ated; but it was there, nevertheless. It is doubtful whether
Fichte's idealism could have taken the form it did had not Spinoza
preceded him. Hegel, setting out on his great intellectual career with a
resolve to defend the faith once delivered to the saints, yet traces its
roots to a philosophy of Being which, at any rate, looks very like
Pantheism. This is perhaps delicate ground to tread. For if one is asked
whether one understands Hegel, one is tempted to answer, like the pious
Scotch lady when her friends enquired whether she had understood the
minister's sermon, "Hech, sirs, d'ye think I'd presume?" Still, not my
own reading of him only, but Mr. Haldane's profoundly interesting
interpretations given in his _Gifford Lectures_, make the impression
that Hegel's eternal process is always a projection of subject as object
and re-integration of the two. And this goes on, not only on the
infinite, but on the finite scale, amidst the infinite number of
processes which constitute the Whole of Being. But this seems to leave
no room for creation out of nothing, and it is to that extent
pantheistic. There are doubtless saving interpretations, but it is
difficult to follow them; and they cannot cancel the initial postulate
of one eternal process, consisting in the relations of infinite subject,
object and reunion. On such a system I do not see how there can be
anything but God, and, therefore, notwithstanding his aversion to the
name, count Hegel a Pantheist.

[Sidenote: Goethe and Wordsworth.]

Goethe and Wordsworth, in many inspired passages of their poetry, echo
the faith of Spinoza. Wordsworth, of course, in the reaction from his
first expectations of the new order that he hoped to see arise out of
the French Revolution, was Inclined to magnify the Importance of
established religious ceremonies and creeds. But we cannot suppose that
he ever repented of his reverence for Nature as a divine revelation. And
we may believe that he continued to regard his practically pantheistic
visions as an insight into the eternal reality from which the detailed
schemes of orthodox theology were projected.

[Sidenote: Schleiermacher.]

That Schleiermacher was much indebted to Spinoza is abundantly evident
from his own words. He spoke of "the holy repudiated Spinoza." He
declared that "the high world-spirit penetrated him; the Infinite was
his beginning and his end; the universe his only and eternal love. In
holy innocence and lowliness, h