Pantheism, Its Story and Significance - J. Allanson Picton
PANTHEISM
By J. ALLANSON PICTON
RELIGIONS ANCIENT AND MODERN
PANTHEISM
Its Story and Significance
RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN.
_Foolscap 8vo. 1s. net per volume_.
It is intended in this series to present to a large public the SALIENT
FEATURES, first of the GREAT RELIGIONS, secondly of the GREAT
PHILOSOPHIES, and thirdly of the GREAT LITERARY and ARTISTIC REPUTATIONS
of the Human Race.
PANTHEISM: ITS STORY AND SIGNIFICANCE. By J. ALLANSON PICTON, M.A.
Author of _The Religion of the Universe_, etc.
RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE. By Miss JANE HARRISON, Fellow of Newnham
College, Author of _Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, etc.
ANIMISM. By EDWARD CLODD, Author of _Pioneers of Evolution_.
RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT CHINA. By H.A. GILES, M.A., LL.D. (Aberd.),
Professor of Chinese at Cambridge University.
* * * * *
_The following Volumes are in preparation_:
ISLAM. Mr. T.W. ARNOLD, Assistant Librarian, India Office.
BUDDHISM. 2 vols. Prof. RHYS DAVIDS, LL.D.
HINDUISM. Mr. T.W. ARNOLD.
FETISHISM AND MAGIC. Prof. ALFRED C. HADDON, F.R.S.
THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN. Mr. CHARLES SQUIRE.
CELTIC RELIGION. Prof. ANWYL.
SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION. Mr. W.A. CRAIGIE.
THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT. Prof. FLINDERS PETRIE. F.R.S.
THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA, Dr. THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES.
PANTHEISM
Its Story and Significance
BY J. ALLANSON PICTON
LONDON
1905
CONTENTS
CHAP.
FOREWORD
I. PRE-CHRISTIAN PANTHEISM
II. POST-CHRISTIAN PANTHEISM
III. MODERN PANTHEISM
AFTERWORD
PANTHEISM
FOREWORD.
[Sidenote: Pantheism not Sectarian or even Racial.]
Pantheism differs from the systems of belief constituting the main
religions of the world in being comparatively free from any limits of
period, climate, or race. For while what we roughly call the Egyptian
Religion, the Vedic Religion, the Greek Religion, Buddhism, and others
of similar fame have been necessarily local and temporary, Pantheism has
been, for the most part, a dimly discerned background, an esoteric
significance of many or all religions, rather than a "denomination" by
itself. The best illustration of this characteristic of Pantheism is the
catholicity of its great prophet Spinoza. For he felt so little
antagonism to any Christian sect, that he never urged any member of a
church to leave it, but rather encouraged his humbler friends, who
sought his advice, to make full use of such spiritual privileges as
they appreciated most. He could not, indeed, content himself with the
fragmentary forms of any sectarian creed. But in the few writings which
he made some effort to adapt to the popular understanding, he seems to
think it possible that the faith of Pantheism might some day leaven all
religions alike. I shall endeavour briefly to sketch the story of that
faith, and to suggest its significance for the future. But first we must
know what it means.
[Sidenote: Meaning of Pantheism.]
[Sidenote: God is All.]
[Sidenote: But not Everything Is God.]
[Sidenote: Analogy of the Human Organism.]
Pantheism, then, being a term derived from two Greek words signifying
"all" and "God," suggests to a certain extent its own meaning. Thus, if
Atheism be taken to mean a denial of the being of God, Pantheism is its
extreme opposite; because Pantheism declares that there is nothing but
God. This, however, needs explanation. For no Pantheist has ever held
that _everything_ is God, any more than a teacher of physiology, in
enforcing on his students the unity of the human organism, would insist
that every toe and finger is the man. But such a teacher, at least in
these days, would almost certainly warn his pupils against the notion
that the man can be really divided into limbs, or organs, or faculties,
or even into soul and body. Indeed, he might without affectation adopt
the language of a much controverted creed, so far as to pronounce that
"the reasonable soul and flesh is one man"--"one altogether." In this
view, the man is the unity of all organs and faculties. But it does not
in the least follow that any of these organs or faculties, or even a
selection of them, is the man.
[Sidenote: The Analogy Imperfect but Useful.]
