all possible ways, the imputation that 
 they are hirelings ; that their pastorates are simply their 
 " livings ; " that they follow their profession, just as all 
 worldly men labor, for the sake of temporal wages. They 
 must compel men to own that their ministry is indeed a 
 discipleship of Him who, though rich, became poor that 
 others through his poverty might be rich ; that it is pe- 
 culiarly and sublimely a labor of love ; that this is its dis- 
 tinctive trait, wherein no other calling or pursuit, in all the 
 world, can be compared with it. 
 
 But this devotion on the part of those who preach the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 33 
 
 gospel is not enough. It may be made weak through 
 the unfaithfulness of the great body of church-members. 
 There have been ministers remarkable for their The whole 
 
 . . ~ ,~ .,* mi church must 
 
 spirit or seli-sacrmce in every age. Iheir co-operate, 
 spirit of devotion was shorn of its power, however, be- 
 cause it was seen to be an exception to the general life of 
 the church. Whatever is exceptional, among persons of 
 the same class and profession, is apt to be regarded as 
 abnormal. The average life of the whole body is taken 
 as the index of its real spirit. On this ground it is that 
 infidels ascribe the zeal of such Christians as Henry Mar- 
 tyn, David Brainerd, and Harlan Page, to religious fanat- 
 icism. They see in it, not a pfroof of the transforming 
 power of the gospel, but a sign of mental disorder. On 
 the same ground the martyr-spirit of the apostles is attrib- 
 uted to natural enthusiasm, awakened by the undue ex- 
 citement of the religious imagination, and the life and 
 death of Christ are said only to prove that he was the 
 greatest of religious enthusiasts. This objection can be 
 effectually answered only by a spirit of devotion pervading 
 the church. There is a supernatural element in the 
 Christian life, a love of sacrifice and self-denial in doing 
 good, which cannot be accounted for by mere natural 
 causes. But this element must appear in the great body 
 of Christians, thus forcing men to see that it is in no case 
 abnormal or exceptional, but a uniform result of faith in 
 Christ Jesus, or the few good works, which are done will 
 not lead them to glorify our heavenly Father. There can 
 be no question, reasoning from the nature of the human 
 mind as well as from history, that when the laity and 
 clergy are'one in this thing, every mouth of the gainsayers 
 
34 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 will be stopped. All men will be forced to recognize the 
 things which are not seen, and which are eternal, in order 
 to account for the phenomena which the life of the church 
 will present. This general union, in filling up what is be- 
 hind of Christ's sufferings, will make it impossible for the 
 world not to confess that he proceeded and came forth 
 from the Father. 
 
 Almost all our reliance, in meeting the doubts which 
 scientific or speculative thinking may from time to time 
 generate, must be on this leaven of sincerity and devotion 
 to good works in the mass of Christ's followers ; a power 
 which we shall get only as we have Christ formed within 
 us, and as we put on Christ day by day, so that the life 
 which we live in the flesh shall be the life of God man- 
 ifested through us. To reveal him is the sublime office of 
 all those who make up the one visible church. If we 
 cherish a friendly feeling towards the science and philos- 
 ophy of our time, that favor should be for this supreme 
 HOW the object. If we give our godspeed to every gen- 
 cfiristfo to ume charity, that sympathy should be for one 
 be shown. an( j ^ Q same p Ur p Ose . If we preach the doc- 
 trines of the gospel thoroughly and with all our might, 
 that faithfulness should have no less an end than to de- 
 clare the Father's name. All our studying, all our toiling, 
 all our self-sacrificing should be to show forth the excel- 
 lency of Him who has called us ; to make men see that 
 the gospel, reproduced in the lives of Christians, is the 
 wisdom and power of God ; to prove, by the all-loving 
 spirit which animates us, that any form of unbelief which 
 seeks to displace Christianity is a thief and a robber. 
 Let the Christ-like spirit of all who believe, compel men to 
 
INTRODUCTION. 35 
 
 see that infidelity is an imposture which bodes them only 
 evil ; that if admitted amongst them it would put cursing 
 for blessing, darkness for light, corrupting selfishness for 
 holy and heavenly charity. If we choose to be identified 
 with one school of theology rather than another, it should 
 be clear to all that that preference grows out of a higher 
 consecration. Not as partisans, but the better to seek and 
 save the lost, should we strive to organize the truths of 
 the gospel into a compact doctrinal system. Why need 
 we care what human name is stamped on our weapons, or 
 from whose armory they came, if so be that they are of 
 celestial temper, and we find them mighty through God 
 to the pulling down of strongholds ? And any denomina- 
 tional likes or dislikes which we may happen to have, 
 should grow out of the same high aim as our other differ- 
 ences. They should be our instrumentalities, not our 
 ends ; chosen not for their own sake, but as the harness in 
 v/hich we can work most easily and effectually for Christ. 
 In this view the variety of Christian denominations is a 
 great advantage to the universal church. They are to be 
 rejoiced in, so long as they do not usurp the place of the 
 objects of the gospel, since they enable every believer, 
 whatever his natural peculiarities, to find some place of 
 service which shall be congenial to him. David can have 
 his sling and stones, and Saul's mighty men their heavy 
 armor; and thus Israel shall not divide, but greatly 
 increase his strength against the hosts of the Philistines. 
 Whether it be a question of theology, or of ecclesiastical 
 polity, all should be free to choose under Christ, with the 
 utmost charity and confidence towards each other. Souls 
 hungering for the peace of God will be drawn to us by 
 seeing that we have no party zeal, no wish to build up 
 
OO HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 this or that branch of the church for its own sake, or at 
 the expense of some other branch, but make it our 
 supreme concern, through whatever special fellowship we 
 may choose to be in, to save and bless mankind. 
 This spirit Nothing but Christianity has ever given to 
 
 peculiar to J 
 
 Christianity, the world such a service as this. There were 
 faint foresh ado wings of it in ancient times, and in some 
 pagan lands men have shown a capacity for it, within 
 certain narrow lines ; but to find another Jesus of Naz- 
 areth, or another such mission of love as he founded, 
 would be as impossible as to put another sun in the 
 heavens. That -kingdom of love and suffering, through 
 the weakness of those to whom it has been committed, 
 may at times have seemed untrue to its lofty tone and 
 standard ; and thus doors may have been opened for the 
 incoming of religious error ; yet under its broader aspects, 
 and as judged by its acknowledged spirit, it has proved 
 itself to be, all along through the Christian ages, the light 
 and the life of men. And if we take up this kingdom in 
 our turn, and carry it forward in the all-sacrificing spirit 
 of the Lamb of God, any unbeliefs that may be lowering 
 about us will swiftly disappear. It is the advancing sun 
 that makes the snow and ice melt, the light shining in 
 beauty that causes the darkness to flee away. Men will 
 recoil from the arts of the infidel, in the presence of a 
 church thus in earnest;- and will hasten from him to be 
 under its covert, instinctively choosing life rather than 
 death, that which quickens rather than that which chills 
 and dwarfs their noblest powers. They will turn to it as 
 the imprisoned plant turns to the window ; they will flock 
 to it as birds fly from winter to a warmer and brighter 
 clime. 
 
PANTHEISM. 
 
 (37) 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 SPINOZA. AND OTHER MASTERS. 
 
 ON the 22d day of February, 1677, in a 
 small hired chamber at the Hague, while the scene. 
 owners of the humble dwelling were at church, it being 
 Sunday, a physician, having seen the tenant of that lonely 
 room heave his last breath, and hastening to depart, took 
 to himself a little money and a silver*handled knife, which 
 lay on the table near the dead man's body, fearing that he 
 might receive no other fee for his medical services. 1 The 
 man whose lifeless remains were thus deserted, to await 
 the return of his simple host and hostess, was Benedict 
 Spinoza. Not wishing to withhold from him any honor 
 which is justly his due, but choosing that he should be over- 
 praised rather than disparaged, I am willing to accept as 
 historically true, all that his most ardent disciples or friends 
 have said of him. The eulogistic account of Mr. Lewes, 
 in his Biographical History of Philosophy, 2 shall be given, 
 
 1 Accounts of the death of Spinoza, as of various events in his life, do not 
 agree. Willis (Life, Correspondence and Ethics of Spinoza, London, 1870) 
 differs from Lewes, whom I have chiefly consulted. Colerus, pastor of the 
 Lutheran church at the Hague, who greatly admired Spinoza, and took pains 
 to gather up all the local memories of him, Is their principal authority; though 
 they do not hesitate to question his veracity (especially Willis) when it conflicts 
 with their own prejudices. 
 
 a Appleton & Co., New York, 1857, pp. 456-469. 
 
 39 
 
40 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TKUTH. 
 
 so far as my space will permit, with no tittle of abatement 
 from its full meaning. 
 
 Spinoza's According to this writer, Spinoza died at the 
 ]i'giou8 8 refu- meridian of his manhood, being but forty-four 
 years and three months old. He was of Jewish 
 parentage, and his father and mother resided in Amsterdam 
 at the time of his birth. They had but recently come to 
 this city of free Holland, escaping thither from their home 
 in Portugal, where intolerance of the Jews would not suffer 
 them to live. Their flight, it thus seems, was nearly in 
 the same age, and for the same reasons, as that of the Pil- 
 grim Fathers from England. They sought an asylum from 
 religious oppression. This is a circumstance which should 
 be noted, in sketching the life of Spinoza. If he had 
 known Christianity as anything but a persecuting power, 
 he might, upon renouncing Judaism, have embraced some- 
 thing better, possibly, than the dream which he himself 
 dreamed in his solitude. But for this hereditary prejudice 
 and hatred, which we all can understand, he might have 
 made the choice of a Paul or a Neander. He seems, how- 
 ever, when he forsook the national faith, to have seen no 
 alternative but to invent a religion of his own. 
 His child Benedict, or Baruch, as he was called before 
 
 hood. jj e f orsoo k the religion of his people, is described 
 
 as a remarkably active boy, though lacking in physical 
 robustness ; fond of playing, with his sisters Miriam and 
 Rebecca, about the squares and wharfs of the city. He 
 was remarkable for his "bright, quick, and penetrative" 
 eyes ; and for his dark hair, which floated in " luxuriant 
 curls over his neck and shoulders." His father is repre- 
 sented as a successful merchant, who hoped that this only 
 
PANTHEISM. 41 
 
 son would choose the same occupation. But a passion for 
 study which showed itself very early, together with a 
 slender constitution, daily growing more slender through 
 devotion to books and meditation, induced the 
 
 His studies. 
 
 parent to change his purpose. I he beloved son, 
 already " sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," was 
 allowed to enter upon a course of the higher Hebrew 
 learning. He gave himself to his studies with the greatest 
 enthusiasm, and with astonishing success ; so that when 
 he was only fourteen years ol,d, hardly a doctor or rabbi, in 
 the whole country, surpassed him in amount and accuracy 
 of knowledge. Very high hopes were entertained of him, 
 among adherents to the Jewish faith. His teacher, Saul 
 Levi Morteira, a zealous Israelite, looked on him with feel- 
 ings of pride and admiration. We may easily judge, 
 therefore, how great were the disappointment and alarm of 
 his friends, when they found him pushing his inquiries 
 beyond the limits of the Old Testament and the Talmud, 
 scattering the arguments of the rabbis with Hisdefec- 
 his nimble logic, and proposing to them a mul- 
 titude of very plain questions which they saw it to be for 
 their interest not to attempt to answer. Two young men, 
 nearly of his own age, are mentioned as courting his inti- 
 macy at this time, 1 and urging him to divulge his opinions, 
 under a pretence of discipleship ; though, as he suspected, 
 with the purpose of betraying him to the Jewish elders. 
 He was so reticent to these young men respecting his new 
 views, that whatever they may have at first designed, they 
 took offence at his reserve, and reported him as one who was 
 secretly undermining the ancient faith. Straightway he 
 
 i Willis, pp. 31, 32. 
 
42 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 was summoned before the leaders of the synagogue, whose 
 minds were already beginning to turn against him. This 
 peremptory demand made him feel, no doubt, the great 
 inconsistency of his people, in refusing him the freedom of 
 opinion which they had gone into exile to secure. He 
 appeared, however, in answer to the requirement ; and 
 that, too, so promptly and willingly as to raise strong hopes, 
 among his relatives and friends, that he would deny or 
 retract the opinions which had been charged 
 
 His trial. 
 
 against him. Yet in all this he was consistent 
 with himself. Though he would not have his sentiments 
 drawn out of him and stated in court by others, he shrank 
 not from the opportunity thus to state them with his own 
 voice and in his own language. He therefore eagerly 
 obeyed the summons. He gave a frank account of his 
 heresies to the proper tribunal. His bearing was so easy, 
 and without apparent concern for himself, in the presence 
 of his judges, as to amount to a kind of " gay carelessness," 
 says one writer. He refused to take back what he had 
 now asserted openly, unless he should be convinced of his 
 error by sound argument. He defiantly but coolly con- 
 fronted the accusers who appeared against him ; and when 
 his judges threatened him with excommunication for his 
 obstinacy, though he answered them respectfully, there 
 
 was something in his voice and manner which 
 
 His conduct. 
 
 betrayed a deep contempt for both their office 
 and themselves. His old teacher Morteira, grieved that 
 his brilliant pupil should be lost to Israel, pleaded and 
 kindly remonstrated ; but these failing, he, too, joined in 
 the attempt to overawe the heretic. But threats had no 
 power to intimidate the youthful thinker. From whatever 
 
PANTHEISM. 43 
 
 source coming, so long as he saw no reason in them they 
 only awakened his proud disdain. His was one of those 
 natures, often found in feeble bodies, which are incapable 
 of fear. The more he was threatened the less disposed 
 was he to be terrified ; and when it was finally resolved to 
 cut him off from the Jewish church, in the awful manner 
 which the rules of the synagogue prescribed, it is said that 
 he anticipated the sentence by publicly declaring himself 
 no longer a Jew in faith. That sentence, read forth at 
 night in the synagogue, amid doleful wailings, His excom . 
 and under lights which went out one by one muuication - 
 till they left the congregation in utter darkness, was as 
 follows : " With the judgment of the angels, and the sen- 
 tence of the saints, we anathematize, execrate, curse, and 
 cast out Baruch de Spinoza, the whole of the sacred com- 
 munity assenting, in presence of the sacred books with the 
 six hundred and thirteen precepts written therein, pro- 
 nouncing against him the anathema wherewith Joshua 
 anathematized Jericho, the malediction wherewith Elisha 
 cursed the children, and all the maledictions wiitten in the 
 book of the law. Let him be accursed by day, and ac- 
 cursed by night ; let him be accursed in his lying down, and 
 accursed in his rising up, accursed in going out, and accursed 
 in coming in. May the Lord never more pardon or acknowl- 
 edge him ; may the wrath and displeasure of the Lord 
 burn henceforth against this man, load him with all the 
 curses written in the book of the law, and raze out his 
 name from under the sky; may the Lord sever him for 
 evil from all the tribes of Israel, weight him with all the 
 maledictions of the firmament contained in the book of 
 
 :a 
 
 "7 
 
 d f 
 
44 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TKUTH. 
 
 the law, and may all ye who are obedient to the Lord your 
 God be saved this day." l 
 
 It may be proper to add that the health of 
 Spinoza did not fail, as soon as this dreadful 
 ceremony was over ; and that he lived nearly twenty years 
 after it, quite as long as his poor body ever promised to 
 last, during which years he seems to have fully carried 
 out his one great purpose. But that malediction, like 
 similar ones from the Head of the Romish church at dif- 
 ferent times, was not altogether an idle thunderbolt. So 
 greatly enraged were his old associates and friends at his 
 withdrawal from them previous to this sentence, thus 
 showing an open contempt not only for their worship but 
 for their power to curse him, that his life was not safe. 
 Forgetting the words of the frightful sentence, which for- 
 bade them to come " within four cubits' length " of him. 
 they waylaid him, with evil intent, in his nightly walks ; 
 and on one occasion, at least, the assassin's knife would 
 have entered his neck, had he not dexterously avoided its 
 thrust. Regard for his personal safety now compelled him 
 to keep away from his former haunts. His own kindred 
 even sought him but to do him harm. For the sake of 
 their good standing with the synagogue, no doubt with 
 true Hebrew vengeance also, they had publicly disowned 
 him, and wrathfully denounced him. He wandered about 
 in places where he was not known, unable to tell what 
 death might befall him any moment ; and though scorning 
 it, yet menaced by the cloud of curses which hung over 
 him. But he was not at all moved from his deeper plans, 
 during the years that he led this uncertain life. He went 
 
 i Willis, pp. 34, 35. 
 
PANTHEISM. 45 
 
 straightway to a physician in Amsterdam, Van den Ende 
 by name, who was a tutor in the Latin tongue. 
 This language was the key to the philosophy of 
 the time, and the medium of intercourse among learned 
 men. The Hebrew religion had forbidden Spinoza, as it 
 did all Israelites, to know this language ; yet he seems 
 to have already had considerable acquaintance with it, 
 nevertheless. His object, in seeking Van den Ende, may 
 have been to perfect himself in this, and in the Greek 
 tongue ; and also, as Willis thinks, to earn a pittance by 
 aiding his tutor with other pupils. Another fact associated 
 with this school greatly interests us, since it is one of the 
 few proofs we have that there was to Spinoza's nature a 
 deeply tender and susceptible side. Though almost noth- 
 ing of an emotional nature can be found in his published 
 writings, I suspect that no man ever felt more keenly or 
 profouncUy, on all those matters which most stir the hu- 
 man heart. It seems that his new professor had a daugh- 
 ter, as skilled as her sire in the speech of the Roman 
 maidens ; and that to her tuition this young Benedict was 
 in some way assigned. However this may have 
 
 His love; 
 
 been, it is at least certain that he came, most 
 silently and deliciously, to be in love with his fair asso- 
 ciate. Yet, with a true and knightly sense of honor, he 
 kept his affection secret, waiting for the time when his 
 prospects should be more settled. That time having 
 come, and the young lady having had full opportunity to 
 learn his character and peculiar religious views, he ven- 
 tured to hint to her the state of his feelings and his hopes. 
 But he met no encouragement. Had he been a member 
 of the Papal church, a man of wealth, and a favorite in 
 
46 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 gay society, she might not have objected. As it was, 
 however, she preferred to cast in her lot with a young 
 Hamburg merchant, who had the means of gratifying all 
 her wishes for show and idle luxury. Spinoza was grieved 
 to find that he had been offering his honorable heart to 
 such vanity ; he was astonished at himself, that he could 
 have felt so much interest in so much selfishness and du- 
 plicity ; and taking home the severe lesson, thankful that 
 he had pressed his suit no farther, he turned away forever 
 from love to philosophy. His susceptible nature seemed 
 to be utterly driven in upon itself. Perhaps there never 
 was a more absolute consecration to the search for truth, 
 with the single fault that it was, at all events, to be a 
 search made in his own strength ; the trustworthiness of 
 his individual intellect was not to be questioned. Dis- 
 owned of kindred, his tenderness rebuffed in the first 
 effort to speak it, he cheerfully accepted his lot^ and he 
 undertook the mighty riddle which was closing about 
 him, with no faith in any wisdom but his own. 
 His purpose ^ Spinoza now asked, whether of friend or 
 formed. foe) was to be perm itted to live. And of this 
 he was pretty sure while he kept out of the way ; for his 
 wants were very few, and he had learned the art of polish- 
 ing lenses for optical instruments, by which he earned small 
 sums of money from time to time. Leibnitz praised him 
 for his skill in this art, writing, in a letter to the young 
 truth-seeker, "Among the honorable things which fame 
 has acquainted me with concerning you, I learn with no 
 small interest that you are a clever optician." Spinoza 
 was now, as he felt, fully able to provide for himself in the 
 world. Independent and satisfied, determined to push his 
 
PANTHEISM. 47 
 
 inquiries boldly on all sides, he was careless of what any 
 critic might say about him, and sure of supplying his few 
 bodily needs from the earnings of spare hours. It was an 
 instance of self-confidence hardly paralleled in the history 
 of thinking, and which commands our admiration at least, 
 when that student, only about twenty-five years old, de- 
 parted from his native city scarcely knowing whither he 
 went, and caring for nothing but to push the investigations 
 of which he had taken hold. On the road between Am- 
 sterdam and Auwerkerke he found his first asylum, in a 
 house which is said to be still standing, situated on what 
 is called, in memory of the great thinker, Spinoza Lane. 1 
 From this retreat he went, after about five years,- to reside 
 in Rhynsburg ; whence he again removed, some four years 
 later, till finally he took lodgings in an obscure house at 
 the Hague. 
 
 The fame of Descartes was at its zenith, dur- Rea d's DCS- 
 ing these years of Spinoza's life, the great ideal- '. 
 ist having been dead but a few years, and his enthusiastic 
 disciples having installed his philosophy as a chief author- 
 ity in the best schools of learning throughout Europe. 
 To his works Spinoza at once turned, studying them 
 with intense ardor, but subjecting every statement to 
 the tests of his own consciousness and logic. Accepting 
 the main premise, and the method of this master, lie 
 yet found much to disagree with in the structure of 
 Cartesianism. The result of these studies was his first 
 work, published at Amsterdam in 1663, entitled The 
 Principles of the Philosophy of Rene des Cartes demon- 
 strated by the geometrical method ; to which are added 
 
 i Willis. 
 
48 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Metaphysical Thoughts, by Benedict Spinoza. 1 The 
 Thoughts, thus appended to his exposition of Descartes, 
 contained the germs of his system of pantheism. His 
 great work on Ethics, written subsequently, and not pub- 
 lished till after his death, and in which we have the final 
 embodiment of his philosophical views, grew out of this 
 beginning. Such utterances, as we might readily infer, 
 gave no little offence to the multitude of Cartesians ; and 
 their deep hostility was shown, at times, in ways more 
 pointed than becoming. They abhorred the conclusions 
 of Spinoza ; and to see him grafting his system upon that 
 of their adored master, was more than philosophy could 
 bear. To add to their vexation they beheld the book of 
 the new expounder and critic in the hands of almost every 
 young student. Spinoza, though cast out from society, 
 and exposed to death all the w r hile, had -yet succeeded in 
 making for himself many admirers. All curious minds, 
 whatever they might think of his religious leanings, were 
 charmed by the boldness and novelty of his speculations. 
 Partly that he might the better command his time, and 
 partly to be out of the way of his implacable foes, he 
 withdrew at length into his little room at the Hague, 
 where fifteen years later a consumption, the seeds of 
 which he had inherited, put an end to his solitary life. 
 Here he exhibited many traits of character which reveal 
 the true^ philosopher and claim our honest admiration, 
 character-is- ^ IS unselfishness in common things was won- 
 derful. An estate fell to him at his father's 
 death, which his sisters denied his right to inherit, on 
 account of his apostasy from the Hebrew faith. He there- 
 
 i Willis, p. 47. 
 
PANTHEISM. 49 
 
 fore first established his right in the civil courts, and then 
 gave the whole estate to the sisters, to be divided between 
 them. Self-possession and bravery were natural to him. 
 On one occasion he was summoned away from his cham- 
 ber by the great Conde, then in Holland with a French 
 army. For this act he was suspected of some secret sym- 
 pathy with the enemies of his country; and upon his 
 return, an infuriated mob was speedily gathered about his 
 lodgings. The owner of the house, dreading the ruin 
 w r hich threatened him, entreated Spinoza to take himself 
 out of the way as quickly as possible. " Fear nothing," 
 was the quiet reply ; "I will go out and meet them." 
 Accordingly, instead of running away and hiding, he did 
 go out, greatly to the relief of his host ; and the mob, 
 overawed by his calm and fearless demeanor, stole away 
 from him, afraid to touch a hair of his head. He scorned 
 the least overreaching or unfair dealing. Being asked 
 once to take the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg, he 
 declined ; for he knew that the theology there taught, if it 
 did not give way, would soon bring him into open conflict 
 with his associates. He would not even make converts to 
 his own views at the expense of the orthodox party. 
 Nor was he less independent than magnanimous. He 
 would not put himself in the way of temptation, which 
 might lead him to change his views, or become the tool of 
 another man. He was offered a pension,- if he would en- 
 gage to dedicate his next work to Louis XIV. But he 
 proudly refused, saying that he had " no intention of ded- 
 icating anything to that monarch." Such was the favor 
 that sought him, and his way of meeting it ; and that, too, 
 while .his poverty was all the time extreme. One day he 
 4 
 
50 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 would have no food but a dish of soup costing 
 
 His poverty. 
 
 three halfpence, and a pot of beer worth three 
 farthings. Another day he would be content with " a 
 basin of gruel, with some butter and raisins, which cost 
 him twopence halfpenny." "And," says pastor Colerus, 
 who gathered these facts about Spinoza while occupying 
 the same lodgings which had been the philosopher's, 
 " although often invited to dinner, he preferred the scanty 
 meal that he found at home, to dining sumptuously at the 
 expense of another." 1 
 
 It is said that in all his lifetime, after coming 
 
 His patience. 
 
 to years 01 discretion, he was never heard to 
 murmur or complain. Silent, thoughtful, smiling, ever 
 patient and ever toiling, he lived on in his solitary cham- 
 ber. Nor Avas he too poor to indulge the kindliness of his 
 nature now and then, by giving away something for the 
 relief of the destitute. The mistress of the house in 
 which he lodged was, together with her husband, a firm 
 believer in the Christian religion; and when she came to 
 him, as she repeatedly did, asking him to explain his reli- 
 gious views, so that she mio-ht know them and 
 
 His toler- 
 ance, judge for herself, he mildly parried her request, 
 
 urging her to be content with her present faith. "Your 
 religion is a good religion," said he ; " you have no occa- 
 sion to look after another; neither need you doubt of 
 your eternal welfare so as, along with your pious observ- 
 ances, you continue to lead a life of peace in charity with 
 all." 2 It will be seen here that Spinoza, according to the 
 doctrine of his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, places reli- 
 gion in outward forms chiefly, which one-may adopt or lay 
 
 i See Lewes, 2 Willis, p. 56. 
 
PANTHEISM. 51 
 
 aside at pleasure, his real character being a thing which 
 they do not affect in any case. This extreme tolerance, 
 and making man's eternal safety depend on the common 
 moral virtues, is significant. It shows the small practical 
 value which Spinoza attached to his own, or to any, con- 
 clusions of the intellect. All that is necessary in every 
 case, as he seems to teach, is, that one's views be purely 
 his own; not learned from any other person, but reached 
 by an independent course of study. This, certainly, is a 
 tolerance so large, that to see wherein it is not simply 
 indifference to truth, must be hard for most minds. 
 Imagine Jesus of Nazareth, at the well in Samaria, telling 
 the woman who asked him about his religion, to be con- 
 tent with the faith in which she had been brought up ! It 
 is the tendency of a great truth, when one has embraced 
 it, to make him a missionary. Just in proportion as lie 
 values it he feels bound to proclaim it, and to bring other 
 men into it. We see this inspiration of truth nobly 
 shown in the martyr, changed to a demon in the persecutor, 
 manifested with heavenly beauty in Him who went about 
 teaching among the villages of Galilee. 
 
 Does not this want of moral earnestness in Spinoza 
 indicate that he studied and wrote not to instruct, so 
 much as to please himself and puzzle mankind ? The 
 supposition that he found a certain secret enjoyment in 
 confusing men's thoughts and bewildering them with his 
 subtle paradoxes, would fall in with some of His easy 
 his well-known habits. " His only relaxations," events. 
 says Mr. Lewes, " were his pipe, receiving visitors, chat- 
 ting to the people of his house, and watching spiders 
 fight. This last amusement would make the tears roll 
 
 [3JHIVBESITYJ 
 
52 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 down his cheek with laughter." Willis, noticing the fact 
 about the spiders, is anxious to prevent the suspicion of a 
 wanton cruelty which it tends to awaken; and he sug- 
 gests that it was not the battles, but the loves of the ven- 
 onlous insects, which so greatly amused the philosopher. 
 The tradition that Spinoza kept a colony of spiders in his 
 room, and that he fed them with flies, after the manner of 
 the Roman theatre, where Christians were thrown to the 
 lions, cannot be thus explained away. This pastime 
 seems to have afforded quite as much pleasure as the 
 other. Mr. Willis may discredit it, and Lewes pass it by 
 silently ; but a more sensitive writer has said, " I could 
 never understand the mirth, the ' laughter ' which Spinoza 
 is said to have indulged in, when witnessing the contest 
 between the spider and the fly. I can comprehend that 
 so abstract a philosopher would have risen above our nat- 
 ural repugnance, and surveyed even calmly an instance of 
 a general and a wise law of nature, life surrendered to 
 support other and generally higher life, but why should 
 the death of the poor fly have occasioned laughter?" 1 
 The disturbed author would have hardly started this 
 query, had he duly considered what was the essence of 
 Spinoza's doctrine. He should have known that the " ab- 
 stract philosopher" was entirely consistent with his the- 
 ory, in laughing at the struggles of the victim ; for the 
 grand lesson which his whole system impresses is, the 
 right of power to triumph over weakness. 
 
 vagueness Thus lived and died Benedict Spinoza, the 
 
 writers. father of Modern Pantheism. Perhaps it would 
 
 not be far out of the way to say that he was the 
 
 1 Thorndale. 
 
PANTHEISM. 53 
 
 father of all pantheism, if we mean by that term only 
 such systems, of the same nature as his, as have a logical 
 completeness and have been clearly reported to us. The 
 signs of agreement with him which we find in ancient 
 thought are often more or less vague and uncertain. As 
 there were reformers before the Reformation, so there may 
 have been Spinozists before Spinoza. There is at least a 
 pantheistic flavor, in some parts of ancient philosophy, 
 which demands our attention ; but the result, at the best, 
 does not promise to be such as would repay an exhaustive 
 treatment. There are, in the New Testament, words and 
 phrases which a pantheist might use. Yet no candid 
 scholar would affirm that pantheism is meant, where we 
 read that " Christ is all and in all," that " whosoeA r er is 
 joined unto the Lord is one spirit," that "the Father 
 dwelleth in us and we in him." If we use an exegesis 
 which saves such passages as these from pantheism, which 
 condemns nothing in the Fourth Gospel, nothing in the 
 Epistles of Paul, nothing in the words of Christ himself, 
 to that category, why not make a similar allowance in the 
 study of uninspired writers ? Indeed, there are modern 
 writers, both of prOse and poetry, who have spoken here 
 and there in the forms of pantheism, yet whose words 
 spoken in other places make it certain that the universe 
 and God were not to them one and the same thing. Take, 
 for instance, the lines of Pope, in his Essay on Man : 
 
 " 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, 
 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, 
 
54 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 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; 
 To him no high, no low, no great, no small ; 
 He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all." 
 
 If such language as this may be corrected, in the light 
 of other expressions by the same author, so as to leave 
 him still a believer in the essential truths of Christianity, 
 we certainly may suppose that at least some of the ancient 
 authors, from whom pantheistic fragments only have come 
 down, spoke other words, now lost, without which they 
 cannot be fairly judged. I do not deny that some of them 
 were clear and thorough-going pantheists ; but the opinion 
 of those best able to form a judgment in the case, has for 
 years been inclining to the view, that not a little of what 
 was once loosely called the pantheism of the ancients, was 
 the more or less vague tradition of a primeval monotheism. 
 In rejecting the many gods of paganism, and insisting on 
 the divine unity, of which dim remembrances had been 
 handed on to them, they may have used terms which we 
 falsely regard as anticipating the theory of Spinoza. 
 
 One of the first movements in religious phi- 
 
 The Alex- 
 
 jindriau losophy \vhich here attracts our notice, is the 
 
 musters. 
 
 Neo-Platonism of Alexandria. Perhaps we 
 ought not to feel any hesitation in charging pantheism 
 upon the teachers of that famous school. For we find them 
 holding such language as this : " God is the only existence ; 
 he is the real existence, of which we, and other tilings, are 
 but transitory phenomena." The greatest of the Alexan- 
 drine masters was Plotinus, who went to Rome. 
 
 Plotinus. 
 
 and founded a school there, where he had among 
 
PANTHEISM. 55 
 
 his pupils the celebrated Porphyry. He died towards the 
 close of the third century of our era. The following is 
 from him : " How doth wisdom differ from that which is 
 called nature ? Verily in this manner, that wisdom is the 
 first thing, but nature the least and lowest ; for nature is 
 but an imitation or image of wisdom, the last thing of the 
 soul, which hath the lowest impress of wisdom shining 
 upon it ; as when a thick piece of wax is thoroughly im- 
 pressed on a seal, that impress, which is clear and distinct 
 in the superior superficies of it, will in the lower side be 
 weak and obscure ; and such is the stamp and signature 
 of nature ; compared with that of wisdom and under- 
 standing, nature is a thing which doth only do, but not 
 know." 1 Thus did he seem to identify the essence of 
 nature with that of intelligence ; and this latter he appears 
 to have held as one with the Godhead ; for even in the 
 agonies of death he exclaimed, " I am struggling to liberate 
 the divinity within me." He wrote two books to prove 
 that all being is one and the same ; and the reason which 
 he gave for not sacrificing to the gods was, that it became 
 the gods, since he too was divine, to sacrifice to him. 
 Views essentially the same as those of Plotinus, were 
 taught by his successor lamblichus at Alexan- 
 
 lamblichus. 
 
 aria ; and as late as the year 529, at Athens, by 
 
 Proclus and those who followed him in the school of that 
 
 city. For a more full account of these masters 
 
 and their philosophy than can be given here, the 
 
 work of Butler may be consulted. 2 " It is the perpetual 
 
 i Cudworth's Intellectual System of the Universe, Vol. T., p. 240. 
 s Ancient philosophy, by William Archer Butler (Philadelphia, 1857), Vol. 
 II., pp. 320-335. 
 
56 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 
 
 lesson of Plotinus," says Butler, " that the object of reason 
 is not, cannot be, external to reason ; that truth is not in 
 the conformity of thoughts with things, but of thoughts 
 with each other. Intelligence is at once the object con- 
 ceived, the subject conceiving, and the act of conception. 
 To rest on self is to commune with the universe." In his 
 theory of knowledge, and of the world, which he held to 
 be an efflux of the divine substance, the teaching of Ploti- 
 nus is such as to give the impression that he anticipated 
 the doctrine of Spinoza. 
 
 This notice of the Alexandrine school brings 
 
 Plato. 
 
 us, by association, to Plato himself, from whom 
 they claimed to derive the germs of their system. Butler 
 says that Proclus " found in Plato all he wished to find ; " 
 and that "the dreamy theories of Alexandria were not 
 unnatural results of certain tendencies discoverable in the 
 writings of Plato himself tendencies for which his own 
 well-balanced intellect, doubtless, provided sufficient coun- 
 terpoise, but which too closely suited peculiar tempera- 
 ments not to have been soon exalted into exclusive or 
 predominant principles of speculation." l Plato seems to 
 have tried to mediate between the empiricists of his day 
 and pure rationalists of the Eleatic school ; yet the tran- 
 scendental element in his writings is that which most power- 
 fully affected his followers, and which was especially laid 
 hold of by the Alexandrine teachers. They treated him 
 " very much as Philo treated Moses ; " very much as some 
 of the Christian fathers, trained at Alexandria, treated the 
 New Testament writings. Whatever we find among the 
 Neo-Platonists, therefore, we can trace back to Plato only 
 
 i Ancient Philosophy, Vol. II., p. 55. 
 
PANTHEISM. 57 
 
 in some such sense as the Alexandrine Jew might trace it 
 to the writings of Moses, or the Neo-Platonic Christian- to 
 the words of Christ and the apostles. 
 
 Even in Aristotle there are statements which 
 
 . Aristotle. 
 
 have a pantheistic look, though his genius was 
 of the empirical cast. In his treatise on psychology, he 
 seems to regard the soul as a principle pervading nature, 
 which exists in the plants and animals no less than in the 
 philosopher. Dr. South says he taught, "that there was 
 one universal soul belonging to the whole species or race 
 of mankind, and indeed to all things according to their 
 capacity ; which universal soul, by its respective existence 
 in, and communication of itself to each particular man, 
 did exert in him those noble acts of ratiocination and un- 
 derstanding proper to his nature ; and those also in a 
 different ' degree and measure of perfection, according as 
 the diiferent disposition of the organs of the body made it 
 more or less fit to receive the communication of that uni- 
 versal soul ; which soul only he held to be immortal, and 
 that each particular man, both in respect of body and 
 spirit, was mortal." We must perhaps accept this as mo- 
 nism ; though, clearly enough, it anticipates the science of 
 the Comtian school, rather than the metaphysics of Spinoza. 
 Other expressions of Aristotle would indicate to us that it 
 ought not to be interpreted too rigidly ; and, even admit- 
 ting that Dr. South caught the proper force of his words, 
 they may have been simply his strong expression of dissent 
 from the polytheism of the times. 
 
 Earlier than the age of Plato and Aristotle Xenophana 
 lived Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic theEieatic. 
 school of philosophy. He, according to Grote, "con- 
 
58 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 ceived nature as one unchangeable and indivisible whole, 
 spherical, animated, endued with reason, and penetrated 
 by, OK indeed identical with God : he denied the objective 
 reality of all changes, or generation, or destruction, which 
 he seems to have considered as only changes or modifica- 
 tions in the percipient, and perhaps different in one per- 
 cipient and another." The Eleatics may have been 
 pantheists ; yet we should bear in mind that this language 
 is not theirs, so much as Grote's commentary on the 
 teachings of their founder. The same may be remarked 
 of Heraclitus, a pupil of Xenophanes, who was 
 
 Heraclitus. 
 
 called "the weeping philosopher," and in whose 
 teachings Hegel claimed to find the germs of Hegelianism. 
 The decisive question in regard to him, as in regard to 
 many others both before and after him, a question im- 
 possible to answer, is this : Had he any clear knowledge 
 of the one living and true God ? If not, his utterances about 
 the Divine Reason, and the One, are very probably pan- 
 theistic. But if he had such knowledge, those same utter- 
 ances may indicate a more or less pure monotheism. Py- 
 thagoras, who lived in the fifth century before 
 
 Pythagoras. 
 
 Christ, agreed apparently with the two thinkers 
 last named ; though his method is peculiar. " Numbers," 
 said he, " are the cause of the material existence of things." 
 In the development of this theory of numbers, we find 
 traces of what has been commonly held to be pantheism ; 
 for he represents all things as the forthputtings of one 
 eternal unit, held together by its underlying and pervasive 
 power, and returning constantly by absorption into it. 
 The doctrine of metempsychosis, which is associated with 
 his name, seems to have grown out of this general theory, 
 
PANTHEISM. 59 
 
 as also perhaps the peculiar discipline which he established 
 among his pupils. He was distinguished in his day for 
 the honor he rendered to woman. His wife is said to have 
 been as devoted as himself in the search for truth ; and 
 many of the noblest women of Greece were among his schol- 
 ars, in connection with which fact it should be remarked, 
 however, that he required each one of his pupils, upon 
 entering the school, to take a vow of silence for five years. 
 There was. a school of philosophers in ancient H lozoists 
 Greece, known as.. Hylozoists, in distinction aud t he fs. 
 .from the Atomists, whose speculations have a decidedly 
 pantheistic flavor. Strato Lampsaeenus was a master in 
 this school, and is represented by Cudworth as the teacher 
 of a certain crude pantheism. " Strato's deity," says he, 
 "was a certain living and active, but senseless nature. He 
 did not fetch the original of all things, as the Democritic 
 and Epicurean atheists, from a mere fortuitous motion of 
 atoms, by means whereof he bore some slight resemblance 
 of a theist ; but yet he was a downright atheist for all 
 that, his god being no other than such a life of nature or 
 matter as was both devoid of sense and consciousness, 
 and also multiplied together with the several parts of it." * 
 Coleridge was no doubt right in saying that "pantheism 
 was taught in the mysteries of Greece." Yet it is hardly 
 fair to study those ancient systems, as too many critics seem 
 to have done, with the foregone conclusion, that so far as 
 they were not polytheistic they were pantheistic. The pre- 
 supposition of pure monotheism would explain certain por- 
 tions of them just as well. Men who think, and who find 
 their data in consciousness, are exposed to pantheism when 
 
 1 Intellectual System, Vol. I., pp. 149, 150. 
 
60 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TKUTH. 
 
 they forsake the true God ; and this is enough to establish 
 the fact that many of the Greek philosophers, though we dare 
 not say precisely which ones, were forerunners of Spinoza. 
 TheOrien- ^ ^e contemplative Orientals it is far more 
 tais. "true than of the Greeks, that, in their ignorance 
 
 of the true God, they inclined to pantheism. We find in 
 the East a philosophy of the senses, quite as earnest as 
 that of Democritus or Epicurus, and resulting in a vast 
 system of Positivism ; but the main current of thought 
 there seems always to have set more naturally towards 
 Spinozism. The ancient Hindoos, if we may trust Sir 
 William Jones, "believed that the w r hole creation is an 
 energy rather than a work, by which the infinite mind is 
 present at all times and in all places, and exhibits to his 
 creatures a set of perceptions, like a wonderful picture or 
 piece of music always varied but always uniform." Here 
 we have laid open the secret of the Brahmanical emana- 
 tions, the source of the pleroma and eons of the Gnostics, 
 the origin of nearly all that is most profound in Oriental 
 religion and philosophy. There are many things also, in 
 E<y fian the writings of the ancient Egyptians, which 
 speculation. geem to an ti c ipate the teachings of modern 
 pantheism. The inscription on the veiled image at Sais, 
 " I am all that was, is, and shall be, and my veil no mortal 
 could ever uplift," may have been the utterance of a pan- 
 theistic creed ; as also, the following words, taken by Cud- 
 worth from the Trismegistic or Herm'aic books : " He 
 (God) is both incorporeal and omnicorporeal ; for there is 
 nothing of any body which he is not ; he is all things that 
 are, and therefore he hath all names ; because all things 
 are from one father ; and therefore he hath no name, be- 
 
PANTHEISM. 61 
 
 cause he is the father of all things." 1 Such passages 
 abound in the sacred books of the Egyptians; but to 
 search them out, and discriminate between those which 
 teach pantheism and those which teach a primitive mon- 
 otheism, would be a wearisome, if it were a possible, task. 
 
 Recent researches have shown, however, that Primitive 
 not all of those old speculations were mere fore- mouotlieism - 
 shadowings of Spinozism; that some of them, at least, 
 are worthy to be put in a nobler category; that they 
 may have been, and probably were, instances of a more 
 or less pure monotheism. The study of language and 
 mythology, pursued with such eagerness by certain Ger- 
 man and French scholars, has nearly demonstrated that 
 there was, far away beyond the ages of polytheism, a 
 general belief in the God of Balaam and Melchisedek. 
 Thus the testimony of science is confirming the scriptural 
 record. And who knows but it may yet be found that 
 many dwelling in the shadow of paganism, and now 
 called pantheists, were worshippers of the true God ? 
 " We see in the history of the religions of China," says 
 Professor Martin, of the Imperial College at Pekin, " a 
 process directly the reverse of that which cer- 
 
 The Chinese. 
 
 tain atheistic writers of modern Europe assert 
 to be the natural progress of the human mind. Accord- 
 ing to them, men set out with the belief of many gods, 
 which they at length reduce to unity, and finally supersede 
 by recognizing the laws of nature as independent of a 
 personal Administrator. The history of China is fatal to 
 this theory. The worship of one God is the oldest form 
 of Chinese religion, and idolatry is an innovation." 2 
 
 i Cud worth, Vol. I., p. 589. 2 New Englander, April, 1869. 
 
62 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 There is evidence also in the Orphic poetry of 
 
 The Greeks. _, 
 
 Greece, that the most ancient thinkers ot that 
 land believed in one God, "one supreme, unmade 
 Deity, the original of all things."" Was there nothing of 
 this nature in the mind of the Greek poet when he wrote, 
 "Nothing is accomplished on the earth without thee, O 
 God, save the deeds which the wicked perpetrate in their 
 folly"? And what shall we say to the words of Soph- 
 ocles in the CEdipus? " May destiny aid me to preserve 
 unsullied the purity of my words and of all my actions, 
 according to those sublime laws which, brought forth in 
 the celestial heights, have Heaven alone for their father, 
 to which the race of mortal men did not give birth, and 
 which oblivion shall never entomb. In them is a supreme 
 God, and one who waxes not old." Or listen to this, 
 found on a roll of papyrus in the coffin of an Egyptian 
 mummy : " I am the Most Holy, the Creator of all that 
 replenishes the earth, and of the earth itself, habitation of 
 
 mortals. I am the Prince of the infinite ages. 
 fromEgypt. * am tne g reat and mighty God, the Most High, 
 
 shining in the midst of the careering stars, and 
 of the armies which praise me over thy head. It is I who 
 chastise and who judge the evil doers and the persecutors 
 of godly men. I discover and confound the liars. I am 
 the all-seeing Judge and Avenger; the guardian of my 
 laws is the land of righteousness." Here, now, is a voice, 
 coining to us out of the ancient wonder-land, from a time 
 far beyond its degrading idolatries, which seems to catch 
 up and sound forward the words spoken to Adam and 
 Noah. 
 
 Ernest Naville, late Professor of Philosophy in the 
 
PANTHEISM. 63 
 
 University of Geneva, has taken pains to gather 
 
 f ,, . . , . Conclusion 
 
 up these vestiges of ancient monotheism, in his of Professor 
 
 Navillc 
 
 able work entitled " The Heavenly Father ; " 
 and he asks, in view of the mass of evidence they afford, 
 " Did humanity begin with a coarse fetichism, and thence 
 rise by slow degrees to higher conceptions? Do the 
 traces of comparatively pure monotheism first show them- 
 selves in the most recent periods of idolatry ? Contem- 
 porary science," he adds, " inclines more and more to an- 
 swer in the negative. It is in the most ancient 'historical 
 ground, that the laborious investigators of the past meet 
 with the most elevated ideas of religion. Cut to the 
 ground a young and vigorous beech tree, and come back a 
 few years afterwards : in place of the tree cut down you 
 will find coppice wood ; the sap which nourished a single 
 trunk has been divided among a multitude of shoots. 
 This comparison expresses well enough the opinion which 
 tends to prevail among our learned men on the subject of 
 the historical development of religions. The idea of the 
 only God is at the root ; it is primitive, polytheism is de- 
 rivative. A forgotten, and as it were slumbering, mono- 
 theism exists before the worship of idols ; it is the con- 
 cealed trunk which supports them, but the idols have 
 absorbed all the sap." Nor does Professor Naville reach 
 this conclusion by any path in which his own faith in 
 Christianity might sway him. Distrusting himself, he 
 appeals to those who may claim to speak with authority 
 on 'the subject; and the response which he gets from one 
 of the most learned of archaaologists is, "The general 
 impression of the most distinguished mythologists of the 
 
 i Published by W. V. Spencer, Boston, 1867. 
 
64 HALF TBUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 present day is, that monotheism is at the foundation of 
 all pagan mythology." l It is now generally held by the 
 best mythologists, that fetichism is a less ancient form of 
 religion than the worship of ancestors. Religious honors, 
 paid to famous progenitors, were the rites which naturally 
 grew up first, after men had forgotten the true God. A 
 distinguished ancestor had some symbol, a 
 fetich/sm. dog, crocodile, reindeer, or other natural object, 
 by which he was known among his contem- 
 poraries, and which gradually became the fetich of his de- 
 scendants. The synonyme for " fetich," in the dialect of 
 the North American Indians, seems to have been " totem ; " 
 and the religious worship which grew up among 
 3i h eVudia 8 f tnem nas been called totemism. Hence Long- 
 fellow says, in one of his poems, 
 
 " And they painted on the grave-posts 
 Of the graves, yet unforgotten, 
 Each his own ancestral totem, 
 Each the symbol of his household; 
 Figures of the bear and reindeer, 
 Of the turtle, crane, and beaver." 
 
 But whether or not we have here a true account of the 
 origin of fetichism, " it is enough for my purpose," again 
 using the words of Naville, " to have shown that it is not 
 merely the grand tradition guaranteed by the Christian 
 faith, but the most distinctly marked current of contem- 
 porary science, which tells us that God shone upon the 
 cradle of the species. The August Form was veiled, and 
 idolatry, with its train of shameful rites, shows itself in 
 history as the result of a fall which calls for a restoration, 
 
 i Pictet. 
 
PANTHEISM. 65 
 
 rather than as the point of departure of a continued 
 progress." 
 
 Therefore, without going farther into the his- 
 
 _ .. Spinoza our 
 
 tory of ancient systems, and admitting that the starting- 
 leaven of pantheism was in many of them, to a 
 greater or less extent, I come back to the lonely exile of 
 Amsterdam as our proper starting-point in the survey 
 undertaken. It is cheering to find that the latest re- 
 searches of scholars and critics are falling in so well with 
 our inspired traditions. This look into the remote past, 
 through the glass of science, also strengthens our position 
 as to the first origin and the genesis of all unbelief. Sepa- 
 rated from God, the human mind becomes lost in its own 
 speculations. As it turns back to him, it partakes again 
 of the spirit of a pure monotheism, which the students of 
 history may have sometimes unjustly condemned as pan- 
 theism. Presuming it to be such, they have found it to 
 be such, as there are not wanting those who have found 
 the same thing in the New Testament. Where, however, 
 the human mind has not thus turned back, but has kept 
 on with its face away from God, it has taken one or the 
 other of two opposite paths of infidelity. Which of 
 these two paths it has in any case taken, has depended on 
 its inherent tendency, whether to make the outward or 
 the inward its starting-point of inquiry. There did un- 
 questionably exist in ancient times, and in various coun- 
 tries, men occupied with philosophy and religion who 
 sought their data in the inner world of consciousness. So 
 far as those thinkers were without knowledge of the true 
 God, they undoubtedly inclined to pantheism, losing the 
 5 
 
66 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 human in the divine, substituting emanation for creation, 
 and confounding the Maker of all things with the work of 
 his hands. 
 
 But this ancient pantheism was unshapen, 
 belSrfwm changeable, crude, indeterminate, vague. It 
 was forever repeating itself in one form or an- 
 other; slightly varied, to suit the genius of different 
 countries and ages, yet on the whole confirming the truth 
 of Dugald Stewart's remark, who says, in vie*vv of the 
 frequent recurrences of the same essential error, " One is 
 almost tempted to believe that human invention is limit- 
 ed, like a barrel organ, to a specific number of tunes." 
 Gleams of the vast conception, now eagerly grasped and 
 now cast aside, flash out upon us all along in the path- 
 ways of ancient thought ; but that conception seems never 
 to come forth, and plant itself in solid proportions before 
 us ; it never unfolds into a well-adjusted and comprehen- 
 sive system. We catch only elusive glimpses of the 
 vision ; vague hints and impressions, with no fixed centre 
 about which to crystallize; faint foreshado wings of the 
 doctrine whose elaborator and expounder was yet to come, 
 course of r ^^ ie wear y a es f paganism circled on. IIu- 
 thouSt manity, cut off from God,' groped after its an- 
 sketehed. c i en t blessedness, but went sounding on a dim 
 and perilous way. The great lights of philosophy burned 
 out, one after another, or withdrew into the heavens. 
 Then " the Desire of all nations " appeared. Wise men' 
 followed his star, and, paying their homage at his fbet, 
 found again the glory which had been lost. But not all. 
 were wise. " He came unto his own, and his own received 
 him not." And that nation of despisers and rejecters, 
 
PANTHEISM. 67 
 
 dashed in pieces for its unbelief, was scattered over the 
 world. The Great Light, seen of them that sat in the 
 region and shadow of death, rose towards the meridian ; 
 and to it the moon and stars did .obeisance. After dis- 
 playing for a time its glory, so full of grace and truth, the 
 mists of human selfishness began to obscure it. It was 
 hidden from the world on which it had briefly shone in 
 triumph, and the night of the dark ages descended. And 
 not until those ages had passed away, in the full morning 
 of modern literature, when the Bible was in the hands of 
 the people, and humanity everywhere was awaking as to 
 some new destiny, did the high priest of pantheism ap- 
 pear. Born of the proud but rejected stock, spurning 
 Judaism, and seeing no beauty in Christ, he braves the 
 religious faith of his own time, and claims to interpret the 
 dream of benighted philosophy. 
 
 Yes, to Spinoza belongs the honor, whatever 
 
 Spinoza's 
 
 that may be, of grasping the principle of former system the 
 impressions and tendencies, and fixing forever 
 the laws and limits of pantheistic speculation. He seized 
 the essence of the world-old dream. And not only that, 
 but he made it stand forth so completely in his exposition, 
 that he may be said to have necessitated the formulas of 
 his most famous successors ; as Newton, when he enun- 
 ciated the principle of gravitation, became virtually the 
 author of all subsequent astronomy. The influence of 
 ^pinoza in the history of pantheistic thinking, reminds us 
 6f the great river which flows through the central valley 
 of the United States. His mind was the point, far up in 
 untrodden- wilds, where previous tendencies were first 
 gathered into 'a single fountain head. He scooped the 
 
68 HALF TRCJTHS AND THE TEUTH. 
 
 channel into which the brooklets emptied themselves, and 
 which drained the neighboring swales and marshes. It 
 was the rush of his tireless genius that gave unity, direc- 
 tion, and momentum- to the stream. He has had many 
 successors ; but, drawn irresistibly towards the main cur- 
 rent, they at length lose their independent life, and be- 
 come, as it were, the tributaries of his greatness. 
 
 I must not omit here, in claiming this pre- 
 Sruno 8 . f ceclence for Spinoza, to mention one other name 
 which is nearly related to the rise of pantheism 
 in modern times. Giordano Bruno is thought by some to 
 deserve the place assigned to the great Hebrew thinker. 
 Even Willis, the biographer of Spinoza, and editor of his 
 Correspondence and Ethics, inclines to this opinion. He 
 thinks it impossible that Spinoza should not have been 
 familiar with the works of Bruno, and wonders that he 
 nowhere alludes to them, while they so thoroughly antici- 
 pate the main doctrines of his system. " In the present 
 day," says he, " we should hold the man who borrowed so 
 freely as our philosopher has certainly done from his pred- 
 ecessor, to be guilty of unmitigated plagiarism, did he 
 fail to acknowledge the obligation." 1 But it is by no 
 means certain that Spinoza deserves this wound in the 
 house of his friends. He must be acquitted of anything 
 approaching dishonesty. He had too much intellectual 
 pride, to say nothing of his general character, ever to 
 deck himself with the plumes of another. Bruno certainly 
 had as many advantages as the outcast Jew for becoming 
 the leader of his school, if he deserved to be. He was 
 not of the rejected race, but a Christian Catholic. He had 
 
 i Life, Correspondence, and Ethics, General Introduction, p. 11. 
 
PANTHEISM. 69 
 
 the favor of public position in his native Italy, resided in 
 England for a time, where he was the friend of Sir Philip 
 Sidney and received many attentions from the queen, 
 was an expounder of the views of Copernicus, and finally 
 acquired the renown of martyrdom at the stake for his 
 scientific heresies. His writings had been before the 
 world three quarters of a century, when the Ethics of 
 Spinoza appeared. It is certainly strange, considering the 
 whole case, that Spinoza, if a mere copyist of his views, 
 should have so thoroughly displaced him, and usurped all 
 his honors. The natural conclusion is, that Bruno, though 
 a pantheist in many of his utterances, was not always 
 consistent with his theory, and that he lacked the system- 
 atizing power which was so remarkable in Spinoza. But 
 whatever the verdict of justice should be, as between 
 these two masters, it is idle to quarrel now with the 
 judgment of history. The scholarship of two centuries 
 has spoken, nor is it probable that any good .cause ban be 
 discovered for reversing its decision. 1 
 
 Spinoza did his work with every help towards 
 
 J Intellectual 
 
 doing it well. The gracious God, who makes activity of 
 
 the age fa- 
 
 his sun to rise on the evil and the good, with- vorabie to 
 held from the daring thinker no advantage. It 
 was the seventeenth century; that century unsurpassed 
 for triumphs of the human intellect in the higher and 
 more difficult fields of inquiry. Luther died 
 eighty-six years before Spinoza was born. It ti?n. f r 
 was the age of the Dutch Republic ; of the 
 
 1 Mr. Lewes, the warm eulogist of Bruno, and who has given us a graphic 
 sketch of his eventful life, says of his philosophy, "Its condemnation is writ- 
 ten in the fact of its neglect." Biog. Hist. Phil., p. 388. 
 
70 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 English Commonwealth; of Richelieu, and the French 
 
 Academy, and the Sorbonne. Bacon's great work, though 
 
 completed, was yet a buried seed, not destined 
 
 Bacon. J 
 
 to rise and overshadow the schools of thought 
 till after Spinoza had passed away. The founder of the 
 pantheistic school of free-thinkers lived, and died, amidst 
 the full blaze of the philosophy whose most recent master 
 had been Descartes. He must have known the story of 
 
 the Pilgrim Fathers, who, not long before his 
 FathS: rim own f amilv > had, like them, sought refuge from 
 
 persecution in Holland. His life synchronized 
 with the palmy period of the Puritan theocracy in New 
 England. Prodigies of human energy, not merely in indi- 
 viduals, but on a national scale, were enacting all around 
 
 him. Richelieu's administration was the won- 
 cromweiif nd der of Europe. Spinoza watched the career of 
 
 Cromwell, and saw him at the height of his 
 power. In the near past was the story of Dutch heroism, 
 linsf to rescue a country from Spanish 
 
 The Dutch. 
 
 tyranny, and from the invading sea. 1 he many 
 
 examples of endurance and devotion thus afforded could 
 
 not fail to inspire the ardent Hebrew. It was a time for 
 
 mediocrity to keep out of sight. To venture forth, and 
 
 claim a place among the leaders of the age, became only 
 
 such as were conscious of their ability to measure swords 
 
 with giants. John Locke was born in the same 
 
 year as Spinoza; but his influence, especially in 
 
 the sphere of religious thinking, belongs to a later age. 
 
 Sir Isaac Newton was ten years younger than 
 
 Spinoza; but his imperial genius, though fol- 
 
 lowing in the track of Bacon and Locke, gave a lustre to 
 
PANTHEISM. 71 
 
 the times of which it was born. It was the age of the 
 Bodleian Library, the age of faith in the moderns. Men 
 had grown less servile towards the old masters, and the 
 Baconian maxim that " we are the ancients " was in every 
 student's mouth. We have seen that Spinoza corre- 
 sponded with Leibnitz, and that he was courted by Louis 
 XIV. of France. Surely, if there were any possibilities 
 of greatness in him, the attentions he received, and the 
 examples all about him, must have aroused them to do 
 their utmost. 
 
 Scientific research was everywhere active, and 
 crowned with remarkable success, in the time of J^Snce 
 Spinoza. It was in his century that Harvey 
 made his famous discovery of the circulation of the blood; 
 that Galileo became known as the expounder of the law 
 of the equilibrium of bodies, the laws of accelerated and 
 retarded motion, and the parabolic nature of the curve 
 described by projectiles ; in his age that Torricelli and 
 Pascal solved the problem of the pressure of the atmos- 
 phere ; that Napier invented the logarithmic tables ; that 
 the binomial theorem was discovered, letters 
 used for notation, algebra applied to the inves- Mtithemat- 
 tigation of the properties of curves. Pascal 
 and Descartes expounded the cycloid; Kepler showed 
 that the circle is composed of an infinite number of trian- 
 gles, the sphere of an infinite number of pyramids, the 
 cylinder of nn infinity of prisms. Spinoza beheld, in 
 astronomy, the most wonderful discoveries of 
 
 Astronomy. 
 
 modern times. Kepler, a believer in the old 
 philosophy rather than the new, had discovered that the 
 planetary orbits are ellipses; that the sun is fixed in 
 
72 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 one of the foci of all those orbits ; that the radius vector 
 of each planet passes over equal spaces in equal times; 
 that the square of the time of revolution is, in every 
 instance, as the cube of the mean distance from the 
 sun. In the midst of these sublime achieve- 
 
 Optics. . . 
 
 ments, optics came forward to lend its helping 
 hand. The telescope, invented by Galileo, vastly widened 
 the field of "the science of space." The moons of Jupiter 
 were observed ; and the phases of Venus, and the occulta- 
 tions of the planets, were used as data in determining 
 longitude. 
 
 But it was not alone in the study of nature 
 fhJfleven 6 f tnat tn i s a g e excelled. Spinoza was the cen- 
 tury!* 1 C temporary of the greatest lights 'in modern lit- 
 erature, the greatest lights in all literature. 
 The first half of the seventeenth century was the golden 
 age of the drama. Corneille, Calderon, Shakespeare, Jon- 
 son, Beaumont "and Fletcher lived and wrote during that 
 period. Cervantes gave to the world Don Quixote in this 
 age. John Milton was the contemporary of Spinoza. To 
 show the activity of the theological and religious mind in 
 this era, it is needful only to name the West- 
 JSyf Cal minster Assembly, the Synod of Dort, the con- 
 troversy between Augustinians and Arminians, 
 Port Royal, Jansenism. What splendor of intellect, what 
 keenness of logic, what patience of labor, and how great 
 wealth of piety and burning devotion are called up to our 
 minds by the mention of such names as John Howe, 
 Richard Baxter, Jeremy Taylor, Isaac Barrow, John 
 Owen, Stillingfleet, Tillotson, Fenelon, Bossuet, Flechier, 
 Bourdaloue ; all of which belong to the age of Spinoza. 
 
PANTHEISM. 73 
 
 It was in the very focus of all this unparalleled bril- 
 liancy of thought, with a mighty hunger for truth, driven 
 to his task by the persecution of friends, and every energy 
 aroused to its utmost by the great examples about him, 
 that the champion of pantheism took up his problem. 
 God seemed, in his providence, to have specially arranged 
 for the solution under the most favorable circumstances 
 possible. The man, the age, and the immediate influences 
 under which he acted, were all that the most earnest 
 friends of the cause could desire. If it failed despite 
 these signal advantages, it would fail utterly 
 and irrecoverably ; and therefore God did not Jtlrpole. 
 withhold them. Wishing to show to his chil- 
 dren that the speculation they had chased so many ages 
 was a baseless dream, he allowed it every opportunity for 
 proving itself true. When all things were ready, and 
 victory seemed most likely to crown the adventure, the 
 word was given, Come forth into the arena ; produce your 
 cause, and set in order your arguments. 
 
1 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 THE NATURE AND GROUNDS OF PANTHEISM. 
 
 A GENERAL definition of pantheism may be 
 ?a e atheism f S iven irl few words. It is tlic doctrine that 
 
 God includes all reality, and is identical with it, 
 nothing besides him really existing. To use t'he Greek 
 phrase, he is ?o e xai 10 nav the One and the All. 
 Spinoza's way of stating it is, " Besides God, no substance 
 can exist, or be conceived to exist." * 
 
 Howitdif- The doctrine thus enunciated will be made 
 ttoeJ8 f maud clearer, perhaps, by comparing it with theism 
 
 and atheism. The theist" separates nature from 
 God, in his system, and recognizes the existence of both ; 
 the atheist starts from nature, and denies the existence of 
 God; the pantheist starts from God, and denies the ex- 
 istence of nature. Atheists and pantheists agree in 
 opposing the theist, alleging that his doctrine involves a 
 species of dualism, not the dualism of Zoroaster and the 
 Manichaeans, which asserts the eternity of matter and of 
 moral evil, but that distinction between the Creator and 
 the creation which admits of secondary causes in nature, 
 and -of free-will in the rational creature. The dualism is 
 only that which is necessary in order to moral govern- 
 
 * Ethics, Tart 1, Prop, xiv. 
 
PANTHEISM. 75 
 
 ment and responsible action. Yet objection is made to it, 
 as not evolving all reality out of a single principle ; as 
 implying an ethical universe, whereas all existence is em- 
 braced under the natural, and must be so regarded, or 
 there can be no simple and perfect philosophy. The atheist 
 and pantheist are alike in starting with a single postulate, 
 which, they claim, is all-inclusive ; and they throw out 
 the matter of freedom and responsibility for the assumed 
 philosophical advantage of entire unity of system. But 
 though alike in standing upon a basis of monism, they 
 seem nevertheless to be in direct and necessary antagonism 
 to^each other. One of them does not believe in any God, 
 the other believes in nothing but God. This hostility is 
 apparent rather than real, however, at least in its religious 
 aspect ; is not so much in ideas as in language. W]iei . cin 
 When the atheist has explained what he means jSJSSSS?* 
 by the word " nature," and the pantheist defines !18Tce * 
 that which he chooses to call " God," it is often clear that 
 they both mean the same thing ; that they occupy common 
 ground in their attitude towards Christianity, although their 
 methods of philosophizing may be opposite.- One denying 
 nature, and the other everything but nature, it is clear 
 that they must alike reject the swper-natural. The uniniti- 
 ated reader gets a profound impression of the piety of 
 Spinoza while reading the pages in which Novalis extols 
 him as "the God-intoxicated man;" but when he learns 
 that the " God " which produced this intoxication was only 
 an impersonal substance constituting the universe, he 
 knows that he has been misled by a verbal juggle. Pie- 
 ty quite as good as this might be legitimately felt, and 
 no doubt was, by Auguste Comte, if not also by Baron 
 d'Holbach. 
 
76 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Lan<mn"c And here we discover, at the very threshold 
 tstfbtteir f i ts temple, one of the vices of pantheism. It 
 )US ' is less honest than atheism. Has it at first 
 sight a somewhat noble and captivating look? This is 
 because it puts on disguises. It uses the language of 
 theism, and even of Christianity, to inculcate a doctrine 
 which no Christian or theist can for a moment think of 
 entertaining. Herder and Schleiermacher, pointing to the 
 verbal dress in which Spinoza's thoughts were at times 
 put, might seem to have a warrant for insisting that he 
 was a Christian ; and Schleiermacher might say that he 
 was not as impious as his critics declared him to be, when 
 once in the midst of a sermon he exclaimed, " Offer up with 
 me a lock of hair to the manes of the rejected but holy 
 Spinoza." It would seem, however, from the manner in 
 which it is here proposed to honor Spinoza, that the^enthu- 
 siastic preacher, to say nothing of the philosopher himself, 
 was in a state of mind bordering on paganism. Justly 
 does Mr. Morell say, speaking of the theistic language of 
 Spinoza, " A being to whom understanding, will, and even 
 personality is denied ; a being who does not create, but 
 simply is / who does not act, but simply unfolds ; who doe.s 
 not purpose, but brings all things to pass by the necessary 
 law of his own existence, such a being cannot be a father, 
 a friend, a benefactor ; in a word, cannot be a God to man, 
 for man is but a part of himself. It may be more correct 
 to term the philosophy of Spinoza a pantheism than an 
 atheism ; but if we take the common idea or definition of 
 Deity as valid, then assuredly we must conclude that the 
 God of Spinoza is no God, and that his pantheism is only 
 a more imposing form of atheism." There is a tradition 
 
PANTHEISM. 77 
 
 that Spinoza, when about to publish on.e of his pantheistic 
 writings, showed it to a friend, and that the word " God " 
 was not to be found in it, but only the term " nature," where 
 the other word stood in the printed volume. His friend, 
 it is said, induced him to make this change wherever he 
 could, substituting the theistic for the atheistic term, fear- 
 ing that if he did nofy the treatise would make no disciples, 
 but only arouse dangerous hostility. It is easy enough to 
 see that Spinoza uses these terms interchangeably. He 
 says, in the Introduction to the Fourth Part of the Ethics, 
 " The eternal and infinite being whom we call God or Na- 
 ture, as he exists of necessity, so does he act of necessity." 
 He therefore might have altered his manuscript to mislead 
 or conciliate a class of readers. But the story may well 
 be doubted ; for Spinoza, whatever must be said of his 
 system, was a thoroughly fearless man, despising hypocrisy, 
 and scorning to turn his hand over in the hope of disarming 
 opposition. The tradition may have arisen from the fact 
 that some of his works were published under fictitious 
 names in various parts of Europe, though without consul- 
 tation with him, and with such changes as his admiring 
 disciples thought would help to give them currency in the 
 philosophical world. 
 
 This extraordinary use of lano-uaere, even jf 
 
 ; Many names 
 
 not intentionally dishonest, has, as a matter ot for one 
 
 . thing-. 
 
 fact, deceived many. It also enables the pan- 
 theist to make a show of denying, and indignantly repel- 
 ling, any charges of irreverence or impiety that may be 
 brought against him. He can subscribe to the whole 
 Christian vocabulary, without making it apparent, except 
 
78 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 to those who understand his system and his definitions, 
 that he resolves all religions, together with everything 
 else, of whatever claims or appearance, back into an'eternal 
 nature-process. Any terminology, from' that of apostolic 
 fervor down to the hardest scholastic barbarisms, can be 
 made to serve his turn. John Sterling, replying to a re- 
 mark made to him one day by his friend Thomas Carlyle, 
 said, "That is flat pantheism." "And what if it were 
 pot-theism, if it were true?" was Carlyle's rejoinder. 1 
 The audacious hero-worshipper was utterly indifferent to 
 terms. They were but the " clothes " of philosophy to his 
 view, and might be changed never so often, he cared not 
 how often or in what way, so long as the substance within 
 them remained intact. In the biography of Sterling which 
 Carlyle wrote, and in which he labors so hard to make 
 Sterling out a religious doubter essentially at one with 
 himself, he shows that he was not above playing the 
 juggler, and that, too, with so sacred a matter as his friend's 
 religious convictions. His complaint of Archdeacon Hare 
 for emphasizing the Christian faith of Sterling, might, so 
 far as it implies a one-sided treatment of the subject, be 
 more properly made against him. Among the terms 
 frequently used by pantheists, and which they regard as 
 synonymous, or nearly so, are Father, All-Father, Heavenly 
 Father, Nature, Substance, God, Subject-Object, World- 
 Ego, Indifference of the Subjective and Objective, the 
 Identity-Point of Existence and Non-existence. The lan- 
 guage hardly seems a caricature, in which an English 
 Satirist represents the later disciples of Spinoza as say- 
 ing, 
 
 i Carlyle's Life of Sterling (Boston, 1852), p. 1G7. 
 
PANTHEISM. 79 
 
 " We worship the Absolute-Infinite, 
 The Universe-Ego, the Plenary-Void, 
 The Subject-Object Identified, 
 The great Nothing-something, the Being-Thought, 
 That mouldeth the mass of chaotic Nought, 
 Whose beginning unended, and end unbegun, 
 Is the One that is All, and the All that is One." 
 
 Thus it appears, from this very slight examination of 
 the pantheistic use, or rather misuse, of terms, that we must 
 know the system if we would not be deceived by popular 
 expositions of it. 
 
 I pass, therefore, to the premise from which Knowledge 
 Spinoza set out, and the method by which he 
 finally reached his pantheism. And here I 
 must bespeak the forbearance of all, knowing 
 how difficult it is to represent his system adequately. 
 Fortunately my purpose does not require me to undertake 
 an exhaustive statement of Spinozism. I am not assuming 
 the office of an historian of philosophy, but simply sketch- 
 ing the general course of speculative thought, so far as 
 may be needful to show the origin of a class of popular 
 infidelities. By keeping to the plain starting-point and 
 clear drift of Spinozism, and not attempting what would 
 be superfluous, I shall hope to be sure of my ground, and 
 at the same time to accomplish all I have purposed. 
 
 I have already intimated that Spinoza was a Dcscnrteg 
 student of Descartes. It will be proper, there- 
 fore, to say a few words of that philosopher, and 
 of his peculiar doctrines. The question has been argued 
 at some length whether Spinoza found the germs of pan- 
 
80 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 theism in Cartcsianism, or in another and earlier Thig 
 system. One theory is, that he was a follower d 
 of Averroes, and that he took the elements of his thinking 
 from the Arabian philosophy. Others have maintained 
 stoutly that he was a Cabalist, and found the principles 
 of his pantheism in the comments of Maimonides and 
 Aben-Ezra on the Hebrew Scriptures. But Spinoza's 
 Opinion of French translator, Saisset, after discussing each 
 of these views carefully, rejects them both as 
 untenable, and affirms that the true filiation is with the 
 Cartesian philosophy. This conclusion I have adopted, 
 for reasons yet to be given. 
 
