Generally, defined substance is cognized at this stage as immanent in all its created accidents, which for this reason are not as yet deposed to a mere relation of service, viewed simply, that is, as an ornament of glory to the Absolute, but are affirmatively conserved by virtue of the indwelling substance; and this is so albeit it is the One and the Divine alone which is set forth and exalted in all particularity. By this means the poet, who contemplates and reveres this unity in all things, and sinks his own individuality, no less than every other object in this contemplation, is able to maintain a positive relation to the substance, with which he associates all other objects.
The _second_ or _negative_ celebration of the Power and Glory of the one God is that genuine type of Sublimity which we find in Hebrew poetry. In this the positive immanence of the Absolute in the created phenomena is done away with, and in place thereof we have the _one_ substance independently affirmed as sovereign Lord of the world, who subsists over against the universe of His creations, which are posited under a relation to this Supreme Being of essential and evanescent powerlessness. If under such a view any representation is attempted of the Power and Wisdom of this Unity under the form of the finite objects of Nature and human destinies, we find nothing here that resembles the Hindoo's distortion of such objects by the unlimited accretion to their measure. The Sublimity of God is rather brought home to our senses by means of a representation whose entire object is to show us that all that exists in definite guise, with all its splendour, embellishment and glory, is a loyal accident in His service, a show that vanishes before the Divine essence and consistency.
Anyone who makes use of the word pantheism nowadays exposes himself thereby to the grossest misunderstanding. For, to take but one aspect of the difficulty, this word "all" signifies generally in our modern acceptation of the term "all, and everything in its wholly empirical particularity." We have at once recalled to us, for example, this particular box with all its attributes, its specific colour, size, form and weight, or that particular house, book, animal, table, stool, oven, streak of cloud and so on, to the end of the list. When we consequently find the charge advanced by not a few of our modern theologians against philosophy, that it makes a God of everything in general, it is quite obvious that this "everything" is taken in the sense we have just adverted to, and this it is which is thus bodily thrust upon her shoulders. In one word the complaint which attaches to it is absolutely unwarranted. Such a conception of pantheism only exists in the heads of stupidity, and is not discoverable in any form of religion whatever, not even in those of the Iroquois and Esquimaux, to say nothing of any philosophy. The "Everything" in what has been termed pantheism is therefore neither this nor that particular thing, but rather "Everything" in the sense of the "_All_," that is the One substantive essence, which no doubt is immanent in particular things, but is cognized in abstraction from their singularity and its empirical reality, so that it is not the particular as such, but the universal animating essence or soul, or to adopt a more popular way of speaking, it is the true and the excellent, both equally a real presence in this particular thing, which are here affirmed and indicated.