No one would deny that the pantheistic theory, which identifies God with the universe and ourselves with God, has its fascination and { 45} glamour--a fascination which is not ignoble on the face of it. The modern founder of Pantheism, Benedict Spinoza, was a man of pure and saintly character, a gentle recluse from the world, lovable and blameless. Nevertheless, we have no hesitation in avowing our belief that the glamour of Pantheism is utterly deceptive; that those who set foot on this inclined plane will find themselves unable--in direct proportion to their mental integrity--to resist conclusions which mean the practical dissolution of religion, in any intelligible sense of that word; and that in the present transitional state of religious opinion it is particularly necessary that the truth about Pantheism should be clearly stated. The test of a theory is not whether it looks symmetrical and self-consistent in the seclusion of the study, but whether it works. If it fails in actual life, it fails altogether; and the one fatal objection to this particular system is that it does not work. Nothing could be more significant than the admission of so representative an exponent of Pantheism as Mr. Allanson Picton, who tells us that one, if not more, of Spinoza's fundamental conceptions "have increasingly repelled rather than attracted religious people." [1] It is the object of the present chapter to show why this must be the case, wherever the implications of his teaching are understood.
{ 46} Pantheism declares--it practically begins and ends with the declaration--that the universe is God, and that God is the totality of being. Now, try as we will, such a conception can never take the place of the thought of God as our Father, and that for the simple reason that the universe is not even what we mean by personal. As Schopenhauer shrewdly remarked, "To call the universe 'God' is not to explain it, but merely to burden language with a superfluous synonym for the word 'universe.' Whether one says 'the universe is God' or 'the universe is the universe' makes no difference." It is when people no longer know what to do with a Deity, he continues, that they transfer His part to the universe--"which is, properly speaking, only a decent way of getting rid of Him." [2] A totality of being is not the same as a personal God, but the very contrary. Nor is it any consolation to be told that this totality, though not personal, is "super-personal." Such a super-personal Absolute or Whole, to quote Dr. Ballard's penetrating criticism, "is devoid of just those elements which for human experience constitute personality. To our power of vision it matters nothing whether we say that the ultra-violet rays of the spectrum are super-visible or invisible. The pertinent truth is that they are not visible. So, too, that which is not 'merely' personal is not really personal. { 47} If the Absolute of philosophy be the super-personal, it is not, in plain truth, personal at all." [3]