 Rene Descartes was born near the end of the 
 of DC*- sixteenth century, of one of the noble families 
 
 cartes. 
 
 of France. He is said to have been a sickly 
 child, of diminutive size, noted for thoughtfulness in his 
 earliest years. In this he reminds us of Spinoza, as also 
 in the fact that he was carefully nurtured in the faith of 
 his fathers. His education was intrusted to the Jesuits. 
 But like the Hebrew youth, yet to follow in his steps, he 
 soon began to distrust tne lessons of his teachers. He 
 set almost no value on all they taught him, with the single 
 exception of mathematics. "As soon as I was old enough 
 to be set free from the government of my teachers," says 
 he, "I entirely forsook the study of letters ; and, determin- 
 ing to seek no other knowledge than that which Earljr pur . 
 I could discover within myself, or in the great posc ' 
 book of the world, I spent the remainder of my youth in 
 travelling." l He therefore had before him a double work 
 to perform : first he must divest himself of all notions thus 
 
 1 Huxley, Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, p. 321. 
 
PANTHEISM. 81 
 
 far acquired ; and then lie must find some criterion by 
 which to distinguish the false from the genuine, in his 
 search for truth. The rule he at length adopted was cer- 
 tainly rigid enough, if adhered to, to guard him against 
 any impositions of error : it was to accept no criterion 
 doctrines but those the truth of which was too 
 clear to be questioned. We are to see in what direction 
 this principle led him, and whether he or Spinoza was 
 more faithful to it in the pursuit of wisdom. But even in 
 regard to this criterion of truth, the originality of Descartes 
 has been doubted. May Spinoza not have taken this, too, 
 from the Arabian philosophy? Mr. Lewes, in 
 his charming sketch of Algazzali, quotes that ni with 
 
 . . Descartes. 
 
 remarkable thinker as saying, " It was evident 
 .to me that certain knowledge must be that which explains 
 the object to be known, in such a manner that no doubt 
 can remain, so that in future all error and conjecture con- 
 cerning it must be impossible." 1 By this rule, strictly 
 applied, the Oriental student feund himself shut up to his 
 own consciousness in the search for truth. He found in 
 the sect of the Soufis, the mystics of the East, the best 
 examples of his principle in action ; though he says that 
 some of them went too far, " imagining themselves to be 
 amalgamated with God, or identified with him." Avoiding 
 this extreme, which would have made him a Spinozist 
 before Spinoza, Algazzali says, "I declare that the convic- 
 tion was forced upon me that the-Soufis indubitably walked 
 in the true paths of salvation. Their way of life is the 
 most beautiful, and their morals the purest that can be 
 conceived." 
 
 1 Biographical Hist. Phil., p. 363. 
 
 6 
 
82 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Testimon though tne Cartesian maxim for discover- 
 
 ' m S truth had been held by others, this does not 
 detract from Descartes' real merits. He was 
 not a plagiarist in the discreditable sense of the word, any 
 more than Spinoza was while pursuing paths already trod- 
 den by Giordano Bruno. Descartes should, no doubt, have 
 the somewhat questionable honor of being the real master 
 of the founder of pantheism. And inasmuch as Spinoza 
 claimed, and might with a degree of justice claim, that his 
 conclusions were a logical development of Cartesianism, it 
 will be necessary to look at some of Descartes' fundamental 
 doctrines. Besides the coincidence already noticed, it will 
 appear, I think, that Fontenelle was right in saying that 
 Spinozism is " Cartesianism pushed to extravagance." So 
 far as conclusions go, the remark of Dugald Stewart is, no 
 doubt, correct, that " no two philosophers ever differed more 
 widely in their metaphysical and theological tenets ; " but 
 if we consider only premises and methods of reasoning, 
 it seems to me far from true- that Spinoza, as Stewart says, 
 "agreed with Descartes in little else than his physical 
 principles." That it was from Descartes especially that 
 Spinoza took the principles of his system, will appear, I 
 think, as we go forward. The maxim, that that only is to 
 be accepted as true which cannot be rationally doubted, 
 was, as no one has attempted to deny, a cardinal rule with 
 Spinoza. This appears in his whole statement of the doc- 
 trine of knowledge ; where he rejects as "hearsay," or as 
 " inadequate," all those notions which do not come through 
 the immediate grapple of the mind with the very substance 
 of truth. We shall see how strictly he adhered to this 
 rule, at least in purpose, and how quick he was to see 
 
PANTHEISM. bd 
 
 and expose any violation of it in the reasonings of 
 Descartes. 
 
 The points in the Cartesian philosophy, which Fourmain 
 may be regarded as paving the way to Spinozism, cartesiau- 
 if not indeed its very germs, are four in num- lsm ' 
 ber : 1. The renowned formula Cogito, ergo sum, ; 2. The 
 argument for proving the divine existence ; 3. The doctrine 
 that there are no second causes ; 4. The theory that all 
 truth is susceptible of proof by the method of mathematics. 
 In all cases of disagreement with Descartes, Spinoza, as 
 can be successfully shown, I think, disagreed with him 
 simply as a logical and thorough -going adherent to these 
 postulates. 
 
 The formula Coc/ito, erqo sum (I think, there- 
 
 I think, 
 
 fore I am), was laid down by Descartes as ex- therefore i 
 pressive of the spirit of his whole system. In 
 this sentence a broad meaning is given to the word " think." 
 Descartes understands by thought any fact in conscious- 
 ness, whether intellectual, emotional, or voluntary. " I 
 designate by the word ' thought,' " says he, " all those facts 
 of which we are internally conscious ; and of these our 
 consciousness itself is one. And so not only to know, to 
 will, and to imagine, but even to feel also, is here the same 
 thing as to think." l But it has been stoutly denied that 
 the Cartesian formula proves even personal existence. 
 Gassendi thought it a flagrant breach of the philosopher's 
 own rule that nothing should be held true which 
 admits of rational doubt, to infer the fact of a Gaanendi 
 
 1 . and Huxley. 
 
 person irom the bare existence 01 thinking. 
 
 The thinking alone is in consciousness ; and to say that 1 
 
 t Principia Philosophise. 
 
84 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 think, is a begging of the question. "Prove that you 
 think," says Descartes' critic, " and the assertion that you 
 exist will follow of necessity. The criticism is valid, no 
 doubt ; and it has been presented quite recently by Hux- 
 ley, under a modified form. The formula is analyzed by 
 Huxley, and shown to contain three distinct propositions, 
 one of which asserts the action of a person, another con- 
 scious thought, and the other personal existence. But only 
 the second of these propositions, that affirming conscious 
 thought, can endure the Cartesian test of certainty. "Des- 
 cartes," says Huxley, " determined as he was to strip off 
 all the garments which the intellect weaves for itself, forgot 
 this gossamer shirt of the self, to the great detriment, 
 and indeed ruin, of his toilet when he began to clothe him- 
 self again." 1 The inference from this criticism is, that 
 Descartes, when pushed back into his main position, turns 
 out to be the true predecessor of James Mill and his school, 
 teaching us that we have nothing to do with substances, 
 whether spiritual or material, but only with sensations, 
 aside from which there is no ground of certain knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 The justice of these criticisms I do not deny. But in 
 showing the relation of Descartes to Spinoza, he must be 
 taken as he understood himself, and as the pupil took him. 
 Strictly speaking, we cannot be conscious of personality ; 
 though we may be said to be, in a larger sense of the term. 
 The "self" is something which rests upon the primary 
 Descartes to beliefs of the soul. Those beliefs, as defined 
 he umu"r- as m more modern times, do not seem to have 
 self. occurred to Descartes as a basis of certitude. 
 
 i Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews, p. 328. 
 
PANTHEISM. 85 
 
 He must perhaps be regarded as holding to consciousness 
 only in the more restricted sense ; and therefore we must 
 grant that his reasoning is illogical, although the work 
 before us requires that his conclusions be allowed to stand 
 in their historical connections. He clearly means to assert 
 that our personal existence is not an inference, but a da- 
 tum of consciousness. What if a man doubts his own 
 existence, runs the argument. Yet he cannot doubt that 
 he doubts ; therefore in any case the existence is a foregone 
 conclusion. It is so true a truth that the most obstinate 
 scepticism cannot at all invalidate it. Of one thing, then, 
 Descartes w r as absolutely certain ; and on this immovable 
 rock he planted himself, resolved to make it a basis for the 
 reconstruction of human knowledge. ^ 
 
 But having found this standing-place, his next desider- 
 atum was the Archimedean lever. This second requisite 
 he claimed to have secured in his method. The 
 
 _ The Car- 
 
 baSIS of certitude was consciousness; and the tcsian 
 
 method of certitude was deduction, called 
 mathematical because always followed in the processes of 
 mathematics. The mistake which Descartes here made, 
 and which Spinoza did not correct, w r as in making mathe- 
 matics a universal science ; in assuming that all truth lay 
 within its domain, and could be reached by its methods. 
 Spinoza says, in the Introduction to the Third Part of the 
 Ethics, "I shall discuss human actions, appetites, and 
 emotions, precisely as if the question were of lines, planes, 
 and solids." But our minds are shut up to a very small 
 sphere of knowledge, if we can know only what may be 
 demonstrated like so many theorems in geometry. The 
 method is inadequate, and we cannot explain Descartes' 
 
86 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 adoption of it, unless, perhaps, he was biassed by his 
 great fondness for mathematics. He achieved astonishing 
 results in the prosecution of this science, and might prop- 
 erly claim to be its especial champion in his times. This 
 fact, together with his declared distrust of any doctrine 
 which rose only to the level of probability, may account 
 for his error. He entered a path from which, as we shall 
 soon see, Spinoza found him tripping. The refugee from 
 Judaism, no less than the revolted pupil of the Jesuits, 
 held the maxim that only what cannot be rationally 
 doubted is worthy of belief. "All original truths," he 
 contended, " are of such a kind that they cannot, without 
 absurdity, even be conceived to be false ; the opposites of 
 them are contradictions in terms." 1 
 
 Regarding the formula Cogito, ego sum, as an instance of 
 mathematical reasoning, in strict conformity with the Car- 
 tesian test of certainty, we are able to see how Descartes' 
 conclusion in the case follows. I think is a datum of 
 consciousness ; and the conclusion I am is involved in 
 that datum, so as to be a necessary deduction 
 fir^Tstop 8 ' from it. The two, propositions are, in math- 
 ematical phrase, identical. That is, the think- 
 ing may stand as the first term of an equation, and the 
 existence as the second term. One is just as true as the 
 other, the truth being in each case assumed ; and there- 
 fore, since things which are equal to the same thing are 
 equal to each other, they may be put side by side, with 
 the sign of equality between them. Thought is an indis- 
 putable fact, and thought equals being ; therefore being is 
 mathematically demonstrated. 
 
 1 Froude's Short Studies on Great Subjects (New York, 1S68), p. 280. 
 
PANTHEISM. 87 
 
 Yet even here is a joint in the Cartesian 
 
 A foothold 
 
 harness, into which the ready critic may thrust for spiuo- 
 
 zism. 
 
 his weapon. Descartes did not seem to see the 
 dangerous admission which his statement involved the 
 welcome to Spinozism, broad and manifest. In strict 
 fidelity to his own method, he had not proved being in 
 itself, or as an objective fact, but only the subjective being 
 of which he was conscious. His universe is shut within 
 the limits of his own thinking. Has he proved existence ? 
 That we grant him ; but this assured existence amounts, 
 after all, to nothing but the contents of his own conscious- 
 ness. All mathematical proof is a series of identical 
 propositions. 2 ~\- 2 = 4 ; that is, two added to two, and 
 four, are simply different ways of saying the same thing. 
 Only the being of the subject involved in the thought is 
 deducible from the fact of thinking, on mathematical prin- 
 ciples. Therefore we must not go out of ourselves, but 
 must draw the whole universe of reality into ourselves, 
 and make it in some way an integral part of our own con- 
 sciousness, if we would know the universe as the math- 
 ematician knows his conclusions. We must cease groping 
 abroad, and unravel the tangled skein of our own con- 
 scious exercises ; for in these alone are all demonstrable 
 truths contained. Thus does the doctrine of Spinoza find 
 a foothold in that of Descartes. If the master attempts 
 to prove, by the professed method, any objective world, 
 whether spiritual or material, the pupil may turn upon 
 him, and assail him with his own weapon. It can be 
 shown, beyond the possibility of refutation, that Cartesian- 
 ism must come at last to nothing but a species of subjec- 
 tive pantheism. It gives the seeker for truth no outlet, 
 
88 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 but keeps him hopelessly shut up, " cribbed, coffined, and 
 confined," within the narrow sphere of his own conscious- 
 ness. God, nature, and humanity, considered as objective 
 realities, are swept out of existence at a single stroke. 
 The only reality left to every man is the conscious being 
 which he finds in his own thinking; and this conclusion 
 follows from the Cartesian formula, according to the math- 
 ematical method, as used by Descartes himself in the 
 search for truth. 
 
 ^ ' IS eas y ^ or thinkers of the present day, who 
 
 are familiar with the Scotch or intuitional phi- 
 ce' 1 8ary f truths losophy, to point out the fatal error in Des- 
 saved d Des Ve cartes' system, and to show what the a-priori 
 
 philosophy needed, in order to guard it against 
 the approaches of pantheism. Those necessary truths, 
 first earnestly insisted on by Reid, and afterwards 
 more clearly defined by Hamilton, are our only escape 
 from the bondage to which Cartesianism dooms us. 
 They alone can break open the door of the prison in 
 which our consciousness holds us fast bound, and cast up 
 a sure highway outward, from the subjective into the 
 objective. They bridge the chasm, not only between 
 thought and that which thinks, but between the me and 
 not-me ; between the one and the many, the conscious 
 and the unconscious, the spiritual and the material. They 
 carry us abroad, out of the narrow circle of individual 
 consciousness, to the limits of the universe of truth. Un- 
 der their ministration, the contents do not drop out of our 
 ideas, so as to leave us but the residuum of blank ideal- 
 ism ; nor, on the other hand, do they allow our identity to 
 become lost in the matter of our thoughts ; but saving us 
 
PANTHEISM. 89 
 
 equally, both from pantheism and from pure rationalism 
 or sensationalism, they reveal to us substance in phenom- 
 ena, and body under the dominion of spirit. Descartes 
 did not discover, and the purpose of Spinoza forbade him 
 to notice, this outlet of the a-priori philosophy from the 
 terrible grasp and confinement of pantheism. 
 
 But as we have kept faithfully to the path indicated by 
 Descartes' famous formula, in reaching the point to which 
 we are now come, so it will be in strict accordance with 
 his principles that we shall reach yet other consequences. 
 His demonstration of the being of God completes the 
 basis which we have already noticed, in part, for the argu- 
 ment in proof of pantheism. "I think, there- 
 fore I am," is impregnable when judged by the 
 Cartesian test of truth, as Descartes and Spi- 
 
 noza both thought. And the next question is, favors spi- 
 
 nozism. 
 
 now to rise from our own thought to as solid a 
 ground on which to rest the divine existence. Is it pos- 
 sible for us to prove, by the exact mathematical method, 
 in a way which shall preclude all doubt, the being of a 
 God who is external to our thinking, and wholly indepen- 
 dent of it? Descartes answers in the affirmative, and 
 speaks substantially as follows, in the effort to make good 
 his assertion : I have a necessary idea of an absolutely 
 perfect being ; but no idea of a being can be absolutely 
 perfect unless that being exists, for his existence must be 
 one of the elements of his perfection ; therefore the abso- 
 lutely perfect being, God, exists. It does not fall within 
 my present plan to notice the usual criticisms of this ar- 
 gument. Whatever may be said about the assumption 
 that actual existence is involved in the idea of a perfect 
 
90 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 being, real objective existence, I mean, no one who 
 comprehends the case will deny that Descartes' conclusion 
 follows legitimately on pantheistic ground. But to say 
 that it follows on the ground of pure theism, we must 
 assume that Descartes anticipates, here, the philosophy of 
 Reid ; that he means, by " necessary idea," one of those 
 primary truths which are the foundation of all thinking. 
 Thus only can it be shown that his conclusive logic does 
 not necessitate pantheism. The theological world seems, 
 more and more, to be coming to the position 
 ment a fo"a that our belief in God is fundamental ; that it is 
 
 God which 
 
 now tends one ot those postulates ot the human reason on 
 
 to prevail. 
 
 which we plant ourselves in advance of every 
 inquiry after a God ; that all our a-posteriori arguments, 
 so far from begetting, only serve to clear up and deepen 
 this necessary conviction. It is one of the truths which 
 lie about us in our infancy, as Wordsworth puts it in 
 his Ode on Immortality; which we bring with us when 
 we come from God, who is our home ; truths that wake 
 to perish never ; 
 
 " Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavor, 
 
 Nor man nor boy, 
 Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
 Can utterly abolish or destroy." 
 
 Descartes seems, at times, to have come very near this 
 ground. Mr. Lewes quotes him as saying, " By the word 
 idea, I understand all that can be in our thoughts ; and I 
 distinguish three sorts of ideas : adventitious, 
 like the common idea of the sun ; framed by 
 
 to anticipate . 
 
 this. the mind, such as that which astronomical rea- 
 
PANTHEISM. 91 
 
 soning gives of the sun; and innate, as the idea of 
 God, mind, body, a triangle, and, generally, all those 
 which represent true, immutable, and eternal essences." 
 But his precise meaning in these words is uncertain, for 
 we again find him explaining, " When I said that the 
 idea of God is innate in us, I never meant more than this 
 that nature has endowed us with a faculty by which we 
 may know God ; but I have never either said or thought 
 that such ideas had an actual existence, or even that they 
 were a species distinct from the faculty of thinking." 
 This language, therefore, shows us on what ground the 
 famous demonstration of a God must be regarded as 
 standing. The God whose existence is demon- 
 strated must not be held to be anything distinct 
 from that which thinks, and conceives, and rea- 
 sons. The Cartesian idea of a most perfect 
 being is only a form of the thinking faculty revealed in 
 consciousness. It is not a truth independent of all expe- 
 rience, but simply a shadow of the " self." And therefore 
 the thinker, who is conscious of it, is still within the circle 
 of his own subjectivity. The being he has found is not 
 outward, and personally separate from himself; he is in- 
 ward, and constitutes in very deed the thinker's own 
 essence and modes of consciousness. 
 
 If it should be denied that this pantheistic conclusion 
 follows from Descartes' position, and his theistic friends 
 should say "that he has proved the being of an objective 
 deity, independent of the human consciousness, then they 
 are confronted by his method of proof, which 
 
 r> The Carte- 
 
 connrms the argument against them. To de- sian meth- 
 duce the outward from the inward, as the Car- the teu- 
 
92 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TKUTH. 
 
 tesian formula did, was doing violence to the 
 law of mathematics which requires that the con- 
 clusion should be found in the premise. I think, and 
 therefore I exist. Now show in consciousness that God 
 thinks, and it will be mathematically true that God exists. 
 Just here, as already intimated, comes the inevitable leap 
 into pantheism. In order to know absolutely that God 
 thinks, as I know that I think, God and I must have one 
 and the same consciousness. I exist, for I am conscious 
 of thinking; and in order to prove mathematically that 
 God exists, I must be likewise conscious of his thinking. 
 This is the position to which an inexorable logic brings 
 us. Man is absorbed into God. Our consciousness of 
 thinking is not ours, but God's ; and because God thinks, 
 God exists. Thus the existence ' of a certain something, 
 Go'd, Nature, Substance, whatever we choose to call it, is 
 demonstrated on mathematical principles ; and beyond 
 this self-conscious and absolute Substance, there cannot be 
 proved to be any reality. 
 
 Is further evidence needed to show that we have fol- 
 lowed Cartesianism out to its logical ultimate? That 
 evidence is at hand, in the doctrine of Descartes respect- 
 ing second causes. He denied that any such causes exist. 
 This tenden "^ F ' ^ ore ^ states his views on this point as fol- 
 sSn-th- r lows : " Creation itself Descartes attributed to 
 deniai'of'sec- the wil1 of tne Almighty, making even neces- 
 ond causes. ^.^ truth dependent upon that will, rather than 
 upon the nature of things." Therefore two and two are 
 equal to four, and the sum of the angles in any triangle is 
 equal to two right angles only because God wills that it 
 should be so. " More important still, however," says Mo- 
 
PANTHEISM. 
 
 rell, " was his doctrine respecting the act of creation itself. 
 To Descartes the whole dependent world, both of mind 
 and matter, is a vast mechanism, carried on by external 
 laws, a mechanism which requires the act of creation to 
 be ever reproduced, in order to keep it in perpetual and 
 harmonious operation. According to this view, there can 
 be no direct action of matter upon matter, because it is the 
 perpetual efflux of the vis creatrix ' by which all such 
 action is maintained ; and, consequently, secondary causes 
 can be nothing more than modifications of the first cause. 
 In like manner, also, there can be no direct influence mu- 
 tually exerted upon each other by mind and matter, for 
 the action of both is dependent on the continuity of the 
 creativ^ power, as seen in the laws or mechanism of body 
 and soul. In this affirmation, that the universe depends 
 upon the productive power of God, not only for its first 
 existence, but equally so for its continued being and opera- 
 tion, there are involved the germs of the several doctrines 
 of pre-established harmony, of occasional causes, and, 
 finally, of pantheism itself the ultimate point to which 
 they all tend." 1 .' 
 
 So near had Descartes himself come to the 
 
 Spinoza's 
 
 edge of the abyss into which Spinoza " pushed " lo ^ ic fault - 
 him. What was there worth contending for, 
 
 O ' 
 
 between this scheme of emanation, making God the au- 
 thor of all human actions even, and pantheism ? The dis- 
 ciple was severely true to the principles of his master. If 
 he reduced the universe to a single self-conscious sub- 
 stance, it was done in the alembic of Cartesianisin. The 
 followers of Descartes had no just cause to shout forth 
 
 i History of Modern Philosophy (New York, 1854), p. 120. 
 
94 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 their indignation from all parts of Europe, thus putting 
 the life of the Spinozists in peril. The feeble-bodied, but 
 giant-minded, outcast from Judaism had been more faithful 
 than any other to the fundamental theses of the great 
 idealist. Those Cartesians who still claimed to be on 
 Christian ground foamed at the charge of pantheism thus 
 laid at their own door. Nor did it make them any the 
 less, but only the more wrathful, to find that the charge 
 could by no means be refuted. We may grant, what is 
 undoubtedly true, that Descartes did not mean to teach 
 such a doctrine. But neither did the good Bishop Berke- 
 ley mean to teach the scepticism which Hume deduced 
 from his premises. As a matter of fact, the germs of 
 pantheism were in the Cartesian philosophy, and *needed 
 only the acute and logical mind of Spinoza to develop 
 them. Given the premise of Descartes, that all truth 
 begins in consciousness ; then allow his method, which is 
 that of mathematical demonstration ; and with these join 
 his limiting of causation to the Deity, and you have all 
 that is essential to Spinozism. The premises of the pan- 
 theistic system were given to it by Descartes ; and from 
 these, as Coleridge has well said, "the deduction is a 
 The prem- chain of adamant." Spinoza can be refuted, 
 jJSjBraiaS" an ^ k* s a PP a ^ m g system be shown to be a 
 tenable. baseless fabric, in very few words. All truth 
 does not begin in consciousness ; the necessities of thought 
 give us a sure standing-place outside of our own conscious 
 thinking. Furthermore, many things which cannot be 
 mathematically demonstrated are nevertheless true. And 
 there are efficient causes in men, if not in nature, which 
 can never be merged into the one great First Cause. We 
 
PANTHEISM. 95 
 
 need not fear the might of this self-reliant Hebrew. He 
 is vulnerable, like the hero of the Iliad. However well 
 protected at all other points, there is one point at which 
 he may- be successfully assailed. But spare his premise, 
 the exposed heel of this logical Achilles, and, like the vic- 
 tim in the fable, you must follow where he leads. Bid- 
 ding a last farewell to all your convictions of freedom, of 
 independent personality, and of real existence ; confessing 
 yourself to be a mere phenomenon, an unsubstantial 
 shadow of the one absolute Substance, you must go with 
 him through that gate upon whose portal the dread line 
 of Dante should be written, " All hope abandon, ye who 
 enter here." 
 
 I do not claim, in tracing pantheism, as I now have, to 
 the philosophy of Descartes, to have followed the exact 
 track of Spinoza ; but I am fully persuaded, whatever may 
 have been the precise nature of his earlier inquiries, that 
 he needed but to keep hold of the Cartesian clew while 
 striding forward to his pantheistic conclusions. It is ne- 
 cessary only that we enter in through the door- 
 
 ,~ , , The central 
 
 way ot our own consciousness, 11 we would position of 
 
 Spinoza. 
 
 reach the persuasion that we stand lace to tace 
 with the one reality ; if we would hold, on logical grounds, 
 that our personality, yea, all personality, is merged in 
 that absolute whole, is indeed an integrant part of it, while 
 it, in so far as it is real, is thereby impersonal. This 
 great One, which is the essence of all things, Spinoza 
 calls Substance, applying this name to it because it stands 
 under and constitutes the whole reality of all those phe- 
 nomena of mind and matter which engage our attention. 
 
 nny BRSIT 7 
 
 8 
 
 'J] 
 
96 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 It is upon this basis of the one absolute Sub- 
 S h resuif mat stance, that Spinoza proceeds to build up his 
 dogmatic system. To follow him through, and 
 see how he accomplishes this undertaking, would be a 
 laborious and tedious task. The form of his exposition is 
 such that it cannot be condensed. Every step in it is a 
 vital part of the whole. I must therefore be content, as 
 my purpose permits me to be, with a simple account of 
 the main drift and features of his work. Having seen 
 what his fundamental doctrine is, it is natural that we 
 should desire some such brief sketch of its plan of devel- 
 opment. I shall confine myself, in what follows, to the 
 chief work of Spinoza, which he called " Ethics ; " though 
 he has set forth his doctrine in other treatises, especially 
 in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. This work is a- plea 
 for the broadest toleration of private religious opinion, 
 while at the same time it argues that the civil power should 
 insist on prescribed forms of religious observance. Reli- 
 gious worship seems to be regarded somewhat in the light 
 of military drill. It is a kind of Papal system, with the soul 
 left out ; an external order, conducive to social uniformity, 
 and necessary to the perpetuity of the state. Forms of 
 worship should have nothing to do with actual religious 
 beliefs, and should be enforced by the civil authority as a 
 discipline which its own safety requires. A full account 
 of the views advocated in this treatise may be found in 
 Willis's Life of Spinoza, pp. 337-352. 
 
 Taking up, now, the exposition of pantheism 
 
 Three kinds . 
 
 of kuowi- in the JLthics, the first thing to be noticed is, 
 that Spinoza distinguishes three kinds of knowl- 
 edge, or more strictly, perhaps, three methods of inquiring 
 
PANTHEISM. 97 
 
 after truth. The First kind of knowledge is that which we 
 gain by the method of hearsay. And under this are 
 included not only history and tradition, but all those im- 
 pressions which we get through the medium of the senses. 
 Knowledge of this sort is vain and unreal. However 
 much it may have to do with the outward life of men, it is 
 merely phenomenal, and therefore unworthy of the true 
 philosopher. The Second kind of knowledge, Spinoza 
 observes, is that which we attain by applying the logical 
 understanding to outward appearances, so as to trace in 
 them certain resemblances, or classify" them under the laws 
 by which they are regulated. This is knowledge in the 
 Baconian sense, and is to be rejected as having no place 
 in a system of demonstrated truths. The Third kind of 
 knowledge, which alone Spinoza regarded as deserving the 
 name, is that which " arises when by an effort of the reason 
 we grasp the very substance of things when we gaze upon 
 Being itself." l A more precise view of Spinoza's doctrine 
 of cognition may perhaps be obtained from Props. XXIX. 
 to XLIIL, inclusive, Part. II. Under Prop. XL., Scholium 
 2, he says, "We perceive many things and form many 
 notions : 1st, from singulars altered to us by our senses, 
 and .represented confusedly and without order to the under- 
 standing (vide Coroll. to Prop. XXIX.). Such perceptions 
 I am therefore accustomed to characterize as cognition 
 from vague experience. 2d, from signs ; for example, be- 
 cause from certain words which we hear or read we remem- 
 ber things, and form certain ideas of these like to those 
 by which we imagine the things themselves (vide Schol. 
 to Prop. XVIII.). Both of these modes of contemplating 
 
 1 Morell, p. 125. Froude's Short Studies ou Great Subjects, p. 279. 
 
 7 
 
98 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TKUTII. 
 
 things I shall for the future designate as cognition of the 
 first kind as opinion or imagination. 3d, and lastly, 
 inasmuch as we have common notions and adequate ideas 
 of the properties of things (vide Coroll. to Props. 
 XXXVIII. and XXXIX. and Prop. ^L.), I shall speak of 
 these under the titles of reason and cognition of the second 
 kind. Besides these two kinds of cognition there is a 
 third, as I shall presently show, which I shall entitle 
 intuitive^ and which proceeds from the adequate idea of 
 the real essence of some of the attributes of God to the 
 adequate cognition of the essence of things." Under 
 Prop. XLIIL, Demonst., he says, " The true idea in us is 
 that which is in God, in so far as God is expressed by the 
 soul of man, and it is adequate." l Here we see, in the 
 definition of knowledge which he gives, how Spinoza seeks 
 at the very outset to draw us within his charmed circle. 
 It is true that many have accepted this definition, or its 
 equivalent, without becoming involved in pantheism ; but 
 they were held back, and saved, by a power which philoso- 
 phy can never bring to bear. 
 
 That immediate cognition of the essence of 
 
 Some ac- 
 
 count of the things, that is, of God, or the one substance in 
 
 Htliics* 
 
 consciousness, is the only true and adequate 
 knowledge Spinoza everywhere assumes. This appears in 
 the First of the five parts into which the Ethics is divided, 
 though more especially in some of the subsequent portions. 
 Reversing the order of parts, so far as to make the First 
 come in last for notice, I will now endeavor to state, as 
 briefly as I can, the topic of each part and the manner of 
 treatment. In the Second Part of the Ethics, the origin 
 
 1 Willis's translation. 
 
PANTHEISM. 99 
 
 and nature of Mind are considered. The human 
 
 . Subject of 
 
 soul is there held to be, not an independent the second 
 thing, but purely a mode of the divine attribute 
 of thought. There are prefixed to the forty-nine demon- 
 strated propositions, with their corollaries and scholia, 
 seven definitions and five axioms. Reality (Def. 6) is 
 defined to be the same thing as perfection. To be is to be 
 perfect. The first proposition declares that thought is an 
 attribute of God, and the second that extension is an attri- 
 bute of God. Individual thoughts express the nature of 
 God. The soul itself is not substance or being, but simply 
 a mode of one of the attributes of substance. 1 Nor can we 
 know the soul save through this underlying substance. It 
 is a thing which must be comprehended in the infinite 
 idea of God. 2 If considered by itself, it appears only as 
 a succession of fleeting phenomena, Following this change- 
 ful process, and not penetrating through it so as to gaze on 
 being itself, Spinoza regards as the road to self-ignorance. 
 The observer mistakes appearances for the reality. 
 The Third Part of the Ethics treats of the 
 
 Subject of 
 
 source and nature of the Affections. " It will Part Thirt. 
 doubtless appear strange," he says in the Introduction, 
 " that I should set about treating the vices and follies of 
 mankind in a geometrical way. Yet such is my purpose." 
 He begins here with three definitions, the second of which 
 is important. We act, he says, when we are the soul or 
 adequate cause of what takes place within us or without 
 us ; and we suffer when anything thus occurs of which we 
 are only partly the cause. He also lays down three postu- 
 lates, the first of which says that the human body may be 
 variously affected, so that its power of action shall be 
 
 i Part II., Prop. X., Scholium 2. 2 Part II., Prop. VIII. 
 
100 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 increased or diminished. Then, in the fifty-nine propo- 
 sitions following, it is attempted to show that all the 
 pleasurable emotions, such as hope, joy, love, occur through 
 the increase of that power of action, and that all the 
 disagreeable emotions, such as despair, grief, hatred, result 
 from the diminution of that power. 1 It is, in each instance, 
 the flowing or ebbing of the one substance. There are 
 times when jill the emotions of which the soul is capable 
 are in such a state of activity as just to balance each other. 
 It is the peace of God, of which we are conscious, when- 
 ever this equilibrium ensues. Then any greater influx of 
 the divine essence causes an overflow, which is some one 
 of the specific forms of pleasure ; 2 and any withdrawal 
 of that essence causes a diminution, which we may include 
 under the generic name of sorrow. 3 
 
 Spinoza goes on next, in the Fourth Part, to 
 Part treat of Human Slavery, or the Strength of the 
 
 l^ourtli. 
 
 Affections. We are enslaved just in proportion 
 to the strength of the emotional element in us. It is the 
 tendency of the affections to take from a man his power 
 of self-control, and to compel him to pursue evil paths 
 even while he sees and approves the better course. To 
 labor for a given end is a species of slavery; for "a final 
 cause, as it is called, is nothing but a human appetite or 
 desire considered as the origin or cause of anything." 
 God is not under this bondage of the affections, since he has 
 no final cause in what he does. " The cause why God acts 
 and why he exists is one and the same, and as he does not 
 exist for any end or purpose, so does he not act for any 
 end or purpose." 4 Everything, that is, is slavish which is 
 
 i Prop. XI. 2 Part III., Prop. LIT I. 
 
 3 Part 111., Prop. LV. 4 Part IV., Introduction. 
 
PANTHEISM. 101 
 
 not purely spontaneous. This doctrine is made to rest on 
 a basis of eight definitions and one axiom, and is built up 
 into seventy-three propositions, with their demonstrations, 
 corollaries, and scholia. "It is impossible," we are told, 
 " that man should not be a part of nature." l And the 
 equilibrium of nature, or the balance of all the passions in 
 God, is lost in their coming forth into our consciousness. 
 The rays of the colorless beam are dispersed and but 
 partially comprehended. This is the subordination of the 
 absolute substance to the particular manifestation ; and it 
 is the slavery of the human mind. 
 
 In the Fifth Part the reverse of this case is 
 
 considered the power of the understanding, I 
 or human freedom, when the mode of the attribute em- 
 bodies its essence. There is most freedom in us when we 
 are least conscious of the self, and lost in beholding the 
 one substance which constitutes all that is real in us. The 
 whole of God is revealed in our contemplation, no ray 
 refracted, and all so blended as to make one passionless 
 experience. Perfect liberty is the perfect spontaneity of 
 the infinite God or Nature, and its absolute necessity is 
 that which renders it perfect. Spinoza declares, in this 
 portion of the Ethics, that " God is without passions, and is 
 not affected by any emotion of joy or sorrow." 2 He also 
 undertakes to demonstrate that " no one can hate God." 3 
 Beatitude is that perfect balance of the passions in their 
 manifestation, which amounts to the absence of passion. 
 True love is purely intellectual, not emotional ; and " the 
 intellectual love of the mind towards God is part of the 
 infinite love wherewith God loves himself." 4 "I say that 
 
 i Part IV., Prop. IV. 2 Part V., Prop. XVII. 
 
 s Part V., Prop XVI 1 1. * Part V., Prop. XXX VI. 
 
102 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 a thing is free," says he, " which exists and acts by the sole 
 necessity of its nature ; and I call that constrained which 
 is determined to exist and to act in a certain definite way 
 by something external to itself. Thus God, though exist- 
 ing necessarily, exists freely, because he exists by the 
 necessity of his nature alone. So also God understands 
 himself and all things freely, because it follows from the 
 necessity of his nature alone that he understands himself 
 and all things else. You see, therefore, that I place free- 
 dom not in any free decree of the will, but in free neces- 
 sity." l The explanatory words show that Spinoza did not 
 recognize such a thing as freedom either in God or man, 
 save in a way that would apply to all the outgrowths of 
 nature equally well ; for these, quite as much as he claims 
 in any case, exist and act from an inherent necessity. 
 
 I will return now, after this look forward 
 
 Subject of . 
 
 the First through Spinoza s system, to what he says more 
 
 directly concerning God, which occupies the 
 
 First Part of the Ethics. I do this, not with the hope of 
 
 adding to the imperfect outline just given, for my sketch 
 
 must, at the best, be far from adequate. But it may not 
 
 be out of place to introduce here a specimen or two of the 
 
 manner in which this system of pantheism is constructed. 
 
 He begins with laying down eight definitions. The first 
 
 of these says, "By a thin which is its own 
 
 Definitions. 
 
 cause, I understand a thing the essence of 
 which involves existence, or the nature of which can 
 be considered only as existent." The third in the series 
 says, " By substance I understand that which exists in 
 itself, and the conception of which does not require the 
 conception of anything antecedent to it." The fourth of 
 
 i Letter to Dr. Schaller, Willis, p. 383. 
 
PANTHEISM. 103 
 
 them is, " By attribute I understand that which the mind 
 perceives as constituting the very essence of substance." l 
 The sixth of these definitions says, " By God I understand 
 the being absolutely infinite, i. e., the substance consisting 
 of infinite attributes, each of which expresses an infinite 
 and eternal essence." 2 
 
 If we are not yet persuaded that there may 
 
 Axioms. 
 
 be such a thing as the geometry of metaphysics, 
 let us follow Spinoza a step farther. From Definitions he 
 proceeds to Axioms. There are seven of these prefixed 
 to this First Part of his work, such as, " Everything which 
 is, is in itself or in some other thing;" "That which can- 
 not be conceived through another must be conceived 
 through itself; " " The knowledge of an effect depends on 
 the knowledge of its cause." 2 But let us not stop here. 
 Let us follow this geometrical pantheist a little into his 
 propositions, demonstrations, corollaries, scholia, and the 
 letters q. e. d., appended here and there ; thus we may be 
 able to see how it is that everything in the treatise, from 
 beginning to end, seems nearly as rigid and concise as the 
 procedure in Euclid. The fifth proposition, which is de- 
 cidedly pantheistic, declares, "It is impossible that there 
 should be two or more substances of the same nature or 
 attribute." The eighth proposition I will give, together 
 with the demonstration, it being one of the simplest, and 
 
 1 It will be noticed that the distinction which Spinoza makes between Attri- 
 bute and Substance, is perhaps what may be called subjective rather than 
 objective. In a letter to his friend Simon de Vries he refers to these third and 
 fourth definitions, and explains : " By Attribute I understand the same thing 
 [as substance], save that Attribute, in respect of our understanding, is regarded 
 as attaching a certain specific nature to Substance." Willis, p. 279. 
 
 2 Lewes, p. 473. s Lewes, p. 474. 
 
104 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 a good example of Spinoza's method: "Prop. VIII.- All 
 substance is necessarily infinite. Demonst. Substance of 
 one attribute exists not save as one (by Prop. V.) ; and to 
 A demon- exist belongs to its nature (Prop. VI.). It will 
 stration. therefore be in its nature to exist finitely or infi- 
 nitely. Not finitely, however, for then it would have to 
 b.e conceived as limited by another substance of the same 
 nature (by Def. 2), which would also have to exist neces- 
 sarily (by Prop. VII.) ; in which case there would be two 
 substances of the same attribute, which is absurd (by 
 Prop. V.). Substance, therefore, exists infinitely : q. e. d." L 
 I shall be readily excused, no doubt, for not 
 
 Perfection 
 
 of supc-r- attempting to report Spinoza's argument any 
 
 structure. 
 
 farther. It seems a little discouraging to one 
 at first, when he thinks of going through a metaphysical 
 treatise constructed after this fashion. But I can assure 
 any one who proposes to make the attempt, that the prog- 
 ress is so steady, and the demonstrations are so clear, 
 that when once fairly started he will find himself drawn 
 irresistibly forward. Let him forget how utterly insecure 
 the foundations are, and he will feel an ever-growing 
 wonder as he sees this temple of pantheism rising up, 
 throwing out its battlements, lifting arch above arch, and 
 rearing aloft its towers, every joint perfect, each stone 
 and each timber going to its destined place, the sharpest 
 scrutiny unable to detect anywhere the least break, or flaw, 
 or weakness. The doctrine of One Substance is the ma- 
 terial of which the whole edifice is made. That 
 butes of substance has two infinite attributes, Thought 
 and Extension. 2 Each of these attributes, fur- 
 
 i Willis, p. 418. a Ethics, Part II., Props. I. and II. 
 
PANTHEISM. 105 
 
 thermore, has, while expressing the essence of the One 
 Substance, an infinite number of modes, which modes make 
 the whole varying phenomena of what we call finite mind 
 and matter. 1 All those phenomena which are viewed in 
 their subjective relation to consciousness, are modes of the 
 infinite attribute of thought, and all those which are seen 
 in objective relations, ordinarily regarded as the affections 
 of matter, are modes of the infinite attribute of extension. 
 Spinoza seems to regard these attributes as mu- Boarinff on 
 tually dependent, so that neither can be con- ?mmo?- nof 
 ceived to be, apart from the other an opinion l 
 which is important, as implying that there can be no 
 thought, and therefore no conscious immortality, where 
 everything which answers to our idea of bodily organiza- 
 tion is wanting. 2 This dualistic manifestation of God 
 must go forward in our consciousness in order that he may 
 know himself as still existent. And he is all. Matter and 
 finite mind, viewed by themselves, have not a real, but 
 simply a phenomenal existence. Soul and body are the 
 same thing ; and neither of them is anything but a tran- 
 sient evolution out of the universal substance. The earth, 
 the heavens, the waters, the continents, man, beast, fishes, 
 the birds, the flowers, have no proper being ; they are the 
 same great all-in-all, the absolute substance manifesting 
 itself. 
 
 " All nature, he holds, is a respiration 
 
 Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing, hereafter 
 
 Will inhale it into his bosom again, 
 
 So that nothing but God alone shall remain." 3 
 
 1 Ethics, Part II., Props. VIII. and XIII. 
 
 2 See Froude's Short Studies, &c., p. 315. 
 8 Longfellow's Golden Legend. 
 
106 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 According to Spinoza theve is no such thing as a created 
 universe. He denies the possibility of creation. 1 Cause 
 and effect are but different aspects of the same energy, 
 natura naturans and natnra naturata ; God, nature, the 
 absolute, the cosmos, or whatever one may choose to call 
 it, continually going out of itself and returning into itself. 
 This process, corresponding to what Herbert Spencer calls 
 evolution and dissolution, is what we name growth and 
 decay, birth and death, in our inadequate language. This 
 terrible God, this insatiate Chronos, devouring his children 
 as fast as he begets them, has perfect freedom, according 
 to Spinoza. Yet here, as already noticed, words are not 
 used in their prevailing sense ; for the freedom spoken of 
 has no reference to liberty of choice, but is only the cease- 
 less power of activity. This all-ingulfing divinity cannot 
 act otherwise than it does, 2 nor can it ever pause in its 
 action. Its spontaneity is necessary and eternal. We 
 have then at last, as Spinoza does not shrink from admit- 
 ting, a scheme of universal and invincible fatal- 
 Fatalism. 
 
 ism. " Free will, he says, " is a chimera, flat- 
 tering to our pride, and in reality founded on our igno- 
 rance. All that I can say to those who believe that they 
 can, by virtue of any free decision of the soul, speak or be 
 silent, or, to use a single word, act, is, that they dream with 
 their eyes open. Nothing is bad in itself. Good and evil 
 indicate nothing positive in things considered in them- 
 selves, and are nothing but modes of thinking. Not only 
 has every man the right to seek his good, his pleasure, but 
 ho cannot do otherwise. The measure of each man's right 
 
 1 See Appendix to Part I. of the Ethics. 
 
 2 Ethics, Part I., Prop. XXXIII. 
 
PANTHEISM. 107 
 
 is his power. He who does not yet know reason, or who, 
 having not as yet contracted the habit of virtue, lives 
 according only to the laws of his appetites, is as much in 
 his right as he who regulates his life according to the laws 
 of reasort. In other words, just as the sage has an abso- 
 lute right to do all that his reason dictates to him, or to 
 live according to the laws of reason, in the same manner 
 has the ignorant man or the madman a right to every- 
 thing that his appetite impels him to take ; in other words, 
 the right to live according to the laws of appetite. And 
 he is no more obliged to live according to the laws of good 
 sense than a cat is obliged to live under the laws that 
 govern the nature of a lion. Hence we conclude that a 
 compact has only a value proportioned to its utility. 
 Where the utility disappears, the compact too disappears 
 with it, and loses all its authority. There is, then, folly in 
 pretending to bind a man forever to his word, unless, at 
 least, a man so contrive that the breach of the compact 
 shall entail for him that violates it more danger than 
 profit." No comment is needed on these plain words. It 
 follows from them inevitably, nay, is earnestly maintained 
 in them, that there can be no such thing as responsibility 
 for moral action, and that right and wrong, as commonly 
 understood, are a pure delusion. Ethical or natural evil 
 is a notion which ignorance frames to itself, with no shadow 
 of actual foundation ; and man, in order to enjoy the largest 
 happiness, and attain the fullest development, should seek, 
 first of all, ta lose his consciousness of such airy phe- 
 nomena, and be identified in thought with the Absolute 
 Substance which fills and upholds all things. 
 
108 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 The question here arises, What shall be said 
 
 The a priori . 
 
 philosophy of Cartesianism in view of the conclusions of 
 
 not to be 
 
 judged by Spinoza ? Is it fallacious ? Ought it to be 
 
 bpmozism. 
 
 altogether eschewed in the search for truth ? 
 While not taken rigidly, but as commonly understood, it 
 certainly is not to be avoided, "even if that were indeed 
 possible. Many of the first thinkers of the time are essen- 
 tially Cartesians, as many have been in every past age, 
 and as will continue to be the fact hereafter. The inherent 
 peculiarities of such minds make them what they are. If 
 they think, at all, it must be on the basis, and by the 
 method, of Descartes. This was true -of the celebrated 
 writers of the school of Port Royal ; more or less true of 
 that wonderful genius and Christian writer Blaise Pascal ; 
 it was true also of the pious Fenelon, and of Bishop 
 Berkeley so devout a worshipper of the true God, though 
 in his theory of the world so deluded. Descartes himself 
 was a sincere believer in Christianity. If his works were 
 condemned as heretical by the Papal church, this was not 
 because he had denied the Lord that bought him, but on 
 account of certain physical discoveries, owing to the cri- 
 terion of truth which he set up, and because he had sub- 
 verted the philosophy of Aristotle as interwoven with her 
 scholastic theology. The great master of a-priori thinking, 
 whom many leading minds even at the present day follow, 
 was a firm believer in the living God of the Scriptures ; so 
 firm, that he seems to have mistaken his faith for logical 
 demonstration.- While Spinoza took from him the princi- 
 Maie- P^ es f pantheism, Malebranche, on the other 
 
 branche. nan( 3 j beginning from the same source, deduced 
 a body of Christian mysticism. No doubt Spinoza was 
 
PANTHEISM. 109 
 
 the more acute and logical pupil. It was the ardent piety 
 of Malebrancbe, his strong hold upon the personal Jehovah, 
 that saved him. " The union of the soul to God," says hq, 
 " is the only means by which we acquire a knowledge of 
 truth. Let my readers judge of my opinions according 
 to the clear and distinct answers they shall receive from 
 the Lord of all men. Let us repose in this tenet, that God 
 is the intelligible world, or the place of spirits, like as the 
 material world is the place of bodies ; that it is from his 
 power they receive all their modifications ; that it is in his 
 wisdom they find all their ideas ; and that it is by his love 
 they feel all their well-regulated emotions. And since his 
 power, and his wisdom, and his love are but himself, let us 
 believe, with St. Paul, that he is not far from each one of 
 us, and that in him we live, and move, and have our 
 being." 1 No doubt the keen-eyed Spinoza would have 
 found his own doctrine here, as easily as in Descartes. 
 But Malebranche was not a logical machine, and therefore 
 not a pantheist. His language expresses his deep sense 
 of the need of divine illumination in the search for truth ; 
 the conviction that we see, falsely through the senses, the 
 imagination, the understanding, the inclinations, and the 
 passions ; but always truly, when we see all things through 
 reason restored to its right relations with God. 
 The world-renowned Leibnitz was a Gar- 
 
 Lfibnitz. 
 
 tesian ; and he bent all the energies of his great 
 mind to refute the conclusions of Spinoza. He did refute 
 them, in the judgment of his friends, but not till he had 
 added to the philosophy of Descartes certain very impor- 
 tant principles. He restored to the idea of a Supreme 
 
 1 Hallam's Literature of Europe. 
 
110 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Being that creative power for which Descartes had too 
 nearly substituted simple emanation ; and in his theory of 
 Monads, or independent forces, not only is the doctrine of 
 second causes restored, but the later doctrine of intuitions 
 or necessary truths is foreshadowed. Herein it was that 
 he hinted at the basis on which alone the a-priori philoso- 
 The safe- P nv can ^ e save d from pantheism. With him, 
 as with Malebranche, faith in a personal God, 
 and in his own independent personality, predominated over 
 any logical faith in Cartesianism. Like many others, both 
 in earlier and later times, they walked safely along the 
 " high priori road " cast up before them. But it was not 
 in themselves, while they thus went forward, nor in the 
 system they adopted, to direct their steps. That Great 
 Light, which is the only true light of philosophy, illumined 
 their pathway ; and the Hand on which the universe de- 
 pends upheld their goings. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE GERMAN SUCCESSION. 
 
 THE startling conclusion which Spinoza had 
 reached, and from which he could not be driven 
 by Cartesianism, was followed by a general revolt from 
 that philosophy. Thinkers gave up their faith in con- 
 sciousness as the basis of a system of truth, and began to 
 build more and more on experience. The a-priori method 
 yielded to the a-posteriori. Deduction was exchanged for 
 induction. Sensuous observation took the place of spirit- 
 ual conviction. 
 
 Thus a fresh impulse was given to the philos- 
 ophy expounded by Bacon, and which had been 
 carried forward into the realm of mind by Gassendi and 
 Locke. Bacon wrote a century earlier than Spinoza, Gas- 
 sendi just before him, and Locke was his contemporary. 
 This school had therefore gained a foothold, and could 
 boast of powerful adherents, when the real nature of Spi- 
 nozism began to be known. Hence the ripened seed of 
 Descartes' philosophy, which the astute Hebrew had gath- 
 ered, was not immediately sown broadcast. It lay buried 
 in the congenial soil of Germany; destined, however, to 
 spring forth into a prodigious growth, when empiricism 
 should have run its course and proved itself, too, a failure. 
 
 111 
 
112 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 It does not belong to the present part of ray 
 
 This move- , .... 
 
 ment to be plan to trace this empirical movement in the 
 for the world of thought ; a movement which became 
 
 so powerful towards the close of the seven- 
 teenth century, and which was subverted in the eighteenth. 
 The Positivism of our times may, I think, find in this its 
 lineal predecessor. Condillac, Bonnet, Helvetius, Saint 
 Lambert, Condorcet, Baron d'Holbach, were its high 
 priests in France. One of its strongest early advocates in 
 England was Thomas Hobbes. David Hume held the 
 same relation to it as a critic which Spinoza held to Car- 
 tesianism. Taking it upon its own premises, that is, he 
 showed its logical ultimate to be universal scepticism ; 
 just as Spinoza had shown that Descartes' principles led 
 to pantheism. This keen sighted Scotchman was to arise, 
 and cut up by the roots the empirical metaphysics of 
 Locke ; then Kant was to introduce, instead thereof, the 
 germs of a-priori thinking again ; and then the doctrine 
 of Spinoza was to experience a resurrection, and to have a 
 development which is one of the marvels of speculative 
 
 philosophy. "The God of Spinoza, which the 
 ispinoz/sm seventeenth century had broken as an idol," is 
 
 the remark of Saisset, "becomes the God of 
 Lessing, of Goethe, of Novalis." It is with this German 
 pantheism, only so far, however, as it appears in the phi- 
 losophy of the period, that I am now concerned. Les- 
 sing the sceptic, who deemed it less blessed to possess 
 truth than to search for truth, was among the earliest of 
 the Germans to awaken an interest in the study of Spi- 
 noza; but he belongs to the department of criticism and 
 literature, rather than that of philosophy. His Nathan the 
 
PANTHEISM. 113 
 
 Wise is perhaps as good a reproduction as we have of the 
 spirit of Spinozism, and I shall repeatedly have occasion 
 to refer to him; but the present starting-point is more 
 properly Kant's Critique of the Pure Reason, from which 
 the stream of pantheistic thought flows steadily on, 
 through the writings of Fichte and Schelling more espe- 
 cially, till it comes to an end in the Absolute Idea of 
 Hegel. It is with very great diffidence that I enter this 
 path, along which so many able critics have been found 
 stumbling. There is a tradition that Hegel, near the 
 close of his life, said, " Only one of my followers has un-y' 
 derstood me ; and he has misunderstood me." Even with 
 the best of qualifications, therefore, I might well shrink 
 from the attempt to represent German pantheism with 
 thoroughness. But fortunately my plan does not require 
 this ; nor is it probable that the numerous class which I 
 hope to reach would be greatly aided by such an effort, 
 however successful in itself. I shall undertake only so 
 much as is requisite in order that certain forms of unbe- 
 lief, more or less popular at the present day, 
 may be seen in their historical connections. I here at- 
 do not claim to be a master of the German 
 tongue, nor to have read the works of the famous authors 
 just referred to, in the original text ; but I have taken 
 pains to verify any statements which seemed to me to 
 require it by recourse to that text, and have used only 
 those translations which have the sanction of high au- 
 thority. Though preferring to walk over the bridge rather 
 than swim the river, as Mr. Emerson puts the case, I 
 have not hesitated to plunge in and make examination, 
 where anything seemed insecure. The writer whom I 
 8 
 
114 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 shall quote chiefly, in sketching the course of thinking 
 from Kant to Hegel, is Heinrich Moritz Chalybaeus, of 
 whose book, rendered into English by Alfred Tulk, 1 so 
 competent a judge as Sir William Hamilton says, that it 
 is " a perspicuous and impartial survey of the various 
 modern systems of German philosophy, at once compre- 
 hensive and compendious." It will be seen I am confi- 
 dent, even in the imperfect and fragmentary sketch which 
 alone I can hope to give, that there is, in all a-priori 
 thinking, a danger on the side towards pantheistic forms 
 of unbelief; and my object will be fully accomplished if 
 it is made clear that the philosophy of consciousness is 
 not a sufficient guide in the search for truth, save where it 
 is supplemented and upheld by a divine energy, but car- 
 ries one fatally on to emanation, and the confounding of 
 effects with their causes, with no promise of a logical 
 resting-place short of the One Substance with infinite 
 attributes in which Spinoza at last rested. 
 
 Leibnitz, who was mainly a Cartesian, may 
 LeibSto f be said to have. nourished the life of Descartes' 
 movement, philosophy in the German mind, during the pe- 
 riod of its feebleness. He was, notwithstanding 
 his seeming arrogance and impatience of contradiction, in 
 many respects a remarkable thinker. Nothing short of 
 the limitless universe of truth seemed an adequate field 
 for his powers, over which his intellect swept on imperial 
 wing. But besides this largeness of range, he had, what 
 is more to the present point, the rare faculty of kindling 
 
 i Historical Survey of Speculative Philosophy from Kant to Hegel (An- 
 dover, 1854). 
 
PANTHEISM. 115 
 
 enthusiasm in other minds. This last trait has no doubt 
 done much towards perpetuating his influence ; for the 
 works which he finished with his own hand have been 
 less valued than some of those which he stimulated others 
 to undertake. It was his mission to open new doors of 
 knowledge, to point out with eagle eye the errors of pre- 
 vious and contemporaneous thought ; to make suggestions 
 and start hypotheses which, in the minds of the rising 
 class of thinkers, unfolded gradually into systems of phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 This influence was especially manifest in the 
 case of John Christian Wolf, who was perhaps 
 the leading thinker of Germany at the begin- 
 ning of the eighteenth century. So closely did 
 he adhere to the teachings of his master, in the numerous 
 works which he published, and which were scattered over 
 Europe, that it has been said of him, " He dried, cut up, 
 and sold the philosophy of Leibnitz." This criticism 
 seems unduly severe, however, for there is evidence that 
 Wolf anticipated some of the views of later and more 
 famous thinkers ; it is in his writings that the -term Ra- 
 tional Psychology, used in the sense of the Kantian 
 school, first occurs. But even granting that he added no 
 new material to the subject, he was a master of method, 
 and gave the discoveries of Leibnitz a systematic shape, 
 whereby he taught them many years, and with no small 
 success, to his countrymen. It was not an age of great 
 intellects. Frederick the Great had drawn around him a 
 class of French writers, who were spreading the worst 
 results of Sensationalism, and thus a kind of shallow 
 eclecticism had grown up in the very home of Leibnitz. 
 
116 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. ' 
 
 But Wolf, breasting this popular current, marshalled to 
 his aid what little was left of the indigenous Teutonic 
 spirit, and kept it ready for the dawning that was to 
 come. He was, besides all else, the instructor of Irnman- 
 uel Kant. He thus stands as in some sort a connecting 
 link between the philosophical source of pantheism in the 
 seventeenth century and of pantheism in the eighteenth 
 .and nineteenth centuries. As there could have been no 
 Spinozism but for the philosophy of Descartes, so without 
 Immanuel Kant there could have been no Fichte, Schel- 
 ling, or Hegel. It is very true that Kant did not abide by 
 the Leibnitz-Wolfian doctrines ; but the whole influence 
 of Wolf strengthened his natural bias, and saved from 
 pre-occupation the field in which he was to sow afresh the 
 seeds of a-priori speculation. " Wolf," according to Ten- 
 neman, whom Mr. Morell quotes as a thoroughly compe- 
 tent witness, " assumed bare thinking as his 'starting-point, 
 overlooked the difference between the formal and the ma- 
 terial conditions of thought, considered philosophy as the 
 science of the possible in so far as it is possible, made the 
 principle of contradiction the highest principle of human 
 knowledge, placed mere ideas and verbal definitions at 
 the very head of all research, made no difference between 
 rational and experimental knowledge, and, though fol- 
 lowing the geometrical method, neglected to distinguish 
 that which is peculiar to mathematics on the one hand, 
 and philosophy on the other, both in their form and in 
 their matter." d Here, now, as may be readily seen, espe- 
 cially in the primacy assigned to " bare thinking," was 
 something which could not foil to awaken the national 
 
 i History of Modern Philosophy, p. 152. 
 
PANTHEISM. 117 
 
 hunger in young Kant's mind. Yet no sure basis of hope 
 was given that the hunger thus awakened would be ap- 
 peased, so large was the intermixture of empiricism all 
 along in the development. 
 
 Kant was of Scotch descent on the father's 
 side, though so unmistakably German in his JfeSPjiew"" 
 habits of thought. The subjective tendency in 
 him, however, did not prevent him from holding for a 
 time the dogmatic position of Locke. He was early in 
 life a student of the Sensational philosophy, and seems 
 never to have rescued himself altogether from its power. 
 Not substances, but phenomena, the sensations of the 
 mind itself, he held to be the proper material of our 
 knowledge. It was to this school of English and Scotch 
 thinkers, rather than to that represented by Thomas Reid, 
 that Kant partly belonged. Though he seems at times to 
 come so near the position of Reid, in his treatment of the 
 ideas of the reason, he never clearly reaches it. He con- 
 demns, in the founder of the intuitional philosophy, that 
 affirmation of objective truths which he himself after- 
 wards tries to make on less solid ground. It was with 
 the speculations of the school of Locke chiefly that Kant 
 contented himself, before undertaking his critical philos- 
 ophy ; and the impulse to this great work, which removed 
 him so entirely from Locke's position, came also from the 
 famous Scotch critic Hume. "I freely con- 
 fess," he says, "that it was David Hume who 
 first roused me from my dogmatic slumber, and 
 gave a different direction to my investigations 
 in the field of speculative philosophy." l By his " dog- 
 
 1 Chalybaeus. 
 
118 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 matic slumber" we are to understand the mental security 
 with which he had gone forward in the search for objective 
 truth, while bestowing no attention on the powers and 
 limitations of the cognitive faculty itself. He agreed 
 with Locke that the material of our knowledge is given 
 to us in experience ; the question still remaining was, 
 whether our notions of efficiency, essences, cause, and 
 especially of a First Cause, are purely imaginary, as 
 Hume had shown that they must be on the ground of 
 Locke. Knowledge can never transcend experience, was 
 the premise which had been laid down. But our experi- 
 ence is limited to the mental processes of which we are 
 conscious. Therefore, is the inevitable conclusion, we can 
 have no knowledge either of cause or substance, or of any 
 phenomenon save as it is a part of our own thinking. 
 This surely followed, as Kant saw by the aid of Hume, 
 from the position taken in the Essay on the Understand- 
 ing. But had that Essay given a full account of man's 
 cognitive powers ? If it had not, and there was a way 
 of knowing besides experience, the universal scepticism 
 which Hume had deduced from it might perhaps be 
 escaped. Hume afforded him no light on this new ques- 
 tion. Still, the violent blow which had been given to the 
 received philosophy "struck a spark." Kant could not 
 accept the dreary conclusion, that subjective truth alone is 
 possible to human knowledge. Fully persuaded as he 
 was, that we may know objects external to our own 
 thoughts, he saw at once the only way in which Hume's 
 scepticism could be effectually met. Thus for he .had neg- 
 lected what it became him first of all to do. The work 
 needing to be done was of the same nature as that under- 
 
PANTHEISM. 119 
 
 taken by Locke, though with the hope of a very different 
 result. The faculties of the human mind must be exam- 
 ined, with a view to showing, if possible, that man has a 
 power of cognition by which he may know truths tran- 
 scending his own experience. And since this was the im- 
 portant doctrine which Kant from the first proposed to 
 establish, but which he failed to establish in the Critique 
 of the Pure Reason, we treat him unfairly, I think, in sup- 
 posing that the Critique of the Practical Reason was in 
 any sense an afterthought. This second Critique alone 
 claims to reach the end which he had in view from the 
 start ; and therefore, whatever must be said of its com- 
 parative merits, or even if it must be regarded as wholly a 
 failure, justice, requires that it be looked upon as an essen- 
 tial part of the design with which Kant set out. 
 He begins his inquiry by questioning the posi- 
 
 J J J Critique of 
 
 turn or Locke, that we can know only what is the Pure 
 
 Reason. 
 given us in experience ; and the first great point 
 
 to which that inquiry brings him is, that we have a faculty, 
 styled by him the Pure Reason, by which w r e may know 
 truths transcending experience. This faculty he proceeds 
 to analyze, calling his analysis a Critique. The pure reason 
 dwells in a sphere which experience cannot reach ; and it 
 gives, out of that transcendent sphere, certain ideas, forms, 
 or regulative principles, which the understand- 
 
 . r> i , . _,, Relation of 
 
 ing is forced to recognize in construing the mat- the reason 
 
 , ~ to the un- 
 
 ter of our knowledge. Our experience does not dorstami- 
 indeed amount to knowledge without them. 
 They are " synthetic judgments a-priori;" that is, logical 
 forms joined to the facts of experience, coming from a 
 region above experience, under which forms those facts 
 
120 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 must be known in order to be true science. The dealing 
 of the understanding with the mere matter of knowledge 
 is nothing, without those regulative principles which the 
 Pure Reason gives to the understanding. Kant's proof 
 of these transcendental elements in all true knowledge is 
 the same as Reid's proof of the principles of common 
 sense, namely, their necessity and their universality. 
 
 These logical forms of the reason are, in the 
 Thmf forms wor ^ f sense, Space and Time. All men are 
 son! 10 rea compelled to know every object of sense under 
 
 both these two forms. The understanding does 
 not merely apprehend the material given it in sensation, 
 and make up secondary notions therefrom by its own un- 
 aided action; but evermore joins with the material of its 
 knowledge these two a-priori data of the Pure Reason. 
 It is as true in the province of reflection as in that of sen- 
 sation ; as true when our minds analyze their experience 
 as of the primary experience itself, that these transcen- 
 dental forms are present. The reason is continually fur- 
 nishing them, wherever the understanding finds any new 
 notion. They are synthetic judgments a-priori, without 
 which the notion would be impossible ; and because they 
 are in every case thus indispensable to knowledge, even 
 in the world of experience with which the understanding 
 deals, Kant calls them the " categories of the understand- 
 ing." There are twelve of these logical forms of the 
 
 reason, three severally having to do with each 
 s e oft c he~ of four different judgments of the understand- 
 imdc-rstand- ing Thus . wliere the understanding finds 
 
 quantity in the matter of our experience, the 
 pure reason supplies the logical form of unity, plurality, 
 
PANTHEISM. 121 
 
 or totality; where the understanding finds quality, the 
 rational form of reality, negation, or limitation will be 
 present; where the understanding finds relation, reason 
 compels that lower faculty to see what it finds under the 
 form of substance, cause, or reciprocity; and where the 
 understanding discovers modality, there is present the 
 a-priori form of possibility, existence, or necessity. These 
 are the categories of empirical knowledge, all coming from 
 that mental realm which is above experience, and all 
 proved by the infallible test of necessity and universality. 
 
 But not only are these regulative principles 
 thus furnished in all our empirical knowledge. J^ s a s a ofthe 
 Besides the categories of the understanding, 
 there are what Kant calls the Ideas of the reason. The 
 existence of those ideas is proved just as that of the logi- 
 cal forms was : all men have them, and no one can help 
 having them. Though coming from the same transcen- 
 dental'source as the judgments of the understanding, they 
 yet differ from them, in that they are not susceptible of a 
 synthesis with any matter of actual knowledge. There is 
 no possibility of applying them to anything else. They 
 stand alone, pure and simple, cognizable only as ideas in 
 their own peculiar sphere, and defying all attempts to 
 actualize them elsewhere. These ideas of the reason are 
 three in number: (1.) that of the Soul, which 
 is the basis of rational psychology; (2.) that of ^ e hatthey 
 the World, which is the basis of rational cos- 
 mology ; (3.) that of God, which is the basis of rational 
 theology. Neither one of these ideas has anything to do 
 with objective reality, but they are all framed by the rea- 
 son, with the consciousness that no object anywhere an- 
 
122 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 swers to them. They are purely transcendental. They 
 remain the peculiar possession of the reason which gave 
 birth to them. Their presence within us is inevitable, what- 
 ever our experience, of which they are independent. They 
 go with us, and are prc-supposed in all our investigations ; 
 yet they can never be brought down, and made a part of 
 the subject-matter of our inquiries. They stand by them- 
 selves, isolated, purely subjective; they involve nothing 
 
 corresponding to them in the actual world. It 
 Sve'nature. " ^ s :lli ideal world, an ideal soul, an ideal and 
 
 subjective God in which they force us to believe. 
 Neither one of these ideas is anything but a regulative 
 principle within the province of the reason itself, and we 
 are cheated with the emptiest possible of illusions if we 
 believe them to involve any reality beyond themselves. 
 We are compelled to entertain the idea of a God, yet this 
 idea furnishes no ground for the belief that God actually 
 exists. While on the one hand it pursues us, and will not 
 let us escape, on the other hand, it equally refuses to go 
 beyond us, or let us pass behind it. It forevermore fol- 
 lows us as an ideal, but we are forbidden to hope that we 
 may ever behold it as actual and real. 
 
 Now. it may well be asked, at least so far as 
 
 Where this 
 
 Critique the most precious beliefs of the human rax^e are 
 concerned, whether the Critique of Kant is a whit 
 more valuable than the Essay of Locke. Had it revealed 
 a new region of truth ? Yes, but that truth had no objec- 
 tive validity; it was purely subjective and ideal. Did the 
 sage of Konigsberg close the door against Hume's scepti- 
 cism? Yes, but in doing so he had opened a door of 
 blank idealism, from which, as we shall see, the step was 
 
PANTHEISM. 123 
 
 easy into pantheism. The thinking world was rescued 
 from one source of infidelity only to be exposed to 
 another. Once more philosophers turned from sensuous 
 impressions, and began to build on the intuitions of the 
 reason ; but they only exchanged Hume for Spinoza ; they 
 recoiled from the rock to be drawn back into the whirl- 
 pool. "We see distinctly," says Chalybaeus, "how near 
 Kant was to expressing himself in the manner to which 
 Hegel, at a far later period, found himself constrained, 
 when on the same path of inquiry : the absolute God is 
 the mere essence which is thinking and thought of, because 
 it is that in us which thinks; thinking is identical with 
 what is thought; the absolute is the thinking process 
 itself. Thus the ontological proof can succeed only upon 
 the basis of an absolute idealism, or idealistic pantheism." 
 But it would be wrong to infer that Kant in- 
 
 Kant's plan 
 
 tended any such result as that now indicated, broader than 
 
 this sphere 
 
 At least we must presume, m simple justice to of the rea- 
 him, that he saw beyond it another result of a 
 positive nature, to be reached by a different path of in- 
 quiry. He certainly leaves the ground of a solid theism, 
 even if he does not tread on the edge of pantheism, when 
 he says that, " for aught we can tell, the unknown base of 
 mind and matter, despite their divergent phenomena, may 
 be the same." But he was no pantheist. It was contrary 
 to his plan, as conceived from the first, to allow his sub- 
 jective idealism to absorb the whole material of philos- 
 ophy. As ChalybaBus justly says, and as we shall soon 
 see, he could not consent to that line of argument in ref- 
 erence to the infinite God, when he came to lay the basis 
 of our ethical action, and of a practical theology. If, on 
 
124 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 the one hand, he had shown the inadequateness of the 
 empiricism of Locke, and on the other hand had struck a 
 blow at the ontology of Anselm and Descartes, it did 
 not therefore follow that he meant to subvert the great 
 truths of the soul, a world-system, and a supreme God. 
 They were indeed subverted, and could by no means 
 be proved true, on the ground of the speculative rea- 
 Anotuer son > but Kant had in view another faculty 
 
 of the human mind, held back thus fir in his 
 reasoning, which he now brings forward as a means of 
 proving the objective validity of those truths. He had 
 not imperilled them at all, as the case stood to his view, 
 for the Practical Reason was that on which he had relied 
 from the beginning to establish their absolute verity. His 
 Critique of the Practical Reason was, as lias been charged, 
 the life-boat in which he escaped from the wreck made by 
 his Critique of the Pure Reason. Yet it should be remem- 
 bered that he had the wreck in view from the outset, and 
 planned the boat with reference to that emergency, regard- 
 ing it himself, whatever others may think, as an abler and 
 far more important work than the one published before it. 
 Having shown that the realm of ontology cannot be reached 
 by way of pure intelligence, he undertakes to open a way 
 into that sublime region upon an ethical basis. The moral 
 nature of man, in distinction from the purely rational, is 
 the ladder on which he may feel himself ascending and 
 
 descending. The law of our moral nature, 
 
 Function of 
 
 the Practical its Tliou shalt and Thou shalt not. Kant calls 
 
 Reason. 
 
 "the categorical imperative." This voice of 
 command in conscience is just as universal, and just as 
 necessary, as any idea of the speculative reason ; and it is 
 
PANTHEISM. 125 
 
 something which, in order to its own integrity, must be 
 realized in experience ; and therefore it carries us back of 
 itself to a self-determining soul, and up to a divine execu- 
 tioner, thus planting our foot " upon the unconditioned, 
 absolute, or intelligible world." This categorical impera- 
 tive, which issues forth from the practical reason, looks 
 only to its own actualization, regardless of such ends as 
 happiness, beneficence, and reward ; and it establishes the 
 otherwise unproved being of a supreme God, since it is 
 upon no less a basis than this that its autocracy can be 
 upheld. Now, if Kant had simply meant, in this reasoning, 
 to give us the usual moral argument of theologians, all 
 would have been well enough. Then he would 
 have come clearly out upon the ground of the satisfuc- 
 intuitional philosophy, and might have affirmed, 
 as the truest of all truths, that conviction of man which 
 he says is " not to be called a true knowledge and cognition, 
 but only a belief." Yet such a step, evidently, would have 
 placed him in open antagonism with the doctrines of the 
 speculative reason ; and even as the matter stood, such a 
 conflict was apparent to others, though not to himself. If 
 his first Critique was to stand, as its immense popularity 
 had already insured, then must the intelligible world be 
 reached, not by the outward pathway of our moral nature, 
 but by bringing it into the ideas of reason, and in some 
 way identifying it with the processes of rational thought. 
 At least this was the method which the leading minds of 
 Germany, in their efforts to know the absolute, were deter- 
 mined to adopt. However conclusive Kant's argument 
 may have seemed to himself, for them it had an air of con- 
 straint, and was so much weaker than what had gone 
 
126 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 before it as to retain no steady hold upon them. It gave 
 the thinking principle no outlet, which pure science could 
 recognize as adequate. The circle of knowledge which it 
 had begun could be completed only by merging the objec- 
 tive and subjective in one pantheistic result. 
 
