62 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



judgment as defective, and consequently be reck- 

 oned opinions injurious if taken as final. 



But let us now ask in earnest what pantheism 

 exactly is. In beginning our answer, we may avail 

 ourselves of a useful clue in the structure of the 

 name itself. The derivation of this from the two 

 Greek words irav (all) and ^eo? (God) would seem 

 to make it mean either (i) that the All is God, or 

 else (2) that God is all — that God alone really 

 and actively exists. The name, then, hints at two 

 quite different doctrines. It may signify either 

 (i) that the total of particular existences is God, 

 in other words, that the universe, as we commonly 

 understand it, is itself the only real being; or (2) 

 that God, the absolute Being, is the only actively 

 real being — all particular existences are merely 

 his forms of appearance, and so, in truth, are either 

 illusions or have an aspect of illusion haunting 

 such partial reality as they possess. Of these 

 diverse doctrines we might convey now the one 

 and now the other by the name, according as we 

 pronounced it /(^//theism or pan///^ism. In either 

 way the word unavoidably covers an absolute iden- 

 tification of God and other being. In the first 

 way, God is merged in the universe ; in the second, 

 the universe is merged in God. 



As a matter of history, too, pantheism has actu- 

 ally presented itself in these two forms. The doc- 



