MODERN SCIENCE AND PANTHEISM 



In response to your invitation,^ I willingly take 

 part in discussing the question, Is pantheism the legiti- 

 mate outcome of modern science? While turning it 

 over for some months past, I have become more and 

 more convinced that any satisfactory answer to it 

 depends upon clearing up the meaning of its terms. 

 What is pantheism ? And what actual features in 

 modern science can give colour to the suspicion 

 that pantheism is its proper result ? Or if such a sus- 

 picion is well founded, what leads us to regard it with 

 a certain aversion ? If science establishes or clearly 

 tends to establish the pantheistic view, why should 

 this stir in us alarms ? Is there some secret hostility 

 to the interests of human nature in a pantheistic 



1 The essay was read at the Concord School of Philosophy, July, 



1885. Under the title "Is Modern Science Pantheistic?" it was 

 printed in the Overland Monthly, December, 1885, and reprinted, with 

 some slight changes, in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. xix, 

 No. 4, nominally for October, 1885, but not issued till the spring of 



1886. It formed a member in a "symposium" to which the other 

 contributors were Mr. John Fiske, Dr. F. E. Abbot, Dr. A. P. Peabody, 

 Dr. Edmund Montgomery, and Dr. W. T. Harris. Mr. Fiske has pub- 

 lished his contribution in his well-known work, The Idea of God as 

 affected by Modern Knowledge ; and Dr. Abbot his, in his volume 

 called Scientific Theism. 



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