 Kant was evidently troubled by the charge 
 
 Critique of ., . . ... 
 
 the jud oi schism which was brought against his philoso- 
 phy, and he firmly believed that he could show 
 the essential harmony of his system without accepting the 
 alternative of Spinozism. He was himself the first to 
 attempt a reconciliation of his ethics with his metaphysics 
 an attempt which we need not discredit as a mere after- 
 thought, but may regard as part of his original plan. He 
 claimed that the real and ideal elements of his philosophy 
 could be united on a common basis, thus making one com- 
 plete whole. That this union of the two principles might 
 take place he sought to show in a third work, his Critique 
 of the Judgment, containing his ^Esthetics and Doctrine 
 of Final Causes. The object of this work was to fix the 
 central principle of a Kantian school of philosophy. I 
 can give no account of it here, except to say that it was a 
 kind of bridge whereby his realistic or empirical doctrines 
 were brought over to his idealism, not to retain their inde- 
 pendent life, but to be overmastered and devoured. A few 
 of his disciples tried, for a short time, to stand upon this 
 middle ground, holding in equilibrium the two antagonistic 
 Critiques. But no one was able to keep the 
 not at- position lono;. The dualism of the Kantian 
 
 tained. 
 
 philosophy was what struck men as its most 
 obvious trait. They failed to see the new foundation, 
 and felt that only another crisis had been reached in -the 
 
PANTHEISM. 127 
 
 history of thinking. Idealism and empiricism, they con- 
 tended, could not be brought together into an harmonious 
 system, and each at the same time preserve its own integ- 
 rity. The question with them therefore was, which should 
 fall before the other. And the question was not a very 
 hard one to decide. When a meteor is revolving midway 
 between the sun and the nearest planet, we know to which 
 body it must ultimately come. The distance being the 
 same on either hand, the attraction must be as the mass 
 of matter. The little finger of Kant's idealism, whatever 
 he thought of it, was, in its impression on other minds, 
 thicker than the loins of his empiricism. As often as they 
 met in fair encounter, the latter was sure to go to the wall. 
 "The two principles," says Chalybaeus, "were still held 
 dualistically together. We could, while arriving through 
 the reason at absolute unity, either acknowledge the one 
 idealistic principle to be the genuine root of all knowledge, 
 and abide subjectively by this alone, or we could in turn 
 make empiricism, and consequently a multitude of objective 
 beginnings and principles, the point of our departure." 1 
 
 Whether I have now succeeded in giving any Three dis 
 correct impressions of Kant's system or not, it is Scies^n 
 at least clear that three distinct schools of Kant ' 
 thought might proceed from him. Directly before him 
 was the path indicated by his Critique of the Judgment, in 
 which Reinhold and Fries tried to go forward ; on the one 
 hand was his realism, which Jacobi and Herbart pursued, 
 though from opposite sides, and on the other hand was his 
 idealism, which Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel carried out to 
 
 1 History of Speculative Philosophy, p. 57. 
 
128 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 its extreme results. The last of these three paths will 
 chiefly claim our notice, though something should be* said 
 of the other two. 
 
 Of those who tried to hold the middle course, 
 
 Reinhold. 
 
 seeking a principle which should mediate be- 
 tween the real and the ideal, Carl Leonhard Reinhold 
 deserves to be first named. Chalybaeus intimates that 
 Fries was the more earnest in advocating Kant's centre- 
 theory ; but of the few sentences devoted to them both, 
 almost all have reference to Reinhold. Under his treatment 
 the ^Esthetics of Kant becomes a representation, oscillating 
 between the subject and the object, in which their essential 
 unity is to be found. This representation being one of the 
 data of consciousness, he is led by it to speak of the im- 
 portance of an examination of that faculty. This work he 
 never undertook himself, but it became a fruitful subject 
 under the treatment of other thinkers, especially in the 
 hands of Fichte, to whose views Reinhold gradually in- 
 clined." 1 
 
 I shall attempt no statement here of the views 
 
 Jacobi. 
 
 of Herbart, who developed strongly the empiri- 
 cal side of the Kantian realism, and shall speak only of 
 Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, who, while starting from the 
 same point as Herbart, leaned towards idealism in his think- 
 ing. He was one of the noblest men of his time. We are 
 charmed by his character, as it comes out both in his writ- 
 ings and his daily life. Yet the tendency of his mind was 
 
 towards a certain mystical quietism. He pur- 
 
 His mysti- 
 cal ten- sued the image of truth, not outward by way 
 
 dency. 
 
 of the understanding and senses, but inward 
 
 i Morell, p. 178. 
 
PANTHEISM. 129 
 
 till caught in the subjective idealism of Kant, where he 
 gave up the chase, and asserted that our conviction of 
 reality is a thing to be reverently accepted, but which, no 
 one should dare attempt to account for. "All our knowl- 
 edge," he says, " must rest ultimately on faith, and not on 
 reasoning." His system has been aptly termed a Faith- 
 Philosophy. Starting with the demands of our moral 
 nature, and holding, with Kant, that they involve in each 
 instance an actual world, human freedom, and a supreme 
 God, he argued that an objective result might be similarly 
 reached in the sphere of pure knowledge. "Has not 
 Kant," he asked, " adopted the matter-of-fact existence of 
 the ideas in his practical philosophy, and regarded them as 
 being the ultimate and most certain point ? Does he not 
 here content himself, and rightly, with letting the matter- 
 of-fact existence of the moral law (the so-called Ar(ru * s 
 categorical imperative) hold good as the most Snt^f first 
 irrefragable of all ? If he did this in the theory criti( i ue - 
 of the practice, how could he presume to do directly the 
 reverse in the theory of knowledge ? Why should that 
 which in the former case was irrefragable count for nothing 
 in the latter ? " * These questions are certainly well put, 
 and, as addressed to Kant himself, they cannot be answered. 
 But they made almost no impression on German thinkers, 
 foi they assumed the correctness of that side of Kant's 
 system which was regarded as a mistake and an ex- 
 crescence. The speculative tendency of the times, taking 
 the Critique of the Pure Reason for its gospel, was not 
 satisfied with a theory which made faith, or mere feeling, 
 the ultimate basis of all knowledge. It demanded that 
 
 i ChalybaeuB. 
 
 9 
 
130 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 The thinkers ^ freedom, a world, and a God, be 
 
 brouht forth from their concealment in the 
 
 
 misty depths of feeling, to undergo scientific 
 study. There was no sanctuary into which the torch of 
 knowledge might not be thus carried ; no veil on the 
 image of truth which the hand of inquiry might not dare 
 to lift. Jacobi stood almost alone in asserting that the 
 three great ideas of the reason are an awful treasure in 
 the depths of the human consciousness; in refusing to 
 sound those depths by the scientific method ; in his dread 
 of Spinozism, to which he foresaw that such an investiga- 
 tion must lead. An extract from the famous conversation 
 of Jacobi and Lessing, at their first meeting in 1784, will 
 
 help to make this point clear. Lessing had no 
 with Les- dread of the results of idealism, and made 
 haste to say, as soon as he found occasion, " The 
 orthodox ideas concerning God are no longer mine. I 
 have no pleasure in them now. 'Ev md -nav, One and All, I 
 know nothing but this." Jacobi's reply is, " Then are you 
 greatly at one with Spinoza." To this Lessing rejoins, " Did 
 I rank myself with any one, it were with none but him." 
 Whereupon Jacobi says, " Spinoza is well enough ; yet is 
 it but a sorry kind of healing that we find in his name." 1 
 
 This partial agreement with Spinoza, which Jacobi gave 
 at different times, led his opponents to charge him with 
 timidity. They said that he lacked the scientific spirit, in 
 refusing to push on to the logical goal of his admissions, 
 
 holding himself back through fear of offending 
 ot h Jacobi tne orthodox party. However this may have 
 
 been, no one questioned the goodness of his 
 
 i Willis's Life, &c., of Spinoza, p. 152. 
 
PANTHEISM. 131 
 
 character, or failed to be charmed by the beauty with 
 which he expressed his deep and suggestive thoughts. 
 His style was said to be like Plato's ; and many, who 
 could not rest in his intellectual quietism, yet studied his 
 works with confessed profit and delight. Hegel, whom no 
 dread of pantheism kept from working out scientifically 
 the contents of his consciousness, says of Jacobi, " He is 
 like a solitary thinker, who, v in the morning of his day, 
 found some ancient riddle hewn upon an eternal rock. 
 He believes in this riddle, but he strives in vain to guess 
 it. He carries it about with him the whole day, allures 
 weighty sentiments from it, spreads .it out into 
 doctrines and images, which delight the hearer, Sitlcism. 
 and inspire him with noble wishes and hopes : 
 but the interpretation fails ; and in the evening he lays 
 him down, with the hope that some divine dream, or the 
 next waking, will pronounce to him 'the word'' for which 
 he longs, and on which he has so firmly believed." ] This 
 beautiful system of faith-philosophy did not start from 
 that side of Kantism which was most complete, and which 
 most powerfully affected the speculative mind of Ger- 
 many. The realism of Jacobi, like the seven goodly ears 
 of corn in Pharaoh's dream, sprang forth only to be de- 
 voured up by the hungry idealism of Fichte, Schelling, 
 and Hegel. 
 
 Fichte, wholly discrediting that side of Kantism to 
 which Jacobi clung, seized with a powerful 
 grasp the doctrine that the ideas of the reason 
 have respect only to themselves. Laying this down as 
 the grand premise, from which all true philosophy must 
 
 1 Hegel's Miscellanies, quoted by Morell, p. 602. 
 
132 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 be deduced, he did not fear to push on to the logical 
 result. The human consciousness that is, his own self- 
 conscious thought-activity is his starting-point. This 
 thinking process is, in the first instance, the veritable Ego ; 
 nor does it presuppose any essence or substance, such as 
 is commonly understood by the word soul ; and to it, 
 whether considered as infinite or finite, all knowl- 
 acrtdfythe e( % e i g strictly limited. Beyond the simple 
 abiJ tiling." thought-activity, there is nothing real. The 
 images and sensations which constitute its ma- 
 terial, and which are imprisoned within the consciousness, 
 cannot be traced to any external origin. The whole pro- 
 cess is purely subjective; in no sense from without, but 
 altogether a creation of the Ego itself. Fichte could not 
 believe that Kant was, in any honest sense, a realist; nor 
 was he willing to give up this opinion till Kant publicly 
 protested against it. But Fichte went on. Of all the 
 advocates of subjective idealism, he was perhaps the most 
 thorough-going. He did not, in so many words, 
 The nou- deny the existence of the world, as his oppo- 
 nents charged him with doing, but recognized it 
 under the designation of the non-Ego. Yet he defines it 
 not as any real thing, after all, but as only that conscious- 
 ness of limitation which the Ego experiences; and he 
 probably would have never conceded even this much, had 
 not the criticisms of Schelling led him to qualify some of 
 his earlier statements. But that he is strictly an idealist 
 still, is clear from his saying, " I can absolutely know noth- 
 ing beyond what is present within me." Our conscious- 
 ness is not due to impressions made by things outside 
 of it, but the thinking process itself creates the objects 
 
PANTHEISM. 133 
 
 with which it is concerned. Having himself 
 posited the object of this thought, a man cannot ^ the^&to' 
 say that he holds a passive relation to it, or that 
 the Ego of which he is conscious is its effect ; for the ob- 
 ject itself is rather the effect of the thinking process. 1 
 There are certain images and sensations, going to make 
 the consciousness in any case, but to seek an external ori- 
 gin for them is to quit the track of true science; just so 
 far as they reach the standard of scientific knowledge, 
 they are a part of the thinking process itself. " The be- 
 ing, the objective reality, can be for us merely a being that 
 is thought ; a thought reality, thought by us, and conse- 
 quently in this sense self-produced." Thus it is, in strict 
 fidelity to Kant's first position, that the theoretical is 
 made to lay hold of the practical and wholly absorb it. 
 Consciousness is the source of all knowledge, and this is 
 limited to its own processes ; hence beyond consciousness 
 there can be no knowledge, but pure guess-work only. If 
 we say that the soul may know itself, yet that soul can- 
 not be a substance, but only a thinking process ; and be- 
 yond the play of this self-conscious thought-activity there 
 is no demonstrable truth. 
 
 It is not necessary to go any farther into Fichte's doc- 
 trine of science, to see that it places him on the edge of a 
 precipice. He can no longer be said to occupy 
 the ground of the ordinary theist ; the only al- 5v 
 ternative before him is atheism or pantheism. 
 The outward world being to him simply an 
 image projected from himself, he could not rise from it to 
 a Creator, as do those who hold it to be an objective real- 
 
 i Chalybaeus, p. 155. 
 
134 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 ity. The thinking process is the creator, "being that 
 operation which mirrors itself in each of its acts ; " and 
 if this be not absolute, there is no absolute. For a time 
 Fichte's utterances were thought to incline towards the 
 atheistic side of the alternative; so much so 
 atSm f that he was force( l to resign his chair of philos- 
 ophy at Jena. To meet the odious charges thus 
 raised against him, he gave a new direction to his 
 thoughts, though by no means changing his theory of 
 knowledge. He affirms that the Ego itself, viewed under 
 its transcendental aspect, is the Absolute One. "This, 
 then, is the sum and substance of our belief," he says. 
 " The .living and active moral order is God ; we need no 
 other God, and can comprehend no other." If we suppose 
 a personal God in the usual way, we are guilty of anthro- 
 pomorphism; mere imitators of the ancient Greeks, who 
 enthroned their own imperfections on Olympus. " God is 
 not a being or existence," says he, " any more than man is ; 
 " but a pure action, i. e., the life and soul of a transcendent 
 world-order." It is at this point, being hard pressed by 
 the speculations of Schelling, that he turns 
 pantEt* back from the atheistic path, and makes choice 
 of pantheism. ' Every human consciousness be- 
 ing an Ego, there is, consequently, as viewed from the 
 empirical side, an infinite number of these. Yet viewed 
 from the transcendental side, they are all but the make-up 
 of one absolute Ege a univeVsal self-consciousness, 
 which is the single divine reality amid all that appears. 
 " We, as intelligent essences, are, in respect to what we are 
 in ourselves, by no means that absolute Being," says 
 Fichte ; " but we are connected with it by the innermost 
 
PANTHEISM. 135 
 
 root of our existence, since apart from it we could not be 
 or exist." This language is not meant to assert, as it 
 seems to do, that Fichte held the absolute to 
 be an essence or substance in the sense of Spi- gjiuoza. 
 noza. The universal activity, the absolute think- 
 ing process, is all that he affirms. Spinoza's God was a 
 substance in the proper sense, and thought one of its infi- 
 nite attributes ; Fichte's God is that attribute, and he 
 denies that there is any reality besides it. Spinoza was 
 intoxicated with his absolute-substance ; Fichte loses him- 
 self in his absolute process. 
 
 It is our highest wisdom, he teaches us, to The true 
 know this only God ; to forget the Ego in so far as 
 it is empirical, and behold it as the transcendental reality 
 filling all things. " So long as ever man yearns to be any- 
 thing, God does not come to him, for no man can become 
 God. So soon, however, as he purely and radically anni- 
 hilates himself, God alone remains, and is all in all. Man 
 cannot engender God, but he can annihilate himself as the 
 true negation, and then he sinks or relapses into God.* 
 He has no fear for the future, for the absolutely Blessed i 
 guides him towards it ; he has no repentance over the past, 
 for in so far as he was not in God he was nothing, and the 
 past is now past, and for the first time since his reception 
 into the Deity is he born unto life ; in so far, however, 
 as he was in God, is that right and good which he has 
 done." l 
 
 We may say, then, that the a-priori philosophy, reinstated 
 and more strictly defined by Kant, had, in the hands of 
 Fichte, vitalized the pantheism of Spinoza. If the distinc- 
 
 i Quoted by Chalybaeus, pp. 182, 183. 
 
136 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Fichte's tive feature of Spinozism was rest, that of 
 considered Fichte's system is activity. Yet while insisting 
 
 on this dynamical life of the absolute, he ban- 
 ished from it all containing substance. This it was the 
 
 aim of Schelling; to bring; back. And it is a 
 
 Schelling. 
 
 striking comment on the history of human 
 speculation, that 'these two men, after all who had pre- 
 ceded them in their school of thought, could only leave 
 the great problem so nearly where Spinoza had left it a 
 century and a half before. 
 
 Schelling begins by objecting to Fichte, and 
 
 i?chte n to ^ at w ^k & reat f rce > tnat tne ^ )are process of 
 
 thinking is in no proper sense of the word 
 
 knowledge. There must be some real matter or essence 
 
 involved in the process, which our thoughts can separate 
 
 from it ; something around it, beneath it, or within it, which 
 
 is to our minds as really objective as the thought-process 
 
 is subjective. Knowledge can begin only when 
 
 doctrineVf our thinking has found something which it did 
 
 knowledge. 
 
 not originate. Thus far Schelling is on the sure 
 grounds of our primary beliefs. But he is possessed by 
 the German madness for .the absolute one, the monistic 
 all-in-all. .The real content of our thinking becomes, with 
 him, only an integrant portion of the one noumenon, which 
 mirrors itself forth not only in our thinking but in all phe- 
 nomena. Not the human ego, therefore, even when con- 
 sidered as a substance,' but the absolute Ego which 
 underlies and constitutes it, is the true a-priori 
 reaches conception. At this point all true philosophy 
 
 osition "^ 
 
 of the pan- must begin. This essence may be contemplated 
 in itself, and as apart from the thought-process, 
 
 HowSchel- 
 
 img reache 
 
 the position 
 
 of the 
 
PANTHEISM. 137 
 
 when it is the object ; or it may be contemplated as enter- 
 ing and filling that process, when it is the subject. It may 
 therefore be properly named the subject-object. Call it 
 by what name you please, nature, God, noumenon, abso- 
 lute reality, infinite one, it is that in which our thinking 
 and the content of our thought are one and the same thing 
 to consciousness ; and therefore the scientific treatment of 
 it is truly styled the Identity-Philosophy. Pantheists arc 
 fond of repeating Schilling's celebrated remark, that "all 
 difference is quantitative." This assertion of-thc one, and 
 of the identity of all things in it, is a complete rendering 
 of the doctrine ofJBpinoza. It is pantheism crowded into 
 a single sentence. The following quotation will perhaps 
 place before us the Schellingian doctrine, so far as de- 
 manded by the present inquiry: "The multiplicity of 
 determinations is not evoked in us by the influence of 
 manifold external objects or things in themselves, but it is 
 the birth or product of the potential fulness of our nature. 
 It is, really and truly, the universal world-nature 
 which here acts in me, as in one of her innumer- ScrS 
 able points, as well as everywhere else ; and on 
 that account we have an immediate knowledge of this 
 nature ; or, more correctly speaking, it is the universal 
 , nature, that here within us knows something of or perceives 
 itself, the nature which has organized itself into human 
 souls, into humanity, and by 'means of these its organs 
 cognizes itself. We human beings are, as it were, but the 
 innumerable individual eyes through which the infinite 
 world-spirit regards itself. We are real or actual as regards 
 our internal essence ; that which is imaginary and unsubstan- 
 
138 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TKUTH. 
 
 tial in us is the absolute personality with which the indi- 
 vidual natters himself." l 
 
 It is therefore plain, if language can make 
 
 Agreement 
 
 with spi- anything plain, that Schilling's Identity is the 
 
 Substance, and his subject and object the thought 
 and extension, of Spinoza. If he has improved at all upon 
 his master, it is by giving heed to the words of Fichte ; 
 that is, by emphasizing the inherent activity of his world- 
 nature. He even speaks of the freedom of the subject- 
 object. But Spinoza insisted that the one substance is 
 free. Yet here is no real liberty of will asserted, in the 
 former case more than in the latter. The freedom of God, 
 'as understood by both these thinkers, is simply that auto- 
 matic power of action which pertains to the universal con- 
 sciousness. This essential activity has three distinct 
 
 manifestations ; three potences Schelling calls 
 potences. them. The first of these is the potence of 
 
 " reflection ; " that is, the movement by which 
 the infinite and absolute seeks to mirror itself forth in finite 
 phenomena. The second is the potence of " subsumption ; " 
 that is, the effort which the absolute makes to return from 
 a mere phenomenal, back into its essential mode of being. 
 The third is the potence of " reason ; " that is, the act by 
 which the absolute recognizes itself as indifferently present, 
 and forever one and the same, in the other two move- 
 ments. 
 
 But this is not all. The first double move- 
 
 ment of the absolute, in trying to realize itself, 
 
 of8pirit? indicates two distinct lines of evolution, which 
 it forever follows. Nature and spirit are these 
 
 i Chalybaeus, p. 204. 
 
PANTHEISM. 139 
 
 lines ; these directions of the absolute, in its self-evolution 
 through the three potences. And in each branch of this 
 twofold evolution there are three successive stages, culled 
 spheres, in which the threefold movement forever goes 
 forward. I will not attempt to give the whole scheme of 
 development, as thus foreshadowed, but only some faint 
 glimpse of it as it occurs in the department of spirit. 1 
 Here the three potences give, in the first sphere, which is 
 that of knowing, feeling, reflection, and freedom. In the 
 second sphere, which is that of action, they give individu- 
 ality, the state, history. The third sphere in the domain 
 of spirit is genius, and in this the three potences blend, 
 constituting the noblest evolution of which the one essence 
 of all things is capable. Within the sphere of genius the 
 threefold movement of the absolute, thus blended into a 
 single state of consciousness, becomes the inspiration of 
 finite intelligence. To its presence and action, being indeed 
 but-another name for itself, all fresh inventions and achieve- 
 ments which excite our wonder are due. In religion, 
 philosophy, and poetry, also, those discoveries which carry 
 the horizon of the soul' abroad, or fill it anew with pure 
 and sublime thoughts, are but the three potences of the 
 absolute, blending in the one movement which constitutes 
 genius, and thereby carrying itself up nearer to that point 
 of perfect realization which it never attains. 
 
 The difference between nature and man, ac- 
 cording to Schelling, is one of degree rather 
 than kind, so that the two spheres in which the 
 world-essence is evolved are less unlike than we 
 might at first think. The same absolute, as the following 
 
 1 The whole subject is treated by Morell, pp. 433-456. 
 
140 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 extract will show, fills them both. "With the stars is 
 inborn the most exalted number and geometry, which they 
 execute in their movements without any notion of such 
 plan. More distinctly, though still incomprehensibly to 
 themselves, appears the living perception in animals, whom 
 we see, though wandering here and there without delibera- 
 tion, to perform countless works far nobler than tHem- 
 selves ; the bird, intoxicated with music, excelling itself in 
 tones that are full of soul ; the small, art-gifted creature, 
 without practice or instruction, producing light works of 
 architecture ; but guided by a superior spirit, which already 
 shines in single flashes of intelligence, but nowhere conies 
 forth as a full sun except in man." l Man, as we thus see, 
 is the true wonder-worker. In him alone is genius ; in 
 him alone, that is, the immanent absolute so realizes itself, 
 in the blending of the three potences, as to be an inspira- 
 tion. Thus it is, as Schelling does not hesitate to say, that 
 we have the Homers and Isaiahs, the Platos and the 
 Pauls, of history. Even the recognized God-man himself, 
 who came forth in heavenly beauty among the hills of 
 Galilee, was but the one world-essence, rising into the form 
 of genius, and moving amid bright visions which its own 
 
 magic had cast. It was the identity of the living 
 tin* \vouid finite with the living infinite, in his conscious- 
 christian?ty. ness, that made him the founder of the sublimest 
 
 of all religions. That same identity may be 
 traced wherever there is genius, though showing itself in 
 less noble displays. There is no supra-mundane Creator ; 
 no God who sitteth upon the circle of the earth. Accord- 
 ing to Schelling, says Mr. Morell, " all difference between 
 
 i Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature, quoted by Chalybaeus, p. 251. 
 
PANTHEISM. 141 
 
 God and the universe was entirely lost; his pantheism 
 becomes as complete as that of Spinoza ; and as the abso- 
 lute was evolved from its lowest forms to the highest, in 
 accordance with the necessary law or rhythm of its being, 
 the whole world, material and mental, became one enor- 
 mous chain of necessity, to which no idea of free creation 
 could by any possibility be attached." 1 The doctrine of a 
 supernatural Creator, as Schelling viewed the case, leaves 
 the creation a piece of dead mecbanism. God is in his 
 works; is himself their essence, their life, their 
 soul ; his immanence is their mystery, his ema- o^schei-* 
 nence their glory. Thus is the mighty problem {|f' 8 8y *~ 
 of the universe solved, thought Schelling. All 
 is but the eternal ebb and flow of the one absolute sub- 
 stance; and without this no man, no nature, no God is 
 possible or conceivable. 
 
 It is remarkable how soon this school of pantheism 
 came to an end. Fichte died only ten years after Kant ; 
 and Hegel, who stands last and highest in the 
 
 ! . , , , Short con- 
 
 SUCCeSSlOn, was but eight years younger than tinuanoeof 
 
 Fichte. Schelling outlived them all, and in his of panthe- 
 old age sought to reinstate his system, which 
 had already fallen into decay. The rise, growth, and 
 downfall of this whole vaunted system of philosophy cov- 
 ered a period of only about fifty years. Kant, as we saw, 
 was assailed with charges of dualism, and failed to rest 
 his speculations on any satisfactory middle-ground. Fichte 
 also, feeling the inadequacy of his earlier views, sought to 
 modify them later in life. And so of Schelling. He did 
 not seem to see the revolutionary tendency .of his thinking 
 
 i Modern Philosophy, p. 448. 
 
142 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 I 
 
 till the mischief had been done. As a logician, he was 
 faulty. He did not possess the philosophical temperament 
 in large measure. He clothed his speculations in the 
 language of poetry, rather than in that of metaphysics. 
 There are passages in his works to which the language of 
 
 Edgar A. Poe, in his Essay on the Material and 
 and Edgar Spiritual Universe, bears a striking likeness. 
 
 Poe called his essay a Prose Poem; and it is a 
 notable instance of the. power of a pantheistic imagination. 
 The Eureka of Poe is the subject-object of Schelling. 
 
 Nor did Schelling seem to be aware of the de- 
 in U lSge a i! ed structive tendency of his doctrine, till Hegel's 
 
 logic compelled him to see it. 
 
 The labors of Hegel are a lesson forever to all the 
 friends of truth, that the surest way of overcoming error 
 
 is to let it clearly state itself. Tolerance of 
 refutation opinion is an effective method of opposing wrong 
 
 of errorists . . mi i i 
 
 clear state- opinions. 1 he human mind was made for truth ; 
 and it instinctively recoils from error, when that 
 error is clearly defined to it. The complete overthrow of 
 pantheism by its especial champion is a signal instance of 
 this. He showed clearly, and in all its practical bearings, 
 what the system was. This was enough. It needed no 
 other refutation. Bellerophon carried on himself the let- 
 ter w^hich condemned him. There was a general recoil of 
 the better -class of minds. Hegelians sought to show that 
 their master ' had been misunderstood. Schelling was 
 drawn from his retirement, to prove, if possible, that his 
 doctrine, at least in its moral and political bearings, differed 
 from the extreme views imputed to Hegel. But Ke at- 
 tempted an impossible thing. The darkness had come to 
 
PANTHEISM. 143 
 
 the light, 'and been reproved. Men saw what it was, in 
 its practical tendencies. Dreading the social chaos it legit- 
 imated, they cast from them its glittering bands ; and the 
 reign once broken, there was no power by which it could 
 be restored. 
 
 Is it not a little discreditable to our Anglo-Saxon intel- 
 lect, that a theory which the best minds of Germany had 
 repudiated should, more than a generation after, have been 
 the boasted faith of so many English and Amer- 
 ican writers ? Is it worthy of men claiming to 4nisim Ch 
 be thinkers, to make so much of that which has 
 been overthrown in the country of its birth ? to be like 
 that class of paupers who come around to the back doors 
 of our houses, to gather into their baskets the stale pieces 
 of bread and meat which the family cook has been or- 
 dered to throw away? But the friends of truth, surely, 
 need have no fear of an enemy which is dead at the heart. 
 The claws of the tiger may continue to feel after hi! 
 prey, although the fatal shot of the hunter has brought 
 him to the ground. This movement of the extremities is 
 but spasmodic, however. That which has ceased to be 
 alive at the core must soon give up the ghost altogether. 
 
 Hegel was a trained logician. He possessed 
 
 Hegel. 
 
 the philosophical temperament to an . eminent 
 degree. He had that cool fearlessness, so remarkable in 
 Spinoza, which shrinks from no logical result of the prem- 
 ises laid down. It is said that he studied the works of 
 Spinoza with the utmost* enthusiasm, caring but little, in 
 comparison, for what had been achieved by other modem 
 thinkers. He saw in the subject-object of Schelling the 
 substance of Spinoza. From this he dropped out the 
 
144 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 objective element, as that whose existence was the same 
 as its non-existence, and the subjective process 
 Jute idea." which remained he called the Absolute Idea. 
 The nature of this idea he undertook to ex- 
 pound, or to show how it unfolds itself, from a primary 
 being which is non-being, to an ultimate being which is 
 also non-being. This part of his system is the Hegelian 
 logic. Kant had discovered, in connection with his cat- 
 egories, certain contradictions which he named 
 
 Use of . 
 
 Hunt's an- antinomies; that is, it was possible, from dif- 
 
 tinomies. 
 
 ferent data, to prove direct opposites in regard 
 to the same thing. But he applied this law of contradic- 
 tories only in the sphere of natural philosophy. Hegel, 
 seizing hold of this Kantian principle, claimed that it was 
 universally applicable, and made it the comprehensive law 
 of his. logic. These antagonisms were only for the under- 
 standing, however; the reason beholds steadily that higher 
 ifnity into which they are constantly rising. His whole 
 
 system of logic is therefore a triplicate process. 
 movSt! As described by Professor H. B. Smith, " There 
 
 is first a statement expressed in the positive 
 form ; then there follows the negation of the position ; 
 and then the two contradictory statements are resolved 
 into a higher unity. And so the system proceeds, from 
 stage to stage, positive, negative, and the union between 
 the positive and negative. This union becomes in turn a 
 positive, a negative is set over against it, and this new 
 contradiction is resolved into another and higher unity." ! 
 
 But the Hegelian dialectics are not simply logic, in the 
 usual abstract sense of the word. A vital movement is 
 
 i Bibliotbeca Sacra, Vol. II. p. 274. 
 
PANTHEISM. 145 
 
 everywhere intended. The recognition of the absolute 
 idea, under its threefold aspect, constitutes in nature Nat- 
 ural philosophy. Here we are conscious of a 
 "becoming," answering to Spinoza's infinite at- JhSowlphy. 
 tribute of extension. This nature-movement, 
 throughout all its stages, conforms to the fixed logical 
 arrangement. It illustrates, like everything else, the pres- 
 ence of the Hegelian trinity. Not only natural philos- 
 ophy as a whole, but its divisions, mechanics, physics, 
 and organized bodies ; and not only these, but their sub- 
 divisions and sub-subdivisions, down to the minutest rep- 
 resentatives of the action of nature, conform to a single 
 law. They exist only by a constant struggle of affirma- 
 tions and negations, through which the reason beholds 
 them rising all the while into a fuller development and 
 perfect unity. 
 
 Not only in nature, but in mind or spirit also, the He- 
 gelian trinity is everywhere present. Mind, considered 
 absolutely, was to Hegel an infinite process, not differing 
 from nature in the final analysis, and corresponding to 
 Spinoza's infinite attribute of thought, so far as 
 an empty process may be said to correspond to o?Bp!ri?. h7 
 a substance. The true philosophy of mind or 
 spirit is the exposition of the threefold movement in 
 consciousness, by which it is unfolded. Our thought- 
 activity affirms itself by a positive movement answering 
 to Schelling's potence of reflection, and also denies that 
 positive by the potence of sub-sumption ; while the rea- 
 son has, in the mean time, held the two contradictories 
 together in perfect union, under the higher idea of the ab- 
 solute spirit. The propriety of the distinction between 
 10 
 
146 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 nature and mind is a little hard to see, looking from the 
 point of Hegel's subjective idealism ; though it enables the 
 logician to reach certain facts of history which otherwise 
 might seem to escape him. The absolute spirit, Hegel 
 says, " is the absolute idea known and understood. The 
 three stages of its development are art, religion, philos- 
 ophy. Philosophy, in the system of Hegel, is the highest 
 state to which the consciousness of man can be brought. 
 It is not merely the union of art and religion, but it is this 
 union elevated into the state of self-conscious thought." 1 
 
 Religion, therefore, is simply one of the factors 
 cai refe e uit OS1 ^ a true philosophy ; one of the potences of an 
 
 absolute thought-process, which started from 
 nothing and proceeds to nothing. All the knowledge of 
 existence to which w r e can ever attain is this triplicate 
 movement of the Hegelian dialectic. Being, which is the 
 same thing as non-being, lies behind us and before us. 
 From it we came, and to it we hasten, by a process of 
 constant " becoming," the law of which is the universal 
 logic, and which constitutes all that we' distinguisli as 
 God, man, and nature. God, for instance, is first thought 
 into being ; but this thought is completed only in the con- 
 tradictory thought of non-being, the two opposites so 
 uniting as to give rise to the pure idea of a " becoming." 
 This is the only existence in the case, and it is the product 
 of the dialectic movement ; therefore, exclaims the auda- 
 cious logician, " I have created God." 
 
 The following is related as occurring between Kant and 
 Hegel. In an argument one, day, Hegel had been con- 
 tending that what we call the outward reality is never 
 
 i Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. II. p. 285. 
 
PANTHEISM. 147 
 
 anything but the idea which we have of it. 
 The thinking process posites the object. Kant jJaut! and 
 could not accept this, for he believed in a real 
 external world; and he replied to Hegel, with great 
 shrewdness, " There is considerable difference between 
 having a hundred dollars and thinking you have them." 
 But the absolute idealist was not at all confused. Draw- 
 ing himself up with proud disdain, he met his opponent 
 on common ground, and effectually silenced him, saying, 
 "Your poor empirical dollars are things with which phi- 
 losophy does not concern itself." 1 No argument, or ridi- 
 cule, could move him from his conclusion, that the only 
 real existence is a self-moved process out of nothing into 
 nothing. 
 
 Plainly, then, no written revelation, or pos- 
 
 Consequen- 
 
 itive system of worship; no political, social, or cesofthe 
 domestic institution, can hold its own a moment 
 in the sweep of this all-consuming philosophy. Polythe- 
 ism, monotheism, Christianity, the instant they touch it, 
 melt like wax in the furnace. Strauss brings the 
 story of Jesus of Nazareth within its reach, and 
 straightway that beautiful life and sacrifice are licked up 
 by its tongue of fire. Schleiermacher exposes 
 to it the doctrines of theology built up by t n r e 1 r dcrm ' v 
 mighty minds through the slow ages, and in- 
 stantly, like the servants of Nebuchadnezzar, they are 
 slain. It would be pleasant to feel sure that the trans- 
 
 1 The following passage (Logic, Chap. I., C.) would go far to sustain this 
 anecdote: " Being and non-being are the same thing; also it is the same thing 
 whether I am or am not, whether this house is or is not, whether these hun- 
 dred dollars are in my possession or are not." 
 
148 HALF TRUTHS ANrf THE TRUTH. 
 
 lator of Plato, and the great Berlin preacher who had 
 such power to lift the minds of men up into heavenly 
 realms of truth, escaped from the abyss of pantheism into 
 which he early fell. But Julius M tiller concedes as much, 
 probably, as the strict truth will bear, when he says, 
 " The truly Christian view of sin and redemption, which 
 Schleiermacher adopts in his superstructure, is in direct 
 contrast with the foundation of his theory.. Firmly agree- 
 ing with Schleiermacher as to the superstructure, we are 
 obliged to reject the theoretic foundation of his doctrine." 1 
 While thinking of the system of Spinoza as 
 
 Net result. 
 
 perfected by Hegel, and of the way in which all 
 divine and human institutions, and the realities of the 
 external world, vanish in its embrace, it seems to us like 
 a mighty ocean, heated by the rays of a vertical sun ; 
 into which the Bible, the Church, the State, history, 
 nature, society, as if they were but so many tall and re- 
 splendent frost-vessels, are forever moving down to melt 
 out of sight, and to blend with its weary, aimless, ever 
 rolling, and unfathomable waters. 
 
 The lesson of this brief and fragmentary sur- 
 
 Lesson of . 
 
 the survey vey of Neo-Spmozism is plain. In the midst of 
 
 now taken. . 
 
 the garden in which the Lord God has placed 
 
 i The following is Schleiermacher's eulogy of Spinoza, the first sentence of 
 which I have already quoted : " Offer up reverently with me a lock of hair to 
 the manes of the rejected but holy Spinoza. The great Spirit of the universe 
 tilled his soul; the infinite to him was beginning and end; the universal hia 
 sole and only love. Dwelling in holy innocence and deep humility among 
 men, he saw himself mirrored iu the eternal world, and the eternal world not 
 all unworthily reflected back in him. Fuji of religion was he, full of the Holy 
 Ghost; and therefore it is that he meets us standing alone in his age, raised 
 above the profane multitude, master in his art, but without disciples and the 
 citizen's rights." 
 
PANTHEISM. 149 
 
 us, is the tree of knowledge. And the latest voice of 
 history only re-echoes his own earliest word, that in the 
 day we depart from him and eat of that tree, aspiring to 
 know as he knoweth, we do surely die. Well does Julius 
 Miiller say, " There is but One perfectly free from error 
 and free from sin CHRIST. He alone could lay claim to 
 the faith of men in himself as one who spoke the truth, 
 on the ground ofJhis moral purity ; and he there- 
 fore can pronounce judgment upon whatever X^iuiE 
 does not receive and harmonize with him, as a 
 wandering into the paths of darkness ; he alone can ana- 
 lyze its connection with a depraved bias of will. That 
 which Protagoras the sophist said of man subjectively, 
 that he is ' the measure of things,' is objectively true of 
 the MAN who is our Lord and our God. But as for us, 
 seeing we are never free from sin, and are therefore con- 
 tinually liable to error, it is our highest wisdom not to 
 trust ourselves, still less to make ourselves the ' measure 
 of things,' but to rise above ourselves to Him who alone 
 is holy, and who, as he is the life, so is also the truth." l 
 
 i Christian Doctrine of Sin, B. I., Ft. I., Chap. III. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 
 
 THE PANTHEISTIC CHRISTOLOGY. 
 
 THE questions of philosophy are always closely 
 cannot be related to those of religion. This is no more 
 
 separated 
 
 f[hm re true wnen th e relation is one of sympathy than 
 when it is one of antagonism ; no more true of 
 pantheism than of positivism. Even a sensuous philosophy 
 opens anew the whole field of religious thought by denying 
 its reality. The human mind, while gratifying its natural 
 thirst for the discovery of truth, either concerns itself 
 directly with the primary facts of religion, or with theories 
 which involve the question of their existence. Naturalism 
 does not, any more than transcendentalism, remove us 
 from the realms of theism. The inevitable recoil of our 
 antipathy, as surely as any direct impulse of sympathy, is 
 constantly bringing us to those realms. This necessary 
 connection is more apparent, however, in the case of the 
 a-priori philosophy. The material on which Fichte, Schel- 
 ling, and Hegel wrought, is the same as that of 
 Christian theology. The nature of God and all 
 existence, and the origin and tendency of things, 
 deutaiisni. were the themes on which they speculated, in 
 common with Augustine, Anselm, and Descartes, 
 though in a different spirit. Pantheism itself is no less a 
 
 (150) 
 
PANTHEISM. 151 
 
 religion than a philosophy; a religion to reverent and 
 poetical natures, which love to look at truth through the 
 haze of the affections or prism of fancy ; a philosophy to 
 purely inquisitive minds, which study all subjects in the 
 dry light of the intellect. 
 
 In one view of the case, therefore, it might seem super- 
 fluous to consider the attitude of pantheism towards the 
 doctrines of religion. Why go on beyond it to speak of 
 that which lies within itself? But we use the 
 word "religion" in two senses. There is a J/'Jhe word 
 natural religion and a revealed religion ; a h e r r 8 e! lon 
 subjective religion of the human conscious- 
 ness, and an objective religion of authoritative precept; 
 an idealistic religion, and an historical religion. It is the 
 former of these that constitutes the essence of *the panthe- 
 istic system : what becomes of historical religion, 
 under the handling of pantheism, is a question 
 still to be considered. The nature of itsinvesti- 
 gations is such as to make this, almost of neces- 
 sity, our first inquiry from its point of view. If 
 it is to have any development at all, if it -is not to be 
 forever a fountain without an outlet, it must begin to flow 
 forth by this channel. Pantheism takes us through the 
 whole realm of religious ideas, and claims to bring us, at 
 last, to a universal solvent. If that solvent is not to lie in 
 our minds unused, but to be applied to the phenomena of 
 human life and society, the particular historical religion 
 which we may happen to hold, will naturally be the first 
 thing to come under its power. If Hegel had lived in 
 China, and made disciples there as he did in Ger- 
 many, his philosophy would have been applied to the 
 
152 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 writings of Confucius ; if he had lived in Tur- 
 
 thei8m P may key, his followers would have straightway ap- 
 >e applied. philosophy to the religion of the 
 
 Koran ; but living, as he did, where Christianity is the 
 historical religion, those who accepted his views began, at 
 once, to use them in accounting for the New Testament 
 records. Hence the rise of the Pantheistic Christology, 
 more generally known under the designation of the Tubing- 
 en School, which has filled so large a space in the biblical 
 criticism of the last half century, and to which I propose 
 to devote the present lecture. 
 
 Let us recall here, so far as the nature of our 
 mentfo? undertaking requires, the central doctrine of 
 Hegelian- Hegel's philosophy. It is that of the progres- 
 
 sive development of the Absolute Idea, through 
 a triplicate and never-ending process. By the Absolute 
 Idea I understand him to mean the one sole reality, besides 
 which nothing either is or can be conceived to be. In its 
 logical results, though not in its essence, it is the same 
 thing as Spinoza's Substance. In like manner it agrees 
 with the Subject-Object of Schelling, while it seems hardly 
 to differ, in any respect, from Fichte's World-Ego. This 
 
 idea is not a substance or entity, at least in our 
 lute fdea. conception of it, but a process. The absolute, 
 
 considered in itself, is either something or noth- 
 ing. As apprehended in consciousness it is a " becoming," 
 an endless evolution which had no beginning. In the evo- 
 lution, or "becoming," there is all the time affirmation, 
 negation, and higher affirmation. This triplicate move- 
 A triplicate ment > forever carrying the absolute idea out 
 process. ^ Q more an( j more perfect manifestations, con- 
 
PANTHEISM. 153 
 
 stitutes the whole material of our knowledge. The 
 movement goes on, not only in the phenomena of the 
 universe considered as one, but in each division and sub- 
 division, down to the least province of discovered facts. 
 It is the method of progress in all civilizations, in all his- 
 tories, in all arts, in all religions. Taken in the broadest 
 sense it constitutes philosophy, which is that manifestation 
 of the absolute idea in which its self-consciousness culmi- 
 nates. The doctrine may be clearer to us, perhaps, if we 
 compare it, or rather contrast it, with Comte's 
 
 Compared 
 
 threefold law of progress. According to Comte with 
 
 Comte's 
 
 the facts of observation are accounted for : first 
 by hypothesis, either theological or metaphysi- 
 cal ; then there is a negation of the hypothesis, through a 
 destructive criticism ; and then there is an advance from 
 hypothesis to the positive laws of phenomena. It is only 
 in this* threefoldness of movement, however, that the two 
 schemes even suggest each other. With Comte the pro- 
 cess is but intellectual ; with Hegel it is real and universal. 
 Comte recognizes only a limited movement in time, while 
 Hegel makes it absolutely eternal. In Comte the three 
 steps of the movement succeed each other chronologically, 
 till at last only the third remains, which is permanent ; in 
 Hegel these steps are simultaneous, and every one valid, 
 and will continue to be forever. The absolute idea, even 
 when asserted most rudimentally, is not an hypothesis, but 
 all the reality there is for the time being. The negation and 
 criticism of its forms do not destroy it, as Comte makes 
 theology and metaphysics fall before positivism, but are 
 ever resulting in its higher affirmation. 
 
154 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 In civilization, for instance, this triplicate 
 movement is always repeating itself. Men fin3 
 . themselves living together in one of the primi- 
 tive stages of society. This rudimentary life is 
 the absolute idea affirming itself; the positive form of the 
 "becoming," or evolution in consciousness. But in the 
 mean time humanity is outgrowing this form of civilization, 
 and recoiling upon it, contradicting and destroying it. 
 The effect of this conflict is another positive manifestation 
 of the absolute idea, in some better form of civilization. 
 And the higher ground thus reached, instead of being a 
 resting-place, is always a point of departure to something 
 still higher. In this way primitive barbarism rose to hero- 
 worship, hero-worship to monarchy, and monarchy to the 
 government of society by laws and constitutions. This 
 unfolding of the absolute idea is history, and the recog- 
 nition of it, and interpreting of human progress by its 
 action, constitute the philosophy of history. 
 
 Within the province of art, also, the Hesrclian 
 
 The abso- 
 lute idea scheme reveals its essential nature. At first 
 
 men made for themselves a few rude implements 
 and ornaments. Jubal was the father of such as handle 
 the harp and organ; Tubal-cain, an instructor of every 
 artificer in brass and iron. This was an actualization of 
 the absolute idea in art. But that idea, being an eternal 
 process, does not stop at this point. It goes beyond, and 
 reacts upon what is with destructive effect. And it 
 brings back with it, into the place of the forms it destroys, 
 other forms which more perfectly embody its own possi- 
 bilities. In all departments of life, as in art and civiliza- 
 tion, there is forever a conservative party in conflict with 
 
PANTHEISM. 155 
 
 a destructive party, and the result of their 
 
 Progress 
 
 struffsmnsr against each other is constant prosr- and con- 
 
 1 6 servatism. 
 
 ress ; the further unfolding, that is, of the abso- 
 lute idea. Whatever bo the thesis on any subject for the 
 time being, antithesis is steadily lifting the general con- 
 sciousness to some higher thesis. 
 
 Such being the universal necessity, it follows that re- 
 ligion, like everything else, is subject to its action. The 
 absolute idea was here first actualized, let us 
 assume, in the form of fetich-worship. But lute idea 
 
 in religion. 
 
 immediately it began to recoil upon this affirma- 
 tion of itself. And the result of the conflict was its higher 
 affirmation as polytheism. Polytheism is now the thesis, 
 and upon this, too, the absolute idea straightway reacts by 
 antithesis, thus lifting the religious consciousness of the 
 world into the form of monotheism. In this way monothe- 
 ism, as at first imperfectly held, became that which the 
 absolute idea affirmed. But by the necessity of its devel- 
 opment, the idea still reacted destructively on what it had 
 affirmed, and thus rose to the positive conception of Chris- 
 tianity. Christianity, as a temporary embodiment of the 
 absolute idea, is now the thesis in religion. The 
 
 . i-i MI- Christianity 
 
 antithesis, which assails this, and destroys its one of the 
 
 temporary 
 
 formal expression in the New Testament records, forms of 
 
 the absolute 
 
 is the Tubingen school of criticism ; which criti- idea, 
 cism, however, so far from doing any harm to 
 religion itself, as conceived under the absolute idea, only 
 clears the way for some manifestation of it more noble 
 than the Christianity of the Bible. Thus it is that pan- 
 theism, under the handling of Hegel and his school, finds 
 within itself a place for the Christian religion. That 
 
156 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TliUTH. 
 
 Christianity is, however, only a transitory embodiment of 
 the absolute idea, which idea alone is permanent, in reli- 
 gion as everywhere else. This winds its all-crushing folds 
 about the historical Christ, destroying him as it gave 
 him, for the sake of its own higher manifestation. The 
 so-called historical Christ is a myth, and the absolute idea, 
 which wrought in the religious imagination of men to 
 create that myth, and which even now is seeking a nobler 
 incarnation, is the only and the whole, the all-one reality. 
 
 The followers of Hegel soon separated into a " right " 
 and "left;" and these two parties straightway went to 
 war with each other, and are still at strife, evolving him, 
 through their disputes, about as interminably as his con- 
 tradictories evolve the absolute. His influence, even upon 
 
 Christian theists, may be easily accounted for. 
 view^o* -^- e ^ ie< ^ suddenly, at the age of sixty, while the 
 Hegelian- p ra i ses o f hi s philosophy were resounding far 
 
 and near. No young thinker, much less any 
 German thinker, wished to set himself against so great a 
 name. Those who held to orthodoxy, and to conservative 
 views generally, yet professed Hegelianism, lest this glory 
 
 should all pass over to the revolutionary party. 
 
 They sought to show that Hegel's philosophy 
 did not subvert historical Christianity, nor the positive 
 institutions of the church and the state. But the absurdi- 
 ty of their effort was too manifest to make much head- 
 way. Though revived from time to time, even to the 
 present day, the attempt to prove that Hegelianism agrees 
 with orthodox Christianity has been generally regarded as 
 a failure. Julius Miiller, a thoroughly competent witness, 
 says, " No place is to be found in this system for a finite 
 
PANTHEISM. 157 
 
 life unfolding itself progressively, in pure and undisturbed 
 harmony with God and with itself, and the attempt to 
 force such an idea into it is vain. Hegel, therefore, in his 
 logic, is fond of using 'infinitude' and 'holiness' as cor- 
 relatives, and in his lectures upon the Philosophy of Reli- 
 gion, he uses 'the finite' as the correlative of 'evil,' with 
 the additional limitation that ' evil is the extreme of fini- 
 tude.' " l Those who take the " left," construing Hegel's 
 system to the overthrow of positive institutions, may well 
 charge their opponents with a lack of the scientific spirit ; 
 with looking to practical results, that is, rather than to the 
 real nature of what Hegel taught. Take the 
 
 The " left." 
 
 self-contradictory thought-process, which is the 
 absolute idea eternally evolving itself, and go on fearlessly 
 with it, say they, never turning back to guard your preju- 
 dices, and warning final causes, historical Christianity, and 
 all other obstacles to save themselves as they best can. 
 But this party, even if true to the logical tendencies of 
 the system, were yet false to the spirit of their master. 
 They, too, like their extreme opponents, sought to make 
 use of the new philosophy in furthering their practical 
 views of social and individual life. But was it possible 
 that so great a man as Hegel should wish to be only a 
 destroyer ? that he should seek to cast off all bands of 
 order from men, and bring in a social chaos everywhere ? 
 This was the question now raised by some of 
 his disciples, to which they could return only a .e"" Cen 
 negative answer. And hence arose a third party, 
 called the " centre," though left-centre would have been the 
 more accurate term, perhaps. These claimed to stand 
 
 i Christian Doctrine of Sin, Book II., Chap. IV. 
 
153 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 midway between the other two parties, and laid special 
 claim to that scientific spirit which they alike had for- 
 saken. And here again we are reminded of the Hegelian 
 dialectics, the same idea evolving itself anew through the 
 conflict of its opposites in manifestation. 
 
 One of the first and most earnest of this 
 
 Strauss. 
 
 "centre" party was David Friederich Strauss. 
 He, while still a youth under twenty, had sat in the vast 
 audience of learned men who listened with delight and 
 wonder to the ripest utterances of Hegel. None were 
 more receptive than he, none more enthusiastic in their 
 advocacy of the new system. It was under thi# impulse 
 that he went to Tubingen, where Hegel had been educated, 
 to lecture at the university, and also to be connected with 
 
 the theological faculty. As we might expect, 
 
 At Tubingen. 
 
 he looked at all subjects through the system of 
 philosophy which he brought with him. He was a pen 
 in Hegel's hand, a tongue to the Hegelian philosophy. 
 But he wrote and spoke, for the most part, on subjects 
 connected with the biblical teachings. We are at present 
 concerned, therefore, to see what the method was by 
 which he found a place for Christianity in this pantheistic 
 temple. 
 
 His Life of Jesus, which has given him so wide'a noto- 
 riety, was published within five years after the death of 
 
 Hegel, and when Strauss himself was but 
 o?jeBus! twenty-seven years old. It was a work of 
 
 youthful enthusiasm, and not free from the faults 
 wont to mar such efforts. Other critics, agreeing with 
 him in the main, especially Ferdinand Christian Baur, 
 
PANTHEISM. 159 
 
 have written more ably and accurately. It is not what 
 Strauss did, so much as the state of religious thought at 
 the time of his doing it, which has made him, throughout 
 the world, the popular representative of the school to 
 which he belongs. The style of biblical criticism which 
 he boldly adopted had for a long time been cautiously 
 growing up. And the destruction of the Evangelical 
 record, in which his criticism issued, was no shock, but an 
 omen of hope, to those who would resolve everything 
 back into an eternal thought-process by which all things 
 are evolved. 
 
 Strauss took the ground that all positive religions, 
 Christianity among them, are but transient forms in which 
 the absolute idea, under its religious designa- 
 tion, manifests itself. These forms, are con- JJjfJj^ ia 
 stantly changing, even while their names are portant" 
 retained ; and they can never have any but a 
 secondary value. Our so-called historical Christianity is 
 only the flowing dress in which the imaginations of Chris- 
 tians have clothed the religious idea. That idea itself, 
 being the absolute in one of its phases, is the only impor- 
 tant thing. And not only this, but since it is part of 
 the eternal thought-process, as such it is the only real 
 thing in Christianity. The temporary embodiment of the 
 process, whether in the form of narrative, discourses, con- 
 versations, dogmatic treatises, natural or so- 
 called supernatural events, is of but little 
 account. It may be altogether fictitious, or a 
 nebulous mass of fiction clustered about some 
 small nucleus of fact ; or 4t may be a string of fabulous 
 inventions and parables, antedated afterwards by some 
 
160 IIALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 unscrupulous editor, who would thus make it seem to full 
 within certain historical limits. No matter what that 
 embodiment for the time being is, provided it is a suitable 
 form in which the imagination of man may express his 
 religious ideal. So long as it admits of this, in the case 
 of those who accept it, its office is fulfilled. The question 
 of fact or fiction need not be raised ; for it serves its turn 
 all the same, be it history, fable, poetry, legend-, myth, or 
 a mixture impossible to define. 
 
 When Strauss was dismissed from the faculty of the- 
 ology at Tubingen on account of his heresies, he took the 
 attitude of surprised and injured innocency. He thought 
 it very hard that he should be driven forth for affirming 
 
 that Christianity was of so little account as 
 Christianity, history, an d as such might be either true or 
 
 false, while he held with all his might to the 
 idea which evolved it. The story of the Nazarene sym- 
 bolizes to us the working of the moral ideal in man, at a 
 certain stage of the general progress. That ideal, wearing 
 such dress as representative writers saw fit to give it, 
 passes before us. It is God manifest in the flesh, it dies, 
 it rises, it ascends into heaven. The whole beautiful pic- 
 ture, so far as it has any value or significancy, is but a 
 movement in the human consciousness. The scene is not 
 
 objective, but purely subjective ; not the won- 
 prodnecd?]!? dcr-working of one who brings help down to 
 
 so-called rec- ug frQm above? but th(J raan y-hued robes of an 
 
 ideal Christ which humanity thinks into being. 
 If we would know how the Evangelical record grew up, 
 Strauss would say, let us consider how the Iliad, Paradise 
 Lost, and Hamlet were produced. The only difference is 
 
PANTHEISM. 161 
 
 that these are the works of individuals, thinking partly in 
 secular channels, while that may be regarded as the Work 
 of a whole people, under the lead of the religious imagina- 
 tion. Humanity is always in a state of progressive think- 
 ing, on religious as on other subjects. This is the grand 
 truth, and all the truth. Man's religious thinking is not 
 to be put under restraint. It may array itself in such 
 garments 'as it likes; may appropriate history, or put its 
 own' inventions into the form of history ; may seize upon 
 any marvellous tales floating about in tradition ; may 
 make use of the actual, the possible, and the impossible, 
 in giving "a local habitation and a name" to its "airy 
 nothings" which are everything. 
 
 From this theory Strauss passes, by a nat- criticism 
 ural inference, to his We of Jesus. All the 
 
 temporary forms of religion are legitimate game 
 for the critic, who loves to discern between the his- 
 torical and the poetical in literature, and who seems to 
 think it but fair that he, provided he holds firmly to the 
 absolute idea in religion, should be allowed to amuse him- 
 self with trying to destroy the Christian religion. It is 
 not at all surprising that such a target should have been 
 chosen by the Hegelian, on which to*' prove his marksman- 
 ship. The paths of religion and philosophy, where not 
 co-incident, are near each other. Neither of them can be 
 pursued very far by itself. This is shown in the case of 
 Strauss. There was but a step between his lighted torch 
 and the Christian records. And having been bred up in a 
 philosophy which assigned a lower seat than its own to 
 every form of religion, it did not occur to him that he was 
 at all sacrilegious or irreverent, though somewhat re- 
 11 
 
162 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 gardless of prevailing prejudices, in brushing aside the 
 whole drapery of an historical Gospel. So much of the 
 Evangelical record as had ceased to express the scientific 
 thinking of the age on religious subjects, had become an 
 obstacle to the further progress of religion. Its reign was 
 broken. It was a discrowned and lifeless body. And the 
 still more glorious manifestation of the absolute idea, re- 
 quired that it should be hidden away as soon as possible. 
 Evidence ^ ut wnat * s ^ e ey idence, sonie may ask, that 
 
 wa a s S a tr pan- * ^ ave state ^ tne real spirit of the Tubingen 
 theist. criticism ? Such evidence abounds. A little of 
 it I w r ill now proceed to give. Strauss quotes the remark 
 of Schelling, that " the incarnation of God is an incarnation 
 from eternity ; " and he says that Schelling " understood, 
 under the incarnate Son of God, the finite itself in the form 
 of the human consciousness." 1 This is his own doctrine. 
 The God-man is the absolute idea coming to self-conscious- 
 ness in man's religious thinking. This thought-process in 
 humanity is the eternal Son, the Word, that by which all 
 things are made, and in which God loves the world. " The 
 recognition of God as a spirit implies, that God does not 
 remain as a fixed and immutable infinite, encompassing 
 the finite ; but enters into it, produces the finite, nature, 
 and the human mind, merely as a limited manifestation of 
 himself, from which he eternally returns into unity." 2 It is 
 in the race of men, therefore, that the incarna- 
 the incarna- tion of God takes place. The' Gospels are a 
 
 tion. 
 
 picture of what is forever going forward in our 
 religious consciousness. Jesus is a symbolical, ideal char- 
 
 i Life of Jesus, Evans' stranslation (N. Y., 1856), Vol. II,, 150. 2 Ibid. 
 
PANTHEISM. 163 
 
 acter, imaging to us the workings of the hnmam mind ; all 
 springs from its depths and divine impulses. 
 
 The origin 
 
 " That history is a beautiful poem of the human of the 
 
 Gospels. 
 
 race, a poem in which are embodied all the 
 wants of our religious instinct. The history in the Gos- 
 pels is in fact the history of human nature conceived ide- 
 ally, and exhibits to us in the life of an individual, what 
 man ought to be, and can become." What was fact and 
 certain history to the four Evangelists, is to us " a sacred 
 mythus and poetry." " The points of view only are dif- 
 ferent : human nature, and the religious impulse in it, re- 
 main ever the same." 1 " To know the ideal Christ," says 
 Strauss, quoting Spinoza, " namely, the eternal wisdom of 
 God, which is manifested in all things, in the human mind 
 particularly, and especially in Jesus Christ, alone is neces- 
 sary." 2 " The key to the whole of Christology Acce tg 
 is this," he again says: "That an idea, instead ^Hf' 9 
 of an individual, is set forth as the subject of the 
 attributes which are attributed to Christ in the Church doc- 
 trine. Humanity is the union of both natures. Humanity 
 is the miracle-worker. Humanity, not the individual, but 
 the race, is the sinless one. Humanity is that which dies, 
 and rises again, and ascends towards heaven. This alone 
 is the absolute subject-matter of Christology : the circum- 
 stance that it appears in the person and history of Jesus 
 of Nazareth, is but the poetical dress of the doctrine." 3 
 Strauss even makes the Evangelists them- 
 
 Thinks the 
 
 selves profess pantheism, where they say of eonseioua- 
 
 i Life of Jesus, Vol. IT., 149. 2 ibid. 
 
 3 Dr. W. H. Mill's " Observations on the Attempted Application of Panthe- 
 istic Principles to the Theory and Historic Criticism of the Gospels" (Cam- 
 bridge, England, 1861). 
 
164 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 ness of Christ " that he recognized God as his Father, 
 
 would have God's CaUSC as his Own, Was conscious of know- 
 responded 1 T-1 1 
 
 to his criti- ing the r ather, and resigned his own will to 
 the divine, where he speaks expressly of his 
 oneness with the Father, and sets himself forth as the 
 visible manifestation of the same. Such utterances were 
 without pretension, arising from no transient elevation 
 of mind, but from the conviction of his whole life. 
 All his acts and discourses were penetrated with this 
 consciousness as with a soul." l The Gospels portray to us 
 such a personage; and his existence is not historically 
 but ideally true, which alone is scientifically possible. 
 lie is the absolute idea, shining forth in the human 
 consciousness for a season, and then sinking back into 
 the infinite depths, to be succeeded by another and more 
 glorious tbeophany, in the progressive thought of the race. 
 We may compare the doctrine of Strauss, or rather of 
 Hegel, to the phenomena of evaporation in nature. The 
 waters above the firmament are one with the waters under 
 the firmament. The mists, which pile themselves in fleecy 
 masses of silver and gold along the calm heights of the 
 sky, are still the ocean which sent them up, and they nre 
 constantly falling back into it, as it is all the time rising 
 into their beautiful forms. In the Christology of Strauss, 
 the absolute idea is the ocean, a sea unfathomed 
 record a and without shore. This, coming forth into the 
 
 piece of . . 
 
 cloud human consciousness, paints that piece ot eor- 
 
 painting. 
 
 geous cloud-scenery, the story of the Nazarene. 
 But the abysmal depths are forever reclaiming the iridescent 
 vapor which they send up. The sweet Evangel cannot- retain 
 that which fills it with its rainbow hues. Even while we 
 
 i Dr. Mill, p. 50. 
 
PANTHEISM. 165 
 
 look it is not the same, but changing every moment. The 
 one changeless and eternal thing in all this, is the absolute 
 idea ; which these moving splendors serve but to reveal, 
 and besides which there is no value or reality in the whole 
 display. 
 
 Now this pantheism of Strauss, from which he Advantage 
 undertook the criticism of the Gospels, gave theistic P po- 
 him a certain vantage-ground. It enabled him 
 to deal a death-blow to the naturalistic school of critics, of 
 which Paulus was the leader. This school was The Paul . 
 already in its decadence when he wrote. It lsts- 
 had tried to apply to the Christian Scriptures such rules 
 of interpretation as Evemerus, an ancient Greek 
 
 Evemerus. 
 
 critic, applied to the classical mythology. Eve- 
 .merus held that the Greek gods and heroes were ex- 
 traordinary men, who to increase their power had sur- 
 rounded themselves with a nimbus of divinity, or whom 
 tradition had invested with superhuman attributes. 1 The 
 Wolfenbiittel Fragmentist was among the first of His method 
 modern interpreters to apply this theory to the .LSng^di- 
 biblical record. He would not even admit the vvoifenbut- 
 
 tel Frag- 
 
 honesty of the great leaders and teachers whom ments, 
 the Bible names. They were designing men, who feigned 
 inspiration and intercourse with the God of heaven, to 
 gain influence over the masses of the people. To this 
 extent Paulus did not go. He still claimed that 
 men of such benevolence as Abraham, Moses, , H ^ u , sed 
 
 ' by Paulus. 
 
 David, Paul, and who really accomplished so 
 
 1 For some account of Evemerus see Grote (Harper's edition), Vol. I,, pp. 
 411, 412. 
 
166 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 much good, could not be wilful deceivers. But they might 
 be self-deceived. They might mistake their natural en- 
 thusiasm for a supernatural afflatus. Their conviction of 
 the vast importance of what they were doing, might give 
 rise to a belief of divine authority to do it. No miracle is 
 to be admitted anywhere ; yet the honesty of the writers 
 and actors, and the historical character of the record, are 
 to be maintained. 
 
 Wild as the attempt may seem, yet it is a fact 
 Se B thS>?y. tnat Paulus sought to explain the Bible on this 
 theory. Our first pa-rents ate some poisonous 
 fruit, which planted in them the seeds of hereditary dis- 
 ease : this, on naturalistic principles, may be regarded as 
 the historic fact of the Fall and its consequences. Moses 
 built a large fire on Mount Sinai, and just then a thunder- 
 storm arose. When he came down to the people, his face 
 shone as the natural effect of so much excitement. So, 
 too, in the New Testament. Early one morning Christ i*s 
 with three of his disciples in a mountain. He is- above 
 them, towards the east, on the highest peak ; when the 
 sun, suddenly rising behind him, makes his whole person 
 shine, so that the disciples are blinded by looking at him. 
 Peter did not find the tribute-money in the mouth of the 
 fish ; this is only a nice way of telling what did occur, 
 namely, that he caught the fish and sold it for the money. 
 Christ and his disciples took wine with them to the wed- 
 ding at Cana ; and it was their putting this into the six 
 water-jars, through a quiet understanding with the servants, 
 which constitutes the historical matter in the narrative. 
 Thus would a Paulist go along through the record, enucle- 
 ating so much of it as is not supernatural, and holding that 
 
PANTHEISM. 167 
 
 this, or some equivalent, is literal history ; while the rest 
 is but embellishment, the result of a rich Oriental fan-cy, 
 or of that tendency to exaggerate which }s in all great story- 
 tellers. Paulus has some followers even at the present day, 
 as the work of Schenkel on the Character of Jesus may 
 serve to attest. No one, excepting always a German with 
 a theory to maintain, can fail to see that the nat- 
 uralism of Paulus was an ignoble failure. His Jf5JjJe daB 
 attempt made it plain, if it was not clear before, 
 that we must admit the supernatural in Revelation, or we 
 cannot regard it as in any proper sense historical. 
 
 Eichhorn, who was contemporary with Paulus, 
 applied the method of Evemerus to biblical in- 
 terpretation. The same is true also ofDeWet- - 
 
 De Wette. 
 
 te to some extent. But these scholars either 
 lacked the intrepidity of Paulus, or they had a keener sense 
 than he of the puerile tendencies of his criticism. They 
 did not wish to divest the Scriptures of all dignity. 
 Therefore, while pursuing a course which in many things 
 sustained the orthodox faith, in some things they -leaned 
 towards the view of Paulus, and in other things they were 
 inclined to grant the Tubingen theory of a poetizing 
 fancy. The inspired writers are communicating 
 truth everywhere, but in some cases their en- biThon^SS 
 thtisiasm makes the dress in which they clothe 8u 8 y tii- 
 it. It is this concession of an unhistorical ele- 
 ment, by De Wette, but more especially by Eichhorn, 
 which Strauss does not fail to seize upon as a partial and 
 cautious approach towards his own theory of the mythus. 
 Indeed, he goes back of them, even to Origen and Philo, 
 for the germs of his theory. I am not careful here to 
 
168 HALF TRUTHS AJtfD THE TRUTH. 
 
 defend either of those early interpreters. Philo was an 
 acknowledged Neo-Platonist ; and Origen felt the influ- 
 ence of the Alexandrine pantheism. Therefore 
 n n ?nd Ori " ^ ie y nla ^ nave both applied a pantheistic exe- 
 gesis to the sacred records. But it is certain that 
 Origen, to say the least, did not deny the his- 
 torical validity of the Scriptures. His allegorical sense 
 was not a creative energy, but a meaning which he found 
 in the narrative. No doubt there is some ground for what 
 Strauss says of himself, that he only matured a theory of 
 interpretation which had been growing up for along time. 
 The enthusiastic reception his work met with, in various 
 quarters, proves that the minds of many biblical critics 
 had come to ' be in sympathy with him. The appetite 
 which his mythical theory gorgecl, had been, to say the 
 least, awakened. Even the orthodox party read him, not 
 sorry to see their old foes, the naturalistic rationalists, fall- 
 Relation to * n unc ^ er his sturdy assaults. Yet they them- 
 schoois of selves were in no better plight. Strauss saved 
 criticism. them from the Paulists, only as the hawks 
 saved the doves from the kites. They were, like Samson, 
 crushed themselves by what they pulled down upon their 
 enemies. Paulus admitted that the Bible is historical, 
 but not supernatural ; Strauss denied that it is either. 
 To his view the Bible, and especially its Christology, is 
 the product of the absolute idea, working in the reli- 
 gious imagination of the Hebrew race for the most part. 
 This idea, coming to self-consciousness in the religious 
 thinking of men, is the whole reality in sacred 
 Scripture, as Hegel had taught him to say ; and 
 
 Secret of 
 
 in jnst this fact, that Strauss was a Hegelian 
 
PANTHEISM. 169 
 
 speaking to a generation of Hegelians, is the secret of the 
 prodigious popularity of his work. 
 
 The orthodox principle of interpretation is, Three prin- 
 ciples of 
 that the biblical record is historical, and much interpret- . 
 
 tiou. 
 
 of it supernatural, as it ought to be, since 
 it describes ^ a coming down of the omnipotent God 
 into nature to save sinful men. The naturalistic ration- 
 alist admits its historical validity, but tries to get rid 
 of the supernatural. The mythologist denies that it is 
 either history or miracle, making it a product of the re- 
 ligious imagination. The mythical theory differs from the 
 legendary, the latter granting some weight to historical 
 facts, while the former affirms that it is indifferent whether 
 the narrative be true or false. These two theories differ 
 rather in decree than in kind, however, while 
 
 The posi- 
 
 the more extreme, namely, the mythical, is that tionof 
 
 Strauss. 
 
 held by Strauss. So much of the record as is 
 supernatural, is of course unhistoric, since it all is but the 
 fruit of human thinking. And so much of it as might 
 have happened, is given not because it happened, but be- 
 cause it is a convenient form in which the thought, working 
 itself out, maybe embodied. JEsop makes the dumb ani- 
 mals, the fishes, and the reptiles talk tog-ether 
 
 The myth. 
 
 with man, in his efforts to convey truth : the 
 writers of the Bible have used 'a similar liberty. They 
 tell of what did not take place, and of what could not take 
 place, more" or less mingled, perhaps, with actual occur- 
 rences, with the sole purpose of giving forth that religious 
 idea which is struggling for expression within them. 
 
 In order to make room for the growth of the Evangelical 
 
170 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 mythus, such as his pantheistic philosophy requires, Strauss 
 
 puts the origin of the Gospels forward into the 
 
 Strauss second century of our era. Jerusalem had been 
 
 makes room 
 
 for his destroyed at least fifty years, and the Christians 
 
 theory. 
 
 were scattered abroad throughout the Roman 
 empire. None of the immediate friends of Jesus of 
 Nazareth, not even any who had conversed with those 
 friends, were now living. There was, among those thus 
 scattered abroad, a tradition that Jesus had been a Rabbi 
 of a singularly pure and noble character, who had suffered 
 a most cruel death some time before their dispersion. 
 This story, handed on from the elder to the younger, and 
 carried from place to place in an unwritten form, naturally 
 grew on the lips of the exiles, and shaped itself to their 
 ideas and feelings. It became a type of their calamity, 
 and of their hope ; that is, a mythus, like the legend of 
 William Tell, mistaken by some for actual history, which 
 is but a symbol of the Swiss struggle for liberty. The 
 
 Jewish nation has been violently overthrown ; 
 the product and the story ran that the good Rabbi from 
 
 of the idea. 
 