If I apply this analogy to an explanation of the above definition of
Pantheism as the theory that there is nothing but God, it must not be
supposed that I regard the parallelism as perfect. In fact, one purpose
of the following exposition will be to show why and where all such
analogies fail. For Pantheism does not regard man, or any organism, as a
true unity. In the view of Pantheism the only real unity is God. But
without any inconsistency I may avail myself of common impressions to
correct a common mis-impression. Thus, those who hold that the
reasonable soul and flesh is one man--one altogether--but at the same
time deny that the toe or the finger, or the stomach or the heart, is
the man, are bound in consistency to recognise that if Pantheism affirms
God to be All in All, it does not follow that Pantheism must hold a man,
or a tree, or a tiger to be God.
[Sidenote: Farther Definition.]
Excluding, then, such an apparently plausible, but really fallacious
inversion of the Pantheistic view of the Universe, I repeat that the
latter is the precise opposite of Atheism. So far from tolerating any
doubt as to the being of God, it denies that there is anything else. For
all objects of sense and thought, including individual consciousness,
whether directly observed in ourselves, or inferred as existing in
others, are, according to Pantheism, only facets of an infinite Unity,
which is "altogether one" in a sense inapplicable to anything else.
Because that Unity is not merely the aggregate of all the finite objects
which we observe or infer, but is a living whole, expressing itself in
infinite variety. Of that infinite variety our gleams of consciousness
are infinitesimal parts, but not parts in a sense involving any real
division. The questions raised by such a view of the Universe, many of
them unanswerable--as is also the case with questions raised by every
other view of the Universe--will be considered further on. All that I
am trying to secure in these preliminary observations is a general idea
of the Pantheistic view of the Universe as distinguished from that of
Polytheism, Monotheism, or Atheism.
[Sidenote: Various Forms of Pantheism.]
[Sidenote: Spurious Forms.]
[Sidenote: Exclusion of Creation.]
[Sidenote: Evolution and Decay applicable only to Parts, not to the
Whole.]
Of course, there have been different forms of Pantheism, as there have
been also various phases of Monotheism; and in the brief historical
review which will follow this introductory explanation of the name, I
shall note at least the most important of those forms. But any which
fail to conform, to the general definition here given, will not be
recognised as Pantheism at all, though they may be worth some attention
as approximations thereto. For any view of the Universe, allowing the
existence of anything outside the divine Unity, denies that God is All
in All, and, therefore, is obviously not Pantheism. Whether we should
recognise as true Pantheism any theory involving the evolution of a
finite world or worlds out of the divine substance at some definite
epoch or epochs, may be a debatable question, provided that the eternity
and inviolability of the divine oneness is absolutely guarded in
thought. Yet I will anticipate so far as to say that, in my view, the
question must be negatived. At any rate, we must exclude all creeds
which tolerate the idea of a creation in the popular sense of the word,
or of a final catastrophe. True, the individual objects, great or small,
from a galaxy to a moth, which have to us apparently a separate
existence, have all been evolved out of preceding modes of being, by a
process which seems to us to involve a beginning, and to ensure an end.
But in the view of Pantheism, properly so-called, the transference of
such a process to the whole Universe is the result of an illusion
suggested by false analogy. For the processes called evolution, though
everywhere operative, affect, each of them, only parts of the infinite
whole of things; and experience cannot possibly afford any justification
for supposing that they affect the Universe itself. Thus, the matter or
energy of which we think we consist, was in existence, every atom of it,
and every element of force, before we were born, and will survive our
apparent death. And the same thing, at least on the Pantheistic view, is
true of every other mode of apparently separate or finite existence.
Therefore no birth of a new nebula ever added a grain of matter or an
impulse of new energy to the Universe. And the final decease of our
solar system, if such an event be in prospect, cannot make any
difference whatever to the infinite balance of forces, of which,
speaking in anthropomorphic and inadequate language, we suppose the
Eternal All to consist.
[Sidenote: Limitation of Scope.]
These observations are not intended to be controversial, but only to
make clear the general sense in which the term Pantheism is here used.
Not that it would be possible at the outset to indicate all that is
implicit in the definition. I only wish to premise plainly that I am not
concerned with any view of the world such as implies or admits that,
whether by process of creation, or emanation, or self-division, or
evolution, the oneness of the Eternal has ever been marred, or anything
other than the being of God has been or can be produced.
[Sidenote: Pantheism either Philosophical or Religious or both.]
