elves appears then also
outside of ourselves, and we and the universe are of the same
spiritual species. So far, so good, then; and one might consequently
ask, What more of intimacy do you require? To which the answer is
that to be like a thing is not as intimate a relation as to be
substantially fused into it, to form one continuous soul and body with
it; and that pantheistic idealism, making us entitatively one with
God, attains this higher reach of intimacy.

The theistic conception, picturing God and his creation as entities
distinct from each other, still leaves the human subject outside of
the deepest reality in the universe. God is from eternity complete, it
says, and sufficient unto himself; he throws off the world by a free
act and as an extraneous substance, and he throws off man as a third
substance, extraneous to both the world and himself. Between them, God
says 'one,' the world says 'two,' and man says 'three,'--that is the
orthodox theistic view. And orthodox theism has been so jealous of
God's glory that it has taken pains to exaggerate everything in the
notion of him that could make for isolation and separateness. Page
upon page in scholastic books go to prove that God is in no sense
implicated by his creative act, or involved in his creation. That his
relation to the creatures he has made should make any difference to
him, carry any consequence, or qualify his being, is repudiated as a
pantheistic slur upon his self-sufficingness. I said a moment ago that
theism treats us and God as of the same species, but from the orthodox
point of view that was a slip of language. God and his creatures
are _toto genere_ distinct in the scholastic theology, they have
absolutely _nothing_ in common; nay, it degrades God to attribute to
him any generic nature whatever; he can be classed with nothing. There
is a sense, then, in which philosophic theism makes us outsiders and
keeps us foreigners in relation to God, in which, at any rate, his
connexion with us appears as unilateral and not reciprocal. His action
can affect us, but he can never be affected by our reaction. Our
relation, in short, is not a strictly social relation. Of course in
common men's religion the relation is believed to be social, but that
is only one of the many differences between religion and theology.

This essential dualism of the theistic view has all sorts of
collateral consequences. Man being an outsider and a mere subject to
God, not his i