 Nazareth was cruelly killed. But the Jewish 
 nation is to be restored ; therefore Jesus, its mythical type, 
 is imagined to have risen from the dead, and ascended into 
 heaven. The Messianic spirit, having thus seized upon 
 the tradition, connects it with Old Testament prophecies. 
 Therefore a birth and childhood of Jesus are imagined, 
 and a public ministry and sufferings, answering to the early 
 predictions of a Messiah. " Such and such things must 
 have happened to the Messiah ; Jesus was the Messiah ; 
 therefore such and such things happened to him." 1 The 
 
 1 Life of Jesus, Vol. I., p. 07. 
 
PANTHEISM. 171 
 
 mythus is "the product of the idea." Jesus is greater 
 than any that went before him, therefore greater marvels 
 must have attended him. Because the face of Moses 
 shone, he must be transfigured. There were twelve Jewish 
 tribes, hence he must have twelve disciples. Whatever 
 the Messiah was expected to do, he is fancied as doing ; 
 and the name Son of God, given to him, grows out of the 
 feeling that the Hebrew nation, which he ideally typified, 
 is the chosen favorite of heaven. 
 
 Thus did the Gospel narratives grow up. They belong 
 to the post-apostolic nge. They are not history, but 
 national religious poems ; not the, work of particular indi- 
 viduals, but of a whole people, which certain persons after 
 a while took the liberty of reducing to writing. If we 
 ask Strauss why these writers did not put their own names 
 'to their works ; why they have practised a fraud upon us 
 in' representing those works as written by the companions 
 of Christ and the apostles, his reply is, " The most repu- 
 table authors, amongst the Jews and early Christians, pub- 
 lished their works with the substitution of venerated names, 
 without an idea that they were guilty of any falsehood or 
 deceit in so doing." l Such is one of tjie exigencies into 
 which the theory of Strauss brings him. In order to give 
 the Evangelical mythus time to grow up, the Gospel narra- 
 tives are declared to be post-apostolic. Thus 
 he is obliged to admit that the writers practised lows if the 
 
 Gospels are 
 
 literary forgery. Yet he sees no immorality in post-apos- 
 their conduct, but thinks they were under the 
 influence of the most exalted motives ! The absolute idea 
 of religion, revealing itself in the national mind, is what 
 
 i Life of Jesus, Vol. I., p. 68. 
 
172 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 we are to see and admire, revering it not the less, but 
 the more, for working itself out through so much story- 
 telling and innocent trickery ! This may meet the highest 
 demands of a Straussian conscience, perhaps ; but there 
 are still a few persons in the world of so singular a turn 
 of mind as to refuse the nostrum, preferring a little less 
 absolute, and a little more honesty. We think it not so 
 likely that the authors of the four Gospels should occupy 
 themselves with inventing lies, as that this Whittington- 
 and-his-cat theory of the life of Christ should be false. 
 We claim strong internal evidence for our conclusion ; 
 since it is the charm of the Gospels that they have none 
 
 of the air of poetic fiction, but everywhere give 
 evidence us wnat profess to be actual events, in the sim- 
 sfrauss plest and plainest style. There is no\yhere any 
 
 impression or hint of a myth. If a fraud, it is 
 the wickedest of all frauds, for every word of it has the his- 
 toric stamp. That which not only so stirs us, but is so real 
 to us in all its alleged facts, cannot be mere literary inven- 
 tion. Its roots must go down into the world of objective 
 truth, which man beholds but does not create, and which 
 will be the same when his place knows him no more. 
 
 But we do not rely on this internal evidence 
 evidence alone evidence which the impotent charge of 
 Eternal!** 11 f r g erv d es not brush aside. There is strong 
 
 external evidence, going to confirm our con- 
 clusion, that the Gospels were written by the men whose 
 names they bear. Before the time to which Strauss 
 assigns the origin of the Evangelical writings, they were 
 quoted as works well known among the Christians. 
 Already, even in regard to the Fourth Gospel, the last 
 
PANTHEISM. 173 
 
 written, Justin Martyr, Papias, and others had testified to 
 its existence, by quoting from it and repeatedly referring 
 to it. In order to escape this historic testi- 
 
 How Strauss 
 
 rnony, Strauss invents .the fiction of a Gospel would evade 
 
 afterwards lost, to which the apostolic fathers 
 
 and the early critics refer, and on which those we now 
 
 have were founded. But however grand or fruitful the 
 
 Hegelian philosophy may be, we must be excused for 
 
 thinking it a little grandiose in fruitfulness, when it not 
 
 only sets aside well-attested history, but invents history 
 
 of which there is no record, for the sake of an unproved 
 
 assumption. Not only the testimony of the 
 
 early fathers, and of infidels even, as well as the Tho r ?- 
 
 rm>nt for the 
 
 intrinsic character of the Gospels, but the geog- SSSnof the 
 raphy of Palestine itself, is to-day a refutation SewSiSeV 
 of the theory of Strauss. The origin of the 
 Gospels was not mythical, but historical. They are not 
 merely ideally but objectively true. No hypothesis solves 
 the problem of their origin, as presented in the light of 
 contemporary events, but that which affirms them to have 
 been written by the men whose names they bear, eye- 
 witnesses and ear-witnesses of the supernatural facts 
 which they record. 
 
 The Tubingen school of criticism would have 
 fallen into disrepute sooner than it did, but for 
 the efforts of Ferdinand C. Baur, perhaps its most skilful 
 representative. He does not, in the same unqualified 
 sense as Strauss, seem committed to the philosophy of 
 Hegel. He wrote an adverse criticism on the Life of 
 Jesus, when that work first came out. But however the 
 
174 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 two men may differ as between themselves, in their atti- 
 tude towards historical Christianity they agree. Strauss 
 regards the Messianic idea in the mind of the Hebrew 
 race as the germ of the Gospels. The view of Baur, 
 though mythical like this, is that the writings 
 stnm s s 8 [ r m of the ^ ew Testament must be traced to a less 
 poetical source, namely, the conflict which had 
 arisen between Jewish and Gentile Christianity. His 
 statement of this theory, as well as his defence of it, is 
 very ingenious. There were two parties in the 
 cnurc h 5 a Petrine and a Pauline party, 
 latter were desirous that the Jewish faith 
 should merge itself into a world-religion, the 
 former wished it to be kept strictly within the old national 
 limits. In the dispersed condition of the Jews, living in 
 Roman and Greek communities, everything naturally 
 favored the Gentile party. It grew steadily, especially by 
 the incoming of Gentile converts, while its rival faction as 
 steadily lost ground. As time passed on, and the once 
 clear authority of the Mosaic laws had grown dim, even 
 in the minds of the Petrine or conservative party, certain 
 of the progressive or Pauline party stepped forward, and 
 supplemented the Old Testament records by inventing 
 'the writings which compose the New Testament. They 
 showed that the prophecies of the Old Testament pointed 
 forward to something, and that something they supplied 
 in the Gospels and Epistles. These writings 
 conf!?ct f aii a w ei ' e so shaped as to, suit the ancient tradition, 
 them'5 h as to represent a long and varying struggle be- 
 tween Jewish and Gentile Christianity, and as 
 in the end to give the latter the ascendency over the 
 
PANTHEISM. 175 
 
 former. Christ is portrayed as less and less Jewish, and 
 more and more favorable to the Gentiles, as the 
 feigned narrative goes forward. This is shown 
 in his denunciations of the Pharisees, while he 
 befriends outcasts ; also in his formal discourses, P a"ty ue 
 and especially in his parables. The lost sheep, 
 the pieces of silver, the prodigal son, awakening so much 
 concern in each instance, are the Gentile world. The un- 
 just steward, whom his lord puts out of the stewardship, 
 is Israel. The fact of descent from Abraham is to be dis- 
 regarded ; Christ proclaims a religion which is equally 
 open to all men. Those on the right hand of the Judge 
 in the last day are good Gentiles ; true subjects of the new 
 kingdom, though kept in ignorance of their relation to 
 Christ by the Petrine teachings. Those on the left hand 
 are bad Jews, rejected for lack of such obedience as the 
 others have shown. Peter is more a name than a person, 
 representing the narrow view. He has precedence in the 
 apostolic college, as the Jews had in the matter of revela- 
 tion. But he does many weak things, such as denying 
 his Master, waiting for a vision before he will 
 visit Cornelius, and refusing to eat with the fp^a. 8 
 Gentiles after his doing so had offended some 
 at Jerusalem. Gradually he is made to acquire broader 
 views, yet he cannot quite put away his exclusive feelings ; 
 and finally, after some collisions with the party of prog- 
 ress, in which he is uniformly put to the worse, he sinks 
 out of the so-called history altogether. Meanwhile the 
 liberal tendency, for the sake of which the New Testa- 
 ment writings were drawn up, is described as making 
 rapid headway, and as absorbing the whole energy and 
 
176 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 
 
 piety of the church. Not only does it show to advantage 
 
 throughout the Evangelical mythus, but especially in the 
 
 Acts of the Apostles. Paul, the representative 
 
 The Paul- 
 
 ine party nian of this movement, is the great missionary, 
 entirely eclipsing Peter, withstanding him to 
 the face because he was to be blamed, and forcing him at 
 last to yield his pretensions. Various treatises are added, 
 which, to increase their influence, are called the Epistles 
 of Paul, or of those who in the main accepted his views. 
 Even Peter is made to indorse the Pauline party, in his 
 Epistles, so called. Baur concedes that some of the trea- 
 tises ascribed to Paul were written by him ; but the Gen- 
 tile spirit predominates in these no more than in those 
 whose authorship is uncertain. The object of them all is, 
 to impress it upon the minds of the early Christians, that 
 either the liberal party in the church must triumph, or the 
 whole Evangelical idea, as well as the Messianic idea back 
 of it, must be given up. -Baur thinks that many a Juda- 
 izing Christian, in the second century and near the begin- 
 ning of the third, falling in with the New Testament 
 writings and reading them thoughtfully, must 
 The reason- have been persuaded to give up his Judaism, 
 
 inr of Baur 
 
 anc l accept the newer doctrine of a world-reli- 
 
 sible. 
 
 gion. To beget such a persuasion was the pur- 
 pose of the authentic treatises, and of the feigned letters 
 and narratives. This purpose emboldened the writers, 
 whoever they were, to do what is sometimes done by the 
 correspondents of newspapers. They imagined the sto- 
 ries they wrote out ; and these, for lack of a rigid criti- 
 cism, such as Baur and his school now apply to them, 
 gained general currency among the credulous friends of 
 
PANTHEISM. 177 
 
 the broad-church party. Histories were invented, for 
 which those who knew Jesus personally are made to 
 vouch, and essays were composed, at the head of which 
 stood apostolic names ; and so childish was the age, and 
 ready to be duped, that this deception passed without 
 successful challenge. It was not till nearly two thousand 
 years after, that, the Daniel of biblical criticism, in the 
 form of the Tubingen school, came to judgment. 
 
 It will be seen, therefore, that the position of Baur, with 
 reference to the historical validity of the New Testament, 
 is substantially that of Strauss. Hence the facts which 
 refute one are a sufficient answer to the other. Having 
 already indicated what those facts are, I need 
 not repeat them here. Those who wish to ex- 
 amine the whole question of the historical valid- 
 ity of the New Testament, need hardly to be 
 referred to the many volumes of recent critics, in which 
 this matter is ably discussed. One of the best of these, 
 for general use, is Professor Fisher's work on the Super- 
 natural Origin of Christianity. This work makes it clear, 
 by a full and scientific treatment of the subject, that the 
 ground of Baur is untenable. 
 
 To the special view of Baur respecting parties in the 
 apostolic church, there is no objection. Such parties un- 
 doubtedly did exist. They are plainly described 
 to us in the New Testament history. It is 
 Baur's fault, that instead of finding them in the 
 history, he makes them create the so-called his- 
 tory. He finds the evangelical record in his idea, rather 
 than the grounds of his idea in the record. In doing this, 
 he shows the peculiar vice of German thinkers. When 
 12 
 
178 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 they have found a theory, they are inclined to make that 
 theory the source of whatever else they find. With Baur 
 the idea of two parties originates the New Testament 
 writings, as the Messianic idea does with Strausa. And 
 in this producing power of the idea they both follow 
 Hegel, who finds in his absolute idea the creative sub- 
 stance of all things. We find, in the history f of the 
 United States soon after the adoption of the Constitution, 
 two political parties, the federal, led by John Adams, 
 and the republican, led by Thomas JeiFerson. But what 
 would be thought of the critic who, discovering this con- 
 flict, should declare that it, for the partisan purposes of 
 one side or the other, has created all our so-called national 
 history ; that the record is simply an imaginary 
 treatment dress, in which some partial champion has em- 
 bodied his view of the conflict ; that the strug- 
 gle did not begin till some time after the date assigned ; 
 that it is very doubtful whether Adams and Jefferson are 
 not, after all, only the myths which some politician has 
 imagined ; while it is certain that they never penned many 
 of the writings which now claim their authorship ? Yet 
 this is not an unfair illustration of the spirit of the Tu- 
 bingen criticism. Not satisfied with running its theory 
 into the ground, it runs the ground into its theory. 
 
 The ancients had their muse of history, whose aid they 
 reverently invoked, while attempting to set past events in 
 order. Did they not, in this, recognize a universal human 
 infirmity ? Even our secular historians carry back their 
 private views, to the serious discoloring of that which 
 they would describe. It was left for Strauss and Baur to 
 enthrone this infirmity, and make it the originator of the 
 
PANTHEISM. 179 
 
 sacred annals. But there is a Muse of evangelical history. 
 Holy men wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 
 This divine inspiration saved them from the error to 
 which all historians are liable. It kept them back from 
 the mythical abyss into which Baur and Strauss fell head- 
 long. It enabled them to record God's thoughts towards 
 us, and the great facts of redemption, with, no damaging 
 admixture of subjective theory; so that we do 
 
 Strauss and 
 
 well to take heed to their words, as to a light Baur fur- 
 nish an ar- 
 that shineth in a dark place. There are many gument for 
 
 inspiration. 
 
 arguments for inspiration, but I know of none 
 more powerful than the rise of the Tubingen school of 
 criticism. If we are to have a revelation from the Father 
 of our spirits, and not sink into naturalism or blank ideal- 
 ism, there is no mere man whom we can dare to trust. 
 That revelation, our sorest need, must come through per- 
 sons whom God has inspired to speak his words unto us, 
 and whom he so saves from their own imperfections, that 
 they shall neither add anything to the message nor take 
 anything away. 
 
 A word only is needed, in this place, respecting 
 the legendary theory of Renan. His Life of 
 Jesus, and connected works, have been extensively read. 
 And no wonder; for they clothe in a fascinating garb 
 theories easily made plausible to minds but partially in- 
 formed. Yet the careful reader soon finds that Kenan's 
 doctrine is not original ; it is a French imitation. His 
 theory hardly seems to me to require any sepa- 
 
 Requires no 
 
 rate treatment. Though he gives more space separate 
 
 treatment. 
 
 to the historical element than either Baur or 
 
180 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Strauss, as he could not well help doing, being familiar 
 with the geography of Palestine, and writing in the midst 
 of it, yet the pantheistic flavor of his thought often 
 rises to the surface. It is true that he rejects the mythical 
 theory, and adopts the legendary ; but he still says that the 
 criticism of the gospel-text by Strauss " leaves little to be 
 desired." He also speaks of Christianity itself as an 
 " evolution by which the noblest portions of humanity 
 passed from the ancient religions." He says, with evident 
 reference to the pantheistic doctrine of the absolute, "No 
 passing vision exhausts divinity ; God was revealed before 
 Jesus, God will be revealed after him. Widely unequal, 
 and so much the more divine as they are the greater and 
 the more spontaneous, the manifestations of the God con- 
 cealed in the depths of the human conscience are all of 
 the same order." The Christian religion, that is, though 
 
 more or less historic in some of its forms, is only 
 o?his P crifi- an evolution within humanity, part and parcel 
 the?etw. n " of tnat thought-process which is all the time 
 
 going forward in man. That such is the philo- 
 sophical germ of Kenan's criticism, so far as it has any, 
 and that he should be met on the same ground as other 
 pantheists, is further indicated where he says, " If we ex- 
 cept the French Revolution, no historic medium was so 
 fitting as that in which Jesus was formed, to develop those 
 
 hidden powers which humanity holds as if in 
 
 An irrever- _ . . . . 
 
 cat com- reserve, and which she never reveals except in 
 her days of fever and of danger." It is doubtful 
 if any person, of less powerful imagination than Renan, 
 would have seen much likeness between the stormy times 
 of Robespierre and the peaceful Galilean society in which 
 
PANTHEISM. 181 
 
 the Son of Mary grew up; and with the exceedingly 
 liberal compliment given to Jesus, by insinuating that he 
 was only second to the leaders of revolutionary France, 
 we dismiss this popular critic to those who ignorantly 
 admire him, not knowing what they worship. 
 
 I only allude here, in conclusion, to the still Free re- 
 more recent movement which calls itself Free l 1011 ' 
 Religion. The peculiarity of.this is, that it finds more or 
 less of religious truth in all religions, and the whole essence 
 of religion in the human consciousness. Brah- 
 manism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, ^P eculiar - 
 all the forms of religion now existing, in short, 
 should stand together in brotherly fellowship. For they 
 have all been developed by the same idea in man ; none 
 of them are of supernatural origin, or have any supreme 
 authority ; and that in us which gave birth to these, is 
 steadily crowding them aside with something better. It 
 will be seen at a glance what is the parentage of this 
 theory. While vainly striving to cling to the ghost of a 
 departed theism, it is but the last and puny child of a 
 philosophy already overthrown. It is the dying 
 echo of the voice which Hegel lifted up so long traced to 
 ago. It is the faint resonance, on this distant 
 shore, of a wave whose original force is spent. Let pan- 
 theism, like the divine revelation, have its "minor 
 prophets " if it must. Yet it touches our American pride 
 somewhat, when we see those prophets trying to convert 
 our popular literature into a kind of Israelitish bazaar for 
 the display of the philosophical old-clothes of the Germans. 
 For Christianity itself, however, we have no fear. Chri8t ; anity 
 The warlike manifesto which scepticism issued triunj P hilIlt - 
 
182 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 half a century ago, has resulted in its own signal 
 defeat. The stone cut out of the mountain has smitten 
 the pantheistic image. Its fragments, ground to powder 
 by the chariot-wheels of truth, are but the dust of the 
 highway cast up for the Lord's ransomed, along which they 
 are returning to Zion, coming with songs, and with the 
 joy of victory on their heads. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 I 
 
 THE CULTURE WHICH PANTHEISM LEGITIMATES. 
 
 THOSE revolutionary tendencies of modern thought, of 
 which we hear so much, are nowhere more manifest than 
 in the ethicnl and social discussions of the day. 
 
 A feature of 
 
 Theories of duty, whether public or private, modern 
 
 r ' thought. 
 
 have forsaken their ancient base. In many 
 instances they have even been faced about, so that what H 
 was once the front is now the rear, and the starting-point 
 has become the point of attack. Formerly external 
 authority was the rule, but now spontaneity is the law 
 which tends to prevail. The doctrine that morals arc 
 intuitive, and cannot be taught, has been broached. Hu- 
 manity, in its spontaneous growth, is the true basis of the 
 state ; and written compacts are hinderances in its way, 
 which should be destroyed. Marriage should not rest on 
 unchanging statutes, but' on the free action of nature in 
 man. The family arid society, instead of depending on^ 
 legislation, should be the unhindered outgrowth 
 iof forces which are a law to themselyeg, The ? a p n e " t ~ y . 
 c MM id act of 'the individual, of the family, of so- 
 ciety, of the state, all of which I here include under the 
 general notion of Culture, should not be regulated froni 
 without, but from within. They should be spontaneous, 
 
 1 (183) 
 
184 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 and not suffer themselves to be guided by external author- 
 ity. That authority is fictitious. They make it by their 
 own unfolding energy, and it but marks a point in their 
 limitless progress, beyond which they have already passed 
 when it rises into notice. 
 
 I do not say that there was none of this revolutionary 
 
 spirit in ancient times. There was much of it. But it 
 
 wrought, for the most part, in a blind and aimless 
 
 menta of way, so that the theory of human culture, which 
 
 authority in 
 
 modem appears most conspicuous to us as we look far 
 back, is the one which rests on external stan- 
 dards. Nor do I mean to imply that this law of culture 
 has at length been abandoned. It was never more loyally 
 obeyed, or thoroughly and clearly expounded, than at the 
 present moment. In this case, as in all others, truth has 
 been cleared up and strengthened by conflict with error. 
 The doctrine of spontaneity in morals no doubt did good 
 by correcting certain exaggerations, and calling attention 
 to certain elements which had been neglected by the friends 
 of truth. That doctrine has been thoroughly canvassed, 
 however, and ably refuted, under the various 
 ^tenable! 7 f rms it has taken since the revival of Spinozism. 
 Whether known as Agrariamsm, Communism, 
 Chartism, or simply as " the Spirit of the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury," when it has clamored for the abolition of the 
 laws of property, for free marriage and free religion, its 
 hostility to our noblest convictions has been clearly pointed 
 out. It assumes an inborn purity in all men, and an ab- 
 sence of evil tendencies, which their own honest con- 
 sciousness sadly denies them. It shuts them away from 
 those heavenly ideals which they did not originate, and 
 
PANTHEISM. 185 
 
 from that holy God, whose authority checks the evil and 
 helps the good in their natures. Its liberty is anarchy; 
 its spontaneity means civil convulsions, social chaos, the 
 axe, the knife, the torch, every man's hand against every 
 man. These disorders are defended on the ground that 
 the whole fabric of society has been wrongly organized, 
 on a basis of external rules ; and it is claimed that all 
 would have gone forward smoothly, if nothing had ever 
 been put in the way of the spontaneous tendencies of 
 men. 
 
 We can see the fallacy of the reasoning easily enough, 
 knowing as we do what many of the tendencies of human 
 nature are ; yet we are sometimes amazed, and 
 half persuaded into belief of the theory, amid j^S^ 
 the dazzling and bewildering sophistries which 
 its advocates throw around us. We need, therefore, to 
 know the source of their power. They must be forced 
 back to a point which even they themselves, perhaps, have 
 not yet found out. The ethical doctrines, which they 
 would apply to man and society, have the same parentage 
 as the theories of Strauss, Baur, and Kenan. Pantheism 
 is the universal solvent. We saw how all the facts of 
 the Scriptures disappeared in it ; we are now to see how 
 the established regulations of society, as soon as they 
 .touch it, melt out of sight. That social lawlessness seething 
 in certain quarters, which gets itself more or less fiercely 
 spoken now and then, may find in Hegel its legitimate 
 source. His philosophy is its real major premise. The 
 spontaneous culture, which it would substitute for that of 
 positiye precept, begins there; and this its philosophical 
 origin we must clearly see, if we would dissolve its 
 
186 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 charm and expose its intrinsic ugliness. It puts on many 
 captivating disguises. The Ynost pure-hearted feel the 
 fascination of some of its partial statements. Only in its 
 source, and its relation to moral evil, do its repulsive 
 features come out. 
 
 There are many recent writers, whose names might 
 represent more or less this doctrine of spontaneous cul- 
 ture. Of these I select, as best suited to my purpose, the 
 name of Goethe. The nature and influence of the new 
 movement, and its relation to Spinozism, can be 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 traced in him as perhaps in no other popular 
 writer. It is evident, as I shall hope to show, that he 
 ranges himself with the pantheistic school of thinkers; 
 and it will not be denied that in variety of topics, origi- 
 nality, and beauty of style, he stands pre-eminent. There 
 is a charm in nearly all that he has written, felt even by 
 the best minds at times, the secret of which needs to be 
 
 uncovered. It is for these reasons that I now 
 
 Why chosen. 
 
 call attention to him. 1 do not attempt a com- 
 prehensive treatment, either of the man or his Writings. 
 Those who look for this will no doubt be disappointed, 
 and disposed to accuse me of injustice. I am concerned 
 with a single phase of his character and influence. This 
 is all that my purpose contemplates. I am not about to 
 give an estimate of Goethe, but to show how a pantheistic 
 philosophy affected him as a man and a writer. Unfortu- 
 nately for me, it will be my duty to dwell on that aspect 
 of Goethe's character which is least honorable to him. I 
 
 crave only such indulgence as is fair, while 
 
 Viewed only 
 
 in one as- doing this ungracious work, knowing as I do 
 the great merits of Goethe, which it would be 
 
PANTHEISM. 187 
 
 out of place 'for me here to consider. It is as a disciple 
 of Spinoza, carrying the principles of pantheism out logi- 
 cally into his theory of literature and life, in these rela- 
 tions and no other, that we have now any special con- 
 cern with him. He was one of the earliest and foremost 
 of those who hold that the laws of duty are not objective, 
 but subjective; who reject outward authority, and fall 
 back on spontaneous impulse as the true guide of human 
 conduct. 
 
 Goethe was enough younger than Kant and Lessing to 
 have been moulded somewhat by their writings. From 
 Jacobi and Herder, also, he may have received 
 hints which gave a pantheistic turn to his think- Sinker" of 
 ing. But he was the senior of Schelling, and Jge. wn 
 had become a famous author before Fichte and 
 Hegel were known to the public. From this we infer 
 that he did not take his speculative views from the Ger- 
 man successors of Spinoza, so much as from the more 
 original source. He wrote for the many, and they for the 
 few, yet they and he alike followed the same master. 
 
 It may surprise some to hear Goethe's name thus joined 
 to Spinoza's. They have never regarded him 
 as a pantheist. He has had multitudes of read- J?^. 
 ers, and still has not a few, whom his superb "lews? 
 sentences charm, but who do not perceive his 
 underlying theory of God and the world. What that the- 
 ory was we need first of all to know ; and that our fairness 
 may be above suspicion, it shall be given chiefly in his 
 own words. 
 
 He has given us an account of the early working of his 
 
188 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 mind on religious subjects. Referring to the 
 tici8m. 8Cep " Lisbon earthquake, which occurred in his sixth 
 
 year, he says, " The boy who was forced to put 
 up with frequent recitals of the whole matter, was not a 
 little staggered. God, the creator and preserver of heaven 
 and earth, whom the explanation of the first article of the 
 creed declared so wise and benignant, having given both 
 the just and the unjust a prey to the same destruction, 
 had not manifested himself, by any means, in a fatherly 
 character. In vain the young mind strove to resist these 
 impressions." l This sceptical bent, he adds, was strength- 
 ened by the ravages of a hail-storm at Frankfort the year 
 after. He had a boy's enthusiasm for Frederick the 
 Great, which his friends, wickedly, as he thought, did not 
 share. "In this way," \\e says, "I was thrown back upon 
 myself; and as, in my sixth year, after the earthquake at 
 Lisbon, the goodness of God had become to me in some 
 measure suspicious, so I began now, on account of Fred- 
 erick the Second, to doubt the justice of the world." 2 It 
 would seem that, with his faith in God, his reverence also 
 declined. For he says, referring to a later period in his 
 life, "I had believed, from my youth upwards, that I stood 
 on very good terms with" my God ; nay, I even fancied io 
 myself, according to various experiences, that he might 
 even be in arrears to me ; and I was daring -enough to 
 think that I had something t9 forgive him. The presump- 
 tion was founded on my infinite good-will, to which, as 'it 
 seemed to me, he should have given better assistance." 3 
 These admissions are certainly enough to show that 
 
 1 Autobiography (Bolm's edition), Vol. I., p. 19. 
 
 2 Ibid., Vol. I., p. 33. 3 Ibid., p. 291. 
 
PANTHEISM. 189 
 
 Goethe's faith in the positive teachings of Christianity had 
 been undermined, and to bear out De Quincey's charge, 
 that he "so corrupted and clouded his mind, as not to 
 look up to God with the interest of reverence and awe, 
 but merely with the interest of curiosity." 
 
 Passing, now, from the negative to the positive side of 
 Goethe's creed, we come at once upon the essence of Spi- 
 nozism. This is his dogmatic position, whatever he may 
 have rejected as a sceptic. Mr. Lewes, one of his most 
 ardent admirers, says, " In his conception of the universe 
 
 he could not separate God from it. Such a con- 
 Proofs that 
 ception revolted him. He animated the uni- he was a 
 
 pantheist. 
 
 verse with God ; he animated fact with divine 
 life ; he saw in reality the incarnation of the ideal ; he 
 saw in morality the high and harmonious action of all 
 human tendencies ; he saw in art the highest representa- 
 tion of life." 1 But we are not forced to take the testi- 
 mony of another, in learning the speculative views of 
 Goethe. He himself has borne witness. At the age of 
 twenty-one, through the works of Bayle, he became ac- 
 quainted with the theories of Giordano Bruno, the pan- 
 theist of the sixteenth century. For this author he con- 
 ceived a warm sympathy, notwithstanding Bayle's crit- 
 icisms. And in his note-book, containing comments on 
 what he read, is the following: "To discuss, God apart 
 from nature is both difficult and perilous; it is as if we 
 separated the soul from the body. "We know the soul 
 onjy through the medium of the body, arid God only 
 through nature. Hence the absurdity, as it seems to me, 
 of accusing those of absurdity who philosophically have 
 
 i Life and Works of Goethe (Boston, 1850), Vol. I., p. 74. 
 
190 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TKUTH. 
 
 united God with the world. For everything which exists 
 necessarily pertains to the essence of God, because God is 
 the one Being whose essence includes all things. Nor 
 does the Holy Scripture contradict this, although we dif- 
 ferently interpret its dogmas, each one according to his 
 own views. All antiquity thought in the same way; an 
 unanimity w r hich to me has great significance. To me 
 the judgment of so many men speaks highly for the ra- 
 tionality of the doctrine of emanation ; though I am of 
 no sect, and grieve much that Spinoza should have coupled 
 this pure doctrine with his detestable errors." l This 
 judgment of Spinoza Goethe afterwards reversed, upon 
 further acquaintance, as we shall see. In saying that the 
 Scriptures are not opposed to pantheism, he simply agrees 
 with other readers who have made their wish father to 
 their thought. And in the same way he mistakes the 
 monotheism of antiquity, expressed in the mystical lan- 
 guage of the East, for downright pantheism. But what 
 the quotation brings clearly out is, that Goethe was essen- 
 tially a pantheist at this period of his life. 
 
 The faith thus early adopted was not a mere enthusiasm 
 to be given up with youth. It marked the manhood and 
 old age of our author as well. His views were constantly 
 crystallizing more and more into this form. In his twenty- 
 sixth year he procured the works of Spinoza and studied 
 them for himself. About the same time he also made the 
 acquaintance of Jacobi, who, like himself was 
 jlcob S i. With revolving, though never more than half believ- 
 ing, the doctrines of the great master. Here is 
 his record of what he then thought, given in the account 
 
 i Life and Works of Goethe, Vol. I., p. 103. 
 
PANTHEISM. 191 
 
 of his conversations with Jacobi. " Happily, I had already 
 prepared if not fully cultivated myself on this side, having 
 in some degree appropriated the thoughts and mind of an 
 extraordinary man ; and though my study of him .had been 
 incomplete and hasty, I was yet already conscious of im- 
 portant influences derived from this source. This mind, 
 which had worked upon me thus decisively, and which was 
 destined to affect so deeply my whole mode of thinking, 
 was SPINOZA. After looking through the world in vain 
 to find a means of development for my strange nature, I 
 at last fell upon the Ethics of this philosopher. Of what 
 I read out of the work, and of what I read into it, I can 
 give no account. Enough that I found in it a sedative for 
 my passions, and that a free, wide' view over the sensible 
 and moral world, seemed to open before me." 1 He de- 
 clares himself especially pleased with Spinoza's definition 
 of love to God, and of all love, making it a sentiment 
 which is to.be regarded as a kind of personal luxury, and 
 to be cherished by the person exercising it for his own 
 sake, with no reference to any effect it may produce out- 
 wardly. " If I love thee, what is that to thee ? " came thus 
 to be one of Goethe's favorite sayings. But the underlying 
 principle, though looking very much like disinterestedness 
 in one view of it, would excuse hatred, or any other evil 
 passion, making it nothing to any but ourselves if we 
 choose to entertain the most malicious feelings. It is in 
 this same connection, still referring to Jacobi, that he says, 
 " I could not comprehend what he communicated to m'e 
 of his state of mind ; so much the less indeed, because I 
 could form no idea as to my own. Still, as he was far in 
 
 1 Autobiography, Vol. II., p. 26. 
 
192 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TBUTH. 
 
 advance of me in philosophical thought, and even in the 
 study of Spinoza, he endeavored to guide and enlighten 
 my obscure efforts." 1 
 
 They are the less intelligent of the friends of Goethe 
 who deny that there is pantheism in his writings ; who 
 accuse us of reading it into, rather than in his pages. He 
 
 disdains all such apology, and is at war with 
 bTknowu tnose wno make it for him, as shown by the 
 nozi?t pi words just quoted. They may affirm that his 
 
 works should be read without suspicion ; but he, 
 in a calm review of his life, declares that Spinoza " affected 
 deeply his whole mode of think jng." As surely as the 
 same fountain cannot send forth sweet waters and bitter, 
 so surely all that Goethe wrote could be, in its religious 
 aspects, only pantheistic. Herder says of him, alluding to 
 a later period in his life, " The only Latin author ever seen 
 in his hand was Spinoza." He often confessed, while 
 arguing with friends, that he thought it better to know 
 God with Spinoza, than to believe in him with Jacobi. 
 Gall's phrenology pleased him, " because it connected man 
 with nature more intimately than was done in the old 
 schools, showing the identity of all mental manifestation 
 in the animal kingdom." "I believe in God, is a bountiful 
 and praiseworthy phrase," he said; "but to recognize 
 God in all his manifestations, that is true holiness on 
 earth." 2 He fatted to" see anything "eTceptionaf "orTupeT- 
 natural in Christ ; his greatness did not stand alone, but 
 was merely of " as divine a kind as was ever seen on earth. 
 If I am asked whether it is in my nature to pay him devout 
 reverence, I say certainly. I bow before him as the 
 
 1 Autobiography, Vol. II., p. 27. 2 Life and Works, Vol. II., p. 397. 
 
PANTHEISM. 193 
 
 divine manifestation of the highest morality. 
 If I am asked whether it is in my nature to JJ ^XSJI? 8 
 reverence the sun, I again say certainly. For 
 he is likewise a manifestation of the highest Being. I 
 adore in him the light and the productive power of God, 
 by which we live, and move, and have our being." 1 Mr. 
 Lewes says, "Goethe's theosophy was that of Spinoza, 
 modified by his own poetical tendencies ; it was not a 
 geometrical, but a poetical pantheism. In it the whole 
 universe was conceived as divine ; not as a lifeless mass, 
 but as the living manifestation of Divine Energy ever 
 flowing forth into activity." 2 In the eighty-first year of his 
 life, while completing the second part of his Faust, Goethe 
 said, " What is all intercourse with nature if we merely 
 occupy ourselves with, individual material parts, and do 
 not feel the breath of the spirit which prescribes to every 
 part its direction, and orders or sanctions every deviation 
 by means of an inherent law ? " Not only does he deify 
 nature, but makes man a part of it, as in the following 
 words- : " I had come to look upon my indwelling poetic 
 talent altogether as nature. The exercise of this poetic 
 gift could indeed be excited and determined by circum- 
 stances, but its most joyful, its richest action was spon- 
 taneous, nay, even involuntary." 3 Here, then, we have 
 the pantheistic spontaneity ; that fatalism of Spinoza which 
 makes necessity essential to liberty. He found 
 in himself a creative power, acting automatically, JJjJ nece 
 in the free play of which he sought to escape 
 from all tumults. 4 This is the power which he described 
 
 i Life and Works, Vol. IT., pp. 397,398. 2 Ibid., r 
 
 8 Autobiography, Vol. II., p. 66. 
 
 13 
 
194 HALF TEUTHS AND 'THE TRUTH. 
 
 in his Prometheus, a poem which both Lessing and Jacobi 
 pronounced thoroughly pantheistic. The play of Egmont 
 assumes all along the presence of a divine force working 
 through human action in obedience to its own fatal ten- 
 dencies. " Man imagines that he directs his life, that he 
 governs his actions, when in fact his existence is irresistibly 
 controlled by his destiny." One of the most admired pas- 
 sages in the whole play is the following, in which the 
 doctrine of a free necessity is taught : " I see before me 
 spirits, who, still and thoughtful, weigh in ebon scales the 
 doom of princes and of many thousands. Slowly the beam 
 moves up and down ; deeply the judges appear to ponder; 
 at length one scale sinks, the other rises, breathed on by 
 the caprice of destiny, and all is decided." Goethe would 
 carry this doctrine of a fate, working unhindered in and 
 through man, so far as to make men irresponsible for their 
 religious beliefs. " In faith everything depends on the fact 
 of believing; what is believed is perfectly indifferent. 
 Faith is a profound sense of security for the present and 
 future ; and this assurance springs from confidence in an 
 immense, all-powerful, and inscrutable being. The firm- 
 ness of this confidence is the one grand point ; but what 
 we think of this being depends on our other faculties, on 
 even our circumstances, and is wholly indifferent." l 
 
 We should hardly expect a writer, whose chosen sphere 
 is poetry and fiction, to make his theoretical views very 
 prominent. We must look for them, rather, in the general 
 tone of his works, and in the spirit actuating his favorite 
 characters. Goethe held that it is the business of litera- 
 ture not to teach or mould men, but to paint the life of 
 
 i Autobiography, Vol. II., p. 15. 
 
PANTHEISM. 195 
 
 nature and society. Claiming to be only an artist in all 
 his writings, he was careful not to give them a dogmatic 
 or controversial air. Nevertheless, the under-current of 
 theory is traceable almost everywhere ; nor is 
 he able always- to keep back decisive utter- Tone of his 
 
 writings. 
 
 ances of his views. We have just noticed some 
 of these; and still others remain, for one or two of which 
 room shall be made. In his Wilhelm Meister the follow- 
 ing words are put into the mouth of Theresa, one of the 
 least faulty characters in the work : " I cannot understand 
 how any one can believe that God speaks to us through 
 books and histories. If the universe does not immediately 
 explain our connection with him, if our own heart does 
 not explain our obligation to ourselves find others, we can 
 scarcely expect to derive that knowledge from books, 
 which seldom do more than give names to ourerrois." 1 
 'Even in the noble poem of Faust, that grandest creation 
 of Goethe's genius, he does not keep his pantheistic creed 
 out of sight. Margaret fears that the man she so tenderly 
 loves is not a Christian. He evades her questions, and 
 strives to quiet her mind by uttering this rhapsody : 
 
 " Tiie All-embracer 
 All-sustainer, 
 
 Doth he not embrace, sustain 
 Thee, me, himself? 
 Lifts not the heaven its dome above ? 
 Doth not the firm-set earth beneath us lie? 
 And beaming tenderly with looks of love, 
 Climb not the everlasting stars on high ? 
 Are we not gazing in each other's eyes ? 
 
 Wilhelm Meister (Bohn's edition), p. 430. 
 
196 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Nature's impenetrable agencies, 
 
 Are they not thronging on thy heart and brain, 
 
 Viewless, or visible to mortal ken, 
 
 Around thee weaving their mysterious reign? 
 
 Fill thence thy heart, how large soe'er it be, 
 
 And in the feeling when thou'rt wholly blest, 
 
 Then call it what thou wilt, Bliss ! Heart ! Love ! God ! 
 
 I have no name for it 'tis feeling all. 
 
 Name is but sound and smoke 
 
 Shrouding the glow of heaven." 
 
 This confession of faith, put into the inouth of Faust, 
 fails to satisfy Margaret. It strengthens the suspicion 
 that her lover is "not a Christian, though it makes ample 
 room for the religion she professes, and for all the sad in- 
 discretion into which she has been tempted. He, and she, 
 and the religious faith of each, and the wild love which 
 has drawn them together, are alike but forthputtings of , 
 the divine essence of all things, every motion of which is 
 sacred, and to obey which is our true worship for the time 
 being, though external standards of right should condemn 
 the act, and only feelings of bitter remorse result from it. 
 No critic has been'bold enough to claim that he fully un- 
 derstands this poem. Yet the clew to it, if I mistake not, 
 is Goethe's own experience. As in nearly all his works, 
 so here, only more profoundly, he deals with those deep 
 heart-troubles which his own wild doings had occasioned, 
 and seeks repose in that pantheistic scheme which makes 
 all human conduct both fatal and divine. In all his writ- 
 ings, as in those now quoted, Goethe claims that he is 
 purely an artist. But he holds that it is the province of 
 art to represent life. Yet life means the free play of all 
 the forces of nature, of which every passion or instinct of 
 
PANTHEISM. 197 
 
 man is a part, and the artist must first experience what- 
 soever he would -represent. Nothing in our humanity is 
 evil, but it is altogether sacred and divine. True holiness 
 forbids us to repress any longing, and consists in acting 
 out to their utmost all our impulses and desires. " The 
 result of all my thoughts and endeavors was the old reso- 
 lution to investigate inner and outer nature, and to allow 
 her to rule herself in loving imitation. I sought to free 
 myself internally from all that was foreign to me, to re- 
 gard the external with love, and to allow all beings, from 
 man downwards, as low as they were comprehensible, to 
 act upon me, each after its own kind." l 
 
 Now, the impression which this pantheistic view of life 
 and the function of the writer makes on us, must depend 
 almost altogether upon the nature of the subjects which 
 happen to be treated. The compass of the instrument is 
 without limit; and the tones it gives forth will excite 
 joy or pain, at the pleasure of the performer. 
 Goethe's theo'T enables him to charm that which The two 
 
 J Goethes. 
 
 is highest, and gratify that which is lowest, in 
 human nature. He stands within a pantheon where our 
 noblest and basest passions may all be gathered. If we 
 complain that he throws a halo of divinity about vice and 
 crime, we must also own that he paints virtue in some of 
 its sublimer forms. He makes no difference in kind be- 
 tween the good and the bad, but honors them both alike 
 in their turn. There are two Goethes, and while listen- 
 ing to one we almost doubt the existence of the other. 
 We see nothing to offend our moral sense, for instance, 
 
 i Autobiography, Vol. I., pp. 469,470. 
 
198 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 while we look at him in his scientific studies, 
 dent of Here the subject is one which hardly admits 
 
 of moral distinctions. The pantheist may deal 
 with natural phenomena as justly as the Christian, though 
 indulging a worship of nature which Christianity forbids. 
 Goethe might have been a great naturalist, had he not 
 chosen to be a poet. As it is, his name will never cense 
 to be mentioned with honor by the friends of science. 
 He was an observer, rather than an interrogator of na- 
 ture ; and like the idealist 'that he was, his conclusions 
 were generally the starting-points in researches : yet he 
 established facts, and threw out hints, which h'ave led 
 on to some of the most marvellous results in scientific 
 
 thinking. The history of comparative anatomy 
 
 cannot be written without reference to Him. 
 His discovery of the intermaxillary bone in man over- 
 turned a false theory in science which had prevailed for 
 centuries ; it went far to establish the truth, so fruitful in 
 the hands of his successors, that the osseous structures of 
 all living animals are built up after a single pattern. He 
 it was, too, who first called attention to the fact that the 
 skull, in man and all animals, is simply a terminal verte- 
 bra in the spinal column, more or less expanded. Scien- 
 tific men hailed this discovery, as they did the other,, with 
 delight ; and from it sprang the doctrine, now established, 
 that all the bone any animal has is back-bone, either 
 
 the main column or one or more of its offshoots. 
 
 In botany. 
 
 In botany, also, Goethe's work on the Metamor- 
 phoses of Plants may be said to have suggested, if it did 
 not originate, what is now the distinctive doctrine and 
 boasted glory of modern science. He showed, more or 
 
PANTHEISM. 199 
 
 less successfully, that all plants conform to a single type 
 in their structure ; that in their development, from stage 
 to stage, they only repeat the universal type, embody- 
 ing it now imperfectly, and now in forms which approach 
 perfection. This type he declared to be the leaf; and he 
 proved, by a valid process, that even fruits and flowers are 
 but modified leaves. Since, however, many plants lack 
 what may be properly termed a leaf, some more general 
 type was sought. The result was the discovery of the 
 cell, which is common to animals and plants, thus laying 
 the basis of absolute unity in nature. To other men, ad- 
 vocates of the so-called development theory, belongs the 
 credit of working out this discovery to its wonderful re- 
 sults. Yet they all name Goethe as the master who 
 gave them the right clew to nature, and an iuipulse which 
 still carries them forward. In optics Goethe was not so 
 successful. We have seen that he did not belong to the 
 schpol of inductive philosophy. The unity of nature was 
 with him a transcendental truth. Possibly this was the 
 secret of his opposition to the Newtonian doc- 
 trine that light is a compound substance. Look- - 
 ing for unity in all things, he assumed that light must be 
 a simple .substance; and he prpclaimed this theory, un- 
 fortunately, when he had happened to observe a single 
 fact which seemed to him to confirm it. The theory was 
 a mistake. That doctrine of nature which had led him 
 aright in the other cases, here betrayed him into error. 
 Yet he fought for his theory as long as he lived. Neither 
 argument nor ridicule could move him. He experimented, 
 and argued, and wrote, with a constantly growing zeal. 
 He contended that his doctrine of light outweighed in 
 
200 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 value all the other achievements of his life. The fact that 
 certain a-priori thinkers, Hegel among them, inclined to 
 believe his theory, enabled him to bear the derision of 
 scientific men far and near. 
 
 In one class of his purely literary works, too, 
 wiSch 8 he Goethe's pantheism does not greatly shock our 
 advantage, moral convictions. I allude to those which are 
 on classic subjects, simply reviving the spirit 
 of antiquity, or which deal chiefly with the nobler tenden- 
 cies of human nature. In all his works, even those which 
 deify wickedness, we may choose out passages admirable 
 for their moral tone ; but this lofty spirit is characteristic 
 of some, as it is not of others. His shorter 
 poems. 1 * poems, if we sift out a class, give charming 
 utterance to almost everything bright or good in 
 human life. He has written lyrics which might serve as 
 vehicles of the purest emotion. In their simplicity and 
 truth to nature, they are equal to the finest models of the 
 ancients. His Iphigenia in Tauris, also, is worthy of his 
 great powers. He transports himself into the serene air 
 of antiquity, lives amid its scenes, breathes its loftiest 
 spirit. Sophocles himself could not speak more 
 in Tauris 11 nobly of the pure but fated daughter of Agamem- 
 non. The guile of the ancient Greek is allowed 
 to come out, in her dealing with the Taurian king ; and 
 here Goethe shows more sympathy with her fault than we 
 could wish. But in everything essential to womanhood, as 
 judged by the standard of those days, in filial devotion, 
 patriotism, maidenly innocence, and the sacrificial spirit, 
 he makes her fill out the highest ideal. Nor 
 
 Egmont. 
 
 can it be denied that there are passages in the 
 
PANTHEISM. 201 
 
 play of Egmont which are not only worthy even of a 
 Shakespeare's genius, but in which the sharpest morality 
 can see little to condemn. It is true that he violently dis- 
 torts history, and shows a fiercely democratic scorn for 
 social distinctions ; yet we almost forget 'this, together 
 with the doctrine of fatalism running through the play, 
 while we read the address to sleep, put into the mouth of 
 the imprisoned Egmont ; and as Clara, who had hoped to 
 be his bride, says to the cowering N.etherlanders, " I have 
 neither arms, nor the strength of a man ; but I have that 
 which ye all lack courage and contempt of danger. 
 O that my breath could kindle your souls ! That, press- 
 ing you to this bosom, I could arouse and animate you! 
 Come, I will march in your midst. As a waving banner, 
 though weaponless, leads on a gallant army of warriors, so 
 shall my spirit hover, like a flame, over your ranks, while 
 love and courage shall unite the dispersed and wavering 
 multitude into a terrible host." One other specimen of 
 this better class of Goethe's writings I must not fail to 
 name the beautiful poem of Hermann and 
 
 Hermann 
 
 Dorothea. Nothing sweeter can be found in mui Doro- 
 thea, 
 the whole range of idyllic or epic poetry. The 
 
 description of the train of exiles, of the meeting of the 
 lovers, of the old landlord and his wife, of the village pas- 
 tor and doctor, of the garden, the vineyard, the encamp- 
 ment, the harnessing of the horses, the finding of Dorothea, 
 her meeting with Hermann at the well, their walk home- 
 ward in the evening, and the betrothal, cannot be surpassed 
 for vivid and charming naturalness. Yet the whole story 
 covers but a single day, too short a time, we feel, for an 
 entirely new love thus to ripen ; and the noble Dorothea 
 
202 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 seems to forget too easily her former lover, but lately slain 
 in battle, whose golden pledge she still wears on her 
 finger. 
 
 From this class of works, in which the law of 
 
 Wherein his . 
 
 theory spontaneity yields so little to onend us, we turn 
 
 to another. Here the influence of pantheism, 
 glorifying whatever it touches, fails to satisfy our moral 
 convictions. The spontaneity which charmed us where all 
 the tendencies were right, begins to repel* us where they 
 are wrong. We hold that man has a lower nature, which 
 is to be repressed, as well as a higher nature, which may 
 act itself out freely. It is the consistency of Goethe, as a 
 pantheist, that offends us. He dares to be true to his 
 theory, to show how it deifies the bad no less than the 
 good. His Faust has been mentioned. Could 
 
 Faust, 
 
 anything show more clearly what bitter fruit 
 pantheism may be made to yield, than that wonderful 
 poem? The longing of man to gratify even his lowest 
 passions is sacred, and cannot be resisted ; yet the gratifi- 
 cation is all the time plunging him into deeper wretched- 
 ness. The only escape from this miserable fate which 
 Goethe can suggest, is " renunciation," not the surrender 
 of one's self to the holy and divine law of Christ, but to 
 this same foredoomed and tormenting activity. 
 
 How indiscriminate pantheism is in dealing with right 
 
 and wrong, may be seen in our author's first 
 
 Goetz von ... _. _ . . . 
 
 Beriich- tamous production, Goetz von iDerliclnni^en. 
 
 ingen. 
 
 Here the law of spontaneity is seen at work in 
 political relations. The personality of the hero, and not 
 public justice, is made the basis of action. He finds the 
 state in his own impulses, and he dares to obey this inward 
 
PANTHEISM. 203 
 
 authority, regardless of external standards. Goetz is the 
 ideal of a predatory baron of mediaeval times. He dwells 
 in his own castle, surrounded by his retainers, in German 
 wilds. To the Emperor Maximilian he swears allegiance ; 
 yet no one but himself is to say what that allegiance 
 requires of him. He often shows it by trampling on the 
 imperial commands. With his fellow-barons he is per- 
 petually at war. Goethe paints him as a champion of the 
 weak ; but in defending some he wantonly wrongs others, 
 as the following case will show : A poor tailor owes two 
 hundred florins, which he is unable to pay. He applies to 
 Goetz for help. The sympathies of the baron are touched, 
 and, lacking the money himself, he waylays and robs a 
 couple of merchants, and out of the booty the tailor's 
 wants are supplied. Thus is an impulse of generosity 
 made to outweigh justice. The deed goes with the flighty 
 purpose, for the law of duty is within. Not established 
 principles, but that subjective law is the guide, and it may 
 modify outward standards, or trample on them, as to itself 
 seems good. Many natural traits in Goetz are noble. He 
 values his reputation- for honor among those who are of 
 his own class. His word once given is sacred. He hesi- 
 tates to break his parole even with a treacherous "foe, and 
 at the risk of his life. Viewed in the light of his own 
 personality, and of his generosity to those whom he be- 
 friends, his conduct is admirable ; but as judged by con- 
 science, in view of the rights of society, only the verdict of 
 strong disapproval can be given. The theory 
 of morals which Goethe thus favors is ably o^monas!" 7 
 refuted by Muller, where he says, "An action 
 which contradicts the moral law is not justified by the mere 
 
204 HALF TBUTHS AND THE TRUTII. 
 
 fact that, by an anomaly within an anomaly, it happens 
 to proceed not from selfish but from good motives in some 
 one particular case. Man is to regard the objective con- 
 nection of a mode of action contrary to the law with the 
 principle of selfishness as an unconditional veto against 
 that action, even though he may imagine that he has in 
 some special case the most excellent motives prompting 
 him thereto. Indeed, in the very self-assertion of his own 
 subjectivity, as the determining and deciding power in the 
 face of the plain dictates of the moral law, there is an 
 arrogance side by side with noble-mindedness, enthusiasm, 
 and what not, whose real source is selfishness." 1 It is 
 with reference to Goethe's doctrine that Miiller thus 
 argues ; of whom he says, in another place, " There is cer- 
 tainly a tendency, in Goethe's view of the world, to regard 
 power and activity as the essence of morality." Much 
 might be quoted, besides what appears in Goetz, to sustain 
 this charge. The following lines are a specimen, in which 
 complaint is made that men obey external rules to the 
 neglect of the impulses of their own natures : 
 
 " Laws are a fatal heritage, 
 
 Like a disease, an heir-loom dread ; 
 Their curse they trail from age to age, 
 
 And furtively abroad they spread. 
 Reason doth nonsense, good doth evil grow ; 
 That thou'rt a grandson is thy woe. 
 But of the law on man impressed 
 By nature's hand, there's ne'er a thought." 
 
 We need not wonder that Goetz was read and admired 
 
 i Christian Doctrine of Sin, Book I., Pt. I., Chap. III. 
 
PANTHEISM. 205 
 
 by all Germany. Besides graphic pictures of 
 the wild life described, it fell in with the pre- ^ 8 PP ular - 
 vailing temper of the times. Goethe is sur- 
 passed by no writer for skill in giving such food as 
 the public taste may chance to demand. He was fully 
 aware of this gift, and in his Autobiography tells us, at 
 considerable length, what pains he took to cultivate it. 
 He watched the currents of popular feeling ; he was care- 
 ful to launch each new literary venture on a favoring tide. 
 Goetz was written for the wild, revolutionary spirit which 
 he saw surging about him. It gave the masses of his 
 countrymen, ground under foreign oppressors, just the 
 voice of proud defiance which they wanted. It pleased 
 their national vanity, and made them feel how right it is 
 to disobey tyrants. Goethe held that it is the function of 
 literature to paint life; and in his first venture he had 
 succeeded so well, that a whole people read in his words 
 the story of its greatness, its wrongs, its too long smoth- 
 ered wrath, its flaming thirst for vengeance. 
 
 The evil of pantheism, in making man altogether divine, 
 and putting him under the dominion of fate, comes more 
 clearly out in the Sorrows of Werther, Goethe's 
 second great literary venture. Here it is not ?vefther f 
 superiority to civil law, but the right to dispose 
 of his own life, which the individual is made to claim. 
 The theory that all human impulses are sacred, and a law 
 to themselves, is fearlessly carried out. Even the suicidal 
 tendency is allowed free course. Werther was read, on 
 its first appearance, with unbounded enthusiasm. It paints 
 that experience which almost all persons undergo in pass- 
 ing from childhood to manhood or womanhood. It enters 
 
206 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 fully into this sentimental period, and describes, in most 
 sympathetic words, the vague unrest, the longings, the 
 disgusts, from which so many youth suffer. Hence its 
 amazing popularity. Every lovesick suitor, unrecognized 
 genius, discarded sweetheart, and hopeless aspirant for 
 social position or public honor, read it as the utterance of 
 a personal sorrow. If it had been a satire, ridiculing their 
 moodiness, it might have saved them. But they found in 
 it no such purpose. It not only voiced forth their heart- 
 weariness to this large class of readers, but pictured their 
 unrest as something divine and sacred. They were driven 
 on by a fate to which ready obedience is always noble. 
 They could say, " The coursers of time, lashed, as it were, 
 by invisible spirits, hurry on the light car of our destiny, 
 and all that we can do is, in cool self-possession, to hold 
 the reins with a firm "hand, and to guide the wheels, now 
 to the right, now to the left, avoiding a stone here or a 
 precipice there. Whither it is hurrying who can tell? 
 And who, indeed, can remember the point from which it 
 started ? " l Their weariness of life is not portrayed as a 
 weakness ; they are not instructed to rise above it. On 
 the contrary, it is made a part of that which constitutes 
 their true nobility. It is the play of the divine life in 
 their human consciousness. " The resolution to preserve 
 my inward nature intact," says Goethe, "according to its 
 peculiarities, and to let external nature influence me 
 according to its qualities, impelled me to the strange ele- 
 ment in which Werther is written." 2 
 
 It is not necessary to claim, here, that Goethe meant 
 especially to justify the practice of suicide, in writing this 
 
 1 JEgmont. 2 Autobiography, Vol. I., p. 470. 
 
PANTHEISM. 207 
 
 work. We may admit what he says in his Auto- 
 biography, that Werther "neither approves nor ence^" 
 censures, but develops sentiments and actions 
 in their consequences." l Undoubtedly he was not con- 
 scious of any didactic aim. Perhaps he did not even see 
 that Werther grew logically out of his philosophical 
 views. Yet that it is a work which pantheism legiti- 
 mates no one can deny ; nor can the influence of it, on a 
 person of morbid or suicidal temper, be at all doubtful. 
 Goethe himself says of it, "My friends were led astray by 
 my work; for they thought that poetry ought to be 
 turned into reality ; that such a moral was to be imitated, 
 and that, at any rate, one ought to shoot himself. What 
 had first happened here among a few afterwards took 
 place among the larger public." 2 A great many cases of 
 self-murder came to Goethe's notice, in which the victims 
 attributed their rash act to the influence of Werther. He 
 was overwhelmed with letters from persons meditating 
 suicide, and he made journeys into various parts of the 
 country to dissuade poor sufferers from such a step. Yet 
 his interest in these unfortunates was mainly artistic. For 
 the most part, he studied their disease, not to cure it, but 
 for the sake of that culture which he sought in every 
 phase of human experience. " I think it is as absurd to 
 say that a man who destroys himself is a coward, as 
 to call a man a coward who dies of a malignant fever," 
 are words which he puts into the mouth of Werther. 
 The morbid yearning for death is inevitable ; it works like 
 a fever in the veins. The great spirit of nature, revealed 
 in the consciousness of the victim, impels him forward till 
 the deadly shot is fired. 
 
 * Autobiography, Vol. I., p. 513. Ibid., Vol. I., pp. 511, 512. 
 
208 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Goethe confesses that Werther is mainly himself. The 
 work describes a morbid experience which he went 
 through, and which came near proving fatal. He became 
 
 ardently attached to a young woman, and was 
 the lf work made wretched by learning that she had been 
 
 already betrothed to one of his friends. Her 
 womanly firmness, in refusing his attentions, drove him to 
 despair. He even contemplated suicide. " Among a con- 
 siderable collection of weapons," says he, " I possessed a 
 handsome, well-polished dagger. This I laid every night 
 by my bed, and before I extinguished the candle, I tried 
 whether I could succeed in plunging the sharp point a 
 couple of inches into my heart." l But while he was in 
 this state, it happened that another young man, of his 
 circle, did commit suicide under a disappointment precisely 
 like his own. This gave Goethe his chance. He began 
 to laugh at his own melancholy, which he saw reflected in 
 the act of his friend. It is greatly to be regretted that he 
 did not imitate Cervantes, and conceive his Werther in 
 the ludicrous vein of Don Quixote ; for then he might 
 have saved others, while cleansing his own bosom of its 
 perilous stuff. But he chose rather to turn his friend's 
 fate into sympathetic narrative and glowing eulogy. The 
 young man thus suddenly cut off by his own hand was 
 widely known and admired. His death, in the circum- 
 stances, caused a deep sensation. There was a romance 
 in his fate which every one wished to know. Goethe, 
 seeing this double opportunity, resolved at once to cure 
 himself by turning the whole affair into a story. Hence 
 the book, and the eagerness of people to read it. He 
 
 i Autobiography, Vol. I., pp. 508, 509. 
 
PANTHEISM. 209 
 
 ^ 
 
 says, speaking of himself and his readers, " Tortured by 
 unsatisfied passions, by no means excited from without to 
 important actions, with the sole prospect that we must 
 adhere to a dull, spiritless citizen-life, we became in 
 gloomy wantonness attached to the thought, that we 
 could at all events quit life at pleasure. This feeling was 
 so general, that Werther produced its great effect pre- 
 cisely because it struck a chord everywhere." 1 He saw 
 the train laid for him, that is; and, quick as he ever was 
 to see the popular craving, he applied his lighted match. 
 The blaze was prodigious, so long as the material which 
 fed it lasted. The glow of composition, and public ap- 
 plause, wrought a cure in his own case. But in thus free- 
 ing himself he put a poisoned cup into other hands, the 
 deadly effects of which cannot be .now computed. 
 
 Goethe had made free use of the names of his best 
 friends in Werther. Greatly to their surprise, they found 
 a very undesirable notoriety thrust upon them. 
 
 Complaints 
 
 They received many letters 01 sympathy on of his 
 account of this usage, and were obliged to avoid 
 the curious gaze of the public. A deep stain rested on 
 Goethe's honor, and he was made aware of their honest 
 displeasure. Strange to say, he neither denied the charge 
 nor felt sorry for it. It seemed to him to be no occasion 
 for a breach of friendship. All had been done in the 
 interest of art, for which every one should be glad to 
 suffer. His friends should regard themselves as a sacrifice 
 on that high altar to which he also was devoted. Thus 
 had they helped him in his wonderful achievement ; and 
 they were wanting in artistic spirit if now disposed to 
 
 i Autobiography, Vol. I., p. 507. 
 
 14 
 
210 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 * 
 
 complain. The apology did not suffice. Even if honestly 
 meant, which seems hardly possible, it was taken as insult 
 added to injury. It is not much of a privilege to be dis- 
 sected alive, even though some new truth of physiology 
 should thereby be shown. It was one thing to the 
 painter, and quite another to his blooming wife, whom he 
 had just married, when he exclaimed, in the excess of his 
 rapture at her beauty, " Into paint will I grind thee, my 
 bride." 
 
 It is important to notice here one other of Goethe's 
 
 works, the Wilhelm Meister, which shows the 
 Seller! 1 working of the law of spontaneity in social and 
 
 domestic relations. If he made pantheism 
 break the bonds of civil order in Goetz, and of probation 
 itself in Werther, in Wilhelm Meister it dissolves all fam- 
 ily ties, and confuses our notions of intercourse between 
 man and man. Great as Goethe is, and admirable in the 
 handling of noble subjects, we cannot approve, but must 
 earnestly condemn, while we see him so applying his the- 
 ory as to place vice and virtue on the same pedestal, and 
 throw the garb of innocency around crime. His doctrine 
 of abandonment to art may have satisfied his own con- 
 science in this ; but even art has its limit, a thus far and 
 no farther, which it should sacredly heed. If it be true, 
 as Goethe has said, that the writer can describe only what 
 he has experienced, no one can envy him his preparation 
 for Wilhelm Meister. But he gave the word " experi- 
 ence " a broad sense, including that sympathy with nature, 
 and with other men, which we feel, and which, aided by 
 the imagination, enables us to share in all the life about 
 us. Whatever we may think of some of the events and 
 
PANTHEISM. 211 
 
 characters in the work, therefore, and though much of it 
 recalls what Goethe has told us of his own wild doings, 
 yet we need not infer that he really went through such a 
 life as he depicts to us. He experienced it artistically, for 
 the sake of the culture which was his aim. There is one 
 Book in Wilhelm Meister, entitled the Confessions of a 
 Fair Saint, which the most exacting may read with pleas- 
 ure. The subject of the story is a Moravian, in her 
 religious faith ; and Goethe, while tracing the 
 course of her outward and inward life, makes salntf* 1 
 most charming use of his knowledge of the 
 Moravians, some of whom were among his dearest friends. 
 Yet he eems to value their faith purely for artistic pur- 
 poses, and he accounts for it in. a wholly natural way, just 
 as for any other social phenomenon, whether pleasing or 
 repulsive. He intimates that the saint-like lady, whose 
 story he is telling, is not altogether of a sane mind ; tha't 
 he learned the facts in her history from a physician, who 
 had treated her for mental disease ; that she had been 
 unusually gay in early life ; from which she wa& turned, 
 by a bitter disappointment in love, to seek solace in 
 prayerful retirement. 1 And thus it turns out at last that 
 the piety of the Moravians is good only as a charming 
 story can be made out of it ; and that that story properly 
 finds a place in the same volume with those of mere 
 pleasure-seekers, since it was due to natural causes that 
 the subject of it came to be so much unlike them. There 
 is really the same defect in her as in those characters of 
 the work which most offend us : it is the want of a clear 
 ethical basis of conduct, which was not a fault in 
 
 i Wilhelm Meister (Bohn's edition), p. 326. Autobiography, Vol. I., p. 290. 
 
212 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Goethe's eye, as indeed it could not be, since his natural- 
 ism did not recognize it as possible. Morality is but a, 
 part of nature ; and what men call conscience, and right 
 and wrong in human conduct, are chiefly due to artificial 
 rules and a false education. 
 
 As Goethe's best characters are not ethically good, so 
 his worst characters are never artistically bad. Even 
 Philina is a creation that pleases us while we shut our 
 eyes to the moral law. She is modelled on the theory that 
 human beings are like the fowls of the air, and may live 
 the same free life as they. Her conduct has no re- 
 
 Philina. 
 
 gard to external rules or proprieties, but springs 
 wholly out of the unchastened impulses of her own heart. 
 She is playful, generous, entertaining, sympathetic, not 
 without genius, equal to any exigency ; yet she loves 
 just when and how she will, and acts out every impulse of 
 her nature, with no compunctions or regrets. She is a 
 creature without a conscience, and flies from one pleasure 
 to another, never shamed by her past follies, or having in 
 view any object but present enjoyment. The Decalogue 
 and Sermon on the Mount are no more a law to her, than 
 to the bobolink which sings in the meadow. Mignon, all 
 heart and soul, and whose poor little body so trembles in 
 
 the storm of her own feelings, wins us. Yet 
 
 Mignon. 
 
 she, too, seems wholly destitute of an ethical 
 nature. Her life is purely spontaneous, the evil in her 
 working as freely as the good ; and the story of her parent- 
 age makes that to be natural and inevitable, which our 
 marriage laws and our conscience brand as infamous. The 
 same may be said of nearly all the characters in Wilhelm 
 Meister, Mariana, Aurelia, Lothario, the Melinas, Serlo, 
 
PA.NTHEISM. 213 
 
 Friedrich, the Countess. They have noble traits, and 
 some of them have many ; yet no difference is 
 
 put between the noble and the base in them, other char- 
 acters. 
 
 That which offends our moral sense is allowed 
 the same freedom as that which we approve. The higher 
 nature is no more sacred than the lower, and works it- 
 self out no more spontaneously, irrespective of established 
 laws or maxims. The work on Elective Affinities is, phil- 
 osophically, a part of Wilhelm Meister ; and there the law 
 of spontaneity, freeing men from positive restraints, and 
 giving a loose rein to everything in their nature, 
 overwhelms the loving Ottilie with a fatal sor- ^ffinitXs. 
 row, destroys the domestic peace of Edward 
 and Charlotte, and turns the most delightful of friendships 
 into a ghastly tragedy. If men and women were angels, 
 it might do for them to hold that all their " affinities " are 
 divinely right, and should have free course. But con-, 
 scious as they are of tendencies which if indulged would 
 result in a moral and social chaos, they need another 
 j aW) the law which warns them to put down the inward 
 motions of sin, and look on the glory of Christ till changed 
 into the same image. The noblest character in Wilhelm 
 Meister, Natalia, has this fault she never regards vice 
 from the ethical point of view. And the same is true of 
 Theresa. They follow the higher tendencies in humanity, 
 yet seem to regard as equally innocent those who follow 
 the lower. Wilhelm himself, who has been one 
 of this latter class, Natalia receives as her hus- ^Yihefm and 
 band, and adopts his child as her own, though 
 aware of the wild life he has led, and which he is slow to 
 abandon. Nothing in her conduct shows that she is 
 
214 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 ruled by her moral nature. She is wholly aesthetic. Wil- 
 helm and his roving friends are not objects of blame to 
 her. They have followed their own bent, just as she has 
 followed hers. Their doings were different from hers, 
 owing to a difference in natural endowments and surround- 
 ings. Even the Abbe, Goethe's ideal of a clergyman, re- 
 gards the past life of Wilhelm as a wholesome schooling, 
 through which he was fated to pass. He has acted as he 
 felt impelled to, and is no more blameworthy than the 
 robins, who choose their mates, and pillage, and sing, in 
 the farmer's orchard. He has done nothing to sorrow 
 over with a godly sorrow. Joined to Natalia, whose 
 stronger nature will control him, the verdict of the Abbe 
 is, " You will never repent nor repeat your follies ; and this 
 is the happiest destiny which can be allotted to man." 
 
 From this notice of the works of Goethe I pass to the 
 
 man himself. Did his pantheistic spirit bear 
 
 theoretical the same fruit in his life as in his writings ? To 
 
 views in 
 
 his own ask the question is to answer it, for his writings 
 confessedly grew out of his life. He is Wcrther, 
 he is Faust, he is WUhelm Meister. No doubt it was his 
 wish to be read purely as an artist. But we cannot dis- 
 tinguish between him and his works, as w r e do between 
 Raphael and the Transfiguration or Last Supper. He 
 casts a roseate light upon sinful deeds. He makes a mode 
 of life which is shamefully wrong, look beautiful and in- 
 viting. He brings vice forward in such bewitching forms 
 as to tempt the susceptible reader. Multitudes have ac- 
 cepted his works, not as art, but as the true philosophy of 
 life. Such they were to himself. He held that his nature 
 
PANTHEISM. 215 
 
 was wholly divine; that each one of his impulses con- 
 tained its own law ; that no external rule could 
 
 His faults 
 
 judge him. This faith he dared to practise ; 
 and we need, for our own admonition, to see 
 some of the evils into which it led him. This is my reply 
 to those who say that the faults of Goethe should be 
 covered up and forgotten. A writer in one of the English 
 periodicals seems to me to speak justly, where he says, 
 " A certain school of philosophers has even become indig- 
 nant with anybody who searches into the moral character 
 of the illustrious dent], to see whether or not they con- 
 formed strictly to the Ten Commandments. Surely, they 
 hint, men of genius are not to be tested by the Ten Com- 
 mandments. No heresy, however, can be so mischievous 
 as that which teaches that there is, for different degrees of 
 genius, a different moral code. Moral distinctions are a 
 barrier erected by society between itself and danger, and 
 are assiduously cultivated by educators and legislators to 
 that end ; and this barrier is nowhere needed more than 
 in the case of great genius. Great intellectual or material 
 strength, unaccompanied by moral sensibility, is an enemy 
 to mankind's happiness, quite as much as a wild beast is 
 to the repose of an African village." J 
 
 In noticing the faults of Goethe, which his views of 
 life helped to develop, that which was noble and pleasing 
 in him should not be kept out of sight. He 
 had kind impulses; he gave liberally of his Noble traits, 
 means to the needy; he visited the wretched, 
 and sought to make them forget their trouble ; he aided 
 
 i Saturday lleview, 1868. 
 
