hem, 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 h
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