eally 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 abou