216 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 poor students with his advice and money ; he counselled 
 young authors, gave them friendly criticism, recommended 
 them to publishers. Such was the culture which he be- 
 stowed on the better side of his nature. Thus did the' 
 more amiable tendencies in him blossom out and ripen, 
 under the law of spontaneous action. But his culture 
 was not limited to this sphere. It was as broad as his 
 whole humanity. It embraced other tendencies not so 
 admirable. He had, for instance, a natural dread of 
 hardship, and loved a quiet, peaceful life. This trait he 
 cherished ; and it was more sacred .to him than popular 
 rights, or the honor of his nation. He disliked to see the 
 Germans rising in arms for their liberty, since the peaceful 
 pursuit of culture would thereby be interrupted. He de- 
 clared that lie was unconscious of such a sentiment as 
 
 love of country. In trying to be a patriot, he 
 Jltdotism. should be a hypocrite. All governments are 
 
 only artificial devices; one was just as bad as 
 another, to him who made nature his rule; and all he 
 asked of any was, to leave him free to act as he pleased. 
 " When we have a place in the world where we can repose 
 with our property," said he, " a field to nourish us, and a 
 house to cover us, have we not there our fatherland? 
 and have not thousands upon thousands got this ? and do 
 they not live happy in their limited sphere ? Wherefore, 
 then, this vain striving for a sentiment we neither have 
 nor can have, a sentiment which only in certain nations, 
 and in certain periods, is the result of many concurrent 
 circumstances." These words were addressed to the peo- 
 ple of Germany, the object being to dissuade them from 
 making war on Napoleon, who was then moving to over- 
 
PANTHEISM. 217 
 
 throw their nation. The argument is, that nature had not 
 destined them for political dominion. Let them, therefore, 
 quietly enjoy what happened to be theirs, indifferent to 
 the civil power over them, which was no part of nature. 
 But where were human. liberty to-day, we may well ask, 
 if such a doctrine had swayed the hearts of all men? 
 Patriotic Germans have not yet forgiven Goethe for 
 accepting the flatteries of Napoleon, and favoring his 
 claims, even while the French army was laying their 
 country waste; and they have proved, by their achieve- 
 ments under William and Bismarck, securing to them an 
 empire, and placing France at their mercy, that they were 
 not vain in their aspirations, while the peace-loving poet 
 was utterly mistaken. Mr. Lewes, apologizing for Goethe 
 as he best can, says, " Without interest in political affairs, 
 profoundly convinced that all salvation could come only 
 through inward culture, and dreading disturbances mainly 
 because they rendered such culture impossible, he was 
 emphatically the ' child of peace,' and could at no period 
 of his life be brought to sympathize with great struggles." l 
 Every high sentiment in us agrees with the Christian 
 poet, when he says, 
 
 " Great truths are greatly won. Not found by chance, 
 
 Nor wafted on the breath of summer-dream, 
 But grasped in the dread struggle of the soul, 
 Hard buffeting the adverse wind and stream ; 
 
 " Wrung from the troubled spirit, in hard hours 
 
 Of weakness, solitude, perchance of pain, 
 They spring like harvest from the well-ploughed field, 
 And the soul feels it has not wept in vain." 
 
 i Life and Works of Goethe, Vol. II., p. 1C8. 
 
218 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 But Goethe's method of culture calls forth from us no 
 such response. The way which he prefers goes around 
 the Gethsemanes and Calvarys of life. Though a prince 
 of moral disorder, he loves repose, that soft and dreamy 
 peace which no outward trouble disturbs, while it allows 
 free play to each fond desire. 
 
 Shrinking, as he thus did, from all hardship and pain, 
 Goethe could not carry the law of spontaneity out thor- 
 oughly in his life. His own peace of mind 
 Snfsjstent* obliged nim to repress some of his impulses, 
 theory! 8 an ^ to regulate even those which he indulged. 
 He often held his natural sympathy in check ; 
 says, " I carefully avoided seeing Schiller, Herder, the 
 Duchess Amalia, in the coffin." The feeling of indigna- 
 
 
 
 tion which springs in every heart at the sight of wrong- 
 doing he sought to overcome. " He who hates vices hates 
 men," was one of his strange maxims. We are to love all 
 things just as they are, however bad. Nothing should 
 excite our hatred or pity, but only our joy. " He who 
 rightly knows that all things follow from the necessity of 
 the divine nature, and come to pass in conformity with 
 the eternal laws of nature, will never meet with anything 
 worthy of hatred or contempt ; neither will he commis- 
 erate any one." J Thus taught Spinoza, and Goethe aimed 
 to live out the precept. He made new friends, forsook 
 old friends, moved from place to place, both, gave and 
 broke the tenderest pledges, as his plans or present com- 
 fort seemed to require. "The most lovable heart," he 
 said, " is that which loves most readily ; and that which 
 e::?ily loves also easily forgets." At one time he was 
 
 i Spinoza's Ethics, Tart IV., Prop. I., Scholium. 
 
PANTHEISM. 219 
 
 attracted to the society of the Moravians ; but finding their 
 piety irksome to him, and their morals too strict for his 
 habits of life, he withdrew from them. 1 "It had become 
 a standing custom with me, whenever I read missionary 
 intelligence to Fraiilein von Klettenberg, which she was 
 very fond of hearing, to take the part of the pagans 
 against the missionaries, and praise their old condition as 
 preferable to their new one." He went through a special 
 course of training, that he might school himself to bear, 
 without pain, unpleasant sights' and sounds. He attended 
 surgical lectures, with the view, he says, of freeing him- 
 self " from all apprehension as to repulsive things. I have 
 actually succeeded so far that nothing of this kind could 
 ever put me out of my self-possession. But I sought to 
 steel myself, not only against these impressions of the 
 senses, but also against the infections of the imagination. 
 And in this also I went so far, that when a desire came 
 over me once more to feel the pleasing shudder of youth, 
 I could scarcely force it in any degree." 2 It will be seen, 
 therefore, that his repression of nature did not grow out 
 of a high moral purpose, but from the wish to avoid pain. 
 He did not always repress what was evil in him, but 
 often that which was good, and thus tried to give the evil 
 unhindered sway. It was not as a Christian, but as an 
 epicurean, that he sought to regulate the law of spontane- 
 ous action. He had not the courage to carry out, on all 
 sides, the doctrine which he puts into the mouth of Faust: 
 
 "The scope of all my powers henceforth be this, 
 To bare my breast to every pang, to know . 
 In my heart's core all human weal and woe, 
 
 i Autobiography, Vol. II., p. 33. 2 i^d., Vol. I., pp. 321, 322. 
 
220 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 To grasp in thought the lofty and the deep, 
 Men's various fortunes on my breast to heap, 
 To theirs dilate my individual mind, 
 And share at length the shipwreck of mankind." 
 
 It is greatly to be regretted that Goethe was 
 little incon- not even more inconsistent with his theory than 
 we have now seen. If he had put down some 
 of the impulses which he freely indulged, his life might 
 not have been, in some of its aspects, the sad picture 
 which it is. No respectable critic, however friendly to 
 him, has attempted to justify his domestic and social life. 
 Even Dr. Hedge, in his Prose Writers of Germany, says, 
 " Unquestionably he was no saint. His wildest admirers 
 have sought no place for him in the Christian calendar. 
 In reading Goethe we do not feel, as when reading Dante 
 or Milton, that we are conversing with a pure and lofty 
 spirit." His habit of trifling with maidenly but susceptible 
 hearts was formed in early youth, and he defended the 
 habit on purely subjective grounds, contending that the 
 usages of society were artificial, and had no right to inter- 
 fere with the action of nature. He refused all legal sanc- 
 tion to his marriage, except so far as might be necessary 
 for the entailment of his name and wealth. His view of 
 the position and rights of a wife are given where he says, 
 "A wife should manage her household properly, and not 
 censure every little fancy of her husband, but always 
 depend on his return." l It is certain that this large indul- 
 gence of husbands, which he thus recommends to every 
 wife, he took for granted in his own. Her 'life had but 
 little acknowledged union with his. He was seldom seen 
 
 i Wilhelm Meister, p. 431. 
 
PANTHEISM. 221 
 
 with her in the company of other persons. Her sad life 
 wore on in seclusion. Other " fancies " were continually 
 leading him abroad ; and into his house came the gay and 
 aspiring, almost daily, to enjoy caresses which .he denied 
 to her. This manner of life caused Goethe no self- 
 reproaches, for it grew logically out of his philosophical 
 views. It was not wrong, but right, he would claim. It 
 was the spirit of the universe coming to consciousness in 
 him, and to let it act freely was obedience to the highest 
 law. All the impulses of humanity are divine, was the 
 major premise of his conduct ; and he carried the reasoning 
 out into his practice, in the direction now shown, even to 
 old age. This appears in the story of Bettine, who came 
 to Weimar while yet a child. Goethe's fame attracted her. 
 She felt the spell of his intellectual greatness ; to be his 
 friend was the summit of her ambition. He saw to what 
 her enthusiasm was carrying her, yet encouraged her love 
 of his now superannuated person. He luxuriated in her 
 affection for him, neither checking it nor seeking to elevate 
 and chasten it, though it was wearing away the founda- 
 tions of her moral nature. No sigh escaped him, but he 
 smiled only the more blandly, while her brilliant but un- 
 schooled nature was breaking from its early moorings, and 
 drifting far out from the lights of Christian faith, where 
 the storm which no one rules beat down upon her. It was 
 Mrs. Browning, with her pure woman's heart, who had 
 pity on the young girl, loving so unwisely, and who, in 
 her poem bewailing Bettine's fate, exclaims, 
 
 " The bird thy childhood's playing 
 Sent onward o'er the sea, 
 Thy dove of hope, came back to thee 
 
 Without a leaf ! Art laying 
 
222 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Its cold wing no sun can dry, 
 Still in thy bosom secretly." 
 
 It is said that something should be pardoned, 
 
 Allowance . . . . . 
 
 to be made in Goethe s hie, to his artistic spirit. His adven- 
 
 to art. 
 
 tures were studies preparatory to the exercise 
 of his literary function. He needed to experience all those 
 human feelings which he would describe. He held the 
 maxim of the ancient artist, who said that one cannot 
 paint a horse without first becoming a horse. It would be 
 a relief to know that some of Goethe's doings were for 
 this object, and not simply for the gratification of his 
 natural desires ; that they were experienced only in sym- 
 pathy, by the help of his imagination, though told as facts 
 in his history. If we could grant this, then we should use 
 it to explain what is noblest in his conduct as well as that 
 which offends us. Thus his whole life becomes purely 
 histrionic. When he is generous, when he gives to the 
 poor and visits the wretched, just as when he trifles with 
 the too confiding, he is not moved by a benevolent pur- 
 pose, but is simply gathering material for the next story, 
 play, or poem. He must become a suicide, in order to 
 write Werther ; must go into the woods, and live like a 
 robber, in order to do the character of Goetz full justice ; 
 must become a stage-manager, and know actors and 
 actresses intimately, in order to describe their rivalries, 
 and jealousies, and quarrels. This artistic zeal made him 
 partial to all the amusements of the theatre. He wrote 
 many plays for the court-theatre at Weimar, and he aided 
 in them as an actor, not only at home, but in the country 
 around. The impression all along, in Wilhelm Meister, is 
 that men may get their best schooling in the experiences 
 
PANTHEISM. 223 
 
 of a theatrical career. Not in the sense of Shakespeare, 
 but literally and seriously, he would have all the world a 
 stage, and men and women merely players. Even though 
 this be not the general rule, he at least is an artist, whose 
 business is to paint life in all its phases; and what he 
 would paint, he must somehow first make a part of him- 
 self. 
 
 But we join issue with Goethe on this defini- 
 
 The obliga- 
 tion. It is not the function of art, but of history t'o? 8 of the 
 
 and criticism, to deal with actual life. He who 
 portrays life to us should discriminate between the bad 
 and good ; should make his representations honor the 
 right always, and condemn whatsoever is wrong. Thus 
 only is he a trustworthy teacher, guarding us against evil, 
 and begetting in us a love of what is pure, and true, and 
 of good report. The ideal realm is that which belongs to 
 art, and its moral purpose should be the same as that of 
 criticism and history, the ennobling of our better nature. 
 It is therefore bound to avoid all subjects which are low, 
 vile, or degrading in their nature, and to give us only such 
 representations as shall appeal to our upward and godlike 
 tendencies. Here it was that Goethe sadly failed. He 
 puts before his readers, painted in colors wholly sympa- 
 thetic, scenes which stimulate what is most grovelling in 
 human nature. To his deep dishonor it must be said, that 
 he does not teach us to abhor the vices of society ; he does 
 not limit his studies to what is worthy of imitation in life ; 
 he does not take what is best in man, lift it up into the 
 ideal realm, make it the material of his conceptions, and 
 clothe it with especial charms, so as to draw us away from 
 all that is vile and sinful, towards that life of pure and holy 
 
224 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 
 
 love which is the glory of the Father of our spirits. The 
 artist is false to his great mission, and commits one of the 
 darkest of crimes when he puts us face to face with that 
 which stimulates the evil in our natures. It is his sacred 
 duty to put all such temptations behind our backs ; to make 
 us see the gates of the city of love, and admire the beauty 
 of its shining towers, and hear the bells ringing out their 
 joyful peals, till our souls shall long to be there. 
 
 The subjective theory of morals, growing out 
 quat? d the- f pantheism, and adopted by Goethe in his 
 tu?e f writings and practice, is a half truth. That 
 
 which is absolutely right in us, making our life 
 so far forth one with the life of God, is a law unto itself. 
 It should be allowed to act itself out freely. But even in 
 its spontaneous action, it does not cease to be subject to 
 authority. It recognizes the moral law as its counterpart, 
 as the outward embodiment of its own ideal. This law, 
 awful as Sinai and lovely as Tabor, is the externization 
 of itself. Subject as it is to disturbances, to the stormy 
 nights which so often issue from our lower nature, this 
 higher nature in us is glad to sail by the light of the con- 
 stellations ; those eternal stars of truth, hung out by the 
 good God in our moral heavens, and ever reflected in the 
 still depths of conscience, which hold us to our course 
 through all the Euroclydons of life, while we watch for 
 their unchanging signals. The true culture of man is 
 therefore not single, as Goethe held, but a twofold process. 
 It is daily a death and a resurrection from the dead. 
 There is evil in us to be crucified, in order that what is 
 best in us may live. Only as our man which is earthly 
 dies, can our man which is heavenly be renewed. No one 
 
PANTHEISM. 225 
 
 but Christ, who is our divine ideal, has ever taught us a 
 doctrine of culture adequate to our case. It is as we bear 
 *about daily his dying, that his life also is manifest in our 
 mortal body. That which is from beneath must decrease, 
 while that which is from above takes increase. That is 
 sown in weakness, while this is raised in power ; that is 
 sown a natural body, while this is raised a spiritual body ; 
 that is sown in dishonor, while this is raised in glory. 
 Who has not many times sat upon the rocks at eventide, 
 and watched the ships sailing away into the setting sun ? 
 Before them all was bright, behind them their own dark 
 shadows lay upon -the water. Some of their sails were so 
 set as to be pure and glistering in the light, others so 
 turned away from it as to show a darkened surface ; yet 
 all were alike helping to bear the ships onward. Such 
 is the process, not single but twofold in aspect, by which 
 man achieves his noblest culture. 
 
 " There was a soul, one eve autumnal, sailing 
 
 Beyond the earth's dark bars, 
 Towards the land of sunsets never paling, 
 
 Towards heaven's sea of stars. 
 Behind there was a wake of billows tossing, 
 
 Before a glory lay ; 
 happy soul ! with all sail set, just crossing 
 
 Into the far away ; 
 
 The gloom and gleam, the calmness and the strife, 
 Were death before thee, and behind thee life. 
 
 " And as that soul went onward, sweetly speeding 
 
 Unto its home and light, 
 Repentance made it sorrowful exceeding, 
 Faith made it wondrous bright; 
 
 15 
 
226 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Eepentance dark with shadowy recollections 
 
 And longings unsufficed, 
 Faith white and pure with sunniest affections 
 
 Full from the face of Christ. 
 But both across the sun-besilvered tide 
 Helped to the haven where the heart would ride. 
 
LECTURE VL 
 
 PANTHEISM IN THE FORM OF HERO-WORSHIP. 
 
 THE topic of this lecture suggests the name of Thomas 
 Carlyle more naturally, perhaps, than that of 
 any other man. Whether a pantheist or not, sentative 
 it is sure that the tendency to deify and wor- 
 ship great men has in him an earnest advocate, its 
 most conspicuous and eloquent champion in modern times. 
 The subject could not be adequately treated .apart from his 
 writings ; and it is in this relation, and with this purpose, 
 that he is here introduced. I do not propose to consider 
 Carlyle, so much as a certain doctrine which he represents. 
 As in the case of Goethe, it is not the man himself, but 
 the speculative views embodied in his writings, with which 
 I am primarily concerned. In this undertaking I shall 
 make large use of the works of Carlyle, quoting them ver- 
 batim as often as I conveniently can. 1 This certainly 
 will be much fairer to him, and much more satis- 
 factory, I hope, to those who would know his JJeatment f 
 views, than any account of him which I might 
 give purely in my own words. Nor does it seem to me 
 
 1 To save space and repetitions, detached passages, both in this lecture and 
 others, have been sometimes brought together as one quotation, and single 
 words here and there dropped or changed; but in no case has this liberty been 
 taken where it would do violence to the author's meaning. 
 
228 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 that I need to make any apology for this method of treat- 
 ment ; since every author knows how much easier it is to 
 write about a person than to present him faithfully in his 
 own language, especially if the work be candid and con- 
 scientious, and so done as to preserve the progress and 
 consecutiveness of the thought, at all of which I shall 
 steadily aim. 
 
 The name of Thomas Carlyle holds a place 
 Cariyie's second to but few in the English literature of 
 
 position in 
 
 ut n erat s ure ^ ^ ast generation. Notwithstanding the cry of 
 outlandishness raised against his style, whether 
 by intelligent critics or stupid Philistinism, he yet has a 
 thorough knowledge of the mother tongue; and, when he 
 chooses to do so, he can write with a classic elegance and 
 power of expression which our best authors might well 
 covet. His disregard of accepted rules and standards is 
 not due to ignorance, so much as to his moods of mind. 
 He knows what he is doing, quite as well as any of his 
 critics, when he casts contempt upon the great models in 
 composition ; and a close scrutiny of his most character- 
 istic coinage of words and phrases often reveals an amaz- 
 ing fitness and vitality in them. Though unconventional 
 to the verge of lawlessness, his sentences show themselves 
 the true servants of his ideas and feelings. Whatever vio- 
 lence they may do to the laws of composition, it is clear 
 that he utters them unaffectedly, eager only to be relieved 
 of the host of thoughts in him which struggle for expres- 
 sion. These idiosyncrasies of style are the more re- 
 markable in view of his fondness for Goethe, whose 
 writings are among the best models of the 
 y e ' literary art. It was in admiration of this Ger- 
 
PANTHEISM. 229 
 
 man master, indeed, that Carlyle's career as a man of let- 
 ters began. His education had been planned with a view 
 to the clerical office in the Scotch church. But he recoiled 
 from what seemed to him the narrowing duties of that 
 office, when he had once drunk at the stream of free 
 thought, then bursting forth so boldly on the continent. 
 The draught intoxicated him. He felt that he had found 
 the door to a new world ; a fresh and living world, where 
 intellectual freedom was the only law, not that stale and 
 conventional world to which he had been used. He re- 
 solved to explore this foreign literature, beside which the 
 standard literature at home seemed to him so dead. And 
 he threw himself into the undertaking with great spirit ; 
 too full of enthusiasm to consider whether it was all truth 
 which he followed, or perhaps judging that that could not 
 be false which so exhilarated and emboldened him. 
 
 Such were the impulse and first joyous experience, which 
 led Carlyle, yet a young man, to yield himself up to the 
 influence of Goethe. The decisive step was taken. His 
 mind came into communication with the pantheism of the 
 day, and, in all its future workings, embodied more or 
 less of the spirit of that error. Not that he lost his indi- 
 viduality. His genius was too original and persistent for 
 that. He is always himself, though freely appropriating 
 other men's thoughts, and though his style was greatly 
 affected by his German studies. His philosophizing, if 
 such it may be called, reminds us of the crystals we some- 
 times see in nature, cast in the mould which their inhe-. 
 rent laws make for them, but stained or clouded by the 
 infusion of foreign matter. If the genius of Goethe was 
 mainly aesthetic, that of Carlyle inclined to be ethical. 
 
230 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 One is as true to the Scotch bias as the other to the 
 German. By instinct Carlyle was a moralist; 
 dency? ' and therefore, to whatever matter he applied 
 himself, instead of treating it simply as an artist, 
 he handled it in the spirit of a critic and reformer. If 
 Goethe held that it was the whole function of literature to 
 paint life, Carlyle even more stoutly held that literature 
 should concern itself with the relations of life, and their 
 adjustment between man and man. It was with this 
 reformatory bent of mind that he set out in his literary 
 career. And we are now to see whither it carried him 
 after he had broken loose from his early moorings ; when 
 he no more turned to the Father of his spirit for guidance 
 into all truth, but committed himself to the stream of his 
 own reasonings and intuitions. 
 
 Though fundamentally at one with Goethe, and making 
 Goethe's works his main study for years, he yet chose an 
 entirely different sphere in which to labor. The German 
 was devoted to poetry, science, and fiction, and to society ; 
 the Scotchman gave himself mainly to politics, the term 
 " politics " being used in its highest and broadest sense, in- 
 clusive of all that enters into questions of statesmanship 
 and government. Nor has this political reformer, so far 
 as appears, fallen into those more vicious habits which 
 Goethe contracted while yielding to the aesthetic bent of 
 his genius. That Carlyle regarded political reform as the 
 field in which his life-work was cast, is clear from 
 A political the very titles of his chief works : the French 
 
 reformer. 
 
 Revolution, Past, Present, and Chartism, Crom- 
 well, Frederick the Great, and New Essays in which he 
 discusses Model Prisons, Downing Street, the Stump-Ora- 
 
PANTHEISM. 231 
 
 tor, Parliaments, and kindred subjects. The Heroes and 
 Hero-worship, though a course of lectures ostensibly lit- 
 erary, yet betrays the fact all along, that he subordinated 
 literature to questions of government. The only works in 
 which this aim does not stand prominent are Sartor Re- 
 sartus, and some of his earlier essays, written before he 
 had fairly settled himself to his more especial purpose. 
 His Life of John Sterling may also be an exception ; but 
 this was written not of choice" so much as from a regard 
 for the wishes of his lost friend. His criticisms of the 
 American war under Lincoln, and of the measures for 
 national reconstruction which followed it; his interest in 
 General Eyre while trampling on the rights of England's 
 West India subjects; and his utterances respecting the 
 extension of the franchise among his own countrymen, 
 show, however much to his discredit, that his ruling pas- 
 sion is political. As the opinions and sympathies of an 
 old man, they also confirm the proverb, that the ruling 
 passion is strong in death. 
 
 Let us go back a little now, and look at the foundation 
 on which Carlyle built up the temple of his : thought. I 
 have not found in his writings any explicit avowal of pan- 
 theism as the philosophical and religious basis of his spec- 
 ulations. He has, indeed, so late as the year 1870, de- 
 nied the charge of pantheism, so often brought 
 against him. Yet his way of doing it shows 
 that he cares little about the matter, in any 
 case ; nor does he even define what he means by pan- 
 theism ? Very likely he could in truth repel many of the 
 charges of his critics ; yet he leaves the question so inde- 
 
232 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 terminate, and his opponents are so numerous and per- 
 sistent, that the case must be settled by a careful study of 
 his writings, rather than by any single denials or avowals. 
 Categorical answers are not to be trusted, where the ques- 
 tioner and the person questioned have different notions of 
 the subject-matter between them. The intelligent stu- 
 dent knows pantheism by its looks, wherever found, and 
 whether falsely named or nameless : it need not be labelled 
 for his information, any more than a plant in order to be 
 known by the botanist. Carlyle was totally indifferent to 
 names, which he looked on as only the changing " clothes," 
 and no - part of the permanent essence of philosophy. 
 That he was perfectly content to be known as a pantheist 
 is clear from the fact that he has never seriously, but only 
 now and then satirically resented the charge. It is a point 
 which he always managed to evade when urged by his 
 friends, favoring them with replies too flippant, or too 
 scornfully brief, to be at all satisfactory. It should be 
 said, however, that his ambiguity here, as in many other 
 places, may have been due to a certain grim humor, which 
 he loved to indulge on all occasions. He rather enjoyed 
 the impression of his friends that he was a sort of reckless 
 and impious Titan, holding theories utterly subversive 
 of the present order of society, though angrily refusing to 
 tell just what they were. But pure philosophy was not 
 his province. It does not appear that he had any imme- 
 diate knowledge of Spinozism, or of the leading 
 
 Not in the ... .,,-, 
 
 dogmatic thinkers who revived the doctrines of Spinoza 
 
 in Germany. He imbibed the essence of that 
 
 philosophy rather, as it was filtered through the works of 
 
 a more popular class of authors. He drank it in espe- 
 
PANTHEISM. 233 
 
 cially from the works of Goethe ; nor was its influence 
 upon him weakened, but rather strengthened, by his famil- 
 iarity with the writings of Heyne, Werner, Richter, Nova- 
 lis, Lessing. He is not a champion of pantheism, nor even 
 a teacher of it, except incidentally. His distinctive work 
 is in the field of political reform. Yet everywhere we 
 may detect, and that quite easily, the pantheistic infil- 
 tration. 
 
 Take, for instance, the following view of the history of 
 the human race in Sartor Resartas : " Generation after 
 generation takes to itself the form of a body; 
 
 Proofs of a 
 
 and forth-issuing from Cimmerian night, on pantheistic 
 heaven's mission, APPEARS. "What force and 
 fire are in each he expends : one grinding in the mill of 
 industry ; one, hunter-like, climbing the giddy Alpine 
 heights of science ; one madly dashed in pieces on the 
 rocks of strife, in war with his fellow: and then the 
 heaven-sent is recalled ; his earthly vesture falls away, and 
 soon even to sense becomes a vanished shadow. Thus, 
 like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of heaven's 
 artillery does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, 
 in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the 
 unknown deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing 
 spirit-host, we emerge from the inane ; haste storrrifully 
 across the astonished earth ; then plunge again into the 
 inane. But whence ? O Heaven, whither ? Sense knows 
 not; faith knows not; only that it is through 
 mystery to mystery, from God and to God." 1 history? f 
 Now, this is a most vivid description of the col- 
 lective life of man, it must be owned, whether correct or 
 
 i Sartor Resartua (Harpers, New York, 1858), pp. 208, 209. 
 
234 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TKUTH. 
 
 not; though it has too many double words, and shows 
 more passion than is desirable. But the spirit and tone 
 of it cannot be mistaken. It is thoroughly morbid, and 
 manifestly pantheistic in its morbidness. Nothing in 
 Werther could teach more clearly that our true wisdom is 
 in committing suicide. We may admit, as Carlyle, no 
 doubt, thought while writing the passage, that it is 
 "grand;" but we are constrained to add that it is 
 " gloomy and peculiar." One would not like a friend, in 
 a melancholy state of mind, to read much of that sort of 
 sentimentalizing. It makes us " such stuff as dreams are 
 made of," in a sense not intended by Shakespeare. Its 
 God, the beginning and enrf of the whole " appearance," is 
 not a living Father, whose hand we may grasp in sw r eet 
 hope when we step off the stage, but simply the " inane," 
 the pantheist's blank and dark immensity. That human 
 history, considered as a single movement, is divine so far 
 as it has any reality, seems to be assumed in the follow- 
 ing : " The life-tree Igdrasil, wide-waving, many-toned, has 
 its roots down deep in the death-kingdoms, amongst the 
 oldest dead dust of men, and with its boughs reaches 
 always beyond the stars ; and in all times and places it is 
 one and the same life-tree." * There is but one life, that 
 is, by which all the parts of the universal frame are for- 
 ever filled. 
 
 But Carlyle finds this one absolute essence in the indi- 
 vidual man, as really as in the race. " The highest God 
 dwells visibly in that mystic, unfathomable visi- 
 bility which calls itself Jon the earth. 'Bend- 
 ing before men,' says Novalis, 'is a reverence 
 
 1 Past, Present, and Chartism (Harpers, 1858), p. 36. 
 
PANTHEISM. 235 
 
 done to this revelation in the flesh. We touch Heaven 
 when we lay our hand on a human body.' " Speaking of 
 the man of letters, Carlyle says, " His life is a piece of the 
 everlasting heart of nature herself: all men's life is, but 
 the weak many know not the fact, and are untrue to it, 
 in most times ; the strong few are strong, heroic, peren- 
 nial, because it cannot be hidden from them. The un- 
 speakable divine significance, full of wonder and terror, 
 that lies in the being of every man, of every thing, is the 
 presence of God who makes every man and thing." 2 "I 
 find it written, within, and not without, the order of na- 
 ture ; and that all things, like all men, are blood-relations 
 to one another." 3 " In this point of view I consider that, 
 for the last hundred years, by far the notablest of all lit- 
 erary men is Goethe. To that man there was given what 
 we may call a life in the divine idea of the world ; vision 
 of the inward divine mystery ; and strangely, out of his 
 books, the world rises imaged once more as godlike, the 
 workmanship and temple of God." 4 
 
 In his views of nature, too, of which he thus makes 
 every man a part, Carlyle shows the same pantheistic 
 habit of thought. " All nature and life are but one gar- 
 ment, a living garment, woven and ever a-weaving in the 
 loom of time." 5 "Then sawest thou that this fair Uni- 
 verse, were it in the meanest province thereof, 
 
 Views of 
 
 is in very deed the star-domed city of God; nature pan- 
 theistic. 
 
 that through every star, through every grass- 
 Past, Present, and Chartism (Harpers, 1858), p. 123. 
 Hero-worship (John Wiley, New York, 1859), pp. 139, 140. 
 New Essays (Phillips, Sampson & Co., Boston, 1855), p. 416. 
 Hero-worship, p, HI. 
 Sartor Resartus (Harpers, New York, 1858), p. 158. 
 
236 HALF TRUTHS AJsTD THE TRUTH. 
 
 blade, and most through every living soul, the glory of a 
 present God still beams. But nature, which is the time- 
 vesture of God, and reveals him to the wise, hides him 
 from the foolish." 1 . "Beautiful, nay solemn was the sud- 
 den aspect to the wanderer. He gazed over those stupen- 
 dous masses with wonder, almost with longing desire'; and 
 never till this hour had he known nature, that she was one, 
 that she was his mother and divine. And as the ruddy glow 
 was fading into clearness in the sky, and the sun had now 
 departed, a murmur of eternity and immensity, of death and 
 life, stole through his soul ; and he felt as if death and life 
 were one, as if the earth were not dead, as if the spirit of 
 the earth had its throne in that splendor, and his own spirit 
 were therewith holding communion." 2 " The world of 
 nature for every man is the fantasy of himself; this world 
 is the multiplex 'image of his own dream.'" 3 " There is 
 one God, in and over all. He is the reality. We and all 
 things are but the shadow of him ; a transitory garment 
 veiling the eternal splendor." 4 " This so solid-looking 
 material world is at bottom in very deed nothing ; is a 
 visible and tactual manifestation of God's power and pres- 
 ence, a shadow hung out by him on the bosom of the void 
 infinite ; nothing more." 5 " What is the mystery of the 
 universe Goethe's ' open secret,' seen almost by none ? 
 that divine mystery which lies everywhere in all beings, 
 from the starry sky to the grass of the field, which is but the 
 vesture, the embodiment that renders it visible? This 
 divine mystery is, in all times and places ; veritably is. 
 In most times and places it is greatly overlooked, and the 
 
 1 Sartor Resartus, p. 207. 2 Ibid., p. 120. 
 
 a Hero-worship, p. 23. * Ibid., p. 50. e ibid., p. 62. 
 
* PANTHEISM. 237 
 
 universe, definable always in one or the other dialect, as 
 the realized thought of God, is considered trivial, inert, 
 commonplace matter, as if, says the satirist, it were a 
 dead thing, which some upholsterer had put together." l 
 " Creation lies before us like a glorious rainbow ; but the 
 sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. Then, in 
 that strange dream, how we clutch at shadows as if they 
 were substances ; and sleep deepest while fancying our- 
 selves most awake. Which of your philosophical systems 
 is other than a dream theorem ; a net quotient confidently 
 given out, whose divisor and dividend are both unknown? 
 What are all your national wars, with their Moscow- 
 retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled revolutions, but the 
 somnambulism of uneasy sleepers ? This dreaming, this 
 somnambulism is what we on earth call life ; wherein the 
 most indeed undoubtingly wander, as if they knew right 
 hand from left ; yet they only are wise who know that 
 they know nothing." 2 
 
 If Carlyle means what these latter sentences plainly 
 imply, then why, in the name of that wisdom which he so 
 strangely defines, has he spent all his life trying to tell 
 kingdoms, and republics, and society in general, how much 
 he knows about their true nature and the best ways of 
 perpetuating them ? Some of his voluminous advice is of 
 so absurd a nature as to go no little way towards estab- 
 lishing his theory of universal nescience, though it certainly 
 excludes him from his own category of the " wise," who, 
 knowing that they know nothing, are precluded from any 
 attempt to teach. I will give but one other quotation 
 under this head, showing that Carlyle, in full sympathy 
 
 1 Hero-worship, p. 72. 2 Sartor Ilcsartus, p. 41. 
 
238 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 with pantheism, looked on all things as making up a single 
 and living whole. " Detached, separated ! I say there is 
 no such separation : nothing hitherto was ever stranded, 
 cast aside ; but all, were it only a withered leaf, works 
 together with all ; . is borne forward on the bottomless, 
 shoreless flood of action, and lives through perpetual meta- 
 morphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost ; there 
 are forces in and around it, though working in inverse 
 order, else how could it rot ? Despise not the rag from 
 which man makes paper, or the litter from which the earth 
 makes corn. Rightly viewed, no meanest object is insig- 
 nificant ; all objects are as windows, through which the 
 philosophic eye looks into infinitude itself." 1 
 
 The fatalism of the pantheist, as well as his unreality 
 of history, of the individual, and of nature, appears in 
 
 Carlyle. He speaks of "the ring of necessity 
 SneSty! whereby we all are begirt;" and adds, "happy 
 
 he for whom a kind heavenly sun brightens it 
 into a ring of duty, and plays round it with beautiful pris- 
 matic diffractions ; yet ever, as basis and as bourn for all 
 our being, it is there." 2 Carlyle shows a pantheistic habit, 
 too, in his treatment of the subjects of space and time. 
 He does not regard them as objective realities in Ins meta- 
 physics, but as purely subjective notions, which the mind 
 imagines in certain processes of thinking. " Think well," 
 
 says he, " thou too wilt find that space is but a 
 andTime. mode of our human sense, so likewise time ; 
 
 there is no space and no time : we are we know 
 not what, light-sparkles floating in the aether of Deity." 3 
 " Is the past annihilated, then, or only past ? is the future 
 
 1 Sartor Resartus, p. 56. 2 Ibid., p. 78. 3 Ibid., p. 42. 
 
PANTHEISM. 239 
 
 non-extant, or only future ? Those mystic faculties of 
 thine, memory and hope, may answer : already, through 
 those mystic avenues, thou the earth-blinded summonest 
 both past and future, and communest with them, though 
 as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains 
 of yesterday drop down, the curtains of to-morrow 
 roll up ; but yesterday and to-morrow both are. Pierce 
 through the time element, glance into the eternal. Believe 
 what thou finclest written in the sanctuaries of man's soul, 
 even as all thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it 
 there : that time and space are not God, but creations of 
 God ; that with God as it is a universal Here, so it is an 
 everlasting Now." l He even presses the language of the 
 Scriptures into his service, in stating this doctrine. " Well 
 sung the Hebrew Psalmist : ' If I take the wings of the 
 morning, and dw r ell in the uttermost parts of the sea, there 
 thou art with me.' Thou, too, O cultivated reader, who 
 probably art no Psalmist, but a prosaist, knowing God only 
 by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the world where 
 FORCE is not ? " And so, not only do the Scriptures 
 agree with Carlyle, but the God of the Old Testament is 
 no living Father of men only an almighty and omni- 
 present force. 
 
 But let us follow Carlyle a little into the proper 
 domain of religion. Here he applies the panthe- JSJrg! onB 
 istic solvent to all forms of faith, recognizing 
 no supernatural inspiration, but finding one and the same 
 divinity, whether in Paganism, Christianity, or Mohamme- 
 danism. He puts the Bible in the same category with the 
 Koran, quoting with approbation the saying of Novalis, 
 
 1 Sartor Rcsartus, p. 205. 2 ibid., p. 55. 
 
240 HALF TEUTHS AND TftE TKUTII. 
 
 that " the highest problem of literature is the writing of a 
 Bible." l " To each nation its believed history is its Bible : 
 not in Judea alone, or Hellas and Latium, but in all lands 
 and all times." 2 " All history is an inarticulate Bible ; 
 
 and, in a dim and inarticulate manner, reveals 
 
 the divine appearances in this lower world." 3 
 " Is there no ' inspiration,' then, but an ancient Jewish, 
 Greekish, Roman one ? Quench not, I advise thee, the 
 monitions of that thrice-sacred gospel, holier than all Gos- 
 pels, which dwells in each man." 4 " Moses and the Jews 
 did not make God's laws ; no, indeed ; they did not even 
 read them in a way that has been final or satisfactory to 
 me. In several respects I find said reading decidedly bad, 
 and will not, in any wise, think of adopting it." 5 This is 
 quite dogmatic, it must be confessed, for the man who only 
 knows that he knows nothing; and it is probable that, on 
 the whole, the Christian world will persist in preferring 
 Moses to Carlyle. Still further defining his ideas of re- 
 ligion, our author says, " The first man who, looking with 
 open soul on this august heaven and earth, this beautiful 
 
 and awful, which we name nature, universe, and 
 wS"ip f such like, the essence of which remains forever 
 
 unnamable ; he who first, gazing on this, fell 
 on his knees awe-struck, in silence as likeliest, he, driven 
 by inner necessity, had done a thing which all thoughtful 
 hearts saw straightway to be an expressive and altogether 
 adoptable thing." 6 Here, then, we have all religion de- 
 fined as essentially nature-worship ; and it is rendered, not 
 
 i New Essays, p. 358. 2 Ibid., p. 410. 
 
 s Ibid., p. 412. * Ibid., p. 386. e Ibid., p. 419. 
 
 6 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 129. 
 
PANTHEISM. 241 
 
 of choice, but spontaneously and of necessity. To the 
 same effect Carlyle says, " The essence of the Scandi- 
 navian, as indeed of all pagan mythologies, we found to 
 be recognition of the divineness of nature ; sincere com- 
 munion of man with the mysterious invisible powers 
 visibly seen at work in the world around him." * Again 
 he says that condemnable idolatry is insincere idolatry. Be- 
 cause we all admire sincerity, and abhor hypocrisy, he 
 seems to think that he carries his point in saying, " Ma- 
 homet's creed we call a kind of Christianity; 
 and really, if we look at the wild rapt earnest- the only 
 
 essential. 
 
 ness with which it was believed and laid to 
 heart, I should say a better kind than that of those miser- 
 able Syrian sects, with their vain janglings about Homo- 
 ousion and Homoiousion, the head full of worthless noise, 
 the heart empty and dead." 2 But does our author mean 
 to say that those " Syrian sects " are not one thing, and Chris- 
 tianity quite another ? We grant him the right to define 
 all religion as at bottom a pantheistic sentiment, if he 
 chooses to do so ; but why should one who prides himself 
 on his love of truth, and who has so much intellectual 
 modesty withal, . resort to the stale trick of confounding 
 Christian truth with the men who hold its forms while 
 denying its power ? That he believes in the divinity of 
 all religions alike, is plain from the following : " Are not 
 aU true men soldiers of the same army ? All fashions of 
 arms, the Arab turban and swift scimeter, Thor's strong 
 hammer smiting down Jotuns, shall be welcome. Luther's 
 battle-voice, Dante's march-melody, all genuine things are 
 with us, not against us. We are all under one captain, 
 
 i Hero-worship, p. 27, 2 Jbid., p. 50. 
 
 16 
 
242 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TliUTH. 
 
 soldiers of the same host." 1 In his famous Inaugural 
 Address, spoken before a university audience, using words 
 often quoted since, Carlyle defines religion as " reverence 
 for what is below us." This definition, so thoroughly 
 pantheistic, is not original with him, however, 
 Accepts k u t i s taken entire from Goethe. Here are 
 
 vrOGTIlc 8 
 
 reu"ion. n f Goethe's words; and no words could more 
 clearly show the position of both master and 
 pupil, as also their theory that Christianity even, so far as 
 true, is but a form of pantheism : " But now we have to 
 speak of the third religion, grounded on reverence for what 
 is under us. This we name the Christian, as in the Chris- 
 tian religion such a temper is most distinctly manifested : 
 it is a last step to which mankind were destined and fitted 
 to attain. But what a task was it not only to be patient 
 with the earth, and let it lie beneath us, we appealing to a 
 higher birthplace ; but also to recognize humility and 
 poverty, mockery and despite, disgrace and wretchedness, 
 suffering and death, as divine ; nay, even to look on sin 
 and crime as not hinderances, but to honor and love them 
 as furtherances ofwhat is holy." 2 Here we are let into the 
 innermost secret of Goethe's glorification of vice and crime ; 
 into the innermost secret of Carlyle's eulogies of American 
 Slavery, the Southern Rebellion, and the oppressive meas- 
 ures of General Eyre. Carlyle honors and loves these 
 embodiments of wickedness. They are manifestations of 
 the divine essence of all things ; feeble manifestations, so 
 that he has the keenest religious faculties who is able to 
 recognize them as truly divine. The amount of religion 
 
 1 Hero-worship, p. 108. 
 
 2 Essays (Phillips, Sampson, & Co., Boston, 1858), p. 87. 
 
PANTHEISM. 243 
 
 in a man, that is, is greater as the object of his worship is 
 less manifestly worthy. To call evil good, and darkness 
 light, and adore them tis such, is the sublimest act of man's 
 religious nature. We do not touch the high- 
 water mark of our manhood, till we believe in 
 the divinity of crime, and are able to say unto sin itself, 
 " Thou art my God." 
 
 Turning now from these quotations, which seem to me 
 to make clear the pantheistic spirit of Carlyle, 
 let us see how that spirit flows up, and out, into pantheism 
 all his writings on political history and reform, practical 8 
 giving them their attitude, their shape, their tone. 
 
 It is in assailing the corrupt governments of Europe, 
 and lampooning their stupid conventionalisms, that Carlyle 
 shows what real strength is in him. Herein, as 
 
 . , ^ , , , 'PI- Makes him 
 
 with (jroethe, lay the secret 01 his power over revoiutiou- 
 the masses of the people. He seemed to them 
 to be their champion while, with eloquent and merciless 
 sarcasm, he lashed and laughed to scorn their oppressive 
 rulers. We wonder that a writer who finds divineness in 
 everything, and who worships what is below him, should 
 so denounce the European monarchies ; but he is not the 
 first instance of a pantheist crossing his own track in the 
 heat of controversy. He forgets his theory in eagerness 
 to assail " the powers that be ; " like that Universalist in 
 the loyal army, who believed in Hell as a military neces- 
 sity, while any rebels were abroad. Yet Carlyle would 
 probably say that he is philosophically consistent ; for he 
 does not regard what he assails as any real thing. In- 
 anities, shams, unrealities, simulacra, are the names he 
 loves most to apply to the objects of his scorn. 
 
244 HALF TRUTH'S AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Take, for example, his work on the French Revolution, 
 
 which I think the ablest and humanest of all his 
 oUrSon. works. It was written in the freshness of his 
 
 years, before the pantheistic spirit had soured 
 into misanthropy. His pity for the royal family, for the 
 heirs of great estates, and especially for the beautiful and 
 pious Marie Antoinette, is genuine and touching. His 
 whole soul seems to mourn on account of the woes about 
 to overwhelm the French government. Yet those woes 
 must come; for the Bourbon dynasty, notwithstanding 
 the merits of individual supporters, has become a sham, 
 
 a cheat, an unreality. It is no longer a revela- 
 the Vault of tion of God. That divinity which is the essence 
 
 of all things has gone out of it; therefore it 
 is untrue, without use or meaning, and cannot but 
 pass away if not quietly, then with much smoke and 
 noise. "Before those five-and-twenty laboring millions 
 could get that haggardness of face, in a nation calling 
 itself Christian, and calling man the brother of man, what 
 unspeakable, nigh infinite dishonesty (of seeming, not 
 being) in all manner of rulers, and appointed watchers, 
 temporal and spiritual, must there not, through long ages, 
 have gone on accumulating! It will accumulate: more- 
 over it will reach a head ; for the first of all gospels is this, 
 that a lie cannot endure forever." l In this strain it is that 
 he speaks of all governments which have become feeble, 
 and which the oppressed masses dare defy. They are not, 
 but only seem to be ; are not powers any longer, but 
 merely the simulacra of departed strength. He contrasts 
 
 French Revolution (Harpers, 1861), Vol. I., p. 35. 
 
PANTHEISM. 245 
 
 these enfeebled governments, which rest on the blind loy- 
 alty of the people, with those of a pagan age, sighing for a 
 return of the times in which Thor and Odin were wor- 
 shipped. " Whnt a world was that old sunk one," he says, 
 "real governors governing it; shams not yet recognized 
 as tolerable in it." l And he adds, " A truer time will 
 come for the nations ; authorities based on truth, and on 
 the silent or spoken worship of human nobleness, will 
 again get themselves established." 2 " This is a reflection 
 sad but important to the governments now fallen anarchic, 
 that they had not spiritual talent enough. They 
 were not wise enough ; the virtue, heroism, in- 
 tellect, or by whatever other synonymes we des- {^j^v* 
 ignate it, was not adequate." 3 The trouble with cr " ment - 
 these governments, according to Carlyle, is that they are 
 based on law and compacts, not on the inherent and 
 acknowledge ability of the men administering them. . And 
 it will be noticed that by "ability" he means sheer 
 strength to govern, of whatever sort. He sees only "syn- 
 onymes," where the Christian moralist is wont to make dis- 
 tinctions. Anything is right which is able. "It grows 
 late in the day," he says, " with constitutionalism ; and it 
 is time for rulers to look up from their Delolme. If the 
 constitutional man will take the old Delolme-Bentham 
 spectacles off his nose, and look abroad into the fact itself 
 with such eyes as he rnay have, I consider he will find that 
 reform in matters social does not now mean, as he has 
 long sleepily fancied, reform in Parliament alone, or 
 chiefly, or perhaps at all. My alarming message to 
 
 i New Essays, p. 358. 2 Ibid., p. 183. s Ibid., p. 162. 
 
246 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 him is, that the thing we vitally need is not a more and 
 more perfectly elected Parliament, but some reality of a 
 ruling sovereign to preside over Parliament.". 1 Carlyle 
 would not do away altogether with constitutional bodies, 
 as they at present exist. They have ceased to have any 
 power to govern. Yet the state of popular feeling gets 
 itself spoken through them ; and thus the strong ruler, 
 whom the people fear, is able to adapt his measures to the 
 times. "Of representative assemblies may not this be 
 said? that contending parties do thereby ascertain one 
 another's strength. They fight there, since fight they 
 must, by petition, Parliamentary eloquence, not by sword, 
 bayonet and bursts of military cannon. Why do men 
 fight at all, if it be not that they are yet unac- 
 Function of quainted with one another's strength, and must 
 
 representa- * 
 
 tive assem- fight and ascertain it ? Knowing that thou art 
 
 ulit?8. 
 
 stronger, that thou canst compel me, I will sub- 
 mit to thee : unless I chance to prefer extermination, and 
 slightly circuitous suicide, there is no other course for me. 
 That in England, by public meetings, petitions, elections, 
 leading articles, and the jangling hubbub of tongue-fence 
 which perpetually goes on everywhere in that country, 
 people nscertnin one another's strength ; and the most 
 obstinate House of Lords has to give in before it come to 
 cannonading and guillotinement : this is a saving charac- 
 teristic of England." 2 Once more, speaking of representa- 
 tive government in Europe, he says, to the same effect, 
 " Beyond doubt it will be useful and indispensable, for the 
 king or governor to know what the mass of men think on 
 questions legislative and administrative ; what they will 
 
 * New Essays, p. 297. 2 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 364. 
 
PANTHEISM. 247 
 
 assent to willingly, what unwillingly ; what they will re- 
 sist with superficial discontents, what with obstinate 
 determination, with riot, perhaps with armed rebellion. 
 No governor can otherwise go along with clear illumina- 
 tion of his path, however plain the load-star and ulterior 
 goal to him ; but at every step must be liable, to fall into 
 the ditch ; to awaken he knows not what sleeping nests 
 of hornets, what sleeping dog-kennels better to be avoided. 
 By all manner of means let the governor inform himself of 
 all this. To which end Parliaments, free presses, and 
 such like, are excellent ; they keep the governor aware of 
 what the people, wisely or foolishly, think." l An Ameri- 
 can senator in the year 1861, representing a state which 
 had just seceded from the Union, and defending the right 
 of his state thus to do regardless of any authority of the 
 Congress, rose amid his fellow-senators, and said, " This 
 assembly is not an authoritative body to me, but only 
 a very respectable public meeting." Precisely like that 
 rebellious senator's view;* seems to be Carlyle's theory of 
 assemblies of men, met together by election of the people, 
 and under a written constitution, to make laws for the 
 regulation and government of their country. 
 
 We have now seen the secret of Carlyle's favor with 
 the struggling masses in Europe. As against 
 the constituted authorities there, he seems to 
 lead them in their arduous struggle. But he is 
 mocking them. If he "keeps the word of 
 promise to their ear," he "breaks it to their 
 hopo," This fact has shown itself even in his tirades 
 against constitutional monarchy ; but it needs to be more 
 
 1 New Essays, p. 306. 
 
248 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 distinctly noticed. The inference was that one who so 
 lashed existing monarchies must be a lover of democ- 
 racies. Vain inference! When he glorifies rebellion, in 
 the case of the French led by Mirabeau, of the English 
 led by Cromwell, and of the Americans led by Samuel 
 Adams, it is not because he believes in the liberty they 
 are seeking, but because he can use -them for the time 
 being against the more immediate object of his attack. 
 These rebellions, though having but little divinity in 
 themselves, show that the divinity is all gone out of the 
 governments assailed. What could be nobler than his 
 eulogy of the first, settlers of Massachusetts ? " Hail to 
 thee, poor little ship Mayflower, of Delft-Haven; poor, 
 
 common-looking ship, hired by common char- 
 tte PUgrfata. ter party for coined dollars ; calked with mean 
 
 oakum and tar; provisioned with vulgarest bis- 
 cuit and bacon ; yet what ship Argo, or miraculous epic 
 ship built by the sea-gods, was other than a foolish bum- 
 barge in comparison ! Golden fleeces or the like these 
 sailed for, with or without effect ; thou, little Mayflower, 
 hadst in thee a veritable Promethean spark ; the life-spark 
 of the largest nation on earth. They went seeking leave 
 to hear sermon in their own method, these Mayflower 
 Puritans; a most indispensable search ; and yet, like Saul 
 the son of Kish, seeking a small thing they found this, 
 unexpected great thing ! Honor to the brave and true ; 
 Puritanism tnev verily, we say, carry fire from heaven, and 
 Jfaui?m h pS" a power which themselves dream not of. Let 
 together. ft jj men ^nor Puritanism, since God so hon- 
 ored it. Islam, with its heart-felt 'Allah Akbar,' was 
 it not honored ? There is but one thing without 
 
PANTHEISM. 249 
 
 honor; smitten with eternal barrenness and inability to do 
 or be; insincerity, unbelief. He who believes no thing, 
 who believes only the shows cf things, is not in relation 
 with nature and fact at all. Nature denies him; orders 
 him at his earliest convenience to disappear. Let him 
 disappear from her domains, into those of Chaos, Hypoth- 
 esis and Simulacrum, or wherever else his parish may 
 be." 1 Thus we see that the Pilgrims, though honored, 
 are esteemed no more worthy of honor than the 
 first followers of Mahomet. Ability and fear- JJee^ove^n- 
 lessness, in whatever form shown, are the real tlerVase! 
 source of merit; and they are admired just as 
 much in despots as in bodies of men struggling to be 
 free ; examples of the latter being extolled only in dam- 
 aging contrast with the established governments of Eu- 
 rope. In no case is any love shown for governments by 
 the people. When the nation which he recognizes as 
 "the largest on earth," whose seed was wafted in the 
 Mayflower, is in trouble, and asks the countenance of 
 good men throughout the world, while asserting its right 
 to exist, instead of the smallest word of sympathy from 
 Carlyfe, it is insulted with outpourings of contempt and 
 scorn. Its purpose to let the oppressed go free is rid- 
 iculed under the title of sympathy for "Quashee;" its at- 
 tempt to carry out its. own democratic ideas is called " a 
 shooting of Niagara ; " the terrible war which it endures, 
 rather than let the world's last hope of liberty perish, is 
 contemptuously pictured as " the foul chimney burning 
 itself clean." No language could be more scornful than 
 that which Carlyle hurls at the masses of the people, and 
 
 i Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 363. 
 
250 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 on popular governments of every kind. The law of ve- 
 racity, the silences, the eternities, or whatever other name 
 he chooses to give his nature-god, is not in them; and 
 therefore, says he, " let them take themselves out of the 
 way." 
 
 Carlyle ridicules the efforts of the humane to reform 
 the vicious and criminal classes, thus showing, in its bald- 
 est form, his thorough hatred of everything 
 monii re- which is too weak to guide and take care of 
 itself. He thinks that every moral and social 
 reform, looking to the recovery of outcasts, should be 
 named a " Universal Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection 
 Society." Those outcasts he calls "the elixir of the infat- 
 uated among mortals." If we want the worst possible 
 investment of our benevolence, in laboring to save the 
 poor and vicious classes, we " accurately have it." "No- 
 where so as here," says he to us, " can you be certain that 
 a given quantity of wise teaching bestowed, of benevo- 
 lent trouble taken, will yield zero, or the minimum of 
 return. It is sowing of your wheat upon Irish quagmires ; 
 laboriously harrowing it in upon the sand of the sea- 
 shore." l " Not brotherhood ; in enmity that muft last 
 through eternity, in unappeasable aversion, shall I have to 
 live with these! Brotherhood? No, be the 
 Misanthro- t^ght far from me. They are Adam's chil- 
 dren, alas yes, I well remember that, and 
 never shall forget ; hence this rage and sorrow." 2 " If I 
 had a commonwealth to govern," says Carlyle, as, 
 Heaven be thanked, he has not, "certainly it should not 
 be these Devil's regiments of the line that I would first 
 
 i New Essays, p. 77. 2 Ibid., p. 84. 
 
PANTHEISM. 251 
 
 of all concentrate my attention on. With them I should 
 be apt to make rather brief work ; to them one would 
 apply the besom, try to sweep them with some rapidity 
 into the dust-bin, and well out of one's road, I should 
 rather say. Fill your threshing-floor with docks, rag- 
 weeds, mugworths, and ply your flail upon them, that is 
 not the method to obtain sacks of wheat. Away, you ; 
 begone swiftly, ye regiments of the line." 1 
 
 With such contempt for all efforts to save the aban- 
 doned classes, denying them, as he does, the very elements 
 of humanity, declaring that they are not in any degree 
 susceptible of improvement, Carlyle need hardly 
 
 J Origin of 
 
 take the trouble to assure us that he has no his con- 
 tempt for 
 faith in popular governments. His political democra- 
 
 views are a legitimate deduction from his low 
 estimate of human nature. Yet he is at pains to state his 
 political views; and if we do not understand them, it 
 certainly cannot be because his language is not explicit 
 and strong enough. He sees the oppressed people of 
 Europe looking hopefully to the example of America, and 
 lie says, " Alas, on this side of the Atlantic and on that, 
 Democracy, we apprehend, is forever impossible. So 
 much, with certainty of loud, astonished contradiction 
 from all manner of men at present, but with sure appeal 
 to the law of nature and the ever-abiding fact, may be 
 suggested and asserted once more. The universe itself is 
 a monarchy and hierarchy ; large liberty of voting there, 
 all manner of choice, utmost free-will, but with conditions 
 inexorable and immeasurable annexed to every exercise 
 of the same." 2 Mankind are a worthless set, that is, taken 
 
 i New Essays, p. 74. 2 ibid., p. 27. 
 
252 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 in the mass ; but here and there may be found a single 
 man, worthy to be trusted with such absolute power 
 over his fellows as God exercises on a universal scale! 
 "Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-cancelling 
 business : and gives in the long run a net result of zero. 
 Where no government is wanted, save that of the parish- 
 constable, as in America with its boundless soil, every 
 man being able to find work and recompense for himself, 
 democracy may subsist; not elsewhere, except briefly, as 
 a swift transition towards something other and further. 
 Democracy never yet, that we heard of, was able to ac- 
 complish much work, beyond that same cancelling of 
 itself." l 
 
 But we will not keep to this negative side of Carlyle's 
 creed any longer. We have seen what power, 
 
 Negative side 
 
 of his poiit- and what weakness, it lends him before his 
 
 ical creed. < t 
 
 world-wide audience. Stating his intense dis- 
 belief in hereditary monarchies and aristocracies, which 
 are based on Written constitutions, the -oppressed masses 
 applaud him; and on the other hand those same de- 
 nounced governments applaud, as he in turn utters his 
 detestation of all popular governments. Republicanism is 
 not better to him than absolutism, but worse, where pre- 
 scribed forms of law determine the course of affairs. His 
 hatred of constitutional free government is as bitter and 
 fixed as- his hatred of constitutional monarchy. He puts 
 them alike into the category of things which are contrary 
 to nature; which are therefore unreal, and without any 
 essence of divinity in them. He denounces them impar- 
 tially, with such power of expression as he can bring from 
 
 1 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 344. 
 
PANTHEISM. 253 
 
 his ample vocabulary ; and then turning from them, as 
 worse than worthless things, he shows his " more excellent 
 way." What that way is, we will now proceed to see. 
 
 The panacea which Carlyle proposes for all social or 
 governmental evils is Hero-worship. The Millennium 
 will come to the world, and to governments of 
 
 , His politi- 
 
 whatever name, when the masses of the people cai and so- 
 cial creed 
 everywhere bow down, in unquestioning rever- positively 
 
 ence, before a few whom, they recognize as great Hero-wor- 
 inen. Their personal will, unshackled by writ- 
 ten constitutions, should give laws to the masses about 
 them; for in them, more than all things else, does the 
 divine soul of nature, which is incapable of error, make 
 itself manifest. "Able men to govern us; that would be 
 the way, nor is there any other remedy for whatsoever 
 goes wrong. There is but one man fraught with blessings 
 to this world, fated to diminish and successively abolish 
 the curses of the world. For him make search, him rever- 
 ence and follow; know that to find him or miss him 
 means victory or defeat for you in all establishments and 
 enterprises here below." * " He is a*bove thee, like a god. 
 Thou, in thy stupendous three-inch pattens, art under him. 
 He is thy born king, thy conqueror and supreme lawgiver ; 
 not all the guineas and cannons, and leather and prunella, 
 under Ihe sky can save thee from him." $ That in men 
 which we call genius, is, according to Carlyle, only the 
 more intensely revealed power of the absolute all-in-all. 
 Jesus of Nazareth had simply the largest amount of reli- 
 gious genius ever enjoyed by a single person ; and it is that 
 
 1 New Essays, p. 137. 2 p as t, Present, and Chartism, p. 291. 
 
254 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 which has made him " a god to this hour." 1 " I should 
 say, if we do not reckon a great man literally divine, it is 
 that our notions of God, of the supreme unattainable 
 fountain of splendor, wisdom and heroism, are ever rising 
 higher ; not altogether that our feverence for these quali- 
 ties, as manifested in our like, is getting lower." 2 " The 
 great man is a force of nature; whatever is truly great in 
 him springs up from the inarticulate depths." 3 " To do 
 every one of us what lies in him, that the able man every- 
 where may be put into the place that is fit for him, which 
 is his by actual right: is not this the sum of all social mo- 
 rality for every citizen of the world ? " 4 " Worship, what 
 we call human religion, has undergone various phases in 
 the history of mankind. To the primitive man all forces 
 of nature were divine; either for propitiation or for admi- 
 ration, many things, and in a sense all things, demanded 
 worship from him. But especially the noble human soul 
 was divine to him ; and announced with direct impressive- 
 ness, as it ever does, the inspiration of the Highest; de- 
 manding worship from the primitive man. Whereby, as 
 has been explained elsewhere, this latter form of worship, 
 Hero-worship as we*call it, did, among the ancient peo- 
 ples, attract and subdue to itself all other forms of human 
 worship; irradiating them all with its own perennial 
 worth, which is indeed all the worth they had, or that any 
 worship can have. Human worship everywhere, 
 
 Hero-wor- 
 
 shdp the so iar as there lay any worth in it, was of the 
 
 source of 
 
 primitive nature of Hero-worship : this universe wholly, 
 
 govern- 
 ments, this temporary flame-image of the eternal, was 
 
 i Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 292. 2 Hero-worship, p. 75. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 101. < New Essays, p. 330. 
 
PANTHEISM. 255 
 
 one beautiful and terrible energy of heroisms, presided 
 over by a divine nobleness and Infinite Hero. Divine 
 nobleness forever friendly to the noble, forever hostile to 
 the ignoble: all manner of ' moral rules ' and well 'sanc- 
 tioned ' too, flowed naturally out of this primeval intuition 
 into nature; which, I believe, is still the true fountain 
 of moral rules, though much forgotten at present." 1 
 
 Not only does Carlyle lay it down as an historical fact, 
 that Hero-worship was the basis of primitive governments, 
 but he contends that such is, and ever must be the only 
 true basis of authority. He is the born ruler, and should 
 be so received, who has the inherent power to 
 make himself master of other men. " In this thcfoniy 
 
 , real source. 
 
 world there is one godlike thing, the essence or 
 all that ever was or ever will be of godlike in this world : 
 the veneration due to human worth by the hearts of 
 men." 2 In utter forgetfulness of his saying, that "religion 
 is reverence for what is beneath us," Carlyle uses this 
 language, and much more. " Hero-worship ; heartfelt, 
 prostrate admiration ; submission burning, boundless, for 
 a noblest godlike form of man, is not this," he asks, 
 " the germ of Christianity itself? " 3 " Hero-worship is the 
 summary, ultimate essence and supreme perfection, of all 
 manner of worship." 4 "It is certain, whatever gods or 
 fetiches a man may have about him, and pay tithes to, 
 and mumble prayers to, the real ' religion ' that is in him 
 is his practical hero-worship. Theologies, doxologies, or- 
 thodoxies, heterodoxies, are not of moment except as sub- 
 sidiary towards a good issue in this." 5 " The man Napoleon 
 
 i New Essays, pp. 350, 351. 2 p as t, Present, and Chartism, p. 287. 
 
 Hero-worship, p. 10. * Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 33, 
 
 New Essays, p. 353. 
 
256 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 was a divine missionary, though unconscious of it ; nnd 
 preached, through the cannon's throat, that great doctrine, 
 the tools to him that can handle them ; which is our ulti- 
 mate political evangel, wherein alone can true liberty lie." ! 
 " What is the Bible of a nation, the practically credited 
 God's message to a nation ? Is it not, beyond all else, the 
 authentic biography of its heroic souls? This is the real 
 record of the appearances of God in the history of a na- 
 tion ; this it is which teaches all men what the universe, 
 when you go to work in it, really is." 2 " The early nations 
 of the world, all nations so long as they continued simple 
 
 and in earnest, knew without teaching that their 
 th^rea? en history was an epic and Bible, the clouded 
 
 struggling image of a God's presence, the action 
 of heroes and God-inspired men." 3 "Human intellect, 
 if you consider well, is the exact summary of human 
 worth;" 4 and "reverence for this intellectual power, 
 loyal furtherance and obedience to it, are the outcome and 
 essence of all true ' religions,' and was, and ever will be." 5 
 To the man of great intellect, regardless of eA r ery other 
 qualification, "belongs eternally the government of the 
 world. Where he reigns all is blessed, and the good re- 
 joice, and the wicked make wail. Where the contrary of 
 him reigns, all is accursed ; and the gods lament, and will, 
 by terrible methods, rectify the matter by and by. Have 
 you forbidden this man to rule ? Obey he cannot. He will 
 retire rather, into deserts, far from you and your affairs. 
 You and your affairs, once well quit of him, go by a swift 
 and ever swifter road." 6 Carlyle's doctrine of hero-worship, 
 
 i Sartor Resartus, p. 138. 2 New Essays, p, 357. 3 Ibid., 409. 
 
 4 Ibid., p. 136. 6 Ibid., p, 135. Ibid., p. 321. 
 
PANTHEISM. 257 
 
 
 
 and the obedience due great men as the ordained rulers 
 of the world, seems to be this: certain fixed and eternal 
 forces, modes of the omnipresent essence of all things, are 
 manifested differently in different men. He who is most 
 vividly conscious of these divine impulses, and who most 
 thoroughly makes himself an instrument for carrying them 
 out to their fated issue, is the true-born master, before 
 whom all others should fall down and worship, letting 
 him do what he will -with them and theirs. " God's light," 
 he says, "is human intellect;" and he finds 
 
 Carlvle's 
 
 more of that lirfit in Robert Burns than in any ideal of a 
 
 great man. 
 
 other man then on the stage. The poet of Ayr- 
 shire, according to him, ought to have been placed at the 
 head of the English government. " Robert Burns," he says, 
 "had not the smallest chance to get into Parliament, much 
 as he deserved, for all our sakes, to have beep found there. 
 For the man was a born king of men : full of valor, of 
 intelligence and heroic nobleness ; fit for far other work 
 than to break his heart among poor mean mortals." l We 
 may go as far as Carlyle in admiration Of the wonderful 
 poetical power of Burns ; but was that power of just the 
 kind which, in any nation or age, has shown itself able to 
 rule ? He who is not master of himself should hardly be 
 allowed to lord it over others in the style which hero- 
 worship enjoins. We could hardly believe that Carlyle is 
 serious, but should suspect him of irony oftentimes, while 
 reading his expositions of his favorite doctrine, did not 
 his evident earnestness forbid. We do not find any man 
 in all history, however great and good and inspired, whom 
 we deem worthy to be clothed with irresponsible power 
 
 i New Essays, pp. 151, 152. 
 
 17 
 
258 . HALF TRUTHS AND THJB TRUTH. 
 
 over other men. What shall be said, therefore, of a doc- 
 trine which would give such power to a Burns, a Goethe, 
 the Cromwells, the Fredericks, the Napoleons of the 
 race? Our hearts refuse such homage as he demands, 
 even to the highest possible ideal of a hero ; much more 
 do they refuse it to the men he offers us as realizing his 
 ideal of human greatness and ability to govern ! We are 
 yet to learn that the only hope of the world is its great 
 men. It certainly has breathed freer, oftentimes, when 
 well rid of such; of men, that is, who were great as 
 judged by Carlyle's standard, Spinoza does not persuade 
 our conscience, when he says, "I consider virtue and 
 power one and the same thing ; " l nor can we any longer 
 consent to the leadership of Carlyle, when he puts before 
 us men great chiefly in their passions and ambitions, as 
 the gods whom we are to obey and worship. 
 
 Carlyle seems to stfspect that his "political evangel," 
 making the masses of men slaves to here and there a 
 
 great man, may be unpalatable. He therefore 
 theory^? 18 turns special advocate, and endeavors to recom- 
 ment mend his theory of government to our favorable 
 
 notice, arguing for it much as the American 
 slaveholders were wont to argue that slavery is better 
 than freedom for the laboring classes. " The very horse," 
 says he, " that is permanent, how much kindlier do he and 
 his master work, than the temporary one, hired on any 
 hack principle yet known. I am for permanence in all 
 things, at the earliest possible moment, and to the latest 
 possible. Blessed is he that continueth where he is." 2 
 This reasoning would be well enough touching the organ- 
 
 i Ethics, Ft. IV. Def. 8. 2 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 280. 
 
PANTHEISM, 259 
 
 ization of human society, if the mass of men have, as 
 seems to be assumed by Carlyle, only an equine nature. 
 What is good for the horse and his owner, is good for 
 men and their rulers, if these rulers be indeed what hero- 
 worship pre-supposes, in relation to those whom they 
 govern. But no such inequality as this can be admitted, 
 while we hold to the unity of the human race, while we 
 recognize freedom, immortality, and the power of self-gov- 
 ernment in all. It also strikes us oddly, that Carlyle, 
 while holding this theory, should exhort every one to re- 
 main where he is. The grand complaint which he makes 
 is, that the great men, who monopolize all the divinity 
 there is in the world, are left so often in obscurity, and not 
 brought forward to be enthroned and worshipped. The 
 "permanence" which he desires is not to begin, therefore, 
 till after this enthronement. When the few "heroes" are 
 clothed with irresponsible power over the rest of man- 
 kind, who willingly accept the position of slaves under 
 them, then his millennium will begin. He laments the feu- 
 dal age of English history, thinking it far happier than the 
 present age of personal liberty. " Garth's brass collar did 
 not gall him ; Cedric deserved to be his master. The pigs 
 were Cedric's, but Gurth would get the parings of them. 
 Gurth had the inexpressible satisfaction of feeling himself 
 related indissolubly, though in a rude brass-collar way, to 
 his fellow-mortals on this earth. He had superiors, infe- 
 riors, equals. Gurth is now ' emancipated ; ' has what we 
 call ' liberty.' Liberty, I am told, is a divine thing. Lib- 
 erty, when it becomes liberty to die of starvation, is not 
 go divine." l It must be confessed that our author faces 
 
 i Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 212. 
 
260 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 this alternative of lordship or serfhood with much show 
 of personal courage. He resigns himself to the decree of 
 fate, in language at least, whether that decree shall assign 
 him to the place of the master or of the slave. " If thou 
 art in very deed my wiser, may a beneficent instinct lead 
 and impel thee to conquer me, to command me. If thou 
 do know better than I what is right, I conjure thee, in the 
 name of God, force me to do it, were it by never such 
 brass collars, whips and handcuffs." l 
 
 And here we come to the point where Carlyle's doc- 
 trine breaks down utterly. It is the point of practi- 
 cal trial; the direct contest, between man and 
 
 The result of . . , . , . , . ... 
 
 the theory is man, which is to decide who shall govern and 
 who submit. The waxen wings by which hu- 
 manity is to fly clear of all evils melt as soon as the flight 
 is undertaken. The godhead, which is the sum of all 
 reality, dwells in a few great men, who, by virtue of this 
 indwelling divinity, ought t.o rule over us and ours ; but 
 how to place them in position, how to secure them this 
 leadership, so as to inaugurate the golden reign of heroes, 
 is a question before which even Carlyle seems to see that 
 his argument labors. Yet he does not quail. He refuses 
 to accept no logical result of his theory. Never did a 
 reorganizer of human society face a difficulty more boldly, 
 or state it more frankly. " Who is slave, and eternally 
 appointed to be governed; who free, and eternally ap- 
 pointed to govern ? It would much avail us to settle this 
 question," says he. 2 "To increase the reverence for hu- 
 man intellect, or God's light, what method is there ? 
 Pray that Heaven would please to vouchsafe us each a 
 
 i Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 213. 2 New Essays, p. 310. 
 
PANTHEISM. 261 
 
 little of it, one by one ! As perhaps Heaven, in infinite 
 mercy by stern methods, gradually will. Perhaps Heaven 
 has mercy too, in these sore plagues that are oppressing 
 us ; and means to teach us reverence for heroism and hu- 
 man intellect, by such baleful experience of what issue 
 imbecility and parliamentary eloquence lead to." 1 " What 
 are all popular commotions and maddest bellowings, from 
 Peterloo to the Place-de-Greve itself? To the ear of wis- 
 dom they are inarticulate prayers : ' guide me, govern me ! 
 I am mad and miserable, and cannot guide myself.' 
 Surely of all 'rights of. man,' this right of the ignorant 
 man to be guided by the wiser, to be gently or forcibly 
 held in the true course by him, is the indisputablest. 
 Nature herself ordains it from the first ; society struggles 
 towards perfection by enforcing and accomplishing it more 
 and more. If freedom has any meaning, it means enjoy- 
 ment of this right, wherein all other rights are enjoyed. 
 It is a sacred right and duty on both sides ; and the sum- 
 mary of all social duties between the two. Why does 
 one toil with his hands, if the other be not to toil, still 
 more unweariedly, with heart and head? The brawny 
 craftsman finds it no child's play to mould the unpliant, 
 rugged masses ; neither is guidance of men a dilettantism : 
 what it becomes when treated as a dilettantism, we may 
 see." 2 
 
 Thus does the problem present itself to Carlyle's mind ; 
 and he is shut up to a single method of solving it. The 
 strongest man must hold the sceptre, the weaker must wear 
 the yoke. Let us not start back from this solution, for he 
 offers no other. "Divine right," he says, "take it on the 
 
 i New Essays, p. 145. 2 p as t, Present, and Chartism, p. 343. 
 
