ed that he is in Girolamo's renowned marionette-theatre,
admires the art by which the director gets up the dolls and guides their
movements. "Oh, you are quite mistaken," says the other, "we're in the
Teatro della Scala; it is the manager and his troupe who are on the
stage; they are the persons you see before you; the poet too is taking a
part."

The chief objection I have to Pantheism is that it says nothing. To call
the world "God" is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language
with a superfluous synonym for the word "world." It comes to the same
thing whether you say "the world is God," or "God is the world." But if
you start from "God" as something that is given in experience, and has
to be explained, and they say, "God is the world," you are affording
what is to some extent an explanation, in so far as you are reducing
what is unknown to what is partly known (_ignotum per notius_); but it
is only a verbal explanation. If, however, you start from what is really
given, that is to say, from the world, and say, "the world is God," it
is clear that you say nothing, or at least you are explaining what is
unknown by what is more unknown.

Hence, Pantheism presupposes Theism; only in so far as you start from a
god, that is, in so far as you possess him as something with which you
are already familiar, can you end by identifying him with the world; and
your purpose in doing so is to put him out of the way in a decent
fashion. In other words, you do not start clear from the world as
something that requires explanation; you start from God as something
that is given, and not knowing what to do with him, you make the world
take over his role. This is the origin of Pantheism. Taking an
unprejudiced view of the world as it is, no one would dream of regarding
it as a god. It must be a very ill-advised god who knows no better way
of diverting himself than by turning into such a world as ours, such a
mean, shabby world, there to take the form of innumerable millions who
live indeed, but are fretted and tormented, and who manage to exist a
while together, only by preying on one another; to bear misery, need and
death, without measure and without object, in the form, for instance, of
millions of negro slaves, or of the three million weavers in Europe who,
in hunger and care, lead a miserable existence in damp rooms or the
cheerless halls of a factory. What a pastime this for a god, who must,
as such, be used to another mode