[Sidenote: Pantheism as a Religion almost Entirely Modern.]
[Sidenote: Mystics not necessarily Pantheist.]
But before passing on to the promised historical review, it is, perhaps,
necessary to refer again to a remark previously made, that Pantheism may
be considered either from the point of view of philosophy, or from that
of religion. Not that the two points of view are mutually exclusive.
But, as a matter of fact, Pantheism as a religion is, with certain
exceptions among Indian saints and later Neoplatonists, almost entirely
a modern development, of which Spinoza was the first distinct and devout
teacher. For this statement justification will be given hereafter.
Meantime, to deprecate adverse prejudice, I may suggest that a careful
study of the most ancient forms of Pantheism seems to show that they
were purely philosophical; an endeavour to reach in thought the ultimate
reality which polytheism travestied, and which the senses disguised. But
little or no attempt was made to substitute the contemplation of the
Eternal for the worship of mediator divinities. Thus, in the same spirit
in which Socrates ordered the sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius for his
recovery from the disease of mortal life, philosophical Pantheists,
whether Egyptian or Greek, or even Indian,[1] satisfied their religious
instincts by hearty communion with the popular worship of traditional
gods. Or, if it is thought that the mediaeval mystics were religious
Pantheists, a closer examination of their devout utterances will show
that, though they approximated to Pantheism, and even used language such
as, if interpreted logically, must have implied it, yet they carefully
reserved articles of the ecclesiastical creed, entirely inconsistent
with the fundamental position that there is nothing but God. Indeed,
their favourite comparison of creature life to the ray of a candle is
not really a Pantheistic conception; because to the true Pantheist the
creature is not an emanation external to God, but a finite mode of
infinite Being. Still the mystics did much to prepare the devout for an
acceptance of Spinoza's teaching. And although so amazing a
transfiguration of religion rather dazzled than convinced the world at
first; nay, though it must be acknowledged that one, and perhaps more of
Spinoza's fundamental conceptions have increasingly repelled rather than
attracted religious people, yet it can hardly be disputed that he gave
an impulse to contemplative religion, of which the effect is only now
beginning to be fully realised.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: If Buddha occurs to the reader, it should be remembered
that he was not a Pantheist at all. His ultimate aim was the dissolution
of personality in the Nothing. But that is not Pantheism.]
CHAPTER I
PRE-CHRISTIAN PANTHEISM
[Sidenote: Its Origins Doubtful and Unimportant.]
[Sidenote: The Secret of Pantheism is Within us.]
It has been the customary and perhaps inevitable method of writers on
Pantheism to trace its main idea back to the dreams of Vedic poets, the
musings of Egyptian priests, and the speculations of the Greeks. But
though it is undeniable that the divine unity of all Being was an almost
necessary issue of earliest human thought upon the many and the one, yet
the above method of treating Pantheism is to some extent misleading; and
therefore caution is needed in using it. For the revival of Pantheism at
the present day is much more a tangible resultant of action and reaction
between Science and Religion than a ghost conjured up by speculation.
Thus, religious belief, driven out from "the darkness and the cloud" of
Sinai, takes refuge in the mystery of matter; and if the glory passes
from the Mount of Transfiguration, it is because it expands to
etherialise the whole world as the garment of God. Again, the
evanescence of the atom into galaxies of "electrons" destroys the only
physical theory that ever threatened us with Atheism; and the
infinitesimal electrons themselves open up an immeasurable perspective
into the abyss of an Unknowable in which all things "live and move and
have their being." Therefore it matters little to us, except as a matter
of antiquarian interest, to know what the Vedic singers may have
dreamed; or what Thales or Xenophanes or Parmenides may have thought
about the first principle of things, or about the many and the one. For
our spiritual genealogy is not from them, but from a nearer and double
line of begetters, including seers--in the true sense of the word--and
saints, for both are represented by Kepler and Hooker, Newton and Jeremy
Taylor, Descartes and Spinoza, Leibnitz and Wesley, Spencer and Newman.
And even these have authority not through any divine right of genius or
acquired claim of learning, but because they illumine and interpret
obscure suggestions of our own thoughts. Indeed, to the sacrament of
historic communion with the past, as well as to the chief rite of the
Church, the apostolic injunction is applicable: "Let a man examine
himself; and so let him eat of that bread."
[Sidenote: Suggestions of Nature.]