262 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 great scale, is divine might withal." He finds this might 
 in Cromwell, more than in Napoleon ; hence he deems, 
 the Protector worthy of more homage than the Emperor. 
 This might within him, what Carlyle calls "latent valor 
 and thought, content to lie latent, then burst out as in a 
 blaze qf heaven's lightning," 1 was the basis of his right to 
 revolutionize the English government. But we think that 
 Cromwell himself would have given quite another account 
 of his riglit in that matter. He asked neither worship nor 
 homage for his own person ; nor did he esteem himself 
 strong, save in the devotion of his people with him to a 
 common end, which he sought to secure by just laws 
 representing the national will. "The just thing, in the 
 long run," says Carlyle, " is the strong thing." " Await 
 the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, each fighter 
 has prospered according to his right. His right and his 
 might, at the close of the account, are one and the same." 2 
 " The painfuflest feeling is that of your own feebleness : 
 to be weak is the true misery." 3 According to Carlyle 
 the Apostle was mistaken when he declared sin to be the 
 great calamity, and when he gloried in his weakness as the 
 occasion of power. His glorying as he did was not a 
 Christian virtue, but a foolish habit of his, since feebleness 
 is " the true misery." And why is man's consciousness of 
 weakness his greatest calamity ? Because " mights, I say, 
 are a dreadful business to articulate correctly. Yet articu- 
 lated they have to be ; the time comes for it, the need 
 comes for it, and with enormous difficulty and experi- 
 menting it is got done. Call it not succession of rebel- 
 
 i Hero-worship, p. 212. 2 p a st, Present, and Chartism, p. H. 
 
 3 Sartor Resartus, p. 128. 
 
PANTHEISM. 263 
 
 lions ; call it rather succession of expansions, of enlighten- 
 ments, gift of articulate utterance descending lower and 
 lower." l Thus does the " ultimate political evangel," 
 which was to free the world from hereditary despotisms, 
 from governments by written constitutions, and from elec- 
 tive democracies, and which was to usher in the golden 
 reign of heroes, end in a carnival of riot and red-handed 
 rebellion. A revolutionary spirit, acting itself out to the 
 utmost, is the only way of lifting up to supreme power the 
 few who deserve to rule, and of forcing all others down 
 into proper subjection. It is with men as with oxen, where 
 a trial of sheer strength decides which one shall be the 
 leader of the herd. " I say sometimes," is Carlyle's lan- 
 guage, " that all goes by wager of battle in this world ; 
 that strength, well understood, is the measure of all worth. 
 Give a thing time ; if it can succeed, it is a right thing." 2 
 " I care little about the sword : I will allow a thing to 
 struggle for itself in the world, with any sword, or tongue, 
 or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it 
 preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost 
 bestir itself; and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it ; 
 very sure that it will, in the long run, conquer nothing 
 which does not deserve to be conquered. In this great 
 duel nature Herself is umpire, and can do no wrong : the 
 thing which is deepest rooted in nature, which we call 
 truest, that thing will be found growing at last." 3 " The 
 fighting was indispensable, for ascertaining who had the 
 right over whom. By much hard fighting, as we once said, 
 ' the unrealities, beaten into dust, flew off; ' and left the 
 
 Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 360. 2 Hero-worship x p. 128. 
 
 s Ibid., p. 55. 
 
264 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 plain reality and fact, ' tliou stronger than I, thou wiser 
 than I ; therefore thou king, and subject I.' " * 
 
 Verily here is a prospect such as Robin Hood, or Goetz 
 of the iron hand, would have shrunk from contemplating. 
 Ishmael, whose hand was against every man,.is our nearest 
 example of Carlyle's true hero. He delivers the world 
 over to a perpetual scene of conflict, each man for -himself 
 and against all others ; and the whole dominion is his, who 
 for the time being manages to keep uppermost. No won- 
 der that our author, in view of this " dreadful business of 
 getting the mights articulated into rights," exhorts men to 
 fling away fear. " It is an everlasting duty," he says, "the 
 duty of being brave. Valor is still value. The first duty 
 of a man is still that of subduing fear. We must get rid 
 of fear ; we cannot act at all till then. A man's acts are 
 slavish, not true but specious ; his very thoughts are false, 
 he thinks too as a slave and coward, till he has got fear 
 under his feet. Odin's creed, if we disentangle the kernel 
 of it, is true to this hour. A man shall and must be val- 
 iant ; he must march forward, and quit himself like a man, 
 trusting imperturbably in the appointment and choice of 
 the upper Powers ; and, on the whole, not fear at all. 
 Now and always, the completeness of his victory over fear 
 will determine how much of a man lie is." 2 The madness 
 of poor old Lear, defying the darkness and storm ; or of 
 Milton's Satan, braving the terror's of the fiery abyss, was 
 not more audacious in its w r ildiiess than Carlyle would 
 beget in each and every man. " What art thou afraid 
 of? " he scornfully says to the man who has an atom of 
 fear for anything in heaven, on earth, or under the earth. 
 
 i Past, Present, and Chartism, p. 245. 2 Hero-worship, p. 28 
 
PANTHEISM. 265 
 
 Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and 
 whimper, and go cowering and trembling? Despicable 
 biped ! What is the sum-total of the worst that lies before 
 thee ? Death ? Well, death ; and say the pangs of 
 Tophet too-, and all that the devil and man may, will, or 
 can do against thee. Hast thou not a heart ? Canst thou 
 not suffer whatso it be ; and, as a child of freedom, though 
 outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy feet, while it 
 consumes thee ? Let it come, then ; I will meet and 
 defy it." l 
 
 This will do. Here we take our leave of 
 Carlyle and his ultimate evangel. We trust it ship con- 
 
 . trusted with 
 
 is not want 01 courage, but want ot misanthropy, Chris- 
 tianity, 
 which makes us shrink from the social chaos he 
 
 invokes, a chaos which that of old, when the earth was 
 void and darkness rested on the face of the deep, but 
 faintly prefigured. It is not Titanic strength, confusing 
 heaven and earth with its wild rush and battle, but the 
 spirit of God, brooding like a dove on human society, that 
 will bring forth order, and serene beauty and peace. 
 There is a better gospel for the nations than this panthe- 
 ism, which limits all reality to a few mighty men, for whose 
 use and behoof all things else are, and were, and ever will 
 be. It is with feelings of profound joy that we turn from 
 Carlyle's desperate conclusion to such words as those of 
 Goldwin Smith, where he says, " Of the religion of hero- 
 worship I am no devotee. Great men are most precious 
 gifts of Heaven, and unhappy is the nation which cannot 
 produce them at its need. But their importance in history 
 becomes less as civilization goes on. A Timonr or an 
 
 1 Sartor Resartus, p. 131. 
 
266 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Attila towers immeasurably above his horde ; but in the 
 last great struggle which the world has seen, the struggle 
 of the North American states for their Union, the hero 
 was an intelligent and united nation. And to whatever 
 age they may belong, the greatest, the most godlike of 
 men, are men, not gods. They are the offspring, though 
 the highest offspring, of their age. They would be nothing 
 without their fellow-men. Carlyle prostrates morality be- 
 fore greatness. We might as well bow down before the 
 hundred-handed idol of the Hindoos. To moral force we 
 may bow down; but moral force resides and can reside in 
 those only who obey the moral law. It is found in the 
 highest degree in those at whom hero-worship sneers." l 
 Set over against the political ravings of Carlyle, who 
 knows no God, and no government, human or divine, save 
 w r hat he finds in great men, how grandly true are the lines 
 of Wordsworth, in his Sonnets dedicated to liberty,, where 
 he says, 
 
 " A few plain instincts, and a few plain rules, 
 
 Have wrought more for mankind, in the disastrous hour, 
 Than all the pride of intellect and thought." 2 
 
 Every right feeling in us responds instantly to these 
 noble words. And a Greater than Wordsworth or Gold- 
 win Smith has taught us, in language still sending an 
 inspiration through the ages, that not the lofty, but the 
 lowly-hearted are the light of life to our world. Let the 
 pantheist leave his great men, whom he regards as the 
 
 1 Three English Statesmen (Harpers, 1867), pp. 79-81. 
 
 ~ 1 give the lines as usually quoted, though changed from their original form. 
 See Sonnets dedicated to Liberty (English ed., p. 239), Part II., Sonnet 10. 
 
PANTHEISM. 267 
 
 only Shekinah. Let him go back from his hero-worship, 
 through Him who is the living way, till he finds again that 
 Father of his spirit from whom he has wandered, and he 
 shall know the truth. He shall know that truth which 
 breaks the fatal dream of philosophy, and leads her forth 
 into the liberty of the children of God. For it is an ever- 
 lasting truth, which all history illustrates and every noblest 
 thing in us welcomes, that God chooses not the mighty, 
 but the weak to confound the mighty ; that it pleases him 
 to hide from the wise and prudent what he reveals unto 
 babes ; and that in the blessed ages to come, when man- 
 kind shall be at peace and walk together as brethren, no 
 imperial chieftain, but a little child shall lead them. 
 
LECTURE VII. 
 
 PANTHEISM IN THE FORM OF SELF -WORSHIP. 
 
 THE pantheist, holding that all objects in the universe 
 manifest its one divine essence, will find that essence 
 more especially amid those investigations to which his en- 
 ergies are devoted. Goethe, with his passion for culture, 
 found it in art, and the assthetic relations of things. Car- 
 lyle, the eager student of history, found it in the great 
 men of the world. But there are other mental peculiari- 
 ties of pantheists^ giving especial form to the common 
 doctrine which they hold. The class of minds 
 i ? "m! Vidual " which naturally tend to individualism in their 
 workings is perhaps as large as the aesthetic or 
 the historic and reformatory. Their tendency is subjective 
 rather than objective ; they believe in the ideal, and dis- 
 trust the so-called real. Where this class of thinkers 
 locate their Shekinah, when under the influence of pan- 
 theism, it is important next to consider. 
 
 What has already been said of Carlyle in relation to 
 hero-worship may, in relation to this subjective pantheism, 
 be with justice said of Ralph Waldo Emerson. lie repre- 
 sents, perhaps better than any \other popular 
 . author, the introspective tendency in modern 
 thought. The subject could hardly be treated 
 
PANTHEISM. 269 
 
 apart from his writings ; and we may safely conclude that 
 we are masters of it, not needing to extend our researches, 
 when we thoroughly understand him. Representing this 
 individualism as he does, and carrying it to the point of 
 self-worship under the lead of pantheism, I shall fulfil the 
 task of the present lecture, if I give a faithful account of 
 his philosophy, considered both in its substance and its 
 practical development. And that the account may be 
 faithful, with the least possible chance of misrepresentation 
 by me, I- shall, as in the case of Carlyle, allow less space 
 to my own comments than to the words of the author 
 himself. What I give, let me also say, must not be re- 
 garded as a full and complete estimate of Emerson. It is 
 in a single, relation only that I propose now to 
 examine his writings., He may have many JJeafment^ 
 merits which the present inquiry does not espe- 
 cially contemplate, though I shall hope to recognize them 
 all as they incidentally occur. My main object will be 
 gained, if I make clear his philosophical views and their 
 bearings, with a regard to the logical connections and 
 progress of the thought, such as his own pages do not 
 deign to give. 
 
 It is with feelings of relief that I turn from 
 the works of Carlyle to those of Emerson, for I with Car- 
 
 lyle. 
 
 cannot help the impression that the latter is 
 much the greater mnn of the two : not a reader of so 
 many books perhaps, nor so accurate and exhaustive a 
 student of history ; but higher toned, of a serener spirit, 
 with less in his writings that is ephemeral ; central in his 
 thought, and balanced in expression, so as to speak not for 
 a day or generation, but for all time. While the peculiar 
 
270 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 phase of thinking which he represents is in the world, he 
 will be recognized as one of its major prophets ; as having 
 at times, I think, surpassed any other writer in uttering 
 the spirit of a subjective and ideal pantheism. Should the 
 present age of materialism pass away, and there be an- 
 other revival of the a-priori philosophy, as will no doubt 
 be the case, I predict that Emerson will be read, while 
 Carlyle is comparatively forgotten. That energy which 
 Carlyle lets off in stormy passion, Emerson carefully hus- 
 bands, and puts into the very substance of his thinking. 
 He never raves, like his friend across the sea, but is al- 
 ways self-contained, measured in his statements, well- 
 poised and calm. The poet Lowell is hardly less just 
 than witty where he says, speaking of the two men, 
 
 " To compare him with Plato would bo vastly fairer; 
 Carlyle's the more burly, but E. is the rarer : 
 He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, trulier; 
 Jf C.'s an original, E.'s more peculiar: 
 That he's more of a man you might say of one, 
 Of the other, he's more of an Emerson ; 
 C.'s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb, 
 E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim." ] 
 
 It is easy to see, while reading Emerson, that 
 kut temper. ne * s a person of very great sensitiveness; that 
 he has felt keenly the sharp antagonism of early 
 friends. But though this longing for the love of good 
 men, and pain at the absence of it, appear in many places, 
 I have looked in vain for any weak word of complaint. 
 There is but little that looks like recrimination anywhere 
 in his writings. Few authors, so roughly criticised as he, 
 
 i Fable for the Critics. 
 
PANTHEISM. 271 
 
 show so little vindictiveness. Even those who ignorantly 
 and stupidly abuse him, he treats with good-natured con- 
 descension rather than hard contempt. So free are his 
 pages from the spirit of controversy, that as you read on 
 the comment you make is, " This man does not seem to 4 
 know how severely the views he is here stating have 
 been denounced." It is a fact, I believe, that he has never 
 formally replied to any of his critics. Certainly a man so 
 without enmities, and whom any one may assail feeling 
 that he will not retaliate, should be resisted only in the 
 interest of truth, and with a spirit more generous, if pos- 
 sible, than his own. In all that I am now about to offer I 
 shall not speak against him, nor affect to speak for him ; 
 but, as just intimated, shall the rather permit him to speak 
 for himself. I have already shown what pantheism, in its 
 last analysis, is ; and if he is in full sympathy with that 
 doctrine, both he and his friends ought to desire that his 
 readers should know the fact. 
 
 Having compared Emerson with Carlyle, to 
 the disadvantage of the latter in some respects, 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 I wish also to say that, to my view, he stands 
 on a higher plane than Goethe even. By this I do not 
 mean that his intellectual range is broader than Goethe's. 
 He has no sucl^ knowledge of natural science as Goethe 
 had ; is not, like him, at home in all the literatures of the 
 world ; but he more uniformly speaks to what is noblest 
 and best in us. There is far less in his pages to oftend 
 our conscience and self-respect. One feels, all along, that 
 he is reading a man whose thoughts and life are pure. 
 However dangerous the underlying theory, yet, by a 
 charming inconsistency, the immediate appeal is to our 
 
272 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 honor, our love of the good, our sense of right. Being 
 less true than Goethe to his main speculation, he is more 
 true to the moral convictions of mankind. I quote with 
 pleasure his own judgment against Goethe, as showing, 
 'however his theory may tally with the German poet's, that 
 his New England blood will not let him indorse that the- 
 ory, when it is practically carried out to all the results. 
 Ernerson says, " I dare not say that Goethe has ascended 
 to the highest grounds from which genius has spoken. 
 He has not worshipped the highest unity. He is incapable 
 of self-surrender to the moral sentiment. There are nobler 
 strains in poetry than any he has sounded. There are 
 writers poorer in talent, whose tone is purer, and more 
 touches the heart. Goethe can never be dear to men. 
 His is not even the devotion to pure truth ; but to truth 
 for the sake of culture." * 
 
 In one respect it is not so hard to enucleate the pan- 
 theism of Emerson as that of Goethe and Carlyle. He 
 rarely loses sight of his major premise. His writings, 
 whatever the occasion or immediate purpose, seem al- 
 ways to be instinct with the spirit of Spinozism. That is 
 the string on which they are all strung together;- their 
 one logical connection, if they have no other. I am con- 
 fident that' any one, assuming this to be the 
 
 Monotony. ... 
 
 clew to his writings, would find but little diffi- 
 culty in tracing their harmony, nay, even their monot- 
 ony. I shall follow this thread only a little way, omitting 
 much that is strictly pertinent, and keeping to his more 
 elaborate essays, in the present inquiry. It is true that we 
 
 1 Representative Men (Boston, Phillips, Sampson, & Co., 1850), pj>. 278, 279. 
 
PANTHEISM. 273 
 
 shall not find, even in these essays, frequent allusions to 
 Spinoza, or to his doctrine under its proper designation. 
 Emerson is Shy of names ; and though he has a confession 
 of faith, he is careful not to give it to his readers in any 
 formulated shape. Nor is it necessary to say, as some of 
 his critics have, that he thus avoids the Avell-known and 
 abhorred phraseology because he wishes to deceive his 
 readers, imbuing them with the principles of pantheism 
 while they are off their guard. He is no such zealot. He 
 cares little for the reception his doctrine gets in other 
 minds. It is not to any taint of Jesuitism, but to the 
 purely literary bent of his genius, that this impatience of 
 technical terms is due. We need not be misled, however, 
 though failing to find the usual superscription on the coin ; 
 the ring of the metal tells us, more clearly than 
 any image could, what is its nature. Very t^r " 61 *' 
 often where Emerson uses the words " soul," 
 " spirit," "mind," "intellect," we shall find, when we un- 
 derstand him, that he does not refer to anything individ- 
 ual or personal, but to an all-surrounding, all-filling sub- 
 stance, which he calls divine, and regards as constituting 
 the whole of reality. " Soul," or " the soul," seems to be 
 his favorite designation of this essence, which Spinoza 
 calls substance, Schelling the subject-object, and Hegel 
 the absolute idea ; as where he says, " the universe is the 
 externization of the soul." l But he uses other terms, 
 such as "life," "light," "God," "the Holy, Ghost," "Pan," 
 "Fortune," "Minerva," "Proteus." He has added one 
 term to the vocabulary of pantheism, which merits partic- 
 ular notice. " All the universe over," says he, " there is 
 
 i Essays (Boston, Phillips, Sampson, & Co., 1858), Vol. II., p. 19. 
 
 18 
 
274 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 but one thing, this old Two-Face, creator-creature, mind- 
 matter, right-wrong, of which any proposition may be 
 affirmed or denied." l Old Two-Face, forsooth ! 
 F!>? WO ~ We fancy that at such a designating as this of 
 the absolute and sole reality, even Hegel's hair 
 would have bristled. But the speculative views of Emer- 
 son will not be obscure, I think, as we go forward in our 
 inquiry, whatever may happen to be his phraseology. 
 I shall, in the first place, present passages from Emer- 
 son's writings which lay down the doctrine of 
 Comprehen- pantheism in its more creneric forms. What 
 
 give state- 
 ments of words, for instance, could utter the doctrine of 
 
 pantheism. 
 
 Spinoza more decisively than these ? " Under 
 all this running sea of circumstance, whose waters -ebb 
 and flow with perfect balance, lies the aboriginal abyss of 
 real Being. Essence, or God, is not a relation, or a part, 
 but the whole. Being is the vast affirmative, excluding 
 negation, self-balanced, and swallowing up all relations, 
 parts and times within itself. Nature, virtue, truth, are 
 the influx from thence." 2 Or we might take this: "The 
 philosophical perception of identity through endless muta- 
 tions, makes man know the Proteus." 3 Or the following 
 might be confidently relied on to sustain our position: 
 " The ultimate fact we reach on every topic, is the resolu- 
 tion of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Com- 
 AH things merce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, elo- 
 quence, personal weight, are somewhat; and 
 engage my attention as examples of its presence and 
 action." 4 In his essay on History Emerson says, " There 
 
 i Essays, Vol. II., p. 236. a Ibid., Vol. I., p. 103. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 28. * Ibid., pp. 61, 62. 
 

 
 PANTHEISM. 275 
 
 is one mind common to all individual men. Whoever 
 
 hath access to this universal mind is a party 
 
 to all that is or can be done, for this is the only 
 
 and sovereign agent." l And the poetical motto, prefixed 
 
 to that essay, is, 
 
 s ' There is no great and no small 
 
 To the soul that maketh all ; 
 And where it cometh all things are, 
 And it cometh everywhere." 
 
 Again he says, " I am much struck in literature by the 
 appearance that one person wrote all the books ; there is 
 such equality and identity both of judgment and 
 point of view in the narrative, that it is plainly 
 the work of one all-seeing all-hearing gentleman. When 
 I read Proclus it is not Proclus, but a piece of nature and 
 fate that I explore. It is a greater joy to see the author's 
 author, than himself." 2 The discovery that the author of 
 Proclus, and of every other writer, is a " gentleman," hardly 
 equals in sublimity the announcement of the ancient sage 
 that " God is a geometer," but it certainly 
 leaves us in no doubt as to the speculative God a en - 
 
 tleman. 
 
 views of our modern philosopher. Emerson 
 further says, " Virtue is the incoming of God himself, or 
 absolute existence." 3 " God is the all-fair. Truth, and 
 goodness, und beauty, are but different faces of the same 
 all." 4 " Cause and effect are two sides of one fact." 5 
 "The soul strives amain to live and work through all 
 
 1 Essays, Vol. I., p. 3. 2 Tbid., Vol. II., pp. 224, 225. 
 
 s Ibid., Vol. I., p. 109. 
 
 4 Miscellanies, (Boston, Phillips, Sampson, & Co., 1858), p. 22. 
 Essays, Vol. I., p. 285. 
 
276 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 things. It would be the only fact." l " The true doctrine 
 of omnipresence is, that God reappears with all his parts 
 in every moss and cobweb." 2 Emerson's theory of love, 
 with all the charms of social and domestic life to which it 
 gives birth, is purely pantheistic. It is the 
 omnipresent divinity in the two sexes, which, 
 revealed as the positive and negative poles of a resistless 
 magnetism, draws them together. Why does man invol- 
 untarily love a beautiful woman ? Because she " suggests 
 to him," says our author, "the presence, of that which is 
 within the beauty. Beholding the traits of the divine 
 beauty, the lover ascends to .the highest beauty, to the 
 love and knowledge of the divinity." 3 He gives a defini- 
 tion of prayer equally novel, and equally faithful to his 
 constant doctrine : " Prayer is the contemplation of the 
 facts of life from the highest point of view. It 
 
 Prayer. 
 
 is the soliloquy of the beholding and jubilant 
 soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works 
 good." 4 This language is a perfect rendering of the 
 meaning of Spinoza where he says, " The intellectual love 
 of the mind towards God is part of the infinite love where- 
 with God loves himself." 5 Prayer, as thus strangely de- 
 fined, is not the offering of petitions by man to his Maker ; 
 it includes all action of whatever form. " The prayer of 
 the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of 
 the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true 
 prayers heard throughout nature." e It is not a person, 
 but the impersonal soul of the universe, which prays ; and 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 93. 2 Ibid., p. 91. 
 
 s Ibid., pp. 164, 105. * Ibid., p. 68. 
 
 s Ethics, Pt. V., Prop. XXXVI. e Essays, Vol. I., p. 68. 
 
PANTHEISM. 277 
 
 what we call our consciousness of praying is but the talk- 
 ing of that soul to itself. 
 
 This definition of prayer leads me to notice what the 
 author has to say on the subject of personality. His views 
 here are perfectly at one with those of the most 
 famous pantheists.. "I wish to speak with^all 
 respect of persons," says he, " but sometimes I 
 must pinch myself to keep and preserve the due 
 decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they 
 are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat 
 them as individuals. Though the uninspired man cer- 
 tainly finds persons a conveniency in household matters, 
 the divine man does not respect them : he sees them as 
 racks of clouds, or a fleet of ripples which the wind drives 
 over the surface of the waters." l " We learn that God 
 is; that he is in me; and that all things are shadows of 
 him. The idealism of Berkeley is a crude statement of the 
 idealism of Jesus ; and that is a crude statement of the 
 fact, that all nature is a rapid efflux of goodness executing 
 and organizing itself." 2 "From within or from behind, 
 a light shines through us upon things, and makes us 
 aware that we are nothing, but the light is all." 8 " Let us 
 go for the universal ; for the magnetism, not for the nee- 
 dles. Human life and its persons are poor empirical 
 pretensions. A personal influence is an ignis 
 fatuus. The great gods of fame fade before the f^u's" 18 
 eternal." 4 " This deep power in which we 
 exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not 
 only self-sufficing and perfect every hour, but the act of 
 
 i Essays, Vol. II., p. 227. 2 Ibid., Vol. I., p. 281. 
 
 s Ibid., p. 246. * Ibid., Vol. II., p. 221. 
 
278 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the 
 subject and the object, are one." l " The larger experience 
 of man discovers the identical nature appearing through 
 them all. Persons themselves acquaint us with the im- 
 personal. In all conversation between two persons, tacit 
 reference is made, as to a third party, to a common nature. 
 That third party, or common nature, is not social ; it is 
 
 impersonal, it is God." 2 " I clap my hands in 
 )n d ai mpcr " infantine joy and amazement, before the first 
 
 opening to me of this august magnificence, old 
 with the love and homage of innumerable ages, young 
 with the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the desert," 3 
 It is sufficiently clear, in the light of these ex- 
 
 tracts, that I do Emerson no wrong in ranking 
 
 him with the disciples of Spinoza. On the con- 
 trary, should I not be doing him a most palpable injustice 
 did I deny to him the pantheistic doctrine which he so 
 plainly and earnestly professes ? Our respect for him as a 
 thinker should lead us to yield him the position he has so 
 distinctly taken, and which he defines almost in the exact 
 terms of the most famous teachers of pantheism. A writer 
 who declares that persons are "poor empiricnl pretensions," 
 ripples on the ocean of real being ; who says that subject 
 and object, the seer and the thing seen, are one ; who 
 affirms that the personal brings us to the impersonal, which 
 is God, or the sole reality, this writer must be set down 
 as a pantheist, or language may mean just the opposite of 
 what it plainly asserts, and Hegel himself was not a 
 Hegelian, nor Spinoza a Spinozist. 
 
 But the nature of Emerson's doctrine will be even more 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 245. * Ibid., p. 252, ^ Ibi(L, Vol. II., pp. 73, 74. 
 
PANTHEISM. 279 
 
 manifest, as we go forward, in the second place, 
 to consider his method. Is this subjective mShod. n>B 
 or objective ? Where does he find the one 
 absolute reality he so firmly believes in ? So far as this 
 question goes, he is more true, I think, to the subjective 
 and transcendental method, than either Goethe or Carlyle. 
 He finds the absolute essence of things, not in society, 
 with the German ; nor in great men, with the Scotchman ; 
 but in each individual consciousness. In this respect he 
 is nearly, if not quite, on the same ground as Fichte. 
 True, there is at times a gush of hero-worship, reminding 
 one of Carlyle; but he looks steadily within for the 
 primary advent of divinity. The divineness of the out- 
 ward is but secondary, the shadow of the true God. It is 
 reflected deity, either conscious or unconscious. " Plants 
 are the young of the world," says he, " vessels of health 
 and vigor ; but they grope ever upward towards conscious- 
 ness ; the trees are imperfect men, and seem to bemoan 
 their imprisonment, rooted in the ground. The maples 
 and ferns are still uncorrupt ; yet no doubt, when they 
 come to consciousness, they too will curse and swear." l 
 "Every animal of the barn-yard, the field, and the forest, 
 of the earth and of the waters that are under the earth, 
 has contrived to get a footing and to leave the 
 print of its features and form in some one or 
 other of these upright, heaven-speaking faces." 2 
 Such remarks, occurring in various places, show 
 .that Emerson holds to the doctrine of identity, as taught 
 by Schelling ; but he has chosen not to state that doctrine, 
 for tbe most part, in the Schellingian form. His method 
 
 Essays, Vol. II., p. 177. a Ibid., Vol. I., p. 20. 
 
280 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 is subjective and ideal. His private consciousness is the 
 door through which he passes to the universal fact. That 
 personality with which we flatter ourselves, is an illusion 
 while considered as the self. It is an efflux of the Eternal 
 One ; and to recognize it as such is to behold, at a glance, 
 all that is, or was, or ever can be. " Standing on the bare 
 ground," says our author, "my head uplifted into infinite 
 space, all mean egotism vanishes. I become a 
 egotism? transparent eye-ball ; I am nothing ; I see all ; 
 the currents of the universal being circulate 
 through me ; I am part or parcel of God." l Thius it ap- 
 pears that the charge of egotism, which ignorant readers 
 have so often made against Emerson, is thoroughly unjust 
 and false. The object of his adoration is not the empirical 
 self, but the transcendental, by which "self," as ordi- 
 narily understood, is swallowed up. All his egotism is an 
 entire absorption of the finite ego into the eternal. 
 
 Man, according to our author, is nothing real and sub- 
 stantial, but only a passing phenomenon, the form in which 
 the universal fact is for the time being self-conscious. 
 "Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; 
 the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is 
 equally related; the eternal OXE." 2 It is Spinoza who 
 says, " We feel and are persuaded that we are 
 S r ?nan! on eternal ;" and the language of Emerson, often- 
 times, is but an echo of these words. "The 
 soul in man is an immensity not possessed, and that can- 
 not be possessed," 3 says he. "The heart in thee is the. 
 heart of all ; not "& valve, not a wall, not an intersection is 
 there anywhere in nature, but .one blood rolls uninterrupt- 
 
 i Miscellanies, p. 8. 2 Essays, Vol. I., p. 245. 3 Ibid., p. 246.- 
 
PANTHEISM. 281 
 
 edly in endless circulation, through all men ; as the water 
 of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one." l 
 " Of this pure nature every man is at some time sensible. 
 Language cannot paint it with his colors. It is too subtle. 
 It is indefinable, unmeasurable, but we know that it per- 
 vades and contains us. We know that all spiritual being 
 is in man." 2 " The soul's communication of truth is the 
 highest event in nature, since it then does not give some- 
 what from itself, but gives itself, or passes into and becomes 
 that man whom it enlightens ; or, in proportion to the 
 truth he receives, it takes him into itself." 3 As the soul, 
 which is the divine and universal fact, is present in all 
 persons, making -them whatsoever they are, " so it is in 
 every period of life. It is adult already in the infant man. 
 In my dealing with my child, my Latin and my Greek, my 
 accomplishments and my money stead me nothing. If I 
 am wilful he sets up his will 'against mine ; but if I re- 
 nounce my will, and act for the soul, setting that up as 
 umpire between us two, out of his young eyes looks the 
 same soul." 4 
 
 But the view of individual man, which we find in Emer- 
 son's works, is no more pantheistic than his definition of 
 genius. He argues that any unusual elevation 
 
 The va- 
 
 of spirit, religious or artistic, is purely an influx rietics of 
 
 genius 
 
 of the divine essence in the form of what we forms of 
 
 the diyine 
 
 call our mind. Such is all inspiration ; that conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 of Paul, of George Fox, of Swedenborg, of 
 
 Michael Angelo. "The revivals of the Calvinistic 
 
 churches, the experiences of the Methodists," he says, 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 267. 2 Ibid., p. 247. 
 
 a Ibid., p. 255. * Ibid., p. 254. 
 
282 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 " are varying forms of that shudder of awe and delight 
 \vith which the individual soul always mingles with the 
 universal soul." 1 The natural genius of these Calvinists 
 and Methodists, that is, is religious. They have a special 
 aptitude for receiving the divine substance in that form 
 which constitutes pious enthusiasm. Their mistake is in 
 believing that God is outside of themselves, and that their 
 excitement is anything more than a transient shadow of 
 him. His going forth into self-consciousness is what makes 
 the " revival," as it makes all that we admire, or love, or 
 wonder at in human achievement. "When we have 
 broken our God of tradition, and ceased from our God of 
 rhetoric, then may God fire the heart with his presence. 
 It is the doubling of the heart itself; nay, the infinite en- 
 largement of the heart with a power of growth to a new 
 infinity on every side." 2 " An individual is an enclosure. 
 Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought, 
 are left at large no longer. Now, the universe is a close 
 or pound. All things exist in the man tinged with the 
 manners of his soul." 3 "Each man has his vocation. 
 The talent -is the call. This talent and this call depend on 
 his organization, or the mode in which the general soul 
 incarnates itself in him." 4 " The maker of all things and 
 all ^persons stands behind us, and casts his dread om- 
 niscience through Vis over things." 5 " The wit of man, his 
 strength, his grace, his tendency, his art, is the grace and 
 presence of God." 6 Any fresh generalization of philoso- 
 phy " is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind." 
 And " Empedocles undoubtedly spoke a truth of thought," 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 257. * Ibid., p. 26fi. a ibid., Vol. II., p. 97. 
 
 Ibid., Vol. I., p. 126. 5 Ibid., p. 255. " Miscellanies, p. 18rt. 
 
PANTHEISM. 283 
 
 says Emerson, " when he said, ' I am God.' " l Not while 
 we go searching abroad, but while we stay at home, keep- 
 ing the door of consciousness open, the great spirit of the 
 universe not only comes in, but makes that into which it 
 comes ; not only sups with us, but is that with which it 
 sups. He constitutes our private thought, in the depths 
 of which he is manifested. "God enters by a private 
 door into every individual ; " 2 and this melting of subject 
 and object into a single consciousness, is a blessed experi- 
 ence, which words must forever labor in vain to utter. 
 ." Ineffable , is the union of man and God in every act of 
 the soul. The. simplest person, who in his integrity wor- 
 ships God, becomes Goxl ; yet forever and ever the influx 
 of this better and universal self is new and unsearch- 
 able." 3 
 
 Having seen that Emerson's God is the same as Spi- 
 noza's, and that, like Spinoza, he finds it in his private con- 
 sciousness, let us, in the third place, see what he has to say 
 of its evolution or " becoming." What is the law 
 
 Teaches the 
 
 of this evolution ? Does the noumenon mirror pantheistic 
 
 fatalism. 
 
 itself in phenomena freely, choosing whether 
 it will or not, or under conditions of the sternest neces- 
 sity ? Here also, as we might expect, our author teaches 
 the pantheistic fatalism. He does not believe in a freedom 
 of will involving the power of alternate choice. The law 
 of man's action is, to his view, the same as that of nature, 
 spontaneous and inevitable. Whatever we do, we can- 
 not do otherwise. Any theory of a moral government 
 which involves accountability, and which is sustained by 
 penalties and rewards, he regards as chimerical, a fancy 
 
 i Miscellanies, p. 1UO. 2 Essays, Vol. I., p. 297. Ibid., p. 265. 
 
284 HALfc TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 of certaia sects in theology. The only liberty is sponta- 
 neity ; and the perfection of this automatic activity is in 
 its absolute necessity. The universe is but one, and for- 
 ever acts and reacts upon itself, compassed in the folds of 
 an eternal fate. This necessity of action, whose endless 
 coil lies at the centre of our being, is the freedom which, 
 when joyfully yielded to, makes us free indeed. 
 
 But on this topic, as on others, I shall not assume to 
 present Emerson in my own words, so much as in the lan- 
 guage which he himself has largely used. In his essay on 
 fate he says, " We trace fate in matter, mind, 
 
 All tilings 
 
 subject to and morals. A part of fate is the freedom of 
 
 fate. 
 
 man." l " The day of days, the great day of 
 the feast of life, is that in which the inward eye opens to 
 the unity of things; to the omnipresence of law; sees 
 that what is must be, and ought to be, or is the best." 2 
 He quotes with approbation the stanza of the Mohamme- 
 dan poet, 
 
 " On two days it steads not to run from thy grave, 
 
 The appointed, and the unappointed day ; 
 On the first neither balm nor physician can save, 
 Nor thee, on the second, the universe slay." 3 
 
 "A man's power," says he in the same essay, "is hooped 
 about by a necessity, which, by many experiments, he 
 touches on every side, till he learns its arc." 4 "A breath 
 of will blows eternally through the. universe of souls in 
 the direction of the right and the necessary." 5 " Let us 
 build altars to the blessed unity, which holds nature and 
 souls m perfect solution, and compels every atom to serve 
 
 1 Conduct of Life (Boston, Ticknor & Fields, 1800), pp. 18, 19. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 21. 3 Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 10. B ibid., p. 23. 
 
PANTHEISM. 285 
 
 an universal end. Let us build altars to the beautiful 
 necessity, which secures that all is made of one piece ; 
 that plaintiff and defendant, friend and enemy, animal 
 and plant, food and eater, are of one kind." 1 A severe 
 critic might be tempted to infer, from the way in which 
 the doctrine of unity is here carried out, things not a little 
 shocking to our author's sensibilities. If animal and 
 plant, food and eater are one, our horror at the deed of 
 the cannibal, who slays his guest and makes a meal of the 
 victim, is wholly out of place. We all are continually 
 living upon some form of the blessed unity, either vegeta- 
 ble or animal ; nor can we destroy any life, in any realm 
 of nature below us, save by a kind of murder and suicide. 
 There is not one flesh of men and another of birds, as 
 Paul thought, but all creatures are the same flesh, and 
 beast and herb are one ; and altars should be built to the 
 beautiful necessity which secures this eternal fact. 
 
 Everything being what it is by that inevitable fate which 
 rules the undivided whole, no person, according to Em- 
 erson, is in the last analysis responsible for his own char- 
 acter. The case of politicians, who change their prin- 
 ciples as the influences brought to bear on them change, 
 is adduced; and their inconsistencies are accounted for 
 purely on the ground of natural and irresistible 
 laws. " The rabid democrat," says our author, <? t ht r can 
 "as soon as he is senator and rich man, has JedoS! 11 
 ripened beyond the possibility of sincere radi- 
 calism, and unless he can resist the sun, he must be con- 
 servative the remainder of his days." 2 Could any doc- 
 trine be more comforting than this to the outlawed rebel, 
 
 i Conduct of Life, pp. 41, 42. 2 Essays, Vol. II., p. 23(5. 
 
286 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 who has sought to destroy the government of his country ? 
 Though he stood high in the confidence of the public, and 
 was the trusted servant of the nation, so that his treachery 
 drew immeasurable ruin after it, yet he has no occasion to 
 reproach himself; he was ripened into the wickedness as 
 apples are ripened. "The only sin," says- this apologist 
 for wrong-doing, "is limitation." 1 At times he seems 
 almost to regret the fatalism in which he so firmly be- 
 lieves, as where he says, " I would gladly be moral, and 
 keep due metes and bounds, which I dearly love, and allow 
 the most to the will of man ; but I have set my heart on 
 honesty, and I can see nothing at last in success or failure 
 but more or less of vital force supplied from the eternal." 2 
 "Character is nature in the highest form." 3 ' : The same 
 law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the vir- 
 tues, and extinguishes each in the light of a better." 4 
 " What avails it to fight with the eternal laws of mind, 
 which adjust the relations of all persons to each, by the 
 mathematical measure of their beings and havings." 5 
 u We talk of deviations from natural life, as if artificial 
 life were not also natural. The smoothest-curled courtier 
 in the boudoirs of a palace has an animal nature, rude and 
 aboriginal as a white bear, omnipotent to its own ends, 
 
 and is directly related there, amid essences and 
 urai! lfe nat billets-doux, to Himmaleh mountain-chains and 
 
 the axis of the globe." 6 " As children in their 
 play run behind each other, and seize one by the ears and 
 make him walk before them, so is the spirit our unseen 
 pilot. All art is a portion of history ; a stroke drawn in 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I. p. 279. 2 Ibid., Vol. II., p. 71. Ibid., p. 106. 
 
 * Ibid., Vol. I., p. 285. 5 Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., Vol. II., p. 177. 
 
rhetor ' 
 
 PANTHEISM. 287 
 
 the portrait *of that inevitable, fate, perfect and beautiful, 
 according to whose ordinations all beings advance to their 
 beatitude." 1 
 
 Now, if Emerson were wont to deal in tropes and rhe- 
 torical flourishes, we might abate somewhat from the pal- 
 pable force of his words. But he is a literalist. He con- 
 tends, as we have already seen, that those who believe in 
 a personal God, and hold that they might act otherwise 
 than they do, are deceived by their rhetoric. 
 Even his poetry, he claims, is the exact Ian- 
 guage of philosophy. When he says, " Every . 
 one must act after his kind, be he asp or angel," 
 he can mean nothing less than universal "fatalism. The 
 passages I have quoted from him on this subject are not 
 to be taken figuratively, but literally. We are to under- 
 stand him as meaning just what his words plainly imply, 
 when he says, " I have been floated into this thought, this 
 hour, this connection of events, by secret currents of 
 might and mind; and my ingenuity and wilfulness have 
 not thwarted, have not aided to any appreciable degree." 2 
 The author shows a desire to see his views adopted by 
 other persons. And here it is, as we see the case, that his 
 doctrine of fatalism presses. For why attempt to make 
 disciples, we say, of beings whom an iron necessity rules 
 in every act? But he anticipates our criticism, saying, 
 "If you say, 'the acceptance of the vision is 
 also the act of God,' I shall not seek to pen- ^yttery*! a 
 etrate the mystery ; I admit the force of what 
 you say." His utterances of doctrine, and all his con- 
 duct, are alike the forthputtings of an eternal fate, and he 
 
 i Miscellanies, p. 201. 2 Essays, Vol. I,, p. 298. s Miscellanies, pp. 212, 213. 
 
288 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 has only this account to give of them. His 'struggle to 
 make others believe as he believes is unnatural, since God 
 himself is in every instance both master and disciple ; and 
 this pantheism, which he offers as a substitute for our tra- 
 ditional faith, is at last confessed to be as inexplicable as 
 anything in Calvinism ! A part of fate - are his writings 
 and all his wise sayings. " The universal nature, too [ 
 strong for the petty nature of the bard, sits on his neck, tf 
 and writes through his hand; so that when he seems to 
 vent a mere caprice and wild romance, the issue is an 
 exact allegory." 1 "By virtue of tliis inevitable nature,, 
 private will is overpowered, and, maugre our efforts or our 
 imperfections, your genius will speak for you, and mine for 
 me. That which we are, we shall teach, not voluntarily, 
 but involuntarily. Thoughts come into -our minds by 
 avenues we never left open, and thoughts go out of our 
 minds through avenues we never voluntarily opened." 2 
 
 Having seen what the fundamental doctrine of Emerson 
 is, in its substance, method, and law, let us next 
 
 The objective 
 
 world in the consider some of the conclusions to which it 
 
 light, of Em- 
 erson's phi- leads mm, within the two great realms of nature 
 
 losophy. 
 
 and history. The soul of all -things, found pri- 
 marily in his own consciousness, and forever acting within 
 the ring of necessity, mirrors itself forth, through him, 
 under the forms of mind and matter. Here we have, with 
 hardly a shade of difference, Spinoza's infinite attributes 
 of thought and extension. History and nature are not 
 radically distinct. They are, the one more, and the other 
 less, vivid manifestations of the absolute essence of all 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 30. . * Ibid., p. 260. 
 
PANTHEISM. 280 
 
 things. In human history the universal soul is still self- 
 conscious ; whereas in everything below the plane of his- 
 tory its reflex is too faint to produce consciousness. His- 
 tory is God conscious; nature is God* struggling towards 
 consciousness. All our study, in these two departments 
 of knowledge, is God looking at himself; beholding as it 
 we're his own image reflected to him in a mirror. All re- 
 corded science, and the annals of the ages, are his autobi- 
 ography ; the naturalist, or historian, being but the pen 
 with which he traces a record of his own action and reac- 
 tion^ in one or more of the successive stadia. Our author 
 might therefore, in strict conformity to his doctrine, bring 
 the whole objective world under a single treatment. But 
 he lias chosen to treat nature and history separately; and 
 hence in giving his views I shall regard the distinction. 
 
 Taking up first his view of history, we find that he 
 holds it* to be simply a conscious reflex of the universal 
 soul. "The soul," he says, "looketh steadily forward, 
 creating a world before her, leaving worlds behind her. 
 She has no dates, nor rites, nor persons, nor specialties, 
 nor men. The soul knows only the soul-; the 
 
 T /> i n i 1-1 History a&- 
 
 web oi events is the flowing robe in which she sorhcd into 
 is clothed." l " Everything the individual sees 
 without him corresponds to his states of mind. The 
 primeval world I can dive to in myself, as well as grope 
 for it in catacombs, libraries, and the broken reliefs and 
 torsos of ruined villas." 2 "There is no age, or state of 
 society, or mode of action in history, to which there is not 
 somewhat corresponding in each man's life. He is greater 
 than all the geography and all the governments in the 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 249. 2 Ibid., p. 21. 
 
 19 
 
290 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 world. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain, and the Is- 
 lands, the genius and creative principle of each and of 
 all eras in my own mind." 1 "A man shall be the temple 
 of fame. I shall find in him the fore-world, the age of 
 gold, the apples of knowledge, the Argonautic expedition, 
 the calling of Abraham, the building of the temple, the 
 advent of Christ, the dark ages, the revival of letters, the 
 Reformation, the discovery of new lands, the opening of 
 new regions and new sciences. He shall be the priest of 
 Pan, and bring with him into humble cottages the blessing 
 of the morning stars and all the recorded benefits of heaven 
 and earth." 2 "The advancing man discovers how deep a 
 property he has in literature, in all fable as well as in all 
 history. His own secret biography he finds in lines won- 
 derfully intelligible to him, dotted down before he was 
 born. One after another he comes up in his private adven- 
 tures with every fable of JEsop, of Homer, of Hafiz, of 
 Ariosto, of Chaucer, of Scott, and verifies them 
 
 All litera- 
 
 bk^raphy with his own head and hands." 3 "Of the uni- 
 ofeachman. versri | ui'md each individual is one more incar- 
 nation. All its properties consist in him." 4 " Ail litera- 
 ture writes the biography of each man. Books, monu- 
 ments, pictures, conversation, are portraits in which he 
 finds the lineaments he is forming. The silent and' the 
 eloquent praise him and accost him, and he is stimulated 
 wherever he moves as by personal allusions." 5 " History 
 is an impertinence and an injury, if it be anything more 
 than a cheerful apologue or parable of my beirfg and be- 
 coming." 6 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I, pp. 7, 8, 9. 2 Ibid., p. 35. 3 iby., p . -^. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 4. 5 ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 58. 
 
PANTHEISM. m 291 
 
 " I am owner of the sphere, 
 Of the seven stars and solar year, 
 Of Caesar's hand ^and Plato's hrain, 
 Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." 1 
 
 " How easily these old worships of Moses, of Zoroaster, 
 of Menu, of Socrates, domesticate themselves in the mind! 
 I cannot find any antiquity in them. They are mine as 
 much as theirs." 2 " Civil and natural history, the history 
 of art and literature, must be explained from individual 
 history, or must remain words. There is nothing but is 
 related to us, nothing that does not interest us, king- 
 dom, college, tree, horse, or iron shoe, the roots of all 
 things are in .man. The priestcraft of the east and west; 
 'of the Magian, Brahman, Druid, and Inca, is expounded 
 in the individual's private life. He finds Assyria and the 
 mounds of Cholula at his door, and himself has laid the 
 courses." 3 
 
 Such is history, according to Emerson : the essence of 
 deity or reality projected forward in actual events, under 
 the forms of each man's private consciousness. If this 
 theory of the subjective essence of all facts be true, the 
 author has acted very foolishly when he has 
 visited different parts of the world, and read A Tactical 
 
 result. 
 
 tedious volumes of antiquarian lore, to get a 
 knowledge of mankind in present and former times; for he 
 held within him, all the while, everything which he sought. 
 Fireside travels are a good as any, and as literal, though 
 they l)e but dreams, if the roots of all things are in man. 
 It sometimes happens that persons cursed with a prodi- 
 
 1 Motto to Essay on History. 2 Essays, Vol. I., p. 25. 
 
 3 Ibid., pp. 10, 25, 26. 
 
292 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 gious vanity, or with that defect of memory which consists 
 in remembering too much, illustrate our author's doctrine 
 in their conversation and public discourse, recounting 
 experiences which they never passed through, and describ- 
 ing scenes in parts of the world which they never visited. 
 They are simply reducing the Emersonian theory to prac- 
 tice ; yet sensible people feel constrained to regard such 
 talk as lying-) and those whx> have fallen into the habit of 
 thus retailing "impersonal" experiences are held to be 
 candidates for the jail or the madhouse. A pantheist once 
 pressed this subjective theory of history on the attention 
 of Nathanael Emmons. "Doctor," said he, "I was with 
 Adam and Eve in the garden at the eating of the apple." 
 " Yes," was the quick reply of the theologian, " I have 
 always understood that a third person was present." The 
 justice of this reply is equal to its wit, for the pronoun I 
 cannot refer to an impersonal existence; if we know and 
 are persuaded that we are eternal, as Emerson and Spi- 
 noza teach, we are bound to have a distinct and personal 
 remembrance of that eternity. 
 
 But let us also look at the theory of nature, which our 
 author holds On the basis of his general doctrine. Nature 
 is the universal soul projected beyond the sphere, of self- 
 consciousness. God is the great light whose 
 ravs 5 constantly going out and returning, make 
 
 DllL all things. When they return from points so 
 near as to awaken consciousness, they make history ; but 
 w r hen from points more remote, so that the eternal centre 
 is not conscious of the reflection, they make nature. This 
 doctrine will easily appear, from Emerson's own words. 
 " The world," he says, " proceeds from the same spirit as 
 
PANTHEISM. 203 
 
 man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God, a 
 projection of God in the unconscious." l " We see the 
 world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the 
 tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, 
 is the soul." 2 "I am somehow receptive of the great 
 soul, and thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars, and 
 feel them to be the fair accidents and effects which change 
 and pass. More and move the surges of everlasting nature 
 enter into me. Revering the soul, man will come to see that 
 the 7 world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh. 
 The soul calls the light its own ; and feels that the grass 
 grows and the stone falls;' by a law interior to, and depen- 
 dent on, its nature." 3 "Genius detects through the fly, 
 through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, 
 the constant individual ; through countless individuals, tfie 
 fixed species; through many species, the genus; through 
 all genera, the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of 
 organized life, the eternal unity. Nature is a mutable 
 cloud, which is always and never the same." 4 "Nature is 
 the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One 
 is senl, and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his 
 mind who is conscious of the soul. Its laws are the laws 
 of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the meas- 
 ure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ig- 
 norant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet pos- 
 sess." 5 " Build, therefore, your own world. The advan- 
 cing spirit shall create its ornaments along its path, and 
 carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which 
 enchants it." 6 "Man filled nature with his overflowing 
 
 i Miscellanies p. 62. 2 Essays, Vol. ]., p. 245. ibid. p. 269. 
 
 Ibid., p. 12. c Miscellanies p. 63. , Ibid., p. 74. 
 
 ' f \. 
 
294 OALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 currents ; out from him sprang the sun and moon. The 
 l:i ws of his mind, the. periods of his action, externized 
 themselves into day and night, into the year and the sea- 
 sons." x "The world is a divine dream, from which we 
 may presently awake to the glories and certainties of 
 day." 2 
 
 Emerson represents nature as the soul or God yet 
 asleep ; God only dreams till he awakes to consciousness 
 in the mind of man. Man, however, is not real save as he 
 is an inlet of the divine essence. It is not the empirical, 
 but the transcendental man ; the absolute cause, not the 
 effect, that he means when he says, "A man's genius de- 
 termines for him the character of the universe." 3 " Not 
 in nature, but in man, is all the beauty and worth he sees. 
 The world is very empty, and is indebted to this gilding, 
 exalting soul for all its pride. " 4 " Out of the human heart 
 go, as it were, highways to the heart of every object in 
 nature. A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, 
 whose flower arid fruitage are the world." 5 " Man carries 
 the world in his head, the whole astronomy and chemistry 
 suspended in a thought." 6 "Let man, then, learn that 
 the sources of nature are in his own mind." 7 " I am pres- 
 ent at the sowing of the seed of the world. With a 
 geometry of sunbeams, the soul lays the foundations of 
 nature." 8 "Nature is the incarnation of a thought, and 
 turns to a thought njiain, as ice becomes water 
 
 The world 
 
 man exter- am | gas. The world is mind precipitated. Man 
 crystallized, man vegetative, speaks to man im- 
 
 i Miscellanies, p. 09. 2 ibid., p. 60. 3 Essays, Vol. I., p. 12H. 
 
 < Ibid., p. 132. 5 ibid., p. 32. 6 ibid., Vol. II., p. 178. 
 
 7 Ibid., Vol. I., p. 267. Ibid., p. 314. 
 
PANTHEISM. 295 
 
 personated." l " The great Pan of old, who was clothed 
 in leopard skin to signify the beautiful variety of things 
 and the firmament, his coat of stars, was but thee, O 
 rich and various man ! thou palace of sight and sound, 
 carrying in thy senses the morning and the night, and the 
 unfathomable galaxy ; in thy brain the geometry of the 
 city of God." 2 
 
 Now let us pause and breathe a moment, and consider 
 whereto the author has brought us in these extracts. If 
 what he has been saying be true, as we must believe that 
 he holds it to be, since he is not a rhetorician, but states 
 things precisely as they are to his view, then it is plain 
 that all our knowledges and our philosophy need 
 to be reconstructed for the most part, whatever ^"nauu-o" 6 
 may be the case of his own. The old fable of kmmiedo-e. 
 a man in the moon, pales before this declaration 
 that the moon is in every man. And not only this, but 
 the sun and stars, and other very formidable objects, quite 
 too numerous to mention, are a part of the original furni- 
 ture of the human mind. We do not have to "stretch" 
 our minds at all, as good Dr. Watts thought, to take in 
 sea and shore ; for all nature is ours before we are born, 
 and we carry it about with us eternally in our thoughts, 
 knowing it to the same extent that we know ourselves. 
 The kingdom of heaven within us is not peace and joy in 
 the Holy Ghost, as the Apostles wrote ; it is, literally, the 
 firmament and its galaxies, with the earth and other 
 planets, and empty regions between, and unmeasured 
 spaces beyond. The microcosm contains the macrocosm. 
 The universe lives, and moves, and has its being in man, 
 
 1 Essays, Vol. II., p. 190. 2 Miscellanies, p. 107. 
 
296 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 
 
 and is the stupendous miracle which he works day by 
 day. 
 
 It is but just to call attention here to that form of ideal- 
 ism which Emerson holds, in order that his views, as now 
 given, may be credited with such rationality as they have. 
 
 He sees no absurdity in the theory of nature 
 Sor fl ot' 8 J ust P resen ted ; for nature is to him not real. 
 S at every hilt He denies the existence, or at least assumes the 
 ideaiS. ve non-existence of an objective world. He is an 
 
 idealist, as every consistent pantheist is at last 
 forced to be. Pure idealism cannot be other than subjec- 
 tive, while it rests on demonstration. "Before the revela- 
 tions of the soul," says Emerson, " time, space, and nature 
 shrink away." l " I have no hostility to nature, but a 
 child's love. I expand and live in the warm day, like corn 
 and melons. Children, it is true, believe in the external 
 world. The belief that it appears only, is an after-thought ; 
 but with culture this faith will as surely arise as did the 
 other." 2 " Whether nature enjoy a substantial existence 
 without/ or is only tlite apocalypse of the mind, it is alike 
 useful and alike venerable to me. Be it what it may, it is 
 ideal to me, sQ long as I cannot try the accuracy of my 
 senses. A noble doubt perpetually suggests itself, whether 
 nature outwardly exists." 3 '" Perhaps these subjective 
 lenses have a creative power ; perhaps there are no objects. 
 Once we lived i n what we saw ; now, the rapaciousness of 
 this new power which threatens to absorb all things, en- 
 gages us. Natiire, art, persons, letters, religions, objects, 
 successively, tunable in, and are, in their turn, its ideas. 
 Nature and literature are subjective phenomena ; every 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 249. 2 Miscellanies, pp. 56, 57. Ibid., pp. 46, 45. 
 
PANTHEISM. 297 
 
 evil and every good thing is a shadow we cast." l " Let 
 us no longer omit our homage to the efficient nature, 
 natura naturans, the quick cause, before which all forms 
 flee as the driven snows ; itself secret, its works driven 
 before it in flocks and multitudes." 2 Man, whose eye and 
 step fate is ever turning outward, 
 
 " Sees full before him, gliding without tread, 
 An image with a glory round its head; 
 This shade he worships for its golden hues, 
 And makes, not knowing, that which he pursues." 
 
 The pantheism of Emerson, the main features 
 of which i have now been presented, involves Sacffin"' 
 other doctrines more specific, and entering more 
 directly into the daily conduct of life, which are still to be 
 considered. 
 
 He teaches, as one legitimate consequence of his philos- 
 ophy, the duty of self-reverence. This is not 
 vulgar egotism, or self-conceit. In the popular Beif-rever- 
 sense of the term, no one is less an egotist than 
 Emerson. The self, regarded as an effect, a person, is, 
 upon his theory, absorbed into the one universal soul which 
 fills all things. For the sake of convenience he retains the 
 name, but only the name ; meaning, by it, the impersonal 
 divinity which rises into consciousness under this fleeting 
 form. The reverence enjoined in the Bible involves the 
 being of a personal God, and guards sacredly the person- 
 ality of the worshipper; but that enjoined by Emerson 
 annihilates the worshipper, and leaves, to be worshipped, 
 only an impersonal force, besides which there is no reality. 
 
 i Essays, Vol. II., p. 77. 2 Ibid., p. 174. 
 
298 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 This is the underlying doctrine when he tells us that 
 " nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own 
 mind." * " It demands something godlike in him who has 
 cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured 
 to trust himself for a task-master. High be his heart, 
 faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest 
 be doctrine, society, law to himself." 2 " A man is the 
 word made flesh ; and the moment he acts for himself, 
 tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of 
 the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere 
 him." 3 Since man is wholly a manifestation of the divine 
 essence, Emerson admonishes us never to use words of 
 self-reproach, but to reverence ourselves at all times. " It 
 is the highest power of divine moments," he says, " that 
 they abolish our contritions also ; " 4 words which remind 
 us of Spinoza's saying, that " repentance is not a virtue, or 
 does not arise from reason, but he who repents of any deed 
 he has doiie is twice miserable." 5 " I accuse myself 
 of sloth and unprofitableness day by day ; but when these 
 waves of God flow into me, I no longer reckon lost time." G 
 "Let a man know his worth, and keep things under his 
 feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down 
 with the air of an interloper, in the world which exists for 
 him." 7 If questioned as to the propriety of reverencing a 
 thing, which is neither subject nor object, but the imper- 
 sonal essence of both forever acting under fixed laws of 
 fate, our author has nothing to say. There is in the self 
 the impulse to worship a somewhat which there makes 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 44. 2 ibid., p. 65. 8 Ibid., p. 67. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 287. e Ethics, Part IV., Prop. HV. 
 
 s Essays, Vol. L, p. 288. 1 ibid., p. 54. 
 
PANTHEISM. 290 
 
 itself known ; and this impulse should be joyfully 
 obeyed. 
 
 Emerson urges, as involved in his general 
 doctrine, the duty of self-reliance, still using fiance, 
 the term "self" in a transcendental sense. He 
 has an entire essay on this duty, the motto of which is, Ne 
 te qucesiveris extra Seek nothing but yourself. " Trust 
 nothing but thyself : great men have always done so, be- 
 traying their perception that the absolutely worthy was 
 seated at their heart, working through their hands, pre- 
 dominating in all their being." l " Entire self-reliance 
 belongs to the intellect. One soul is a counterpoise of all 
 souls, as a capillary column of water is a balance for the 
 sea." 2 " Obey thyself. That which shows God in me, 
 fortifies me. That which shows God out of me, makes me 
 a wart and a wen." 3 " Only by coming again to them- 
 selves, or to God in themselves, can men grow forever- 
 more." 4 "The true Christianity, a faith like Christ's in 
 the infinitude of man, is lost. Once leave your own 
 knowledge of God, your own sentiment, and take sec- 
 ondary knowledge, as St. Paul's, or George Fox's, or 
 Swedenborg's, and you get wide from God with every 
 year." 5 " The reformers summon conventions, and vote 
 and resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends, will the God 
 deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a niuthod precisely 
 the reverse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign sup- 
 port, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong, and to 
 prevail. lie is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is 
 not a man better than a town ? Ask nothing of men, and 
 
 1 Essays, Vol. I., p. 41. 2 Ibid., p. 312. 3 Miscellanies, p. 127. 
 
 * Ibid., p. 128. 6 ibid., p. 140. 
 
300 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 in *,he end thou, only firm column, must appear the up- 
 holder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that 
 power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for 
 good out of him and. elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws 
 himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights 
 himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, 
 works miracles." l " Let us not rove ; let us sit at home 
 with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding 
 rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple 
 declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the 
 shoes from off their feet, for God is here within." 2 " Great 
 is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follower ; 
 it never appeals from itself. Before the immense possibili-. 
 ties of man, all mere experience, all past biography, how- 
 ever spotless and sainted, shrinks away." 3 Now this is 
 pantheism carried out to the last degree. It is the being 
 and non-being of Hegel put into a didactic form, and made 
 to each man. the rule of his daily life. The self is nothing, 
 and there is nothing but the self; and all is a necessary 
 deduction from the postulate that the known God, as 
 defined by Hegel and Emerson alike, "is that of which 
 everything may be affirmed and everything denied." The 
 religion of Christ was self-worship ; and we shall be 
 Christs, in the same sense that he was, when we find the 
 sum of all that is- real and divine where alone it exists for 
 us, within the compass of our own thoughts. 
 
 Another practical deduction, which Emerson finds in his 
 subjective pantheism, is the duty of self-assertion. 
 
 Self-asser- Thig Qne fa(jt th(J WQrld hatc?g> says }^ that 
 
 the soul becomes ; for that forever degrades the 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 78. Ibid., p. 02. Ibid., p. 268. 
 
PANTHEISM. 301 
 
 past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to shame, 
 confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Judas and Jesus 
 equally aside." l Here, as we perceive, the " becoming " 
 of Hegel's logic is made the basis of a rule for our every- 
 day life. Self-assertion, by which we understand forward- 
 ness, aspiring, pushing for place, personal ambition, self- 
 consciousness, a bustling sense of one's own importance, 
 and the like, our author regards as God coining out of 
 non-being into being ; and therefore the more of it we 
 have, the more will God be manifested. And the sinner 
 should be just as earnest as the saint, in this becoming ; 
 for God is the essence of them both. Emerson admits 
 that this doctrine, if carried out in all its consequences, 
 legitimates the social chaos of Goethe, and the political 
 lawlessness of Carlyle. Yet he offers no other creed, 
 while he urges this upon every man. " I appeal from your 
 customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any 
 longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, 
 we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek 
 to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes 
 or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is 
 holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon 
 whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints." 2 
 " A man may have that allowance he takes. Take the 
 place and attitude which belong to you, and all men acqui- 
 esce. The world must be just. It leaves every man, 
 with profound unconcern, to set his own rate. Hero or 
 driveller, it meddles not in the matter. It will certainly 
 accept your measure of your doing and being, whether 
 you sneak about and deny your own name, or whether you 
 
 see your work produced to the concave sphere of the 
 
 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 61. 2 Ibid., p. 64. 
 
302 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 heavens, one with the revolution of the stars." l " Speak 
 your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense ; 
 for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and 
 our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets 
 of the last judgment." 2 
 
 Still another injunction, which Emerson finds in his 
 general doctrine, and which he lays on us all, is that which 
 bids us seek the law of our duty within. All trustworthy 
 rules for the conduct of life are of subjective origin ; and 
 they alone are the standard by which to judge those pre- 
 tending to come from any outward source. If this in- 
 ward law were simply the voice of conscience, 
 
 The moral 
 
 law wholly that higher law of our moral nature by which 
 
 eubjective. 
 
 Christ teaches us to regulate our practice, it 
 would be well. But it is -far other than that. It is the 
 total tendency of the man, the resultant of all his en- 
 ergies in free exercise. The moral imperative is no more 
 sacred to him whose ethical nature predominates, than the 
 animal imperative to 'him whose appetites predominate. 
 "No law can be sacred to me," says our author, " but that 
 of my own nature. If I am the devil's child, I will live 
 from the* devil. Good and bad are names very readily 
 transferable to this or that ; the only right is what is after 
 my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A 
 man is to carry himself, in the presence of all opposition, 
 as if everything were titular and ephemeral but he." 3 " It 
 is of no use to preach to me from without. If a man do 
 not speak from within the veil, where the word is one with 
 that it tells of, let him lowly confess it." 4 " What your 
 heart thinks great is great. The soul's emphasis is al- 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 136. 2 Ibid., p. 30. s Ibid., p. 44. Ibid., p. 261. 
 
PANTHEISM. 303 
 
 ways right." l " No love can be bound hy oath or cov- 
 enant to secure it against a higher love. No truth so sub- 
 lime but it may be trivial to-morrow in the light of new 
 thoughts. People wish to be settled; only as far as they 
 are unsettled is there any hope of them." 2 Our author 
 admits that the law thus enunciated confounds all estab- 
 lished notions of social order, but he retracts nothing. 
 " The bold sensualist," he says, " will use the name of phi- 
 losophy to gild his crimes, but the law of consciousness 
 abides." 3 "One man thinks justice consists in paying 
 debts, and has no measure in Ijis abhorrence of another 
 who is very remiss in this, and makes the creditor wait 
 tediously. But that second man has his own way of look- 
 ing at things." 4 Let each obey his tendency, is Emerson's 
 admonition to them both, and in neither case shall any 
 real injustice be- done, but the highest ethical perfection 
 be indifferently attained by the two diverse courses of 
 action. He proceeds in a similar strain, seeming to feel 
 the dangerous nature of the ground he is on, yet pressing 
 boldly forward, in the line of his fundamental theory : " I 
 hear some reader say, you have arrived at a fine Pyrrho- 
 nism, at an equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and 
 would fain teach us that our crimes may be lively stones, 
 out of which we shall construct the temple of the true 
 God !. I am not careful to justify myself. I own that I 
 am gladdened by seeing that unrestrained inundation of 
 the principle of good into every chink and hole that self- 
 ishness has left open, yea; into selfishness itself; so that 
 no evil is pure, nor hell itself without its extreme satisfac- 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 130. 2 Ibid., p. 290. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 65. . < Ibid., pp. 286, 287. 
 
304 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 tions." 1 The ultimate fate of the wicked, that is, will be 
 a source of blessedness to them, as truly as the destiny of 
 the righteous will make them forever content. Judas, in 
 going to his own place, went to a place which satisfied 
 him, no less than the Lord of glory himself. The con- 
 clusion is certainly somewhat startling, yet it grows logi- 
 cally out of the Emersonian philosophy. The optimism 
 of that philosophy is all-encompassing, absolute. To 
 whatever any being, angel or devil, is brought by, the 
 largest outcome of all that is in him, it cannot but be to 
 him a state of perfect blessedness. It may be called 
 "perdition," and by many other hard names; and "the 
 Book " may paint its terrors in blackness and fire ; never- 
 theless, it is not an evil, but a good, and, to those who 
 bravely meet it, full of " extreme satisfactions." 2 The 
 words which exhort us to make to ourselves friends who 
 shall receive us when our earthly tabernacles fail, is here 
 broadened into a precept which confounds holiness and 
 sin ; which makes it a matter of indifference whether we 
 choose this or that alternative, so long as we are in the 
 path to which the " emphasis " of our nature impels us. 
 
 Another duty involved in the pantheistic creed of Em- 
 erson, and which he does not omit to press, is that of self- 
 isolation. All true life rests at last on a basis of pure 
 
 individualism. Intercourse with men, and devo- 
 SStioii 8df ti n to mere affairs, render us forgetful of that 
 
 in which all true greatness consists. The secret 
 doors, by which the soul of all things comes into us, are 
 
 1 Essays, Vol. I., p. 288. 
 
 2 For a fine statement and criticism of this view of evil, see Muller's Chris- 
 tian Doctrine of Sin, Book II., chap. IV. 
 
PANTHEISM. 305 
 
 not kept open. We no longer feel the charm of the eter- 
 nal; but its spell is broken, and we fall away into the 
 temporal. We cease to be, and only seem. From all 
 this seeming we must withdraw ourselves, and retire into 
 the solitude of our own thoughts. Thus alone is it that 
 we feel the impulses of the universal soul ; as the rivers, 
 by pouring themselves into the sea, are filled out of its 
 depths through all their courses. " If a man would know 
 what the great God speaketh," our author says, "he must 
 'go into his closet and shut the door,' as Jesus said. God 
 will not make himself manifest to cowards. One must 
 greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all the 
 accents of other men's devotion. Even their prayers are 
 hurtful to him, until he have made his own. He that finds 
 God a sweet enveloping thought, never counts his com- 
 pany. When I sit in that presence who shall dare to 
 come in ? " l " The poor mind does not seem to 
 itself to be anything, unless it have an outward 
 badge ; some wild contrasting action, to testify 
 that it is somewhat. The rich mind lies in the 
 sun and sleeps, and is nature." 2 He whose mind is in a, 
 perpetual doze, and all whose life comes nearest to the 
 idea of natural vegetation, is, according to this language, 
 the man bkssed with the largest measure of intellectual 
 wealth. Contentment with idle reverie is the characteris- 
 tic of genius ; and they are greatest whose blessedness 
 consists with doing nothing. 
 
 Urging this duty of self-isolation, and entire satisfaction 
 with one's inward life, Emerson says, "I like the silent 
 church before the service begins better than any preaching. 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 2G8. 2 ibid., p. 146. 
 
 20 
 
306 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TEUTII. 
 
 How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt 
 
 each one with a precinct or sanctuary. So let us always 
 
 sit." 1 "Let us not be too much acquainted. 
 
 ' Men de- 
 scend to We should meet each morning as from foreign 
 
 meet." 
 
 countries, and, spending the day together, should 
 depart at night as into foreign countries." 2 "Men de- 
 scend to meet. In their habitual and mean service to 
 the world, for which they forsake their native nobleness, 
 they resemble those Arabian sheiks wHo dwell in mean 
 houses, and affect an extreme poverty, to escape the ra- 
 pacity of the Pacha, and reserve all their display of 
 wealth for their interior and guarded retirements." 3 
 Now this solitary and lofty self-sufficiency, which is a duty 
 if -pantheism be true, certainly ought not to claim any 
 affinity with the spirit of Him who went about doing good, 
 teaching us that only as we humble ourselves are we 
 exalted, and that we must "wash one another's feet "if 
 we would be great in his kingdom. " Your isolation must 
 not be mechanical, but spiritual ; that is, must be eleva- 
 tion. At times the world seems to ]?e in conspiracy to 
 importune you with important trifles. Friend,- client, 
 child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at the gate of 
 the closet door, and say, ' Come out to us.' But keep thy 
 state; come not into their confusion." 4 And this man is 
 
 an oracle to hot a few philanthropists of to-day. 
 Misanthro- j) Q th ose W \ 1O re gard him as a safe guide in 
 
 ways of loving service to mankind really appre- 
 hend the spirit of his writings ? Undoubtedly there are 
 those who imagine themselves in sympathy with his views, 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 63. * Ibid., Vol. II., p. 135. 
 
 8 Ibid., Vol. I., p. 253. Ibid., p. 63. 
 
PANTHEISM. 307 
 
 while they are dealing their bread to the hungry, and 
 striving to break every yoke. Yet nothing can be clearer, 
 in the light of the words now quoted, than that the path 
 which they follow is not his, but "the more excellent 
 way " in their own hearts. They do good despite of his 
 teachings. They are not swerved from their lovin'g-heart- 
 edness and charity, though charmed by the sweet-voiced 
 dream. Their protection against the unloving tone of 
 much that Emerson has written consists partly in the fact 
 that they are too good to comprehend it, and partly in the 
 fact that his own practice gives the lie to his theory. 
 
