of existence!

We find accordingly that what is described as the great advance from
Theism to Pantheism, if looked at seriously, and not simply as a masked
negation of the sort indicated above, is a transition from what is
unproved and hardly conceivable to what is absolutely absurd. For
however obscure, however loose or confused may be the idea which we
connect with the word "God," there are two predicates which are
inseparable from it, the highest power and the highest wisdom. It is
absolutely absurd to think that a being endowed with these qualities
should have put himself into the position described above. Theism, on
the other hand, is something which is merely unproved; and if it is
difficult to look upon the infinite world as the work of a personal, and
therefore individual, Being, the like of which we know only from our
experience of the animal world, it is nevertheless not an absolutely
absurd idea. That a Being, at once almighty and all-good, should create
a world of torment is always conceivable; even though we do not know why
he does so; and accordingly we find that when people ascribe the height
of goodness to this Being, they set up the inscrutable nature of his
wisdom as the refuge by which the doctrine escapes the charge of
absurdity. Pantheism, however, assumes that the creative God is himself
the world of infinite torment, and, in this little world alone, dies
every second, and that entirely of his own will; which is absurd. It
would be much more correct to identify the world with the devil, as the
venerable author of the _Deutsche Theologie_ has, in fact, done in a
passage of his immortal work, where he says, "_Wherefore the evil spirit
and nature are one, and where nature is not overcome, neither is the
evil adversary overcome_."

It is manifest that the Pantheists give the Sansara the name of God. The
same name is given by the Mystics to the Nirvana. The latter, however,
state more about the Nirvana than they know, which is not done by the
Buddhists, whose Nirvana is accordingly a relative nothing. It is only
Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans who give its proper and correct
meaning to the word "God."

The expression, often heard now-a-days, "the world is an end-in-itself,"
leaves it uncertain whether Pantheism or a simple Fatalism is to be
taken as the explanation of it. But, whichever it be, the expression
looks upon the world from a physical point of view only, and leaves out
of sight its moral