Obeying that injunction, any man possessing ordinary powers of
observation and reflection may, in the course of a summer day's walk,
find abundant reason for interest in the speculations of historic
Pantheism. For the aspect of nature then presented to him is one both of
movement and repose, of variety and harmony, of multiplicity and unity.
Thus the slight breeze, scarcely stirring the drowsy flowery the
monotonous cadences of the stony brook, and the gliding of feathery
flecks of cloud across the blue, create a peace far deeper than absolute
stillness, and suggest an infinite life in which activity and repose are
one. Besides, there is evident everywhere an interplay of forces acting
and reacting so as mutually to help and fulfil one another. For
instance, the falling leaves give back the carbon they gathered from the
air, and so repay the soil with interest for the subtler essences
derived therefrom and dissolved in the sap. The bees, again, humming
among the flowers, while actuated only by instincts of appetite and
thrift, fructify the blooms, and become a connecting link between one
vegetable generation and another. The heat of the sun draws up water
from ocean and river and lake, while chilly currents of higher air
return it here and there in rain. So earth, sea, and air are for ever
trafficking together; and their interchange of riches and force is
complicated ten thousandfold by the activities of innumerable living
things, all adapting themselves by some internal energy to the ever
varying balance of heat and cold, moisture and drought, light and
darkness, chemical action and reaction. And all this has been going on
for untold millions of years; nor is there any sign of weariness now.
[Sidenote: Sympathy thus awakened with the old Pantheistic Aspiration to
find the One in the Many.]
In the mood engendered by such familiar experiences of a holiday
saunter, it may well occur to anyone to think with interest and sympathy
of the poets and seers who, thousands of years ago, first dared to
discern in this maze of existence the varied expression of one
all-embracing and eternal Life, or Power. Such contemplations and
speculations were entirely uninfluenced by anything which the Christian
Church, recognises as revelation.[2] Yet we must not on that account
suppose that they were without religion, or pretended to explain
anything without reference to superhuman beings called gods and demons.
On the contrary, they, for the most part, shared, subject to such
modifications as were imperatively required by cultivated common sense,
the beliefs of their native land. But the difference between these men
and their unthinking contemporaries lay in this; that the former
conceived of one supreme and comprehensive divinity beyond the reach of
common thought, an ultimate and eternal Being which included gods as
well as nature within its unity. So, for them, Indra, Zeus, or Jove were
mere modes of the one Being also manifest in man and bird and tree.
[Sidenote: The Vedas and Related Literature.]
Every race possessing even the rudiments of culture has been impelled by
a happy instinct, which, if we like, we may call inspiration, to record
in more or less permanent form its experience of nature, of life, and
of what seemed the mysteries of both. To this inspiration we owe the
sacred books of the Jews. But it is now generally recognised that an
impulse not wholly dissimilar also moved prophetic or poetic minds among
other races, such, for instance, as the Egyptians, the Chaldaeans, and
the Aryan conquerors of India, to inscribe on papyrus or stone, or brick
or palm-leaf, the results of experience as interpreted by free
imagination, traditional habits of thought, and limited knowledge. Of
this ancient literature a considerable part is taken up by the mysteries
apparently involved in life, conduct, and death. Most notably is this
the case with the ancient Indian literature called the Vedas, and such
sequels as the Upanishads, Sutras, and--much later--the Bhagavad Gita.
This collection, like our Bible, forms a library of writings issued at
various dates extending over much more than a thousand years.
[Sidenote: Indian Pantheism.]
The forgotten singers and preachers of this prehistoric wisdom were as
much haunted as we ourselves are with the harassing questions suggested
by sin and sorrow, by life and death, and by aspirations after a higher
state. And many, perhaps we may say most of them, found comfort in the
thought that essentially they belonged to an all comprehensive and
infinite Life, in which, if they acted purely and nobly, their seeming
personality might be merged and find peace. Their frame of mind was
religious rather than philosophical. But their philosophy was naturally
conformed to it; and in their contrast of the bewildering variety of
finite visible things with the unity of the Eternal Being of which all
are phases, those ancients were in close sympathy with the thoughts of
the modern meditative saunterer by field and river and wood.
[Sidenote: Differences between Ancient and Modern Conditions of
Thought.]