 It is a little surprising that Emerson, after putting so 
 low an estimate as he does on the Christian Scriptures, 
 should endeavor to show that they accord, in some of 
 their teachings, with his doctrine. Why should 
 
 Attitude 
 
 he claim the indorsement of a volume whose towards the 
 
 Bible and 
 
 authority he has disowned ? Seeing how man- Christian- 
 ifestly the Bible is against him in its whole 
 drift, he seems to me to wrest its free language in a quite 
 extraordinary way. He broadly intimates that the account 
 of the fall of man, in the first chapter of Genesis, is sim- 
 ply an exposition of his theory, as held by Moses, or who- 
 ever wrote the book ; that it is an allegory, picturing to 
 us the human family, who in the main have ceased to 
 commune with the great spirit of nature revealed in them, 
 and are living in that objective world which he regards as 
 unreal. 1 "Christianity," he says, " is rightly dear to the 
 best of mankind ; yet was there never a young philoso- 
 pher whose breeding had fallen into the Christian church, 
 
 i Essays, Vol. II., p. 174. 
 
308 HAXF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 by whom that brave text of Paul's was not specially 
 prized : ' Then shall also the Son be subject unto him who 
 put all things- under him, that God may be all in all.' 
 Let the claims and virtues of persons be never so great 
 and welcome, the instinct of man presses eagerly onward 
 to the impersonal and illimitable, and gladly arms itself 
 against the dogmatism of bigots with this generous word 
 out of the book itself." l " The dogmatism of bigots " is 
 a rather tart phrase for so amiable a writer as Emerson to 
 apply to those whose only bigotry is, that they do not 
 with him find pantheism, but monotheism in the writings 
 of the apostles. But let the harsh utterance stand. Our 
 author has read the story of the Pilgrim Fathers. " What 
 a debt is ours," he says, " to that old religion which, in the 
 childhood of most of us, still dwelt like a Sabbath morn- 
 ing in the country of New England, teaching privation, 
 self-denial and sorrow ! A man was born not for prosper- 
 ity, but to suffer for the benefit of others, like the noble 
 rock-maple which, all around our villages, bleeds for the 
 service of man." 2 . When Emerson has found, in all the 
 pantheism of the ages, any such flowering as this into 
 holy and sacrificial lives, it will be time for him to charac- 
 terize an earnest Christian faith as "the dogmatism of 
 bigots," and to quote the words of the Son of God as 
 confirming his own speculative views. "Jesus Christ," he 
 says, " belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw 
 with open eye the mystery of the soul. One 
 
 thS n chmt man was true to wnat i g * n y u ancl me - ^ e 
 
 Sieist/ al1 " sa ^5 m tn i s J ll kil ee of divine emotion, 'I am 
 divine. Through me, God acts; through me, 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 284. 2 Miscellanies, p. 211. 
 
PANTHEISM. 309 
 
 speaks. Would you see God, see me ; or, see thee, when 
 thou also thinkest as I now think.'" 1 To the view of 
 Emerson, therefore, Christ is not an exceptional person 
 among men. He is one of a class ; those, namely, who 
 have lived and spoken from the soul which dwells con- 
 sciously in us all. "When the gods come among men, 
 they are not known. Jesus was not ; Socrates and Shake- 
 speare were not." 2 But this classification will not stand. 
 For no exegesis can make out the religion of Christ to be 
 only self-worship, or the God of the Christian. Scriptures 
 to be the same as that of Emerson and Spinoza. We 
 have seen, in noticing Emerson's attitude towards all*re- 
 forms and charities, to what opposite results the doctrine 
 of Christ and that of the pantheist logically come. The 
 God whose will Christ came to do is a Father, with the 
 father's heart of pity and tenderness towards all his chil- 
 dren ; the God whom the pantheist would set up in his 
 place, and persuade us to worship, is an eternal fate, which 
 devours all things up. Emeraon says, Believe in the god 
 within yourself, and you shall live ; Christ says, 
 Whosoever believeth in me shall never die. the two 
 
 contrasted. 
 
 Emerson says, Obey your own tendency and you 
 shall be led into all truth ; Christ says r I am the way, and 
 the truth, and the life. Emerson says, Accept my specula- 
 tion and it shall unsettle you in all things ; Christ says, 
 Take my yoke upon you and ye shall find rest to your soul. 
 But some one may accuse me of injustice in represent- 
 ing that the spirit of Emerson's doctrine is just the oppo- 
 site of the spirit, of Christ ; that he would unsettle and 
 bewilder us, rather than lead us in a plain path, where our 
 
 i Miscellanies, p. 125. 2 Essays, Vol. I., p. 28. 
 
 
310 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Emerson souls shall be at peace. Yet here are his wo 
 Tetu^r fully justifying all that I have said: "Lest I 
 
 should mislead any when I have my head and 
 obey my own whims, let me remind the reader that I am 
 only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what 
 I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pre- 
 tended to settle anything true or false. I unsettle all 
 things. No facts to me are sacred ; none are profane ; I 
 simply experiment, an endless seeker, with no past at my 
 back." J Unlike Him who declared that he was the light 
 of the world, Emerson here announces that he is a planet 
 yet* uncertain of its own orbit, and which rushes on, in 
 obedience to an inward impulse, regardless alike of the 
 past and the future. 
 
 It may seem to some that I misrepresent Emerson, in 
 
 saying that he is not a philanthropist, but, so 
 tiiropis 1 ?. 11 lr as consistent with his theory, a despiser of 
 
 all acts of charity and beneficence among men. 
 His own language shall decide whether I have misrepre- 
 sented him or not. " I tell thee, thou foolish philanthro- 
 pist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to 
 such men as do not belong to me, and to whom I do not 
 belong. Your miscellaneous popular charities ; the educa- 
 tion at college of fools ; the building of meeting-houses to 
 the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; 
 and the thousandfold relief societies ; though I confess 
 with shame I sometimes succumb, and give the dollar, it 
 is a wicked dollar, which by and by I shall have the 
 manhood to withhold." 2 As if these words were net 
 enough, he again says, in one "of his later works, "Leave 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 289. 2 ibid., pp. 45, 46. 
 
PANTHEISM. 311 
 
 this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are 
 rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and in- 
 fluence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. 
 I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, 
 'drill, divide and break them up, and draw individuals out 
 of them. The worst of charity is, that the lives you arc 
 asked to preserve are not worth preserving. Masses ! 
 the calamity is the masses. I do not wish any mass at 
 all, but honest men only ; lovely, sweet, accom- 
 plished women only ; no shovel-handed, narrow- themasses. 
 brained, gin-drinking, million stockingers or laz- 
 zaroni at all. If government knew how, I should like to 
 see it check, not multiply the population. When it 
 reaches its true law of action, every man that is born will 
 be hailed as essential. Away with this hurrah of masses, 
 and let us have the considerate vote of single men, spoken 
 on their honor and their conscience. In old Egypt it was 
 established law, that the vote of a prophet be reckoned 
 equal to a hundred hands. I think it was much under- 
 estimated." l Certainly, this burst of misanthropy almost 
 rivals Carlyle. It is as undemocratic as the most violent 
 aristocrat could desire. It savors not of philanthropy, but 
 of that spirit of caste which would do a Brahman's heart 
 good. It is, in fact, whether consciously or not to the 
 author, -a passionate rendering of Spinoza's language, 
 where he says, as one of the inferences from his panthe- 
 istic system, " The man who lives by reason endeavors as 
 much as possible not to be touched by pity or com- 
 
 MO 
 
 passion. a 
 
 In asserting, as I have, that Emerson confounds the 
 
 Conduct of Life, pp. 218, 219. - Ethics, Ft. IV., Prop. L., Coroll. 
 
312 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 
 
 NO moral bad with the good in morals, and sees only 
 the same kind of sacredness in men as in the 
 meanest animals, it may be said that I wrong him. But 
 his own words shall judge between us. " I talked to- 
 day with a pair of philosophers : I endeavored to show 
 my good men that I love everything by turns, and 
 nothing long ; that I loved the centre, but doted on the 
 superficies ; that I loved man, if men seemed to me mice 
 and rats ; that I revered saints, but woke up glad that the 
 old pagan world stood its ground, and died hard ; that I 
 was glad of men of every gift and nobility, but would not 
 live in their arms." l The same soul of nature, that is, 
 which gives understanding to men, reveals itself in the 
 small burrowing creatures ; paganism is as good as Chris- 
 tianity while earnestly cultivated ; the warrior who deso- 
 lates a continent, may claim the same homage as the 
 enlightener of a nation. A Ca3sar and a Paul are alike 
 noble, as judged by that, philosophy which sees God in all 
 action ; but Emerson himself, whom this nobility fills 
 with joy, is greater than all, and disdains familiar inter- 
 course with that which he so admires, since the most 
 sacred revelations of God cannot be from without, but are 
 always from within. 
 
 Now a stranger, who should visit Emerson after can- 
 vassing the views which I have given, would expect to find 
 him the veriest wild creature that was ever caged. But 
 how agreeable, how exhilarating the surprise ! 
 
 Emerson 
 
 bettor than He is the kindest, gentlest, simplest of men. 
 
 his theory. 
 
 These bad and hard utterances are not charac- 
 teristic of him. They belong to the system he has em- 
 
 i Essays, Vol. II., p. 239. 
 
PANTHEISM. 313 
 
 braced, as he is forced to see ; but the New England blood 
 in him is too pure to welcome them. He for the most part 
 avoids that side of pantheism which looks towards lawless- 
 ness and vice, and keeps rather to its spiritual side, which 
 permits him to discourse so like a Christian mystic, if not 
 in the exact language of Christianity. In nearly all his 
 utterances he is benevolent, and true to our love of the 
 beautiful and just in morals, owing to this great inconsis- 
 tency. His practice is. not in agreement with his theory," 
 and therefore the two do not walk together. That theory, 
 whose realized ultimate would be a social chaos, does not 
 destroy in him a certain high-toned virtue, bred in the 
 ancestral stock, which makes him the friend of order, of 
 domestic purity, and of every grace of character that 
 adorns either public or private life. Possibly some of 
 those who feel the greatest repugnance to Emerson's doc- 
 trine, and who believe in a personal God, and one Master, 
 even Christ, are quite as inconsistent with their creed as 
 he, and that, too, far less to their credit, since they are 
 made worse by that which ma^es him better. It is not 
 honorable to men to disregard in practice a wise system 
 of faith, but in view of Emerson's faith we cer- 
 tainly esteem him the more for saying, " A fool- tency rec- 
 
 111 IT f 1- t ommended. 
 
 isb consistency is the hobgoblin 01 little minds, 
 adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. 
 With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do." 1 
 When Spinoza's landlady came to him, asking him to teach 
 her his doctrine, he advised her to be content with the 
 Christian faith, in which she had been bred up. And 
 Emerson, as though valuing a spirit of sincere piety more 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 50. 
 
314 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 than his own speculations, says to his disciples, " In your 
 metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity ; yet 
 when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them 
 heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape 
 and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the 
 hand of the harlot, and flee." 1 Certainly we are inclined 
 to judge in the most favorable light possible one who thus 
 insists on right action whatever may become of theory ; 
 but it is the theory, and not the man, with which we have 
 been especially concerned in this inquiry ; nor do we grant 
 that it is indifferent what a man's speculative views may 
 be, if he tries to make his practice right, since in the great 
 
 majority of cases the speculative views do, 
 man forced sooner or later, determine the practice. Hy- 
 hypocrite. pocrisy is never to be encouraged, even where 
 
 it makes men seem better thnn their honest con- 
 victions. We naturally carry our creeds out into our lives. 
 This is the tendency, and it must ultimately prevail, as 
 external hinderances, and the restraints of education and 
 birth, are taken away. While gladly recognizing all the 
 virtues to which our author may lay claim, and admitting 
 that it is not hypocrisy, .but goodness of nature, which 
 makes his life so much more pleasing than his creed, I still 
 insist that no word, in which I have set forth the spirit and 
 drift of his teachings, should be taken back, or qualified, 
 or in any respect explained away. He does not lay a 
 foundation for society, for government, or for personal 
 development such as our circumstances, and our knowledge 
 of what we are, demand. Our own self, looked at from 
 tlio transcendental point of view, and including all its 
 
 i Essays, Vol. I., p. 50. 
 
PANTHEISM. 315 
 
 weaknesses and exposures to evil, is the only sacred thing. 
 This we are to worship ; for this we are to live ; in this 
 are the springs and the law of all that is, or was, or ever 
 shall be. 
 
 Upon rising from this examination, the same question 
 confronts us as when we rose from the examination of 
 Spinoza. Are the conclusions which Emerson has reached, 
 both as to the substance of truth and the conduct of life, 
 a* warning to us to beware of the a-priori philosophy ? 
 Not by any means. The danger of the great mass of 
 mankind has always lain just the other way. 
 The popular thought of the world ever looks dentaltem 
 
 not to be 
 
 outward and down, away from ideas to facts, jnci-rori i>y 
 
 Emerson. 
 
 from spirit to matter, from the kingdom of God 
 to questions of food, raiment, shelter, temporal thrift. 
 That thought would be far nobler, and far more ennobling, 
 if it could be trained to a steady love of those truths 
 which transcend the sphere of the senses, and which we 
 reach only as the inner doors of the soul are open to our 
 consciousness. We may count here and there one, among 
 transcendentalists, who, though a star of the first magnitude, 
 has wandered out of the orbit of truth, and become lost in 
 the blackness of darkness. Yet we are at the same time 
 permitted to look on a host of others, of the same school of 
 thought, whom no such fate has overtaken. They are the 
 brightest names in the Christian church, and in that litera- 
 ture which never .grows old, shining forth in calm splendor 
 on the ages God would lead and enlighten. All these 
 safely travelled the high circuit which Emerson too self- 
 reliantly essayed, held to their course, as he was not, 
 by that central Luminary which is the light and the life of 
 
316 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 men. If the flight proved too hard for him, 
 grand pafc- and we must sorrowfully own that he fell like the 
 
 guard. 
 
 son of the morning, yet his overthrow cannot be 
 imputed to the form of philosophy which he held in com- 
 mon with them. They have not been shaken, though 
 members of the same starry host to which he belonged. 
 They have kept their first estate. No shock has been able 
 to hurl them from their sphere. They shine on with un- 
 dim'inished lustre, and as the brightness of the firmamen^ 
 trusting not to that force which is in themselves, but to 
 Him who holdeth the stars in his right hand. 
 
LECTURE VIII. 
 
 THEISM WITH A PANTHEISTIC DRIFT. 
 
 IT would be a serious defect, in any account of modern 
 free- thought, to omit the speculations of Theo- 
 dore Parker. Perhaps the name of no religious iSe?. 5 
 theorist of the last generation is more widely 
 known. To the public generally, however, he is known 
 more as an earnest political reformer, and bitter opponent 
 of the existing institutions of Christianity, than as the 
 teacher of a positive system of religious belief. But he 
 had elaborated such a system, even before he emerged 
 from the comparative obscurity of his early manhood ; a 
 system which he claimed as peculiarly his own, and which 
 he professed to hold unchanged to the very close of his 
 life. And if I should not succeed in trying to make clear 
 just what his views and position were, I shall hope at least 
 to preserve a spirit of candor and calm inquiry, such as I 
 have often failed to discover in him. 
 
 Parker always felt it a hardship, as his friends 
 
 J Disliked to 
 
 still feel it to be, that he was classed with inn- be called 
 
 an infidel. 
 
 dels by the popular verdict. Yet it is rather to 
 the odium associated with the word " infidel," than to the 
 doctrine which that word marks, that objection has been 
 made. I do not now use it for the sake of the odium, but 
 
 317 
 
318 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 as a descriptive term, which, however abused, has a well- 
 defined meaning. If the word " infidel " were an honorable 
 term, having lost its odium as the once odious word 
 " Christian " has, I would use it all the same. Those who 
 refuse to call Christ 'their master, or who, after having 
 once bowed to his authority, turn from him to trust in 
 something else as the final arbiter, are at liberty to make 
 their action as honorable to themselves as they can. They 
 are not charged with absolute infidelity, but only with infi- 
 delity to Christ the Lord. The term is accurately em- 
 ployed. It describes just what they have done. They 
 should glory in it, as some try to do, if there be a religious 
 authority for them superior to that of Christ. 
 
 Let us then, in the first place, see the proof 
 
 Did not bow . _. .. _ . _ 
 
 to Christ as that barker did not own the authority of Christ 
 
 the final au- 
 
 tiioriiyin as supreme in matters of religious faith: the 
 religion. 
 
 ' proof that he revolted from under that authority, 
 
 and. set up for himself another religious oracle. This evi- 
 dence will not be hard to find. It is so abounding, and so 
 acknowledged by both himself and his friends, that I may 
 be thought to do a superfluous work in adducing it. But 
 we must go step by step ; taking the first for the sake of 
 the second, if indeed for no other reason. 
 
 In his chapter on the "limitations of Jesus," Parker 
 says, "It is apparent that Jesus shared the 
 erroneous notions of the times respecting devils, 
 possessions, and demonology in general ; respect- 
 ing the character of God, and the eternal pun- 
 ishment he prepares for the devil and his angels, 
 and for a large part of mankind. If we may credit the 
 
 B error on 
 
PANTHEISM. 319 
 
 most trustworthy of the Gospels, he was profoundly in 
 error on these important points, whereon absurd doctrines 
 have still a most pernicious influence in Christendom. But 
 it would be too much to expect a man ' about thirty years 
 of age ' in Palestine, in the first century, to have outgrown 
 what is still the doctrine of learned ministers all over the 
 Christian world. He was mistaken in the interpretation 
 of J-he Old Testament, if we may take the word of the 
 Gospels. But if he supposed that the writers of the 
 Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the prophecies spoke of him ; 
 if he applied their poetic figures to himself, it is yet but a 
 trifling mistake, affecting a man's head, not his heart. It 
 is no more necessary, for Jesus than for Luther to under- 
 stand all ancient literature, and be familiar with criticism 
 and antiquities ; though with men who think religion rests 
 on his infallibility, it must indeed be a very hard case for 
 their belief in Christianity." 1 Now, in this extract it is 
 noticeable, that Parker accepts the orthodox exegesis 
 respecting future punishment, a personal devil, and Messi- 
 anic prophecies ; that he rejects the exegesis. which prevails, 
 on those topics, among Unitarians and Universalists. tie 
 also expresses a doubt as to the claim of *the New Testa- 
 ment, not merely to divine authority, or special inspiration, 
 but to the trustworthiness of ordinary history. And he 
 very graciously apologizes for the errors of Jesus, attribut- 
 ing them to youthful enthusiasm, inexperience, and limited 
 advantages for culture. But the point to be especially 
 noticed is, that he finds no element of authority in Christ 
 as a religious teacher ; he has a feeling of pity for all, of 
 whatever shade of belief, who hold to the infallibility of 
 
 1 Discourse of Religion (Little & Brown, Boston, 1856), pp. 276, 277. 
 
320 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TEUTH. 
 
 Jesus. He says in another place, speaking of 
 and the T ' modern theology, it " has two great idols, the 
 
 Bible idols. ._ 
 
 BIBLE and CHRIST. 1 
 
 The Unitarian body is denounced by Parker for still rec- 
 ognizing the authority of the Son of God. That party, 
 he says, " differs theoretically from the orthodox party in 
 exegesis, and that alone ; like that, is ready to believe any- 
 thing which has a thus-saith-the-Lord before it ; 
 Unitarians its Christianity rests on the authority of Jesus; 
 
 denounced J 
 
 f!tiiem~ tnat on the authority of his miracles; and his 
 miracles on the testimony of the. Evangelists. 
 The old landmarks must not be passed by, nor the Bible 
 questioned as to its right to be master, of the soul. Chris- 
 tianity must be rested on the authority of Christ." 2 Such, 
 he alleges, is the doctrine of conservative Unitarians ; and 
 from it he earnestly dissents, as being " too narrow for the 
 soul." The fact that Christ claims this authority he does 
 not deny, but considers it one of the mistakes into which 
 Christ's enthusiasm led him. 
 
 Parker more usually calls his .own system or speculation 
 the Absolute Religion, though not always. In one place, 
 distinguishing it* from the prevailing theology, he calls it 
 spiritualism ; and says it teaches that " God is immanent 
 in spirit and in space." Here we have, at the 
 keriHm finds very threshold, a statement which is strictly pan- 
 theistic in form. This spiritualism, the author 
 goes on to say, " believes that God is near the soul ; hears 
 him in all true Scripture, Jewish or Phoenician ; stoops at 
 the same fountain as Moses or Jesus. It sees in Jesus a 
 man living man-like, highly gifted, though not without 
 
 i Discourse of Religion, p. 453. 2 Ibid., p. 439. 
 
PANTHEISM. 321 
 
 errors. He lived for himself; died for himself; worked 
 out his own salvation, and we must do the same, for one 
 man cannot live for another more than he can eat and 
 sleep for another. The divine incarnation is in all man- 
 kind." l So high is the throne of judgment on which 
 Parker seats himself. Nor is it easy to see how the state- 
 ment, that all mankind are the incarnation of God, differs 
 from the most distinctive utterances of Spinozism. But 
 waiving this point for the present, and still tracing the 
 plain marks Parker has left of his estimate of Jesus, we 
 find him saying, in an account of his early experiences, " I 
 had no belief in the plenary, infallible, verbal inspiration 
 of the whole Bible, and strong doubts as to the miraculous 
 inspiration of any part of it. I could not put my finger on 
 any great moral or religious truth taught by revelation in 
 the New Testament, which had not previously been set forth 
 by men for whom no miraculous help was ever claimed." 2 
 Of the Old Testament Parker says, " The legendary 
 and mythological writings of the Hebrews have 
 no more authority than the similar narratives of The OM 
 the Phoenicians, the Persians, and the Chinese." 3 long since 
 
 outgrown. 
 
 He thinks that many things in those ancient 
 writings were relatively true, and of use, to the people to 
 whom they were spoken. But humanity, which is ever 
 moving forward in religious ideas as in other matters, has 
 long since outgrown them, and left them, as cast-off gar- 
 ments, far behind on its path. " Hebraism, Heathenism, 
 Christianism are places where man halted in his march 
 towards the promised land, encampments on his pilgrimage. 
 
 1 Discourse of Religion, pp. 444, 449. 
 
 2 Experience as a Minister (Boston, 1859), p. 37. 
 8 Discourse of Religion, p. 111. 
 
 21 
 
322 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 He rests a while ; then God says to him, Long enough hast 
 thou compassed this mountain ; turn and take thy journey 
 forward. Lo ! the land of promise is still before thee." l 
 As to the nature of this religious progress, our author does 
 not leave us in doubt. It is an endless "becoming," a con- 
 tinuous unfolding of the absolute religion in new and 
 better forms. It delivers evermore from the power of the 
 past, and from all authority external to the soul itself. 
 The present emphasis of each man's religious conscious- 
 ness is his guide for the time being. In that he learns to 
 trust, and to reject every other oracle, as he grows truly 
 wise concerning his own faculties and destiny. " There 
 must be a better form of religion," he says. " It must be 
 free, and welcome the highest, the proudest, and the wid- 
 est thought." 2 Whoever seeks this nobler form " bo\vs to 
 no idols, neither mammon, nor the church, nor the Bible, 
 nor yet Jesus. Its redeemer is within, its salvation, and 
 its heaven and oracle of God." 3 "Protestantism delivers 
 us from the tyranny of the church, and carries us back to 
 
 the Bible. Biblical criticism frees us from the 
 TCi? ff tous f thraldom of the Scriptures, and brings us to the 
 
 authority of Jesus. Philosophical spiritualism 
 liberates us from all personal and finite authority, and re- 
 stores us to God, the primeval fountain." 4 Not only, 
 therefore, is the true God impersonal, according to Parker, 
 but the gospel of Christ, and all the forms of Christianity, 
 are each a despotism, whose sway the human soul rejects, 
 upon coming to a clear knowledge of its own inherent na- 
 ture. 
 
 i 
 
 1 Sermons of Theism (Boston, Little & Brown, 1856), Introd., p. 74. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 72. s Discourse of Religion, p. 446. Ibid., p. 449. 
 
PANTHEISM. 323 
 
 Having seen what Parker denies on religious 
 
 The posi- 
 
 sumects, let us, in the second place, see what he tive side of 
 
 Parkerism. 
 
 undertakes to affirm. 1 have said that he calls 
 
 his doctrine the Absolute Religion, Spiritualism, or Philo- 
 
 sophical Spiritualism. The first of these designations is 
 
 that by which his more distinctive views are best known. 
 
 In some of his later writings, however, the 
 
 word " theism " seems to be preferred ; and he to C Sfgnate 
 
 strongly insists that the speculation thus named 
 
 is. something quite other than deism, pantheism, or athe- 
 
 ism. Indeed, lie labors so hard and often to make out this 
 
 distinction, that we suspect it was not clear to the minds 
 
 of his friends, even if he himself had no doubt of its reality. 
 
 The terms he chose by which to designate his views 
 
 show that he was ambitious of originality, though the 
 
 views themselves are in almost no sense original. It is in 
 
 forms of expression, not in essence of doctrine, 
 
 that he is unlike some of those from whom he 
 
 claims to differ. He was unwilling to call any 
 
 one master, even while freely appropriating the 
 opinions of others. Whether he really believed himself 
 to be the founder of a new religion or not, that was evi- 
 dently the high character and office to which he aspired, 
 and which he labored all his life long to show that he had 
 attained. But it will appear, I think, that he was not as 
 successful as he thought himself to be ; that in large part, 
 unconsciously perhaps, he was a disciple of other men; 
 that even where he most s-toutly asserts his independence 
 and originality, he is not the central sun, but rather a sec- 
 ondary orb, in the system to which he belongs. I shall 
 hope to give an intelligible, though condensed statement 
 
324 HALF TRUTHS AND TIIE TliUTH. 
 
 of what Parker calls his Theism, without taking up very 
 much space. 
 
 The elements which he places at the bottom 
 toriM>f fl Ab ^ ^ e Absolute Religion, and which he traces 
 8 ?on te Kcli through all its multitudinous forms, are three in 
 number : the Sentiment, the Idea, the Concep- 
 tion. There is in all men a feeling of dependence : this is the 
 religious sentiment. But the feeling of depen- 
 dent* deuce involves, or is necessarily connected with, 
 an intuition of something on which the depen- 
 dence rests : that objective something is God, and consti- 
 tutes the religious- idea. And this idea, as it is 
 variously apprehended, limited, and defined, 
 The con- becomes the religious conception. Of these 
 
 ception. 
 
 three elements, the first two, the sentiment and 
 the idea, are universal. They are also unvarying in 
 their nature, being a part of the essential furniture of 
 the human mind. Not so, however, the third element. 
 This is the form under which the idea is apprehended. 
 It belongs to the comprehending faculty, and differs 
 with the differing capacities, idiosyncrasies, and culture 
 
 of men. The conception of God in the mind of 
 
 The cqncep- , - 
 
 tion alone a JN ew Zealander, for instance, diners vastly 
 
 varies. 
 
 from that in the mind of an educated English- 
 man; but the sentiment and idea are in both cases the 
 same. These three factors, then, constantly working to- 
 gether everywhere, make the Absolute Religion. This is 
 all the religion there is in the. world, or ever was, or will 
 be. Judaism, Paganism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, 
 are but the transient forms of this permanent essence. 
 All religions are substantially one and the same. But 
 
PANTHEISM. 325 
 
 they differ endlessly in form, owing to the variable term, 
 the conception of God. This is purely subjective, and 
 determined, in each individual case, by inherent 
 but constantly changing peculiarities. The reli- reunions* 
 gious conception has been in a state of progres- 
 sive development from the beginning. It has not yet 
 reached its perfect maturity, however near to perfection 
 some marvellously gifted soul, here or there, may per- 
 chance have come. Man is a steadily progressive being 
 in religion, as in all the other elements of his nature. 
 This progress the author thinks he has traced in the his- 
 tories of the various families of men : not traced it as 
 thoroughly as he could desire, since the data are wanting, 
 but sufficiently to persuade him that his main position is 
 correct. He would be glad of certain facts which he does 
 not find, just as the extreme Darwinists would be, in 
 proving their doctrine of the origin of species. 
 But the large mass of facts which he does find cession 
 seem to him to make the unfound so probable, 
 that he assumes their existence; and he announces the 
 conclusion to which he comes from such a premise with an 
 air of scientific certainty. Man's original conception of 
 God was in the form of Fetichism. Then, as he emerged 
 from barbarism, and became somewhat civilized, that con- 
 ception rose to the form of Polytheism, or even to some 
 of the ruder forms of Pantheism. Then, as governments 
 were set up, and nations became rivals of each other, this 
 conception took the shape of a belief in national gods. 
 Hence the Isis and Osiris of the Egyptians, the Indian 
 Brahma and Gaudama ; the' Greek, and the Roman pan- 
 theon, the Scandinavian Thor, the Persian Ormuzd, the 
 
326 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Phoenician Baal. The Jehovah, of whom we read in the 
 Old Testament, was but the national god of the Hebrews ; 
 an imperfect god, as were those worshipped by the other 
 nations ; one who loved the Jews, and who was bent on 
 making them the supreme political power among men. 
 But this exclusive national spirit gave way somewhat 
 before the conquests of the Roman empire. A new polit- 
 ical era dawned, in which peoples hitherto at strife were 
 brought under a single government. This new state of 
 things led the way to the Christian conception of God ; 
 a conception larger and nobler than any which had pre- 
 ceded it, but still imperfect, since even the God of Chris- 
 tianity is a partial being, whose purpose it is to save a 
 part of the human race, and to eternally torture all the 
 others. Plainly, then, the perfect conception is 
 tobesu- not yet reached. Parkerism, as judged in its 
 
 pcrscded. . . 
 
 own light, must soon perish. It is the duty or 
 all men to struggle for something better yet in store for 
 them. Forgetting the venerable past, and disentangling 
 themselves from the present, they should keep their con- 
 ception ever enlarging, that it may accord with the grow- 
 ing science, thought, and philanthropy of the world. This 
 doctrine of an endless progress, as all must see, destroys 
 the basis of the author's whole system. For by what 
 right can he claim to speak of an absolute religion, while 
 holding that the very faculties and powers on which man 
 is dependent for all his religious views, are in a constant 
 process of change? That which seems absolute to-day 
 will be seen to be relative to-morrow, if his theory be true. 
 Only a weary eternity of escape from one falsehood to 
 another is before us. If there can be no absolutely perfect 
 
PANTHEISM. 327 
 
 revelation of God to us out of a supernatural sphere, but 
 we can know him only under those forms of our own 
 minds which we are daily outgrowing, the word truth is 
 eternally without a fixed meaning; and whatever we may 
 now happen to believe concerning God and our obligations 
 to him, we are sure to reach a point in the future where 
 we shall see that we believed a lie. 
 
 There are particular statements in the author's exposi- 
 tion of his theory, with which we might not disagree. 
 Much that he says respecting the religious sentiment, the 
 idea, and the conception in the unaided mind, is, no doubt, 
 true, notwithstanding the suicidal spirit of his scheme as 
 a whole. And besides this fatal feature, even P . irker > 8 
 the partial truths which he utters, rest on a the- 
 ory of progress which the settled facts of his- 
 tory flatly contradict. Those facts were given 
 in a previous lecture. 1 Scientific researches have shown 
 that monotheism existed in the world in Egypt, China, 
 and elsewhere - before the ages of idolatrous worship. 
 Fetich ism is not the most ancient religion of which we 
 have historic record. Archeology proves that a better 
 religion than polytheism preceded polytheism. And the 
 verdict of history is not that there was steady progress, 
 but fearful degeneracy, in man's forms of worship and 
 conceptions of God. There is a solid basis, which no 
 plausible theory can disturb, for our belief that man was, 
 at least religiously, better as God made him than as we 
 find him in the savage state. However he may have im- 
 proved in other respects, in that spiritual nature which 
 makes him God's child, he has fallen. As a religious 
 being he degenerated into the primeval barbarism, and 
 i Lecture I. 
 
328 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 did not grow up into it out of a deeper ignorance of the 
 true God. 
 
 Perhaps there is no fact on which Parker insists more 
 strongly, than the infinite perfection of the Creator. Yet 
 he does not seem to see that the biblical doctrine of a fall, 
 and of the religious degeneracy of man, is necessary to sus- 
 tain this vital fact. That, rather than Ids own doctrine of 
 progress from a life wholly brutish, is the logical inference 
 from God's infinite perfection. He insists, with 
 
 Obscures ~ , . 
 
 the charac- eTeat earnestness, that God has a perfect mo- 
 
 terofGod. 
 
 tive, and perfect purpose, and makes a perfect 
 use of the^ most perfect means in fulfilling that purpose. 
 Now, which being is more worthy of such a God, more 
 worthy of infinite wisdom and 4ove to create as the father 
 of a religious race? Shall the first term in this grand 
 series be a savage, more a brute than a man ; one who, by 
 the necessity of his organization, and with no capacity for 
 a less revolting worship, saciifices his child to the cat which 
 he has defied ? Or shall this wondrous creature, made for 
 fellowship with the great Father of men, be such as that 
 Adam who is described to us in Genesis ; upright, fashioned 
 after the image of God, searching the heavens with fearless 
 eye, and awaiting the visits of the Infinite One among 
 the trees in the cool of the day? Certainly we should 
 expect such a being, rather than the monster of Parker's 
 
 theory, to come forth from the divine Artist's 
 Weakens hand. There is also a firmer basis of hope for 
 
 our basis * 
 
 man ' more reason to expect that he will rise 
 into communion with God and become a par- 
 taker of the divine holiness, if originally endowed with 
 those high powers which the biblical account of his crea- 
 
PANTHEISM. 329 
 
 tion ascribes to him. But those high powers involved the 
 gift of free-will. Man, like the Creator, could determine 
 for himself what course of moral action he would pursue. 
 In the exercise of this freedom, with holiness and sin alike 
 possible to him, he was tempted into the choice of the lat- 
 ter. Thus he forsook the God in whose image he was 
 made, and sank down to the level of superstition where 
 Parker finds him. And hence it follows, that 
 the first great need of man is not progress in his ^ e d ^ ~ re 
 present state, but redemption from it. The rationS" 
 whole scheme of a revelation from God, with 
 the purpose of an atonement and restoration, is seen to 
 be rational. Our faith in the goodness- of God leads us to 
 expect that he will interpose for the recovery of his chil- 
 dren. And that remedial work must have on it the seal 
 of his own divine name and authority, and must be in the 
 hands of a Mediator who is not subject to human limita- 
 tions. The blind cannot lead the blind. None but a 
 Saviour who has never fallen, and whose nature is such 
 that he cannot be tempted of evil, may hope to avail for 
 us in this sore exigency. 
 
 I have now sketched the main features of Parker's the- 
 ism ; and have indicated, in brief, the line of refutation to 
 which he is exposed, assuming him to be only a 
 theist, and the leader he has been supposed to simply 
 
 . -.- theist. 
 
 be. It may appeur, however, as we go on, that 
 this assumption is unfounded, or at least that it but par- 
 tially states the case ; that there was in him, not a conclu- 
 sion, perhaps, but a tendency towards a conclusion, which 
 forbids us to assign him the place of leadership, and re- 
 quires that he be set down as the follower of a school of 
 
330 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 theorists long known in the history of religious specula- 
 tion. Had 1 been told that Parker was a pantheist, before 
 studying him with a view to the settlement of the matter, 
 I should have been strongly inclined to deny the charge ; 
 and I still deny it, after carefully reading his works, if the 
 meaning be that he had finally and openly declared him- 
 self to that effect. But that the imputation is altogether 
 false, if only the drift and tone of his thinking be meant, 
 no thorough student of him, I am sure, will undertake to 
 maintain. 
 
 Let us therefore, in the third place, see if 
 er there be any sufficient ground for bririging 
 Theodore Parker within the limits of a treatise 
 on pantheistic thinking. 
 
 Here it is important to revert, for a moment, to the 
 
 position taken in the introduction to these lectures. It 
 
 was there maintained that there can be but two sources 
 
 of philosophical infidelity ; that all free thought 
 
 A re-state- } ia s its logical ultimate in pantheism or positiv- 
 
 ment of the 
 
 o^unbeVief * sm : m pantheism when the a-priori or tran- 
 scendental method of thinking is rigidly adhered 
 to, in positivism when the a-posteriori or empirical method 
 is strictly followed. Any other forms of infidelity are but 
 half-way houses between Christianity and one or the other 
 of these two. The human mind having let go its hold 
 upon God, and not recovering that hold in Christ, gravi- 
 tates steadily towards Spinoza or Cotnte. Christ, if I may 
 so speak, stands as it were at the apex of the triangle of re- 
 ligious thought ; and whomsoever faith in Christ does not 
 uphold at that point, the same settles steadily downward 
 
PANTHEISM. 331 
 
 through the process of speculation, till he reaches the base 
 line ; the original bent of his mind having meanwhile, ac- 
 cording as it is transcendental or empirical, carried him 
 aside op that line either to the angle occupied by Spinoza, 
 or to that occupied by Comte. Any intermediate posi- 
 tions, such as deism, theism, scepticism, rationalism, natu- 
 ralism, are but points in the process, where he is held in 
 suspense for a longer or shorter time. 
 
 This statement is, if I mistake not, confirmed by the 
 drift of Parker's speculations. Plaving cast off 
 the authority of Christ, he did not escape the 2^ c fn 0tbe 
 fatnl spell which draws all minds downward, ? B f ositiv " 
 either in the direction of pantheism or positiv- 
 ism ; not in the direction of positivism in his case, as we 
 shall soon see. The bent of his genius was not empirical, 
 but transcendental. He found the germs of the absolute 
 religion, not in the philosophy of the senses, but in that 
 of consciousness. Had he lived to the present time, when 
 the intuitional philosophy is at a low ebb and the sensa- 
 tional is coming in like a flood, he would logically stand 
 with the retiring rather than the advancing host. 
 
 There is one subject on which we need to discriminate 
 with care, or we shall often confound the pan- 
 theist with the positivist: it is the subject of 
 development in nature. They both speak of po 
 this, sometimes in nearly the same w r ords ; but 
 if we consider we shall see that with one it is a develop- 
 ment downward, and with the other a development up- 
 ward. Pantheism is thus made to- appear as a kind of 
 a-priori positivism, and positivism as a-posteriori pantheism. 
 According to the pantheist there is an efflux of the divine 
 
332 HALF TEUTHS ANP THE TKUTH. 
 
 essence ever farther and farther down, constituting nature, 
 both the conscious and the unconscious. The positivist 
 admits no such divine essence, much less any manifesta- 
 tions of it under natural forms ; but, on the contrary, holds 
 that all the reality we can know is centred in nature, and 
 is constantly ascending towards consciousness by the action 
 of inherent forces. We might think that even Emerson 
 is a positivist, when he says that the plants grope ever 
 upward towards consciousness ; but he is not, for he else- 
 where teaches that it is the going forth of the eternally 
 conscious "soul," ever downward from the higher to the 
 lower forms, that makes nature. The development of 
 nature, however variously expressed, is the divine mind 
 taking its own outgoings back into itself. 
 
 Thus, rather than in the atheistic sense, are we to under- 
 stand Parker when he seems to use the language of positiv- 
 ism or materialism. " I have been into man with my 
 scalpel in my hand, and my microscope, and there is no 
 soul. Man is bones, blood, bowels, and brain. Mind is 
 matter. Do you doubt this ? Here is Arnoldi's perfect 
 
 map of the brain : there is no soul there ; noth- 
 a material- ing but nerves." x He puts these words into the 
 
 mouth of an imagined teacher of materialism, 
 and so far from accepting the doctrine they embody, he 
 utters his strong abhorrence of it. It is true that he often 
 speaks kindly of atheists, especially while contrasting them 
 with orthodox Christians, for whom he has no patience ; 
 yet he does not leave us to infer from this that he has any 
 sympathy with atheism. " The Christian world," says he, 
 " has something to learn, at this day, even from the athe- 
 
 1 Sermons of Theism, p. 19. 
 
PANTHEISM. 333 
 
 ist ; for he asks entire freedom for human nature, free- 
 dom to think, freedom to will, freedom to love, freedom to 
 worship if he will, not to worship if he will not. And if 
 the Christian world had granted this freedom, then there 
 would have been no atheism. If theology had not severed 
 itself from science, science would have adorned the church 
 with its magnificent beauty. Even the protests against 
 * Christianity ' are oftenest made by men full of the reli- 
 gious spirit. Many of the l unbelievers ' of this age are 
 eminent for their religion ; atheists are often made such 
 by circumstances. M. Corate must have a new Su- 
 preme, Nbuveau Grand Etre, and recommends daily 
 prayers to his composite and progressive deity." * What 
 Parker here says of the duty of the Christian church to 
 admit atheists into its fellowship, my present purpose does 
 not require me to notice ; but in denying, as he 
 does, the possibility of atheism, he shows that possibility 
 
 -..., of atheism. 
 
 he is not a disciple of any a-postenon system of 
 philosophy or religion. No one could speak more ear- 
 nestly, or more feelingly and indignantly, than he, against 
 speculative atheism. It is in a strain of tearful remon- 
 strance almost, that he exclaims, "Take away my con- 
 sciousness of God ; let me believe there is no infinite God ; 
 no infinite Mind which thought the world into existence, 
 and which thinks it into continuance ; no infinite Conscience 
 which everlastingly enacts the eterjial laws of the universe, 
 no infinite Afiection which loves the world, then I should 
 be sadder than Egyptian night. Yes, I should die in 
 uncontrollable anguish and despair." 2 Our author had 
 been accused of atheism, by some of those who undertook 
 
 i Sermons of Theism, Introduction, pp. 70, 72. 2 Ibid., pp. 29, 30. 
 
334 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 to criticise his Discourse of Religion. It may be, there- 
 fore, that in his Sermons of Theism, preached some years 
 later, he spoke more strongly than he otherwise would, in 
 order to vindicate himself before his own friends, who 
 were firm theists. No doubt, also, he felt lonely in that 
 state of comparative isolation into which his controversies 
 had driven him ; and it comforted him, more than at an 
 earlier day, to believe that an infinite Friend was helping 
 hini in his hard battles. It is true that his representations 
 of the nature of God are somewhat vague. He seems to 
 confuse the Creator with his works, in saying that God 
 " thinks the world into existence and continuance." Yet 
 even this language, though indicating that his theism has 
 something peculiar in it, strengthens his protest ; nor have 
 we any reaspn to doubt, what he so earnestly avers, that 
 there was no tendency in his thinking, which by any 
 possibility could have carried him on to the errors of 
 positivism. 
 
 The charge of vulgar atheism, brought against Parker, 
 may therefore be dismissed as wholly untenable. Nor is 
 evidence wanting that Parker held stoutly back, on the 
 other hand, from what he defines as pantheism. " Two 
 things," he says, " are necessary to render religion possible ; 
 namely, a religious faculty in man, and God out of man as 
 the object of that faculty." l The phrase " God out of 
 man" seems clear and decisive. We should expect it 
 only from an opponent of pantheism. Speaking 
 
 Denied that ,, , , n -i / < i -ri 
 
 he was a ot what he calls the infancy of religion, .rarker 
 
 pantheist. . 
 
 says, "Its highest form was the sublime but 
 deceitful reverence which the old Saba3an paid to the host 
 
 1 Discourse of Religion, p. 151. 
 
PANTHEISM. 335 
 
 of heaven, or which some Grecian or Indian philosopher 
 offered to the universe personified, and called Pan, or 
 Brahma. God was worshipped in a sublime and devout, 
 but bewildering pantheism. He was not considered as 
 distinct from the universe." l Pantheism, then, is one of 
 the earlier forms through which the absolute religion has 
 passed in the process of historical development. Limiting 
 his view to the form only, and assuming that he has given 
 an exhaustive statement of the nature of all pantheism, he 
 may be right in saying that he is not a pantheist. And 
 yet, even with this statement, it is only in the "transient" 
 element of religion that he makes himself to differ from 
 the Brahman. A different dulture induces a different form, 
 but the religion itself is in either case the same, being ab- 
 solute and always unchangeable in essence. 
 
 The manifest anxiety of Parker not to be thought a 
 pantheist is at times suspicious. Why should he be so 
 fearful of that of which he is wholly unconscious ? This 
 anxiety may account for the narrow and inade- 
 quate definition of pantheism which he lays definition is 
 
 inadequate. 
 
 down. One may prove that he differs from any 
 doctrine whatsoever, if allowed to define it as he pleases. 
 Pantheism is not altogether an ancient thing. It has 
 thriven recently, and even now exists ; and the question is 
 whether Parker's speculations have anything in common 
 with this modern movement. In one place, after denoun- 
 cing positivism, he says, " Besides, the pantheists tell us of 
 their God, who is but the sum total of the existing uni- 
 verse of matter and of mind, immanent in each, but tran- 
 scending neither, imprisoned in the two ; blind, planless, 
 
 1 Discourse of Religion, p. 53. 
 
336 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 purposeless, without consciousness, or will, or love ; de- 
 pendent on the shifting phenomena of finite mind and of 
 finite matter, finite itself; a continual Becoming this or 
 that, not absolute Being, self-subsistent, and eternally the 
 same perfection : their God is only law, the constant mode 
 of operation of objective and unconscious force." l We 
 are amazed that any respectable writer should think this a 
 fair view of pantheism. The misrepresentations of Chris- 
 tian thinkers, which Parker published at different times, 
 have long been familiar to us. These we had set down to 
 prejudice, and to that one-sidedness which the heat of con- 
 troversy is apt to beget. It now appears, however, that 
 the friends of Christianity are not an exception ; that 
 Parker misapprehends the system taught by Fichte and 
 Emerson, quite as strangely as evangelical systems ; that 
 his inability to treat an opponent candidly, amounted to a 
 constitutional weakness. If the idealistic pantheism of 
 Germany makes God "unconscious," "-finite," "not abso- 
 lute," " dependent on shifting phenomena," then there are 
 no pantheists. Does the theism of Parker require this 
 unfair definition of pantheism, in order that it may continue 
 to be theism ? If so, many an earnest follower 
 Spinoza. f Spinoza may claim to be a theist ; for proba- 
 bly not one of them would accept the account 
 our author gives of their doctrine. . Yet Parker is not 
 wanting in charity towards the leaders of pantheistic 
 thought in modern times. He makes his narrow definition 
 acquit them together with himself. He allows no place 
 to the object of his dread, outside of barbarism. Fichte, 
 Schelling, and Hegel do not teach pantheism ; for they do 
 
 i Experience a^a Minister, p. 147. 
 
PANTHEISM. 337 
 
 not teach the absurd theory he describes. He assumes 
 them all to be good theists; as he is, judged by his own 
 definition ; and even in regard to Spinoza he says, 
 "Pantheism is a word of convenient ambiguity, and 
 serves as well to express the odium theologicum as the 
 more ancient word atheism." l 
 
 But Parker claims to be mainly in agreement with these 
 masters. If he interprets them rightly, what they would 
 call the reflex of the divine consciousness does not differ 
 from what he calls the feeling of dependence in man. 
 And if he knows. God by a direct intuition, as manifest in 
 the feeling of dependence, then his doctrine of God can- 
 not be at a great remove from theirs. This similarity of 
 doctrine evidently did not escape him ; and therefore, to 
 defend himself,, he tries to show that Spinoza and his suc- 
 cessors had been misunderstood. He claims that they 
 were no more pantheists than the mystics of the middle 
 ages, or the evangelist John ; thus leaving us to infer that 
 such men as Tauler, and the beloved disciple, did not, any 
 more than Hegel, recognize the separate existence and 
 personality of both the Creator and the creature. He 
 says in one place that the question between the pantheist 
 and pure theist is this : " Is G-od the immanent cause of 
 the world, or is he not?" Now, we have already seen, 
 and shall yet further see more positively, that Parker 
 takes the affirmative of this question. He re- 
 peatedly speaks, almost in the exact words of twug'wijw 
 Spinoza, who says, "God is the immanent or t henamef 
 indwelling, not the transient or outside cause 
 of all things." 2 Clearly, then, he is a Spinozist by his 
 
 1 Discourse of Religion, p. 91, note. 2 Ethics, Prop. XVIII. 
 
 22 
 
338 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 own admission, though he refuses to be called a pan- 
 theist. How does he escape the odious name ? It is, as 
 we have already seen, by resorting to a definition which 
 does not cover all the forms of pantheistic thinking. 
 " Monotheism," he says, " is the worship of one supreme 
 God. He may, however, be supposed to manifest himself 
 in one form, or in all forms, as the Pan and Brahma of the 
 Greek and Indian ; for it is indifferent whether we ascribe 
 no forms or all forms to the infinite." 1 But that is a sin- 
 gular species of theism, certainly, which teaches that the 
 Greek polytheism did not differ from monotheism essen- 
 tially, and which saves itself by asserting that the infinite 
 may be defined under any form, or as being without form. 
 It is amazing, considering how much space our author 
 devotes to the subject, that he succeeds so poorly in free- 
 ing himself from the charge of pantheism. 
 
 I proceed, therefore, to trace some of the more 
 tfve re foofs positive indications, in Parker's writings, of a 
 fan? 1 "* 116 " pantheistic drift in what he calls his theism. If 
 I seem to go over ground already traversed in 
 doing this, it will be because even his denials of pantheism 
 do not deny, so much as affirm, what must be regarded ns 
 pantheistic doctrine. Let me further say, if I seem to any 
 to do him injustice in this examination, that I shall at 
 least hope to misrepresent him less than he does Chris- 
 tianity. I may fail to discern the tendency of his doc- 
 trine ; but I can hardly be guilty of such mis'representa- 
 tion as he utters when he says, " The popular theological 
 i Ion represents God as finite, limited subjectively by self 
 
 I See Discourse of Religion, pp. 80-92. 
 
PANTHEISM. 339 
 
 ishness, wrath, aifd various evil passions, objectively by 
 elements in the world of men which continually prove 
 refractory, and turn out as he did not intend." ] 
 
 Here it is to be observed that the same philosophy 
 which was carried out into pantheism in Germany, gave 
 direction to our author's inquiries after religious truth. 
 He says, " I found most help in the works of 
 Immanuel Kant. If he did not always furnish Kantian 
 
 i T n <- i, 4.1 Philosophy. 
 
 conclusions 1 could rest in, he yet gave me the 
 method, and put me on the right road." 2 Kant did for 
 him, that is, the same work as for Fichte, Schelling, and 
 Hegel ; started him in his investigations, but did not go 
 far enough to satisfy him. Parker's argument for the 
 existence of God is that of the transcendentalist.: " Now 
 the existence of this religious element," he says, "our 
 experience of this sense of dependence, this sentiment of 
 something without bounds, is itself a proof by implication 
 of the existence of its object, something on which de- 
 pendence rests. The belief in God's existence is there- 
 fore natural, not against nature. It comes, as the belief in 
 light comes, by using the eyes. The knowledge of God's 
 existence may be called an intuition of reason. Our be- 
 lief in God rests not on a-priori or a-posteriori arguments ; 
 on no argument; not on reasoning, but reason. The 
 arguments a-priori and a-posteriori confirm our belief." 3 
 Thus far some of the foremost of Christian theologians 
 would agree with Parker. It is when he begins to define 
 his theism, when he speaks of the nature of the God he 
 finds in reason, that we cannot go with him. " Specula- 
 
 i Sermons of Theism, p. 157. 3 Experience as a Minister, p. 42. 
 
 3 Discourse of Religion, pp. 19, 21, 22. 
 
340 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 tive theism." he says, "is the belief in the ex- 
 
 His defini- 
 tion of God istence of God, in one form or another; and I 
 
 does not 
 
 exclude call him a theist who believes in any God. A 
 
 pantheism. 
 
 man may deny actuality to the Hebrew idea of 
 God, to the Christian idea of God, or to the Mahometan 
 idea of God, and yet be no atheist." * " A man says, there 
 is no God. But he says, Nature meaning by that the 
 whole sum-total of existence is powerful, wise, and 
 good ; Nature is self-originated, the cause of its own ex- 
 istence, the mind of the universe, and the providence 
 thereof. Very well. In such cases, the absolute denial 
 of God is only formal, not real. The quality of God is 
 still admitted, and affirmed to be real ; only the represen- 
 tative of that quality is called Nature, and not 
 
 uieilts? called God - That is onl y a change of name." 2 
 As if this were not errough to make clear the 
 pantheistic drift of his theism, our author says, in close 
 connection, " Spinoza may call God natura naturans, but 
 he admits the existence of the thing so diversely entitled. 
 The name ivS of the smallest consequence." 3 Of the 
 smallest consequence, surely, if, as he says in another 
 place, " There is but one religion, as one ocean ; though 
 we call it faith in our church, and infidelity out of our 
 church." 4 
 
 It is difficult at times to make out the entire consistency 
 of Parker. In one connection he condemns the later pan- 
 theism of Germany, saying, "That is a fatal error with 
 Hegel, and with his followers in England and America." 5 
 
 i Sermons of Theism, p. 4. 2 Ibid., p. 9. 
 
 s Ibid. 4 Discourse of Religion, Introd., pp. 6, 7. 
 
 5 Sermons of Theism, p. 155. 
 
PANTHEISM. 341 
 
 But this criticism is based on a false imputation. It 
 assumes certain errors, which Hegel and his followers, 
 whatever their mistakes, do not hold. Parker here 
 charges upon them that gross pantheism which is all that 
 his own narrow definition allows. He seems to forget his 
 apology for them in another place, where he gives a less 
 inaccurate statement of their views. " There are two 
 classes of philosophers," he says, " often called atheists ; 
 but better, and perhaps justly, called pantheists. One of 
 these says, ' There are only material things in existence, 
 resolving all into matter ; the sum-total of these material 
 things is God.' That is material pantheism. If I mistake 
 not, M. Comte, of Paris, and the anonymous author of 
 * Vestiges of Natural History in Creation,' with their nu- 
 merous coadjutors, belong to this class. The 
 
 , . . Misrepre- 
 
 other class admits the existence ot spirit, some- sents pan- 
 theists. 
 times resolves everything into spirit, and says, 
 
 4 The sum-total of finite spirit, that is God.' These are 
 spiritual pantheists. Several of the German philosophers, 
 if I understand them, are of that stamp." 1 Evidently our 
 author does not " understand them," if he really believes 
 that they resolve all things into " finite " spirit. By hte 
 definition, Hegel himself was not a Hegelian. We are 
 left to infer that Parker had no clear or fixed views of the 
 two grand and conflicting systems of philosophy. He 
 must show not only that he is not a Comtist, and that he 
 rejects the crude theories here imputed by him to Hegel, 
 but that he has no sympathy with what we know to be 
 the real Hegelianism, if he would prove that he is not a 
 pantheist. His denial of the imaginary doctrine is so put 
 
 i Sermons of Theism, pp. 154, 155. 
 
342 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 as to affirm the actual doctrine taught by Spinoza and his 
 successors. . He says that the pantheism he disowns rep- 
 resents God as in a state of progressive development. 1 
 But this is the doctrine of Comte's pqsitive religion. It 
 is as far from 'real pantheism as the east is from the 
 west. The later German philosophers held no such doc- 
 trine ; nor Carlyle, nor Emerson. He does those" writers 
 great injustice when he says that they thus believe and 
 teach. They believe in the eternal completeness of God 
 as firmly as he. He confounds the fact with the manifes- 
 tation, the Being with the Becoming. They say God is 
 Being; only in what we call our knowing him, is he a Be- 
 coming. If Parker's definition .acquits himself, it acquits 
 Emerson. But it foils to make out a clear case of theism 
 for either, since it does not touch the real ground of dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 Having said that he dissents from pantheism as defined 
 
 by himself and as he wrongly ascribes it on the one hand 
 
 to Comte and on the other to Hegel and his followers, 
 
 Parker goes on to utter words, almost in the 
 
 Identifies . 
 
 God with next sentence, which harmonize perfectly with 
 
 the world. ... 
 
 the main principles of the pantheists. " There 
 is no point of space, no atom of matter," he says, "but 
 God is there." 2 How can he claim that he holds to a 
 God distinct from the world, after saying, " Finite matter 
 and finite spirit do not exhaust God. He transcends the 
 world of matter and of spirit, and in virtue of that tran- 
 scendence continually makes the world of matter fairer, 
 and the world of spirit wiser." 3 This is saying that all of 
 God is not yet manifested ; but it does not separate him 
 
 * Sermons of Theism, p. 155. 2 Ibid., p. 150. s ibid. 
 
PANTHEISM. 343 
 
 from the world, and make him an independent existence. 
 Wittingly or unwittingly, Parker speaks with the panthe- 
 ist when he says " There is really a progress in the mani- 
 festation of God, but not a progress in God the mani- 
 festing." 1 Spinoza could accept that statement, both as 
 to its affirmation and its denial. We think our author is 
 going to proclaim himself a veritable theist, when he says, 
 " God must be different in kind from the world of matter 
 and of man." But in the next breath he changes ground? 
 and speaks of that difference as being only in degree: 
 "They are finite, he infinite; they dependent, he self-sub- 
 sisting", they variable, he unchanging. God must include 
 both matter and spirit." 2 If the only difference between 
 God and the universe be that one is infinite and the other 
 finite, then are they the same qualitatively. And if the 
 universe be but the progressive manifestation of God, 
 what is there besides God ? Schelling could not teach the 
 doctrine of identity in plainer terms. The doctrine that 
 " all difference is quantitative," cannot be pantheism in 
 Germany and good theism in America. 
 
 In his efforts to contrast the human and divine, Parker 
 makes no mention of distinct personalities, but says, 
 " Man's consciousness of God and God's consciousness of 
 himself must differ immeasurably. No man can have an ex- 
 haustive conception of God, one, I mean, which uses up 
 and comprises the whole of God." 3 To some 
 even this utterance may not seem to bring our With God 
 
 suhject and 
 
 author clearly out on pantheistic ground. But 
 can there be any doubt after the following? 
 "In the self-consciousness of God subject and object are 
 
 * Sermons of Theism, p. 156. 2 ibid., p. 154, 3 ibid., p. 153. 
 
344 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 the same, and he must know all his own infinite nature." 1 
 Certainly, if there be no pantheism here, we must con- 
 clude with Talleyrand, that words were made to conceal 
 thought, and not to express it. It is a significant fact 
 also, in view of this bold utterance, that Parker, while 
 careful to show how he differs from deism and atheism, 
 forgets his usual caution on the other side, not even allud- 
 ing to pantheism. His words embody the doctrine of 
 Schelling, almost in Schelling's own terms ; yet he no- 
 where applies to that doctrine the name which would in- 
 dicate its real nature, but couples that name with a false 
 .definition of his own. " I use the word theism," he says, 
 " as distinguished from atheism, the denial of God ; from 
 the popular theology, which afirms a finite ferocious 
 God ; and from deism, which affirms a finite God without 
 ferocity." 2 Deism is better than Christianity, for its God 
 is "without ferocity," though still "finite." "It starts 
 The f-mit of f rom tne sensational philosophy, and abuts in 
 deism. materialism, leaving out of sight the intuition of 
 
 human nature." 3 The superiority of Parker's theism, he 
 claims, is that it begins in consciousness, and avoids the 
 finiteness, or, which is the same thing, as we shall soon 
 see, the personality of the God of deism. 
 
 Parker preached several glowing discourses on the sub- 
 ject of immortality. Here certainly was an opportunity, 
 if he desired it, to state his belief in the personal and con- 
 scious existence of men after death, which 
 immortality would have gone far to disprove his alleged 
 sympathy with pantheism. But he made no 
 such use of that opportunity. He goes no further than tc 
 
 i Sermons of Theism, p. 154. 2 Ibid., p. 152. s Ibid. 
 
PANTHEISM. 345 
 
 say, alluding to those discourses years after, " The in- 
 stinctive intuition of the immortal, a consciousness that 
 the essential element of man, the principle of individuality, 
 never dies," had been a prominent topic in his preacnlng. * 
 Here may be a faith broad enough for fancy and imagina- 
 tion, and wherewith to delight undiscriminating hearers ; 
 but surely one must hold to something more than the im- 
 mortality of " the essential element of man," in order to 
 teach that the future life will be so related to the present 
 that memory may join them together as experiences of the 
 same person, which is the only idea of immortality at 
 all inspiring, or even intelligible to us. Our bodies are 
 immortal, in the sense that the particles of, matter which 
 make them are forever reappearing in other forms. They 
 never perish. Emerson has discoursed of immortality to 
 the editi cation of Christian worshippers. But what they 
 took for the immortality of the person as now living and 
 conscious, he seems to have meant only for the eternity of 
 the impersonal " soul " which fills all things. There is no 
 valid proof that Parker's doctrine differed essentially from 
 his; and he declares that if we raise the question of the 
 immortality of the conscious individual, looking to the 
 future, and not wholly satisfied with the present, we are 
 "already fallen." 
 
 We have seen that Parker, after saying that the ques- 
 tion between the pantheist and theist is one of 
 
 ... s~< -. . , God imma- 
 
 the immanency of God in the world, seems to nent in ail 
 side with the former. He repeatedly makes 
 statements which go to show, if he did not take that side, 
 that he considered it as differing only by the faintest 
 
 1 Experience as a Minister, p. 42. 
 
346 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 shade from the other. In giving his experience as a min- 
 ister, he says, "I believed yi the immanence of God in 
 man, as well as matter, his activity in both." 1 "The in- 
 finitely perfect God is immanent in the world of matter, 
 and in the world of spirit; each particle thereof is insep- 
 arable from him, while he transcends both. There must 
 be a complete solidarity between God and the twofold 
 universe." 2 Still more decisively he says, in his Discourse 
 of Religion, "The material world, with its objects sub- 
 limely great or meanly little, as we judge them ; its atoms 
 of dust, its orbs of fire; the rock that stands by the sea- 
 shore, the water that wears it away ; the worm, a birth of 
 yesterday, which we trample under our foot ; the streets 
 of constellations that gleam perennial overhead ; the as- 
 piring palm tree fixed to one spot, and the lions that are 
 sent out free, these incarnate and make visible to us all 
 of God their several natures will admit." 3 " God, then, is 
 universally present in the world of matter. He 
 *'God is i s the substantiality of matter. No atom of 
 
 the substan- 
 tiality of matter so despised and little but God, the In- 
 
 mutter, x 
 
 finite, is there. God is immanent in the world, 
 however much he transcends the world. . 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. 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." 4 Do not these extracts 
 confirm the view, that all searching after truth, which is 
 independent of divine guidance, must at last come either 
 
 i Experience as a Minister, p. 3& 2 Ibid., pp. 80, 81. 
 
 3 Discourse of Religion, pp. 104, 165. * Ibid., pp. 161, 162, 163. 
 
PANTHEISM. 347 
 
 to the position of Spinoza or to that of Comte ? It is not 
 in the power of language to state, if they do not, the 
 identity of God with the world. If God is " the substan- 
 tiality of matter," I do our author no injustice, but rather 
 state the case in its mildest possible form when I say that 
 there was in his theism a drifting towards pantheism. 
 
 On the subject of a person's responsibility for 
 the form of religious faith he may hold, Parker responsible 
 
 J for the re- 
 
 Speaks after the manner of Goethe and Carlyle. %ion they 
 
 hold. 
 
 All the religions of the world are forms of the 
 absolute religion, which manifests itself thus variously by 
 virtue of fixed law. The faiths of men cannot be other 
 than they are. The religion which exists necessarily in all 
 is bearing them on, through whatever temporary forms, to 
 the same blessedness ; and this high result is sure to be 
 reached, irrespective of any free volitions they may put 
 forth. He says, " All men are at bottom the same ; but as 
 no two nations or ages are exactly alike in character, cir- 
 cumstances, or development, so therefore, though the re- 
 ligious element be the same in all, we must expect to find 
 that its manifestations are never exactly alike in any two 
 ages or nations, though they give the same name to their 
 form of worship. From the difference between 
 
 ,... Different 
 
 men, it follows, that there must be as many dif- religions a 
 
 _ necessity of 
 
 ferent subiective conceptions of God, and forms circum- 
 stances. 
 of religion, as there are men and women who 
 
 think about God, and apply their thoughts and feelings to 
 life. The phenomena of religion, like those of science and 
 art, must vary from land to land, and age to age, with the 
 varying civilization of mankind ; must be one thing in 
 New Zealand, and the first * century, and be something 
 
348 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 quite different in New England, and the fifty-ninth century. 
 They must be one thing in the wise man, and another in 
 the foolish man. They must vary also in the same indi- 
 vidual. The religion of the boy and the man, of Saul the 
 youth and Paul the aged, how differently they appear ! " l 
 But there are men, intelligent thinkers of the fifty-ninth cen- 
 tury, quite able to find out what their own belief is, with 
 no help from Parker, who claim to hold the religious faith 
 of the first century ; nor is it at all likely that Paul, whose 
 opinion in the case must be regarded as at least equal to 
 Parker's, was conscious of one way of salvation when he 
 repented at Damascus, and of another when he wrote to 
 Timothy. The Christian religion is the same now that it 
 was in the beginning ; nor is there any state of society, 
 however refined or however rude, to which it is not equally 
 adapted. But granting that Parker has the facts of his- 
 tory on his side, the thing to be noticed in what he says is, 
 that a stern necessity has fixed men in their various beliefs, 
 which beliefs are not essentially different, but at bottom 
 
 one universal -religion. All is the same, and all 
 same at inevitable ; a statement which accords perfectly 
 
 with the views of acknowledged pantheists. 
 " The religion of each is the same, distinguished only by 
 the more or less." 2 Again he says, after having spoken 
 of fetichism, polytheism, dualism, pantheism, monotheism, 
 " Each of these forms represented an idea of the popular 
 consciousness which passed for a truth, or it could not be 
 embraced ; for a great truth, or it could not prevail widely ; 
 yes, for all of truth the man could receive at the time he 
 embraced it. We creep before walking. Mankind has 
 
 1 Discourse of Religion, pp. 47, 48, 49. 2 Ibid., p. 99. 
 
PANTHEISM. 349 
 
 likewise an infancy, though it will at length put away 
 childish things.. Each of these forms did the world service 
 in its day." l 
 
 By his own showing, therefore, Parker's religious theory 
 is not a finality, but a tendency towards something else ; 
 and that drift is the result of a force as resist- 
 
 An endless 
 
 less as that which moves the planets through siu-cesKhm 
 
 1 of religions. 
 
 space. " To censure or approve Catholicism, or 
 Protestantism, is to censure or approve the state of the 
 race which gave rise tcf those forms. They could not have 
 been but as they were. To condemn them is to condemn 
 the absolute religion ; is to condemn both God and man." 2 
 Orthodox Christians should remember this passage, when 
 suffering under that wrath which Parker so often pours 
 out on their heads. It is only by a figure of rhetoric that 
 they are at all culpable. His scorching invective, provided 
 he spoke from his theory, was not meant for them, but for 
 " the state of the race," which has made them what they 
 are. And why he is so enraged at this, we are still puzzled 
 to know ; for the immanent God is in every " atom " there- 
 of, and it is ever opening out, through the necessity of the 
 divine inworking, into the more blessed and more fair. 
 " The history of man's religious consciousness," he says, 
 " seems to be a series of revolutions. What is to-day 
 built up with prayers and tears, is to-morrow pulled down 
 with shouting and bloodshed, giving place to a new fabric 
 equally transient. Prophets were mistaken, and saints 
 confounded. Religious history is a tale of confusion. But 
 looking deeper, we see it is a series of developments, all 
 tending towards one great and beautiful end, the harmoni- 
 
 i Discourse of Religion, p. 102. 
 
 Of 
 
 UHI7BRSIT7 
 
350 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 /ous development of man. The circle of his vision becomes 
 wider continually, his ideal more fair and sublime." l We 
 deny that man has reached any fairer religious ideal than 
 grew up in Galilee eighteen centuries ago. Bnt granting 
 this again, we see the pantheistic doctrine of necessity 
 which Parker holds. The everlasting progress of man in 
 religion is not kept up by any supernatural helps, 
 nor by gradually learning to choose good rather than evil, 
 but is all the while only the spontaneous unfold- 
 
 The panthe- . ... 
 
 istic fatal- mg oi a religious nature. Speaking of the 
 
 ism. . 
 
 religious element in man, he says, " In my own 
 consciousness I found it to be automatic." 2 " Each form 
 of religion has grown out of the condition of some people, 
 as naturally as the wild primitive flora of Santa Cruz has 
 come from the state of the island ; as naturally as the 
 dependent fauna of the place comes from its flora." 3 After 
 this full statement of the law of necessity, under which 
 Parker makes the religious sentiment eternally act, a neces- 
 sity as relentless as the pantheist's fatalism, and in appear- 
 ance the same, we are prepared for his unbounded toler- 
 ance. This, however he may forget it in the heat of 
 debate, is fully equal to that of Goethe, who makes even 
 
 wickedness divine. It admits into its paradise 
 toStioii. the greatest sinner, with the same abundant 
 
 entrance as the greatest saint, saying, " Many a 
 savage, his hands smeared all over with the blood of 
 human sacrifice, shall come from the east and the west, and 
 sit down in the kingdom of God, with Moses and Zoroaster, 
 with Socrates and Jesus." 4 
 
 k 
 
 1 Discourse of Religion, p. 105. 2 Experience as a Minister, p. 41. 
 
 s Ibid., p. 86. Discourse of Religion, p. 107. 
 
PANTHEISM. 351 
 
 The immanency of God in the world, as held by Parker, 
 might not be an evidence of pantheism if he had anywhere 
 clearly asserted the doctrine of second causes. But he 
 denies this doctrine, at least by implication, allowing no 
 real efficiency to man even, and making God the one pro- 
 ducing cause of all things. What we call our freedom, he 
 calls " oscillation." " In the world of nature, not 
 endowed with animal life, there is," he says, " no ^T 1 
 margin of oscillation. In the world of animals 
 there is a small margin of oscillation. But man has a 
 certain amount of freedom ; a larger amount of oscillation, 
 wherein he vibrates from side to side." * So far as the 
 final result is concerned, however, it is indifferent whether 
 we say " man has no freedom of will at all," or " some 
 freedom of will." " There can be no absolute evil or im- 
 perfection in the world of man, more than in the world of 
 matter, or in God himself." 2 " Creation and providence 
 are but modifications of the same function. 
 Creation is momentary providence ; providence 
 
 perpetual creation ; one is described by a point, game! th 
 the other by a line. Now, God is just as much 
 present in a blade of grass, or an atom of mahogany, this 
 clay and every moment of his existence, as he was at the 
 instant of its creation." 3 Thus providence is the same 
 thing as creation, and creation is the same as emanation, 
 according to our author, for besides this statement he else- 
 where says, " There can be nothing in nature 
 which God did not put in nature from himself." 4 action of 
 
 . nature 
 
 " God is responsible for his creation, his world God's 
 
 action. 
 
 of matter and his world of man ; for mankind 
 
 1 Sermons of Theism, p. 167. * Ibid., p. 170. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 160. Ibid., p. 158. 
 
352 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 in general ; for you and for me." * " The immanence of 
 God in nature is the basis of his influence."' 2 " The man 
 with pure theism in his heart looks out on the world, and 
 there is the infinite God everywhere as perfect cause, 
 everywhere as perfect providence, transcending all, yet 
 immanent in each; with perfect power, wisdom, justice, 
 holiness, and love, securing perfect welfare unto each and 
 all." 3 " The powers of nature, that of gravitation, 
 electricity, growth, what are they but modes of God's 
 action ? " 4 These mighty agents have not even an instru- 
 mental function in themselves ; they are the immanent 
 essence of all things, coming forth in various forms. " All 
 the natural action in the material world is God's action, 
 whether the wind blows a plank, and the shipwrecked 
 woman who grasps it, to the shore, or scatters a fleetr, and 
 sends families to the bottom." 5 
 
 There are statements in the writings of Parker which 
 would indicate that he held the mathematical method 
 of proof, as applied by Spinoza to the principles of the 
 Cartesian philosophy. He says, in one place, that the hu- 
 man faculties can " ascertain truth in religious matters, as 
 in philosophical or mathematical matters." 6 
 mathemat And in another place he sa\ r s, " The truth of 
 
 ical method. .' 
 
 the human faculties must be assumed in all our 
 arguments, and if this be admitted, we have the same 
 evidence for spiritual facts -as for the maxims or demon- 
 strations of geometry." 7 It would seem, therefore, that 
 
 i Sermons of Theism, p. 174. 2 Discourse of Religion, p. 170. 
 
