acles-if
it cannot convert that matter, if the matter persists in disagreeing
with it-its spirits droop, its soul is disquieted within it, it becomes
listless like a withering flower-it languishes and dies. We cannot
imagine a thing to live at all and yet be soulless except in sleep for
a short time, and even so not quite soulless. The idea of a soul, or of
that unknown something for which the word "soul" is our hieroglyphic,
and the idea of living organism, unite so spontaneously, and stick
together so inseparably, that no matter how often we sunder them they
will elude our vigilance and come together, like true lovers, in spite
of us. Let us not attempt to divorce ideas that have so long been wedded
together.

I submit, then, that Pantheism, even as explained by those who had
entered on the outskirts only of its great morass, nevertheless holds
out so little hope of leading to any comfortable conclusion that it will
be more reasonable to occupy our minds with other matter than to follow
Pantheism further. The Pantheists speak of a person without meaning a
person; they speak of a "him" and a "he" without having in their
minds the idea of a living person with all its inevitable limitations.
Pantheism is, therefore, as is said by Mr. Blunt in another article,
"practically nothing else than Atheism; it has no belief in a personal
deity overruling the affairs of the world, as Divine Providence, and is,
therefore, Atheistic," and again, "Theism believes in a spirit
superior to matter, and so does Pantheism; but the spirit of Theism is
self-conscious, and therefore personal and of individual existence-a
nature per se, and upholding all things by an active control; while
Pantheism believes in spirit that is of a higher nature than brute
matter, but is a mere unconscious principle of life, impersonal,
irrational as the brute matter that it quickens."

If this verdict concerning Pantheism is true--and from all I can gather
it is as nearly true as anything can be said to be which is predicated
of an incoherent idea--the Pantheistic God is an attempt to lay hold of a
truth which has nevertheless eluded its pursuers.

In my next chapter I will consider the commonly received, orthodox
conception of God, and compare it with the Pantheistic. I will show that
it, too, is Atheistic, inasmuch as, in spite of its professing to give
us a conception of God, it raises no ideas in our minds of a person or
Living Being--and a God who is no