But the enormous interval of time separating us from those early Indian
thinkers necessarily involves very great differences in conditions of
thought. And we should not be surprised if amidst much in their writings
that stirs our sympathy, there is also a great deal which is to us
incongruous and absurd. Therefore, it may be well before quoting these
writings to note one or two points marking an almost incommensurable
difference between their mode and ours of regarding the world.
[Sidenote: 1. Survival In their day of Fetishistic and Animistic Ideas.]
1. First, they were much less removed than we are from the influence of
fetishistic and animistic traditions. Even in the Greek and Roman
classics the casual reader is often revolted by the grossly absurd
stories told of gods and heroes. And, indeed, it is impossible to
conceive of the amours of Zeus (or Jove), for instance, with Leda,
Europa or Danae as having been first conceived during an age marked by
the poetic genius and comparative culture evinced in the most ancient
epics. But the most probable solution of the puzzle is that the earliest
civilization inherited a number of animal stories, such as are
characteristic of savagery in all parts of the world, and that the first
literary generations into whose poetic myths those stories were
transferred, being as much accustomed to them as to other surroundings
of their childhood, such as bloody sacrifices, mystic expiations, and
fantastic initiations, saw no incongruity in anything told them of the
gods. Besides, as those wild myths were associated with sacred rites,
the inveterate conservatism of religion, which insisted on stone knives
in sacrifices long after bronze and iron came in, was likely enough to
maintain the divine importance of those fables, just as the historicity
of Balaam's ass and Jonah's whale is in some churches piously upheld
still.
[Sidenote: 2. Ancient Ignorance of Natural Order.]
2. In the times from which the first known Pantheistic teaching dates,
ideas of nature's order were incongruous and indeed incommensurable with
ours. Not that the world was then regarded as a chaos. But such order as
existed was considered to be a kind of "balance of power" between
various unseen beings, some good, some evil, some indifferent. True,
some Indian prophets projected an idea of One Eternal Being including
all such veiled Principalities and Powers. But their Pantheism was
necessarily conditioned by their ignorance of natural phenomena. In
fact, an irreducible inconsistency marred their view of the world. For
while their Pantheism should have taught them to think of a universal
life or energy as working within all things, their theological habit of
mind bound them to the incongruous notion of devils or deities moulding,
or at least ruling, matter from without. And, indeed, the nearest
approach they made to the more genuine Pantheism of modern times was the
conception of a world emanating from and projected outside Brahma, to be
re-merged in him after the lapse of ages. Now, if I am right in my
definition of Pantheism as absolutely identifying God with the
Universe,[3] so that, in fact, there cannot be anything but God, the
inconsistency here noted must be regarded as fatal to the genuineness of
the Indian or indeed of any other ancient Pantheism. For the defect
proved during many centuries to be incurable, and was not indeed fully
removed until Spinoza's time.
[Sidenote: 3. Absence of Definite Creeds.]
3. Another difference between ancient Pantheists and ourselves was the
absence in their case of any religious creed, sanctioned by supernatural
authority and embodied in a definite form, like that of the three
Anglican creeds, or the Westminster Confession of Faith. Not that those
ancients supposed themselves to be without a revelation. For the Vedas,
at least, were considered to be of divine authority, and their words,
metres, and grammar were regarded with a superstitious awe, such as
reminds us of what has been called the "bibliolatry" of the Jewish
Rabbis. But subject to this verbal veneration, the Rishis, or learned
divines, used the utmost freedom in regard to the forced and fanciful
interpretations extorted from the sacred text, a freedom which again
reminds us of the paradoxical caprice shown by some schools of Jewish
Rabbis in their treatment of the volume they professed to regard with
awe. The various finite gods, such as Vishnu, Indra, Krishna, Marut, or
Varuna, were not the subjects of any church creed chanted every day, and
carefully stereotyped in the tender minds of children. On the contrary,
various roles were assigned by successive generations to these
divinities. So that, for instance, Varuna was at one time the god of the
ocean, and at another of the sky. But the uniform tendency of all poets
and Rishis alike was to seek, beyond all these gods, one unbeginning,
unending, and all comprehensive Being, from whom these "devas" emerged,
and into whom they must return. Not only so, but it is clearly suggested
in many passages, of which an instance will presently be quoted, that
the Eternal, called Brahma who was the true Self of all gods, was also
the true Self of man and bird and beast. So that, in fact,
notwithstanding the illogical emanation theory, He was the only real
Being, the All in All.