 Theism, p. 179. * Discourse of Religion, p. 103. 
 
 B Ibid., p. 158. 6 Sermons of Theism, p. 152. 
 
 f Discourse of Religion, p. 19 (note). 
 
PANTHEISM. 353 
 
 our author held to this method as the proper guide in the 
 search for religious truth. And if he did believe that all 
 truth can be mathematically proved, he must have known 
 that he was a pantheist. For this method of proof, ap- 
 plied rigidly to the analysis of the religious sentiment, 
 which is the central principle of his system, affords no 
 resting-place short of Spinozism. 
 
 I shall adduce but one other fact here, as indicating a 
 pantheistic drift in Parker's speculations, his view of 
 the divine personality. This subject, if I mis- 
 take not, is considered as giving a decisive test ali!" pe * : 
 to the religious thinker. One definition of pan- 
 theism is, that it is the denial of the personality of God. 
 The personality of God is certainly the especial stumbling- 
 block of the pantheist, the shibboleth which he cannot 
 utter. Parker has much to say of the mind, conscience, 
 affection, will of God, which in itself might satisfy any 
 theist; but he uniformly denies personality to God. 
 What the nature of the attributes just named can be, or 
 how God can awaken our love and homage if he be im- 
 personal, we think it would be impossible for the author to 
 explain. It does not clear up the matter to say that per- 
 sonality is the same as anthropomorphism, and 
 that Parker denies to God only what is meant eonality the 
 
 same as an- 
 
 by this latter term. The words have broadly thropomor- 
 
 J phism. 
 
 different meanings. It requires no great learn- 
 ing or insight to conceive of persons other than men, per- 
 sons having for the most part superhuman qualities. To 
 recognize the personal existence of God is a different 
 thing from making him such a one as ourselves. This is 
 an act of irreverence against which the Scriptures warn 
 23 
 
354 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 us, even while a personal God is the object of worship 
 they reveal. The distinction is one which the untutored 
 intellect may see ; nor could our author have overlooked 
 it, though, to break the force of the more pantheistic word, 
 he sometimes joins the two together. In his Discourse of 
 Religion he says, " The feelings, fear, reverence, devotion, 
 love, naturally personify God; humanize the Deity." 
 Thus is God made personal only as any object in nature 
 may be ; that is, by personification. It is rhe- 
 S (?nVy r ina torically, by a figure of speech, but in no other 
 sense" 1 Wa 7> that God can have personality. The thing 
 is not objective and real, but altogether subjec- 
 tive. " Some rude men require this," he says, but adds, 
 " It must be remembered all this is poetry. This personal 
 and anthropomorphitic conception is a phantom of the brain 
 that has no existence independent of ourselves." 1 " There 
 has been dogmatism enough respecting the nature, essence, 
 and personality of God. It avails nothing. As the abso- 
 lute cause, God must contain in himself, potentially, the 
 ground of consciousness, of personality, yes, of uncon- 
 sciousness and impersonality." 2 This statement certainly 
 identifies God, in substance, with all existence ; and also 
 reminds us of Hegel's doctrine that being and non-being 
 are the same. Not only may God be considered 
 as ne ither personal nor impersonal, since he is 
 on ty potentially either one or the other, but we 
 cannot say that he is conscious or unconscious, 
 since in regard to these states there is not the actuality, 
 but only the ground or possibility. It is just as true that 
 God is impersonal and unconscious, as that he is personal 
 
 1 Discourse of Religion, pp. 156, 157. 2 Ibid., p. 154, 153. 
 
PANTHEISM. 355 
 
 and conscious. In another place, as we saw, Parker spoke 
 of the importance of "a God out of man." Here he seems 
 to consider it a matter of no importance at all. " The 
 greatest religious souls that have ever been," he says, 
 "are content to fall back on the sentiment and idea of 
 God." : " God is nowhere in particular, but 
 
 God is nni- 
 
 every where in general, essentially and vitally versa! be- 
 omnipresent. Denying all particular form, we 
 must affirm of him universal being." 2 
 
 I have now stated the evidence, found in Parker's writ- 
 ings, which convinces me that I do him no wrong by 
 bringing him within the limits of a treatise on pantheistic 
 thinking. His religious theorizing may not have come to 
 its logical conclusion, even in his own view ; but its ten- 
 dency was the same as that of Spinoza, Hegel, Emerson. 
 He was sailing the same voyage, and would have reached 
 the same port by keeping on. The fact that his ship 
 went down in mid-ocean does not prove that it was headed 
 some other way. That he is to be judged by 
 his tendency, rather than the conclusions he juried by 
 
 hi s tendency. 
 
 had clearly reached, seems evident ironi his own 
 words. He said, near the close of his life, that one of his 
 deepest regrets in dying was, that he must leave his sys- 
 tem incomplete. " The will to live," he writes from Santa 
 Cruz, "is exceedingly strong; more "vehement than ever 
 before, as I have still much to do, some things to begin 
 upon, and many more now lying half done, that I alone 
 can finish ; and I should not like the little I have done to 
 
 1 Discourse of Religion, p. 154. 2 Ibid., p. 158. 
 
356 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 
 
 perish now for lack of a few years' work." l Undoubtedly 
 it' will be better, in replying to the views of Parker, 
 whether as stated by himself or his disciples, not to im- 
 pute to them decided and intentional pantheism. He, and 
 those who more especially represent his views, have chosen 
 to be called THEISTS. Let them bear the name 
 Atheism? tne 7 nave assumed. I indicated, near the be- 
 ginning of this lecture, the line of refutation to 
 which they are open while holding to that theistic ground, 
 and teaching an absolute religion forever in a state of 
 progressive development. If called pantheists, they will 
 flatly deny the charge ; and they can show much that will 
 seem, to the view of the undiscriminating, to make good 
 their denial. In his popular discourse, therefore, let the 
 Christian minister grant them the theism to which they 
 lay claim. Then, besides overturning their professed 
 theory, it will be easy to show that their thought has not 
 yet ultimated itself; that they are not established, but 
 drifting; that there is in their theism a tendency towards 
 pantheism, unless perchance it be towards positivism, 
 owing to the fact that they are empirical, rather than 
 transcendental, in their turn of mind. 2 
 
 Several things conspired to keep Parker from pushing 
 his speculation to its logical ultimate. He was 
 
 His real ten- 
 dency held a sympathetic student of all the modern sys- 
 
 in cheek. J 
 
 terns of free religious thought ; so sympathetic 
 as to show the influence upon him of the last author 
 
 1 Experience as a Minister, pp. 20, 27. 
 
 2 The Rev. O. B. Frothingham, of New York, speaking of the impression 
 made on himself and others by Mr. Parker's preaching, said, " We were forced 
 to man the life- boat, to save ourselves from the floods of pantheism." Lec- 
 ture before the Parker Fraternity (Boston). 
 
PANTHEISM. 357 
 
 he had read. His settled and vehement hostility to 
 everything evangelical threw him unresistingly into the 
 arms of the opposite class of writers. Thus he was em- 
 barrassed by the amount and variety of his learning ; not 
 mastering his materials, so much as seeming; to 
 
 Character 
 
 be mastered by them; neither an independent of his schol- 
 arship, 
 thinker, who knew just what he believed, and 
 
 could clearly state and consistently defend it, nor a sturdy 
 adherent of some other master; a multifarious rather 
 than accurate student, having partial knowledge of many 
 systems, but knowing no one thoroughly ; and loving all 
 authors who strengthened him in his fight with ortho- 
 doxy, so that he did not care to discover how widely they 
 differed from himself and each other. 
 
 Parker claimed to be a consistent Unitarian to the end 
 of his life. But to make good this claim he did 
 not plant himself on any doctrinal belief of Uni- ^ uSta? 
 tarianism, so much as on its postulate of the 
 supremacy of reason in the search for religious truth. Ac- 
 cepting this postulate in the absolute sense in which it is 
 held by the advocates of Free Religion, in other words, 
 finding the only source of religious truth in the soul of each 
 man, he found himself forced to disown the authority of 
 the Bible altogether, as well as the right of Jesus to be 
 called Master and Lord. For this heresy, the " new prot- 
 estantism " of the free religionists, he was cast out of the 
 Unitarian body ; and he claimed that the Unitarians, in 
 excommunicating him, had stultified themselves. *A.t any 
 rate, whether or not he had misstated their cardinal prin- 
 ciple, the cry of persecution arose; and a number of per- 
 sons in Boston, professing a desire to see "fair play," 
 
358 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 secured for him an opportunity to be heard. Besides this 
 nucleus, composed chiefly of Unitarians, others soon began 
 to flock around him ; attracted by his zeal in the reforms 
 of the day, for devotion to which they were suffering much 
 discomfort in the older churches and conservative circles 
 throughout the country. The influence of this audience 
 upon the preacher was probably quite as great as his in- 
 fluence upon them. Multitudes of them clung 
 
 Some of his 
 
 strongest to their evangelical faith, and heard approvingly 
 
 supporters 
 
 disowned his on ly his reformatory views. 1 He knew the set- 
 theology. 
 
 tied reverence of the New England mind for 
 
 the Scriptures and for Christ ; and it was only from the 
 vantage-ground of his position as a reformer, that he could 
 succeed at all in his efforts to undermine or shake it. I 
 cannot resist the feeling that there was a strong Christian 
 sentiment in the friends he most loved, to say nothing of 
 the instincts of his own heart, which was a constant check 
 to his speculative tendency. He was too dearly attached 
 to those who had rallied to his support in the hour of 
 need, to press forward in a course of thinking which, ex- 
 cept as veiled from their comprehension, must have done 
 violence to their long-cherished convictions. The time for 
 earnestly undertaking such a work as this > for devoting 
 himself to it with any hope of success, he did not live to 
 see. It was easy enough for him to lash the Unitarians 
 for their inconsistency, as he believed, in opposing him ; to 
 lash the Orthodox for their treachery to the spirit of 
 the N^v Testament, in upholding slavery and kindred 
 wrongs ; and it was -his merciless doing of this, not his 
 
 1 " Mine is the old faith of New England. On those points he and I rarely 
 talked." Address of Wendell Phillips, at the funeral services for Theodore 
 Parker in Boston. 
 
PANTHEISM. 359 
 
 theological notions, but this in spite of them, which made 
 him in some respects a leader and guide to other minds. 
 
 It is an instructive fact, that the fullest and clearest 
 statements we have of his speculative views are contained 
 in a volume mainly written before he was much 
 
 The early 
 
 known to the public. Had the germs con- rtatwnents 
 
 of Ins views 
 
 tained in that volume been allowed to unfold most de- 
 cided. 
 
 and mature, he could have hardly failed, even 
 during his not very long ministry, to come out distinctly 
 and avowedly on pantheistic ground. But his speculative 
 tendency, for such reasons as those just named, seems to 
 have been checked. His theological bias was held in sus- 
 pense. Devotion to reforms, and regard for the feelings 
 of those who stood by him in adversity, blocked the 
 wheels of his logic, so that he never clearly and openly 
 reached the goal at which alone he could legitimately 
 stop. It is significant, as showing that I do not misjudge 
 him, that the pantheistic leaning is more apparent in the 
 early treatise to which I have alluded, the Discourse of 
 Religion, than in later works. It was after he had been 
 laboring for years with the earnest New England re- 
 formers, that he preached his Sermons of Theism, in 
 which the name Theism is given to his system, and the 
 attempt made to distinguish between himself and panthe- 
 ists, atheists, and deists. To what shifts of false 
 statement and definition that attempt led, at 
 least in the case of pantheism, we have already 
 seen. It is a fact, of which he was aware all 
 through his ministry, that his preaching was more liked 
 the nearer it came to evangelical ground. However im- 
 portant his peculiar views seemed to himself, he could not 
 
360 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 preach them, save negatively and indirectly, with any hope 
 of persuading the mass of his more intelligent hearers. 
 Hence those views remained in the undeveloped form of 
 the early treatise, to find lodgment here and there in a few 
 scholarly but ill-balanced minds, who, now that he is no 
 more, seem to be completing in themselves the process 
 which was begun in him; trying, that is, to hold by a 
 position which is not a position, but a tendency ; and fall- 
 ing away one after another into pantheism or positivism, 
 according to the original bias of their thinking, where they 
 have not fortunately received divine strength to flee back- 
 ward, and regain the only sure foundation, which is laid in 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 Weightily true, and nobly solemn in counsel to us all, 
 are the words of Tholuck, spoken in view of.the fate of all 
 human thinking which is divorced from faith in the Son of 
 God : " Philosophy can never remain stationary. Aristotle 
 expressed the hope, as Cicero says in the Tusculan Ques- 
 tions, that philosophy would be perfected in a short time. 
 Kant also, in modern times, has said, 'My philosophy will 
 bring eternal peace to the world.' And vet the 
 
 The fate of , r t 
 
 philosophy progress of philosophy is onward, ever onward, 
 
 when be- 
 
 r ef X^ f - faith without delay. The truths which are recog- 
 
 m Christ. J 
 
 nized by one system are discarded by another. 
 From this mutability of philosophical dogmas, however, is 
 the truly Christian theology exempt. This teaches us to 
 rely on one single MAN, who has l.iid claim to infallibility. 
 So soon as we acknowledge that the absolute truth is re- 
 vealed by Jesus, then have we such a ground of confidence 
 as can never be shaken." l In all his efforts to raise up 
 
 i Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. I., p. 207. 
 
PANTHEISM. 361 
 
 the fallen, and promote justice between man and man, 
 Parker could draw no inspiration from his peculiar system 
 of religious thought. As his arm is lifted higher to smite 
 down great iniquities, and sympathy for the wretched 
 breathes more tenderly through his words, he draws nearer 
 and nearer to the burden of the teachings of Christ. Eigh- 
 teen hundred years of human speculation have 
 made no difference. All that is best, even in ofAges!* 
 the utterances of this denier of Christ's lordship, 
 is an unconscious testimony to the wisdom of the fisher- 
 man, who, when others were forsaking his Master, ex- 
 claimed only the more ardently, and with an overflowing 
 faith, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast the words 
 of eternal life." 
 
LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS OP PANTHEISM. 
 
 I HAVE now gone over the ground especially marked 
 out in this course of lectures. The point taken at the 
 beginning of the discussion, and briefly explained and 
 defended, was that all systems of religious error have 
 their genesis in the estrangement of men from God ; and 
 
 that from this original source two main streams 
 tk>n? pitula f speculation have flowed forth, owing to those 
 
 opposite mental tendencies, either transcenden- 
 tal or empirical, which characterize all thinkers. 1 It is the 
 errors of religious thought in which the first of these two 
 tendencies may be chiefly traced, that I have thus far con- 
 sidered. The subject, therefore, to which my inquiries 
 have been limited, was the source and development of 
 pantheism ; since it is in pantheism, as I endeavored to 
 show, that all a-priori thinking which is not kept by Chris- 
 tian faith must find its legitimate stopping-place. An 
 examination of ancient authors made it appear that pan- 
 theism, at least in its clearly defined and more dogmatic 
 forms, is of comparatively modern growth. Historical 
 facts were adduced, which tended to show that man did 
 not ascend first from fetichism to pantheism, but sank to it 
 
 1 Introduction. 
 
 362 
 
PANTHEISM. 363 
 
 from pure monotheism, after he had forsaken God. 1 For 
 obvious reasons, Benedict Spinoza was selected as the rep- 
 resentative of this system. He had been a pupil of Des- 
 cartes at the outset; but it was only the philosophical 
 method, not the Christian faith, of his master that he 
 accepted. I undertook to show, so far as required by my 
 more immediate purpose, what the leading doctrine of 
 Spinoza was ; as also how that doctrine might be legit- 
 imately reached from the premises of Descartes. 2 The 
 development of pantheism in philosophy was then briefly 
 sketched, especially in the school of German transcenden- 
 talism, beginning with Kant and ending with Hegel. 3 In 
 immediate connection with this, the Tubingen school of 
 criticism, as represented by Strauss and Baur, was exam- 
 ined with a view to make clear its pantheistic spirit. 4 
 Thus the way was open for what seemed to me to enter 
 more directly into my main undertaking ; namely, a sur- 
 vey of the development of pantheism in literature, espe- 
 cially in the widely-read works of Goethe, Carlyle, Em- 
 erson, and Theodore Parker. 5 It is in the treatment of 
 these popular authors, whose influence Christianity more 
 manifestly meets in its progress, that I have aimed to be 
 thorough, and at the same time accurate and candid. I 
 have allowed them to state their own views, as far as pos- 
 sible, adding my personal comments mainly to elucidate 
 the current of their thinking. 
 
 It would be easy to extend this list of names in the 
 domain of letters ; though no others have occurred to me 
 as deserving to be classed with leaders in pantheistic 
 
 1 Lecture I. 2 Lecture II. s Lecture III. 
 
 4 Lecture IV. e Lectures V.. VI., VII., VIII. 
 
364 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 doctrine. Very likely something might be gath- 
 e^cVuded ere( l from almost every great author, which, by 
 survey" 8 itself alone, seems to be in sympathy with pan- 
 theism. But each writer, I hold, is to be judged 
 by his main spirit and tendencies, together with his open 
 attitude towards Christianity, rather than, by the utter- 
 ances he makes here and there when his feelings and 
 imagination happen to be strongly excited. I do not 
 think it at all necessary to the completeness of my under- 
 taking, to trace the particulars in which the writings of 
 Swedenborg seem to reproduce those of Spinoza: Pan- 
 theism may be the logical ultimate of his doctrines, and 
 of the church founded on them, as one ingenious critic 
 has tried to prove; 1 but I am content to leave that ques- 
 tion untouched, having laid down the tests by which 
 every student of Swedenborg may decide it for himself. 
 I have already quoted lines from Pope which are panthe- 
 istic in sentiment, and might have added others of similar 
 import from the same author. But just how much weight 
 should be given to these, as decisive of Pope's speculative 
 views in religion, is uncertain; for he has written mucli, 
 the sentiment of which is opposite to this; nor does it 
 appear that he ever declared himself the foe of Christian 
 theism. Willis, in his Life, Correspondence, and Ethics 
 of Spinoza, adopts the conclusion already referred to, that 
 Swedenborg was a Spinozist; but he also puts many oth- 
 ers into the same category, by what seems to me a very 
 unfair method of criticism. Even the writers of the 
 
 i This critic is the late General Hitchcock, of the United States army, who, 
 in 1846, published a work entitled " The Doctrines of Spinoza and Swedeuborg 
 identified, in so fas- as they ciairn a Scientific Ground." 
 
PANTHEISM. 365 
 
 Bible do not escape his classification; and authors so 
 wholly unlike as- the poet Tennyson and the naturalist 
 Darwin are named among pantheists. To Wordsworth 
 a prominent place is assigned. Undoubtedly this poet, in 
 common with many others not pantheistic, has written 
 passages which, taken by themselves, have a savor of 
 Spinozism. There are lines in the Ode on Immortality 
 which carry the doctrine of Plato to the very verge of 
 pantheism. Also, in the Ode on Tintem Abbey, Words- 
 worth speaks of 
 
 " A presence that disturbs us with a joy 
 Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime 
 Of something interfused 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean, and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and fills the mind of man 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking tilings, all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 But these lines must be explained by others, and by the 
 well-known religious views of the author. Wordsworth 
 never professed any creed which would warrant us in 
 giving his poetry a pantheistic construction; he never 
 assumed an attitude of hostility or attack towards the 
 Christian religion. But far more surprising than Willis 
 is an English clergyman, Hunt by name, whose 
 work has just fallen under my notice. 1 This critic, in an 
 extended treatise on the general subject, finds pantheism 
 not only in the writers now named, but in Augustine, 
 
 1 An Essay on Pantheism, by Kev. John Hunt. 8vo. pp. 382 (London, 
 I860). 
 
366 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Anselm, Leibnitz, Sir William Hamilton, Hansel. Wes- 
 ley, and Cowper, and Bryant, as truly -as Goethe and 
 Shelley, are to him poets of pantheism. He finds the doc- 
 trine of Spinoza in Milton and Toplady no less than in 
 Emerson. Frederick Robertson, as judged by him, is a 
 pantheist of the same class as Theodore Parker. But 
 such criticism cannot be allowed. It is wholesale and 
 indiscriminate. We are left to infer from it that pan- 
 theism is a wholly innocent thing, into which even Chris- 
 tian writers must be expected to fall at times. There is, 
 as it seems to me that I have successfully shown, a vast 
 difference between most of these writers and those whom 
 I have classified as pantheists. Undoubtedly I have not 
 named all; but it will be found, I think, that those not 
 named are either disciples of one or the other of those I 
 have examined, or indeterminate in their views, so as to 
 preclude all claim to any separate or special treatment. 
 If there are around us free-thinkers, and propagandists of 
 free religion, even they are substantially answered in the 
 reply to Emerson and Parker. Either this, or they do 
 not fall within the limits of a treatise on a-priori thinking, 
 but belong to the school of empirical thought, and must 
 be reserved for treatment under the general head of Pos- 
 itivism. 
 
 It was stated, in the Introduction, that some- 
 
 Rpfntation 
 
 of panthe- thiii^ in the way of refutation mio-ht be ex- 
 ism. 
 
 pected at the close of this survey of pantheism. 
 To that concluding work we have now come; and I pre- 
 fer to entitle it a statement both of the strength and the 
 weakness of pantheism, rather than a precise refutation. 
 I do this for two reasons. In the first place, I have 
 
PANTHEISM. 367 
 
 sought to make the refutation go along side by 
 side with the exposition of the doctrine. The 
 overthrow of this, and of all forms of religious 
 error, as was maintained in the latter part of the 
 Introduction, depends more on^ the practical fidelity and 
 broad generosity of Christians, than on any arguments 
 addressed to the understanding. Yet such arguments 
 must not be thrown aside as valueless. It behooves us to 
 overturn pantheism from the position of philosophy ; to 
 show that the clear head disowns it, as truly as the pure 
 and tender heart. This work I have tried to do, in some 
 measure, at each point of our progress. Nor did the 
 doing it require much break or diversion in our line of 
 treatment. The premise on which pantheism rests is so 
 simple, that only a brief hint, or turn of a phrase or sen- 
 tence, was needed, for the most part, to guard against any 
 plausible aspect of the doctrine which met us from time 
 to time in the course of our inquiry. It is at the risk of 
 repeating myself that I proceed to notice some of those 
 suggestions more distinctly. Besides, as I have said in 
 the course of the investigation, the best refuta- 
 
 , . ,, ,. . >ii 
 
 tion 01 a religious error is the clear statement 
 
 of it. Such a statement of pantheism I have best refuta- 
 
 tion. 
 endeavored to give, recognizing it as a half 
 
 trjith, and presenting its comely features together with the 
 repulsive, in the various authors passed in review. The 
 fact that it is not unmixed error in its origin, that it arises 
 out of a blending of the false with the true in philosophy, 
 would seem to require that something should be said for 
 it, however adverse the final decision in estimating it 
 thoroughly. But whether I speak of its strength or 
 
368 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 weakness, I shall still feel, as I thus far have, that every 
 mind which goes along with me will see its utter unten- 
 ableness, judging it in the light of those necessary and 
 immutable convictions of our nature which never fail to 
 pronounce it false when its essential meaning is brought 
 clearly to view. 
 
 In the second place, I do not here pretend to 
 
 Every pan- 
 theist has any exact refutation of pantheism, because there 
 
 something . * 
 
 peculiar to is something in almost every author treated 
 
 himself. 
 
 . which might, in that case, seem to require a 
 
 special reply. The gross doctrine which Theodore Parker 
 calls pantheism, as if to divert attention from the real 
 thing, is too unphilosophical to deserve a particular answer. 
 It may draw an odious name from his "theism," when 
 offered to minds which do not discriminate ; but to attack 
 it would be investing it with a dignity it cannot claim. 
 And there are reasons why the recognized masters of pan- 
 theism need not be answered separately. Though there 
 is something distinctive in each one of them perhaps, yet 
 their main position is so essentially the same, 
 Seyagree. tnat wnflt thoroughly refutes any one is a sub- 
 stantial refutation of them all. In one form or 
 another they make consciousness the organ and* the cri- 
 terion of truth. "I think, therefore I am," is the point 
 from which Spinoza sets out, but which he seems to me to 
 abandon quite as unwarrantably as Descartes. Conscious- 
 ness is the mind's knowledge of what it does as being its 
 own acts. It is therefore always a particular and deter- 
 mined knowledge, never universal and absolute. Its 
 sphere is psychology ; nor can it, by any possibility, tran- 
 scend this limit so as to include ontology. It has 
 
PANTHEISM. 
 
 nothing to do with being in general, but is Spinoza's 
 always shut up to being in particular. Hence S reach* 11 " 
 Spinoza, to be consistent, cannot affirm an abso- 
 lute reality, of which he is the fleeting manifestation ; for 
 on his own premise, and by his own method, he himself, as 
 known in consciousness, is the only reality. 
 
 The reasoning of Fichte also is defective, and in the 
 same way as that of Spinoza. He cannot pass from the 
 finite ego to the Infinite Ego in consciousness. That step 
 must be taken by an inference, or through a conduction 
 which carries one beyond the province to which conscious- 
 ness is shut up. In like manner, Emerson may 
 
 J Same fault 
 
 say that his soul is a conditioned image of the in the rea- 
 soning- of 
 unconditioned over-soul, but he abandons the so- Fichte and 
 
 Emerson. 
 
 called philosophy of consciousness in thus affirm- 
 ing. He utters an ontological doctrine, to which his con- 
 sciousness can never attain. And he certainly is one of the 
 most consistent of pantheists when he intrenches himself 
 within the sphere of psychology, declaring that he is God and 
 nature, and that he knows no reality save the subjective self. 
 Some of the later pantheists, as if hoping to escape this 
 fatal defect in their reasoning, have given a new definition 
 of consciousness. 1 They arbitrarily enlarge its function ; 
 say that it is not limited to subjective knowledge, but in- 
 cludes that which is objective and infinite. They define it 
 as a knowing not only with one's self, but with the univer- 
 sal whole. Is there, however, anything in human experi- 
 ence answering to such a definition? Mani- Futlction of 
 festly it is not real, but only verbal. An objec- 
 tive consciousness is an absurdity. It does not taken * 
 
 See North American Review, Article " Hegel (April, 1868). 
 
 24 
 
370 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 even seem to lay a path out from the conditioned to 
 the unconditioned. It is a phrase without a meaning, for 
 there is no corresponding fact in our experience. What 
 these pantheists call " consciousness " is more properly 
 suggestion. Spinoza's finite thinking suggests an infinite 
 thinking. Fichte's particular ego suggests a universal 
 ego. Emerson's my-self suggests an other-self. Hegel's 
 being suggests its opposite, which is non-being. But these 
 contraries are not united in the human consciousness. 
 There Js another and more royal faculty of the human 
 mind, which holds them together. As soon as we duly 
 examine this nobler power, we find that it renders panthe- 
 ism forever impossible. The proper office of this power is 
 to furnish us with our primary beliefs, with those con- 
 victions respecting ourselves and the world, 
 
 Differs from 
 
 the faculty which are universal and necessary. It is prop- 
 
 of intuition. 
 
 erly named the intuitional faculty. This faculty 
 it is, however designated, which gives us a sure passage 
 out into the ontological world. We may, thoughtlessly or 
 for the sake of convenience, call it consciousness ; but it is 
 not such a power as to imply, in its workings, that we are 
 part and parcel of all which we know. It leaves us eter- 
 nally distinct from the external universe with which it 
 acquaints us. We can never grant to the pantheist that 
 he has found the absolute, the unconditioned, in his own 
 consciousness. It is in the exercise of this other, our 
 noblest and divinest faculty, by the intuition of objective 
 and necessary truths, that we leap "the flaming walls of 
 the world," and stand face to face with the Father of our 
 spirits. The only consistent form of pantheism is that 
 idealism by which a man denies all reality save the thought- 
 
PANTHEISM. 371 
 
 process of which he is conscious. It is not objective, but 
 purely subjective. It is not absolute, but forever cast in 
 the mould of his particular being. 
 
 We are obliged, therefore, at the very outset, 
 to grant the pantheist a position he cannot 
 legitimately reach, in order to consider some of 
 the more general arguments on which he relies. 
 We will allow that he has planted his foot in the world of 
 unconditioned thought, not forcing him to explain the 
 process by which he reached that position. Having con- 
 ceded this much, the way is open for us to look at the 
 arguments with which he seeks to fortify himself, that we 
 may know what weight or want of weight there is in 
 them. 
 
 It is sometimes said that pantheism follows 
 from the truth, admitted by all theists, that God 
 is an infinite%eing. This is the point at which 
 Parker especially stumbles. He fears to clothe 
 God with personality, lest God should thereby be unclothed 
 of his infinity. To make him personal so runs the argu- 
 ment is to make him finite. He must be impersonal in 
 order to be infinite. Personality involves limitation ; but 
 God is unlimited ; therefore God is impersonal. This 
 sounds quite conclusive ; is, in form at least, unanswerable. 
 But let us look at it. Has the major premise been proved ? 
 What human intellect has discovered that personality, 
 always and necessarily, involves limitation ? Let us see 
 the proof that there is a whit more difficulty in the idea of 
 an infinite, than of a finite person. No such evidence can 
 be found. The syllogism is therefore baseless, and the 
 
372 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 whole argument sinks into a fallacious assertion. Person- 
 ality is properly but another name for determinatem-ss ; 
 and as the amount of being is greater in any case, the 
 demand for this is not less, but more. " In reality there is 
 no contradiction," says Julius Miiller, " between detcrmi- 
 nateness and infinity. Infinity not only implies determi-' 
 nateness, but positively requires it ; it demands a fulness of 
 determinations in no way limited from without by any 
 other being, nor from within by one another." l But by 
 
 what right do pantheists say that God must be 
 menVa^ 11 impersonal because he is infinite ? They deny 
 fhc 1 panthe* t a ^ personality. Man, to their view, is essen- 
 Scd." 8 de tially impersonal ; a person only a personification. 
 
 Upon this theory simple reality, quite as neces- 
 sarily as infinity, excludes personality. Persons are the 
 images of our own dream. We flatter ourselves with the 
 illusion of personality, in this phenomenal and unreal life ; 
 but we shall awake from this fantasy at length, shall be 
 absorbed back, that is, into the impersonal substance, whose 
 bright shadows we are. Turning from this argument, 
 which so remarkably defeats itself, we say that the seat of 
 personality is in the will. It is not bound up with the idea 
 
 of a given amount of being, whether less or 
 of 1 person 1 - ce more ; but is essential to the idea of freedom, 
 with 18 ' liberty, independent choice. There can be no 
 
 personality in the material world ; for that is 
 without the determining power, it is the realm of fate. 
 According to the pantheist there cannot be personality 
 anywhere, for he lifts the iron sceptre of necessity over all 
 things. But we know that we are free. Nothing can 
 
 i Christian Doctrine of Sin, Book III., Pt. I., Chap. IV. 
 
PANTHEISM. 373 
 
 uproot this conviction, or stand against it. In the free- 
 dom thus vouched for is the citadel of our personality, of 
 all personality. To affirm that God is impersonal, is there- 
 fore to degrade him below man; is to teach that he can 
 never have the sublime sense of liberty which we all have; 
 is to affirm that he must come out of the sphere of the in- 
 finite, and be as one of his finite creatures, in order to feel 
 that he has the power of doing as he will. It is not the 
 personality of God, but of man, that is imperfect. Our 
 will is overborne by temptation. It is weak, owing to the 
 finiteness of the circle of being in which it acts. 
 But God's being is not limited. Its centre is only perfect 
 everywhere, its circumference nowhere. Hence p 
 he is immeasurably above us, in all that goes to consti- 
 tute him a person. He is infinite in his being, and there- 
 fore as a person he is absolutely perfect. 
 
 Another argument, equally high-sounding and equally 
 hollow, is founded on the ambiguous postulate 
 that the mind cannot act excepting where it is. 
 
 Hence it is inferred, by the pantheist, that all ^nly where 
 truth lies within the compass of the mind ; and 
 that we can have knowledge of nature, or of any other ob- 
 jective thing, only as our minds, in the last analysis, are 
 identical with it. In all our acquisitions of truth we are 
 mistaken, if we suppose that our researches pertain to ex- 
 ternal facts ; for that which we regard as outward is only 
 a shadow of the inward, while, spider-like, we spin our 
 theories of God and the world out of our own 
 dream. But in reply to this argument we have 
 only to bring those principles of the common- 
 sense philosophy, so clearly enunciated by Reid 
 
374 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 and Hamilton, and to which I have already referred as 
 there was occasion. It is a fundamental belief with us 
 a persuasion beforehand, which we bring with us to every 
 problem in science that we are independent entities, 
 separate from nature ; and that it is not through con- 
 sciousness as an organ of discovery, but by immediate 
 cognitions, that we get onr knowledge of the external 
 world. These cognitions are inexplicable, yet are they 
 irresistible; and we find ourselves always naturally be- 
 lieving what they declare. Now we must insist 
 that this fundamental belief in the separate ex- 
 
 must insist . 1 .L 1 I .,1 1 
 
 on these be- istence of the subject knowing and the object 
 known is true, until the pantheist proves it to 
 be false; for if it .be shown that this our necessary con- 
 viction is deceptive, then no one of our faculties is any 
 longer trustworthy, and all knowledge of truth, even that 
 of which the pantheist makes his boast, is forever at an 
 end. There is no point short of absolute scepticism, wild, 
 dark, terrible beyond all we can imagine, at which logi- 
 cally to stop, the moment we swing loose from our faith 
 that the mind may hold converse with objects outside of 
 itself. If we know anything, we know that the human 
 spirit is a royal child. It can act upon realities external 
 to itself. Consciousness is no prison, in which that spirit 
 must remain shut away from the knowledge of objective 
 truth. The everlasting doors of consciousness are lifted 
 up, and through them the soul is* constantly looking forth 
 on a universe without, sure that what it sees is not " the 
 vision of its dream," but a revelation of God's glory in the 
 works of his hand, which it may evermore study, and ad- 
 mire, and subdue to its royal control. 
 
PANTHEISM. 375 
 
 One great service which mental science owes to Chris- 
 tianity is a thorough investigation of the funda- 
 mental beliefs of the soul. They are the armory 
 to which we never go in vain for weapons ; c 
 weapons mighty to the pulling down of the truths? 1 
 strongholds of pantheism ; of that pantheism 
 which would draw all reality into the maelstrom of con- 
 sciousness, and give us its own thought-process, at last, as 
 the only universe and the only God. These necessary 
 convictions cannot be too much studied in the colleges 
 and all other schools where youthful intellect is trained ; 
 for they are the golden links in a chain which is the only 
 chain that binds the conditioned world to the uncondi- 
 tioned. They are the pontoons which the advancing soul 
 throws out over the swollen streams of scepticism, making 
 for itself a way into the regions of absolute truth, along 
 which ft moves with assured step, conquering and to con- 
 quer. God is in heaven, and "we on the earth. Yet the 
 Father may commune with his children while we behold 
 these angels, faithful messengers between the two worlds, 
 ascending and descending along the ladder let down for 
 them. 
 
 Pantheists urge, as one of the strong arguments for 
 their doctrine, its capabilities as a system of 
 philosophy. It deduces all reality from con- 
 
 sciousness, on mathematical principles. This h 
 is thought to be eminently satisfactory to the philosophi- 
 cal thinker. All things mind, matter, church, state, so- 
 ciety, the Bible, the Koran, Jesus, Confucius, Zoroaster 
 are analyzed back into an eternal nature-process. In this 
 solution, we are told, is comprehensiveness; everything 
 
376 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 covered by a single formula; perfect unity, and perfect 
 demonstration. But we say, in reply to this boasted 
 strength, that it is a glaring and fatal weakness. The 
 claim of comprehensiveness cannot be made good; is just 
 the opposite of the actual state of the case. So far from 
 being all-inclusive, pantheism is a system of exclusion. It 
 
 begins with leaving out some of the most im- 
 caimot b portant data of a perfect philosophy. There 
 
 are within us certain convictions, which are 
 as inevitable as consciousness, though not in their origin 
 a part of it. We have, for instance, an unconquerable 
 faith in. the freedom of our will ; in the power, whatever 
 choice we make at any time, to make either that or some 
 other choice. This persuasion is as truly a certainty to us, 
 as the thinking of which we are conscious. But the pan- 
 theist has no place for this, intuition in his system. He 
 excludes it. His fatalism represents it as purely a chi- 
 mera. Not only does pantheism deny the possibility of 
 this freedom; it rejects other intuitions of the reason, 
 which are bound up with the action of all our mental fac- 
 ulties. Men know that they commit sin, and they feel 
 guilty for it. But on the theory of the pantheist that feel- 
 ing of guilt is an illusion, for the sin itself is impossible. 
 We are as thoroughly persuaded, also, of the distinctions 
 of right and wrong as that we think. Yet pantheism, 
 
 by resolving all things into a chain of neces- 
 truths '" sity, makes these distinctions impossible. Our 
 theism ex- thoughts are compelled either to accuse or else 
 
 eludes. . 
 
 excuse one another. How, then, can we accept, 
 as at all adequate to the facts of our nature, a philosophy 
 which denies that there is anything praiseworthy or 
 
PANTHEISM. 377 
 
 blameworthy in human conduct? Its optimism is flatly 
 contradicted by a voice in our conscience which we cannot 
 disown. If consciousness be all-inclusive, and its contents 
 are evolved under fixed laws of fate, it is absurd to speak 
 of gratitude, blame, remorse, the approval or disapproval 
 of one's own or another's life. For there can be no such 
 thing as good or ill desert. Nothing can be otherwise 
 than it is; and we should take everything as it comes, 
 thanking no one and condemning no one. But pantheism 
 is not founded on anything as inevitable as these same 
 feelings of gratitude, remorse, censure, praise. They are 
 true if anything is true. And yet the temple which the 
 pantheist builds allows them no entrance within its doors. 
 The alleged capacity of the system for including and uni- 
 fying all truth, is therefore a hollow pretence. Its founda- 
 tion is not broad enough for the facts of the soul. It 
 leaves out, and makes war upon, one whole department of 
 the soul's activities ; namely, the moral and religious. It 
 allows room for the thinking faculty alone; affirms that 
 all truth lies within the conscious action of this single 
 power; and on so narrow, so insufficient a basis, it at- 
 tempts to construct a philosophy of the universe and of 
 God. 
 
 And this favoritism, it should also be re- 
 marked, is shown for an inferior department of ^ v e e ,j c ? r t e j 
 our humanity. The city which John saw gave faculty" 01 " 
 no entrance to the unclean, but only to the pure, 
 within its pearly gates ; but the New Jerusalem of the 
 pantheist reverses this action, excluding what is noblest, 
 and admitting that which maketh a lie. The weeds are 
 cherished in his paradise, and the flowers thrown over the 
 
378 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 walls. Our highest capacity, that in which the most im- 
 portant of all truths are revealed to us, is the ethical and 
 religious ; the capacity in virtue of which we have to do 
 with the right, with God, with immortality. This su- 
 preme power of the soul is conscience, the seat of the 
 moral sentiments ; and it should ever take precedence of 
 mere intellect. Both are worthy of recognition. 
 
 All the fac- , .. . 
 
 uitiesof I he true philosophy assigns a niche to each one 
 
 the mind 
 
 should be m its temple : but the place of honor belongs, 
 
 recognized. 
 
 evermore, not to that which moves only within 
 the sphere 'of natural law, but to that which spurns the 
 dominion of fate, which bears the soul upward on tire- 
 less wing, into communion with the holy, the uncaused, 
 the self-directed, the divine. Conscience and the under- 
 standing should not be put asunder; and in joining them 
 
 together, conscience should be assigned to the 
 should be uppermost seat. Hers is of right the throne 
 f he moral and the sceptre. The faculty which aids us 
 
 chiefly in acquiring unreligious and conditioned 
 knowledge must not command her, much less attempt to 
 usurp her kingdom. Its duty is both to admit her, and to 
 obey the voice she utters. This was conceded by Kant, in 
 his Critique of the Practical Reason, where he shows that 
 barje thinking, the basis on which the pantheist tries to 
 build, is too narrow to sustain the most vital truths of 
 philosophy. Buckle, whose positivism is at one with pan- 
 theism in this particular, rejects the teaching of the sage 
 of Konigsberg. He puts knowledge in advance of good- 
 ness ; welcomes the data of the senses and understanding, 
 and out of them constructs a so-called history of civiliza- 
 tion. But he pays no regard to the categories of man's 
 
PANTHEISM. 379 
 
 moral nature, excepting to class them with the supersti- 
 tions of a theological and metaphysical age. The recep- 
 tion his work has met with shows the repugnance of his 
 doctrine to the convictions of wise and good men. 
 
 It is not theology and metaphysics, but hu- 
 man nature, which demands that supreme def- ^f! ia ~ 
 erence be shown to the dictates of the moral 5S5d?tM. 
 faculty, which forever takes man out of the 
 province of necessary law, and makes him the free and 
 responsible child of God. That which sees God, and 
 opens to us the book of eternal truth, is not the mighty 
 intellect, but the pure heart. Behind our inmost thought, 
 coming out of the depths of 'our spirits, far beneath the 
 subtlest play of consciousness, there is a thrill upward 
 through all the soul's action, confirming and re-echoing 
 the sentence, that it pleases the Father to hide from the 
 wise and prudent things which he reveals to babes. This 
 vision of moral truth is within the veil, in the holy of 
 holies of the human spirit. In that inner sanctuary we 
 find the true glory of man. And that character is wor- 
 thiest, that life mightiest, that philosophy most surely 
 grounded, which lays here the beams of its chambers. To 
 turn away from this shekinah, is to miss the brightness in 
 which forevermore is the hiding of its power. Virtue is 
 greater than intelligence. Without holiness there can 
 be no clear understanding. Only as he fears the Lord 
 and departs from evil, is either the statesman wise, or the 
 orator eloquent, or the poet inspired. The essence of 
 foolishness is wickedness, and moral perfection is the only 
 foundation of a perfect philosophy. There is in every 
 man a voice which gladly responds to these simple state- 
 
380 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 ments. And it is a voice of authority, no less than of 
 gladness. It speaks out in indignant tones of 
 
 Evry hon- ' 
 
 est nature threatening, when this order of things is re- 
 
 weloomes it. 
 
 versed when the crown which innocency 
 should wear is made to deck the brow of guilty power. 
 It forces us to cry shame, and covers us with blushes, 
 when we see a thoughtless public showering honors upon 
 a corrupt man, however grand his mental proportions. 
 To our moral nature, which looks from between the cher- 
 ubim, the aspiring politician is often dwarfed to insignifi- 
 cance beside the poor husband, wife, or son ; the dashing 
 warrior eclipsed by some pale-faced girl, toiling alone to 
 support the mother she loves. And if gratitude were not 
 so often " a lively sense of favors expected," if we could 
 make up our minds to act out our inmost and most sacred 
 judgments, that suffering child of penury, not the great 
 man whose trumpet is blown before him, would receive 
 from us the statue and the eulogy. 
 
 . A main source of the charm of pantheism, for many 
 The doctrine nnn( ^ s > ^ s ^ ts doctrine of the divine immanency. 
 o 6 ^ tll ^ s doctrine wliich gives to the writings 
 
 source Jf a f Theodore Parker nearly all their beauty and 
 power. He seemed to dwell in an ocean of 
 deity. Whichever way he turned, he met the divine in 
 all things. The apotheosis of nature was celebrated in 
 his sermons, and especially in his prayers. Thus he trans- 
 figured the whole world to the imaginations of his dis- 
 ciples ; they mistook poetry for philosophy, the enchant- 
 ment of their own minds for religion. The fascination of 
 Goethe arises in the same way. lie xlid not distinguish 
 between the divine and the simply natural. He animated 
 
PANTHEISM. 381 
 
 nature with God. All the world, under his handling, was 
 made to take on a strange beauty; every highest and 
 every lowest thing was idealized, and painted as a part of 
 the universal whole, till it carried away the reader in an 
 ecstasy of nature-worship. If we watch our minds while 
 following Emerson through his pages which delight us 
 most, we shall see that the secret of his power over us is 
 the same. He pours floods of divinity all through the 
 world; and this sorcery of the imagination, boldly prac- 
 tised where angels fear to approach, so captivates us that 
 we are tempted to believe in it as the exact and unvar- 
 nished truth. Yet this charm is dissolved when 
 we come to apply the doctrine of God's imma- Proves too 
 
 much. 
 
 nency in all its bearings. If everything is di- 
 vine, then are even the vices and crimes of men a part of 
 the life of God. These, as we have had occasion to notice 
 in several of the authors reviewed, may claim our worship 
 as really as that which seems to us most innocent and 
 pure. Thus it is that the doctrine, by its very thorough- 
 ness and consistency, breaks the spell it had thrown 
 around us. Its power becomes weak. Our minds are 
 disenchanted. The moral sentiments utter their strong 
 
 ^ O 
 
 protest. We behold, with clear eye, that he who makes 
 God identical with all reality, deals in fancies rather than 
 fact ; he is a poet simply, not a teacher of religion or its 
 true philosophy. 
 
 Even the Christian poet, therefore, has every advantage 
 which the pantheist may claim, and at the same time may 
 keep his pages pure. He knows that God is not The real 
 really the same thing as the world ; and hence, 
 
 , ., . this doc- 
 
 while painting nature as divine, he may avoid trine. 
 
382 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 nil those objects which are in their essence base, and 
 
 give us only such as are fit emblems of a character 
 
 infinite in holiness and truth. Bryant, for in- 
 
 Bryant. 
 
 stance, does not claim to be a philosopher, but 
 only to utter poetic fancies quickened by faith in a personal 
 God, when he says, 
 
 " 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, all are instinct with thee." 
 
 Nor have we reason to infer that Thomson 
 
 Thomson. 
 
 would confound the Creator with his works, 
 though he, in the fervor of poetic contemplation, could 
 
 say, 
 
 "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." 
 
 The first lines of this description would be as baldly 
 
 pantheistic as anything in Emerson, were we 
 
 These have forced to read them in the lisrht of Emerson's 
 
 as much 
 
 vntw<'e philosophy; and did not the personification pf 
 
 Eme?I d on! Spring,.the fields, the mountains, and the forests, 
 
 which immediately follows, show that the whole 
 
 passage only gives voice, to a poetic reverie. We must 
 
PANTHEISM. 383 
 
 interpret the words of " the Concord Sage " more strictly 
 in his May Day and other 'poems, where he confounds 
 natural forces with the attributes of God. He declares 
 that he is looking into the real substance of things, and 
 expounding them in exact terms, when he says, 
 
 " Thou seekest in globe and galaxy; 
 He hides in pure transparency. 
 Thou askest in fountains and 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 every feature ; 
 And his mind is the sky, 
 Than all it holds more deep, more high." 
 
 All those features of modern literature which are repul- 
 sive to our moral sense, whether found in the novels of 
 Charles. Reade or the Poems of Swinburne and Walt 
 Whitman, can find no apology short of panthe- 
 ism. Whatever may be the speculative views 
 of the writers, they are simply vulgar, save as 
 they go back to the doctrine which Goethe and 
 Carlyle drew from Spinoza. Those who take pleasure in 
 the poetry of Byron and Shelley thereby reveal the gross- 
 ness of their tastes, or betray a sympathy with that phi- 
 losophy to which even sin is divine and beautiful. This 
 disregard of the moral imperative, which so abounds in a 
 class of popular works, has its primary source, no doubt, 
 partly in the wish to please sordid minds for the sake of 
 notoriety or gain, partly in the eagerness of writers to 
 indulge a feeling of unrestrained freedom, and partly in 
 
 Jure! era 
 
384 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 efforts to imitate the great masters of this species of litera- 
 ture ; but its only claim to respect, or even to toleration 
 among people of pure tastes, is through the favor of that 
 system which transfigures all things into deity. Even the 
 freshness and originality of Joaquin Miller, his 
 Miner! 11 sympathy with nature in her wildest and love- 
 liest moods, his brilliant word-painting, which 
 makes the wonders of tropical life pass before us so vividly, 
 should not blind us to the moral defects of his poetry. 
 Describing the filibuster Walker and his fellow-criminals, 
 he calls them 
 
 " Men strangely brave and fiercely true, 
 Who dared the West when giants were, 
 Who erred, yet bravely dared to err. 
 
 With iron will and bated breath, 
 Their hands against their fellow-man, 
 They rode each man an Ishmaelite. 
 
 I did not question, did not care 
 
 To know the right or wrong. I saw 
 
 That savage freedom had a spell, 
 
 And loved it more than I can tell, 
 And snapped my fingers at the law." 
 
 This love of " savage freedom," and painting it as the 
 ideal of human enjoyment, should be more careful to dis- 
 criminate. Among Christians,'and in the teach- 
 Good men 
 exposed to ings of the pulpit, there is danger, unless we 
 
 peril. 
 
 have a wise care, that views will be held which 
 cannot stand before conscience ; danger lest our hatred of 
 artificial life, and the joy we take in unrestrained liberty, 
 should drive us upon ground where Spinozism will be the 
 
PANTHEISM. 385 
 
 only reason we can give for the faith which is in us. That 
 is the shelter of respectability, under which everything 
 immoral, or gross, or lawless and wicked, may gather. It 
 is a shelter which may be stretched out over all 
 that is fair and charming ; but it is equally hos- T r ^ e d f ~ the 
 pitable to base and repulsive things. This want 
 of discrimination, disregard of moral differences, 
 confusing the good with the bad, is a fatal weak- 
 ness. Pantheism must be judged, not by the pure things 
 for which it claims to make room, but by the impure things 
 which fly to it for protection. 
 
 Another source of power in pantheism, to which multi- 
 tudes of men are especially susceptible, is the intellectual 
 eminence, and in some instances the moral 
 
 The argu- 
 
 purity, of its masters. The argument is, that a mont from 
 
 great men. 
 
 doctrine held by such persons should be pre- 
 sumed to be true. But let us see what becomes of this 
 argument, when we examine and discriminate. The mas- 
 ters of pantheism have never been first-rate, but at the 
 best only second-rate thinkers. Descartes was the teacher 
 of Spinoza ; discovered, by his transcendent genius, the 
 data which Spinoza's logic carried out to their gloomy 
 conclusion. So Fichte, Schellinff, and Heffel are 
 
 Pantheism 
 
 overshadowed by Kant, who was not a panthe- cannot 
 
 claim these. 
 
 ist. Without him they could not have been. 
 He is the great primary in the system of transcendental 
 thought ; and he remains such, while they wander into 
 darkness. The power, therefore, is not in the pantheism, 
 but in that spiritual philosophy whicli pantheism distorts 
 and caricatures. The charm is in the Kantian metnphysics, 
 in the transcendental philosophy. With this philosophy 
 
386 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 the greatest names of the race have been associated, and 
 will be. Of all subjects of investigation it is the most 
 difficult, and hence appeals only to the highest order of 
 minds. It is subtle, profound, inexhaustible. There can 
 be no other such intellectual gymnastic as it 
 
 Transcen- 
 dentalism affords ; for it taxes the attention, the reason, 
 can. 
 
 the imagination, the logical understanding, the 
 power of expression, to their utmost, and ever more and 
 more. Now those must be minds of more than the aver- 
 age rank, which are first attracted to this philosophy; nor 
 can they escape the benefits of its discipline altogether, 
 though not great enough to hold themselves back from the 
 abysses of pantheism. It is their love of a-priori thought, 
 of purely spiritual investigation, that proves them great ; 
 that some of them lose their balance, and drift into pan- 
 theism, is a proof of weakne.ss. Life is a probation, a con- 
 stant scene of 'trial; and that trial which affords the 
 grandest discipline, offers at the same time the most fear- 
 ful temptation. The exposures of the a-priori philosophy 
 
 are very qreat ; and the fact that some of the 
 
 They have 
 
 escaped the foremost thinkers of the race have slid from it 
 
 perils of 
 
 loso I)" mto P antn(? i sni 5 but makes more conspicuous 
 those who have stood firm on its slippery edge, 
 secured not so much by the grandeur of their intellect, 
 as by their sublime faith in the Son of the Living God. 
 The best philosophical fruit of the ages is ripened by that 
 style of thought ; yet as soon as the thought begins to be 
 pantheistic, that ripe fruit becomes over ripe, and to the 
 discriminating taste loathsome. 
 
 I cannot forbear to speak here of the growing disposi- 
 tion, in some quarters, to let scientific studies take pre- 
 
PANTHEISM. 387 
 
 cedence of metaphysics, at our colleges and universities. 
 It seems to me to be one of the most serious mistakes of 
 educators at the present day. Though it may 
 be true that the spiritual philosophy will give \ c hfedu- 
 us here and there a Spinoza, a Hegel, a Goethe, 
 a Carlyle or Emerson, yet what are these to the spawn 
 of an empirical philosophy? If the infidelities growing 
 out of transcendeittalism were even worse thnn those 
 growing out of materialism, yet it has this signal advan- 
 tage: it honors the soul ; it emphasizes the spiritual na- 
 ture of man ; it trains our noblest mental faculties as 
 material science never can. I would not pluck one honor 
 from those who are extending our knowledge of nature ; 
 we owe them a great debt, but their pursuits do not give 
 the discipline which most ennobles human minds. The 
 names of great naturalists are spoken reverently ; but 
 where is the volume contributed by them to the literature 
 of the ages, and living from generation to gen- 
 eration in the hearts of men ? Their discov- physical A 
 cries become, after a little, the tools of the 
 craftsman and economist. To their honor be it said that 
 all works of present utility owe them a vast debt ; but 
 where is the poem, the classic, the moral or religious vol- 
 ume, conceived in their minds, which lives on through 
 time, and ennobles and inspires? In vain do we look to 
 the futui e for an order of men who shall write our hymns, 
 who shallenrich our literature, who shall elevate and re- 
 fine the tone of thinking among the people, if we turn the 
 minds of our students down from the ideal realm, to labor 
 on that whose fashion is- all the time passing away. " It 
 is as the best gymnastic of the mind," says Sir William 
 
388 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 Hamilton, " as a mean principally and almost 
 HamiUon f excms i ve ly conducive to the highest education 
 of our noblest powers, that we would vindicate 
 to metaphysical studies the necessity which has too fre- 
 quently been denied them. By no other intellectual appli- 
 cation, and least of all by physical pursuits, is the soul thus 
 reflected on itself, and its faculties concentrated in such 
 independent, vigorous, unwonted, and "continuous energy. 
 By none, therefore, are its best capacities so variously and 
 intensely evolved. ' Where there is most life there is 
 most victory.' " * If we look into the history of literature, 
 we shall find that its most glorious eras have been illumi- 
 nated by metaphysics ; that its proudest achiev- 
 Scicntific ments were the fair outgrowth and blossom of a 
 
 eras barren 
 
 ture tera spiritual philosophy. And on the other hand 
 we shall find that its most barren periods, when 
 the oracles were dumb and there was no open vision, 
 when no monumental work was printed, when nothing 
 was written which the world refuses to let die, have been 
 times of the bondage of genius to empirical pursuits. The 
 mind of the age ceased to have its conversation in heaven, 
 and was led captive in the chains of the flesh. Thus it 
 became weak, and groped in darkness ; nor did it any 
 longer have to do with the deep intuitions of humanity, 
 but built -hay, wood, and stubble into the walls which are 
 from everlasting to everlasting. 
 
 But not one of the great benefits which result from the 
 study of metaphysics is to be accredited to pan- 
 honor's theism. These benefits have been secured in 
 most transcendent measure where no pantheistic 
 
 1 Philosophical Discussions, p. 39. 
 
PANTHEISM. 389 
 
 element mingles. They begin to be tainted as soon as that 
 element appears. It changes insight to mysticism, large- 
 ness of view to vagueness, wealthy thought to corrupting 
 dreams. It is only as the transcendentalist holds back 
 from. this extreme, not slipping down from the plane of 
 high discipline into the state of mental lassitude, that he 
 continues to be strong and to prevail. Nor is that purity 
 of life, seen in such men as Spinoza and Emerson, any real 
 support of their doctrine. It fascinates their 
 disciples, and thus makes way for what they 
 
 . . teacher not 
 
 teach, but it is no iruit ot their teaching. A a test of ina 
 
 doctrine. 
 
 thinker may be pure in life, while thinking out 
 a system fearfully corrupting to others. He is too much 
 absorbed in profound investigation to desire base indul- 
 gence. With him study is the pleasure which satisfies 
 every craving; he 'has no other passion to be gratified. 
 " Keep men thinking," says a late writer, " and it matters 
 not what their doctrines or their philosophy may be ; we 
 know pretty well what their lives must be. A Spinoza 
 gives as little trouble to the state as the Seraphic Doctor 
 himself. All men absorbed in thinking have that which 
 will keep them steady, as they pace the strange passage 
 from birth to death." l It is only as the doctrines of these 
 thinkers flow up from the fountains to the surface, and 
 mix with social and every-day life, that we discover their 
 true character. And here the weakness of pantheism is 
 made overwhelmingly manifest; for the morals of commu- 
 nities brought under its influence will not bear even the 
 most superficial scrutiny. 
 
 A system of thinking cannot be true, which thus foils to 
 
 1 " Thorndale." 
 
390 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 endure the test of conscience. Our better na- 
 cri?erion Cal ture f rces us to turn from it to that which 
 
 helps pure-hearted men and women in actual 
 life. Their right impulses, which it is never unsafe 'to 
 heed, demand a doctrine from which they can draw com- 
 fort in trouble ; which arms them against temptation ; 
 which girds them for every good word and work. They 
 are very unwise champions of Christianity, knowing but 
 little of its blessed spirit, who cower in the presence of 
 popular errors ; who try to stretch their charity so as to 
 take in every great philosopher, whatever his religious, 
 views, fearing that if he be left out, the gospel may fall 
 
 into disrepute. Christianity is no client. Much 
 
 Christianity 
 
 above all less does it need the patronage ot those who 
 
 patronage. - 
 
 are slow to confess its excellency. If any of 
 the so-called great men of the world find it in their hearts 
 to disown Christ, the loss is all their own. It is they, not 
 the Rock cut out of the mountain, that must be ground to 
 powder. 
 
 We see, therefore, that the strength of pantheism turns 
 to weakness when duly examined. It has no ground at 
 all in strict reason. How, then, shall we account for its 
 ascendency over minds of no mean order? We can ex- 
 plain this fact quite naturally. The system has 
 
 How men 
 
 become been to such minds what Calypso s cave was to 
 
 pantheists. 
 
 the hero of the Odyssey. Iii their search home- 
 ward for eternal truth, demanding of them tireless effort 
 and caution, they have grown weary, and have allowed 
 this charm to draw them out of their course. Worn out 
 by the ceaseless strain, and no Star of Bethlehem rising 
 
PANTHEISM. 391 
 
 on them, they have yielded to the enchantress. The soft 
 fascination, half poetical and half philosophical, gradually 
 Overcame them. They were J^orne away on a delicious 
 dream ; grew averse to argument ; vaguely believed their 
 dream true either because they wished it true, or 
 through doubt of all other things. The system has lived, 
 for the most part, in the minds of a few solitary thinkers. 
 It has become popular only as it has enabled those hold- 
 ing it to voice forth some great feeling of the times. 
 Thus, when everything was ripe for a revolution in Eu- 
 rope, the ruled rising up against their rulers in both church 
 and state, pantheistic writers stepped forward, and led in 
 the wide revolt. The practical import of their 
 creed was, that every man should act out what 
 might be in him to his utmost, regarding as 
 sacred only the impulses of his own nature. 
 Established forms were profane and unreal, over which 
 the people might boldly ride, borne forward by the divine 
 strength of their own desires. Thus did Goethe and 
 others give the reins to malcontents, and apply the spur, 
 raising a storm from which they were glad afterwards to 
 hide their heads. It was not argument, but the discovery 
 of something favorable to their revolutionary spirit, which 
 brought the masses into love with pantheism. Here was 
 a philosophy which legitimated disorder. They were will- 
 ing to embrace, without careful study, a doctrine which 
 encouraged them in overturning governments, guillotining 
 monarchs, ami sacking public treasuries. So 
 more recently in England, and to some extent dSSrdw/ 68 
 in America. If pantheistic teachings liave 
 spread among our people, it is because lawless desire had 
 
392 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 paved the way for theory. Enemies, not only of political 
 wrong's, but of the Bible, the Sabbath; the church, the 
 family, the state, wish somg plausible premise i'roinjvvRicti 
 to deduce their action. Champions of free love, and of a 
 higher law found in their lower nature, know, that the 
 social chaos they invoke can- never come, in a thoughtful 
 community, save as they ,are able to show for it some 
 ground of authority. Hence pantheism, more or less 
 clearly defined, is their natural ally. From this their lax- 
 ness -of morals, and general irregularity of life, may be 
 legitimately reached by a chain of practical logic. It is 
 the fruitful root out of which all their disorder and cor- 
 ruption can be made to grow. It gives them the license 
 they crave, and at the same time invests their libertinism 
 with the air and grandeur of philosophy. 
 
 The pantheism which has poisoned so much of our pop- 
 ular literature for a generation past, seems now to be in 
 its decadence. Should its reign be hereafter restored, let 
 us at least hope that it may not be ushered in through 
 the gateway of man's lower passions. What we know of 
 the English, and especially of the Puritan stock, persuades 
 us that such is not the first danger. Our danger seems 
 to me to arise rather from that worship of intellectual 
 greatness which is so natural to our people. This was the 
 source in which the stream of German pantheism began. 
 The race of which we come is largely Teutonic. Its dis- 
 persed members, like those of the fatherland, 
 
 Our expo- v. 
 
 puro to the are too much inclined to exalt sheer mental 
 
 peril. 
 
 power. The honor they yield it is sometimes a 
 homage not due to ' the creature, but only to the Creator. 
 That which we idolize, to which we burn incense, is not 
 
PANTHEISM. 393 
 
 simple moral worth, but natural genius, refined by schol- 
 arly culture. In this Imtnt Hes'our special peril. It makes 
 us too willing to be influenced by, men of commanding 
 intellect, without .regard to the moral principles they 
 teach, and it may be also practise. This, habit shuts our 
 eye to the higher and nobler -part of man's nature. It 
 prepares us to accept doctrines which may poison our 
 character, simply because they are held, and urged upon 
 our attention, by some imperial thinker. 
 
 I would not discredit mental activity. Let it continue 
 to distinguish the English-speaking races, and especially 
 the people of America. In the future, more than in the 
 past, let ours be the land of teachers, lecturers, authors, 
 scholars. But let us not worship intellectual eminence. 
 Let us insist on some other and diviner quality in the man 
 whom we accept as truly great. Let us demand 
 of every leader, and of every volume that asks 2acf e 
 our favorable verdict, fidelity to conscience, 
 moral purity in tendency as well as tone. Let us bid the 
 new comer stand afar on", as an infected and deadly thing, 
 if it only stimulates the thinking faculty, and does not lift 
 the soul nearer to God. If it would escape this quar- 
 antine, and sail into the harbor of our faith and love, let 
 it bring, besides and above everything else, an influence 
 which shall cleanse and exalt the natural affections; 
 which shall guard the sanctuary of the heart ; which shall 
 build broader and higher, itsteaol of stealthily undermining, 
 that wall of instinctive delicacy which keeps the honor 
 and happiness of our firesides. 
 
 Then there will be no stock on which pantheism may 
 ingraft itself among us. Our ideal of the true man, and 
 
394 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TKUTH. 
 
 of the true woman, will continue to be grander than any- 
 thing of which Spinoza dreamed. And so we shall not 
 exchange, for this monster which devours up all things, 
 the one only living and true God. We shall not exchange, 
 for this hideous nightmare of the absolute being which is 
 nothing, our sweet faith and instinctive trust in the Father 
 of our spirits. The peace passing all understanding shall 
 still be ours ; even the peace which comes of the assurance 
 that he is with us, and that we are his children, whom no 
 power can pluck from his hand. He draws about us the 
 
 savor of his companionship, and undertakes with 
 betfe^thaS us > wllile we are toilm g downward after the lost 
 s. eisra and vile. He covers us with the shield of his 
 
 presence, and reenforces our strength with his 
 own almighty power, when we march forth to fight against 
 iniquity and outstanding wrongs. It is unto a personal 
 God, who knows our frame, that we lift up our cry out of 
 weakness and troubles ; and we are sure that he is atten- 
 tive to our prayer. Whether living or dying, we are his. 
 We go to our graves, even, trustfully and in blessed hope. 
 For it is he who bids us depart ; and we hear his whisper, 
 in fatherly mercy, saying to us that after the natural cometh 
 the spiritual, and that we shall be satisfied with beholding 
 his face, when we awake in that nearer fellowship to which 
 his love invites us. 
 
 Of the subjects considered in this course of 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 lectures, we now take our leave. I have en- 
 deavored as a companion, and in some sense as a guide, to 
 go with others through the depths and windings of pan- 
 theistic thinking. If our incursion into that realm has 
 
PANTHEISM. 395 
 
 reminded any of scenes described in the Sixth Book of 
 the JEneid, I trust they have not lacked, throughout, a 
 charm more potent than Virgil makes his hero carry. It 
 is from the Tree of Life that we must pluck a branch, if 
 we would walk unharmed in the shadow-land of scepticism. 
 What the adored Beatrice was to Dante, in his Inferno, 
 while he passed through circle after circle of the deepening 
 abyss, the Spirit of Truth must be to us in the 
 underworld of religious error. I am relieved ^^"3? 
 even to gladness, coming up as I now do out of 
 this investigation, into a realm where I may again breathe 
 the upper air and see the sweet light of the Christian faith. 
 It is as though one were awaking at length from a long 
 and fearful dream. Notwithstanding the mighty intellects 
 which pantheism may claim, and though I have tried to 
 recognize the grandeur of the literary works of its disciples, 
 I yet experience a refluent joy and peace in standing once 
 more amid the radiance of Christian ideas, and hearkening 
 to the voice of the Living God, my Father and Friend, 
 speaking to me with the accents of a personal and tender 
 love. This experience, coming after so much groping in 
 the regions of darkness, recalls what Richter so graphically 
 describes as happening to him one summer evening, while 
 he lay on the hill-side and slept. 
 
 He dreamed that he was in the parish church, and that 
 he saw the dead leave their graves and gather about him. 
 " The shadows stood congregated near the altar ; and in 
 all the breast throbbed and trembled in place of a heart. 
 One, which had just been buried in the church, lay still 
 upon its pillow, and its breast heaved not, while Rioter's 
 upon its smiling countenance lay a happy DreHm - 
 
896 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TKUTH. 
 
 dream ; but on the entrance of one of the living he 
 awoke, and smiled no more. A lofty, noble form, hav- 
 ing the expression of a never-ending sorrow, now sank 
 down upon the altar, and all the dead exclaimed, 'Christ, 
 is there no God ? ' And he answered, ' There is none ! I 
 traversed the worlds. I ascended into the suns, and flew 
 with the milky ways through the wildernesses of the heavens, 
 but there is no God ! I descended as far as being throws 
 its shadow, and gazed down into the abyss, and cried aloud, 
 " Father, where art thou ? " but I heard nothing but the 
 eternal storm which no one rules ; and when I looked up to 
 the immeasurable void for the divine eye, it glared upon 
 me from an empty, bottomless socket, and eternity lay 
 brooding upon chaos.' Then there arose, and came into 
 the temple, the dead children who had awakened in the 
 churchyard ; and they cast themselves before the lofty 
 form on the altar, And said, ' Jesus, have we no Father ? ' 
 And he answered with streaming eyes, ' We are all 
 orphans, I and you; we are without a Father.' And 
 as I fell down and gazed into the gleaming fabric of 
 worlds, I beheld the raised rings of the giant serpent of 
 eternity, and she enfolded the universe doubly. Then she 
 wound herself in a thousand folds around nature, and 
 crushed the worlds together ; and all became narrow, dark, 
 and fearful, and a bell-hammer, stretched out to infinity, 
 was about to strike the last hour of time, and split the 
 universe asunder, when I awoke. My soul wept for joy 
 that it could again worship God ; and the joy, and the 
 tears, and the belief in him were the prayer. And when I 
 arose, the sun gleamed deeply behind the full, purple ears 
 of corn, and peacefully threw the reflection of its evening 
 
PANTHEISM. .397 
 
 blushes on the little moon, which was rising in the east 
 without an aurora. And between the heaven and the 
 earth a glad, fleeting world stretched out its short wings, 
 and lived, like myself, in the presence of the Infinite 
 Father ; and from all nature round me flowed sweet, peace- 
 ful tones, as from evening bells." 
 
 There are expressions in the writings of Richter which 
 indicate that even he did not wholly escape the pantheistic 
 virus. It may have been hatred of atheism, rather than 
 of Spinozism, which moved him to utter these words. 
 Yet are they applicable to the latter, in some respects, 
 more than to the former. I am willing to take the passage 
 as declarative of strong faith in a personal God ; for such 
 it certainly is, at least in form. Whatever Richter's specu- 
 lative belief may have been, therefore, we may adopt his 
 Dream as illustrative of the workings of our Christian faith 
 in view of pantheism. Thus viewing it, the 
 chord of gladness within us, which vibrates 
 responsively to its dosing words, is deeper than 
 any pantheistic doctrine can ever reach. Nor 
 has Goethe, the illustrious friend of Schiller, written any- 
 thing so reverent and touching as the prayer which Schiller's 
 father, an unlearned but pious man, offered up for his infant 
 son : " O God, that knowest my poverty in good gifts for 
 my son's inheritance, graciously permit that even as the 
 want of bread, to thy Son's hunger-stricken 
 flock in the wilderness, became the pledge of 
 overflowing abundance, so likewise my darkness 
 may, in its sad extremity, carry with it the 
 measure of thy unfathomable light ; and because 
 I, thy worm, cannot give to my son the least of blessings, 
 
398 HALF TRUTHS AND THE TRUTH. 
 
 do thou give the greatest ; because in my hands there is 
 npt anything, do thou from thine pour out all things ; and 
 that temple of a new-born spirit, which I cannot adorn 
 even with earthly ornaments of dust and ashes, do thou 
 irradiate with the celestial adornments of thy presence, 
 and finally with that peace which passeth all understand- 
 ing." We search in vain, throughout the pantheistic 
 literature of Germany, for anything so sublime as this faith 
 in a personal God, or which so stirs the pure heart. What 
 is there coming from the renowned Spinoza himself, or 
 from his most famous disciple, which can awake the sweet- 
 est and holiest emotions of our souls like the 
 the twenty- twenty-third Psalm ? As Ion or as we "believe 
 
 third Psalm. 
 
 that what is noblest in us is most trustworthy, 
 as long as the purest impulses of our nature are any guide 
 to the truth, so long must we bow to the instinctive yearn- 
 ing for a personal God, and say, in calm defiance of the 
 wisdom which bewilders, " THE LORD is MY SHEPHERD ; 
 
 I SHALL NOT WANT. HE MAKETH ME TO LIE DOWN IN 
 GREEN PASTURES ; HE LEADETH ME BESIDE THE STILL 
 WATERS. HE RESTORETH MY SOUL ; HE LEADETH ME 
 IN THE PATHS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS FOR HIS NAME'S 
 SAKE. YEA, THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY 
 OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH, I WILL FEAR NO EVIL ; 
 FOR THOU ART WITH ME ; THY ROD AND THY STAFF 
 

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