MODERN SCIENCE AND PANTHEISM 63 



trine has come forward in a great variety of 

 expressions or schemes of exposition, such as those 

 of HeracHtus, Parmenides, and the Stoics, in ancient 

 times, — not to speak of the vast systems lying at 

 the basis of the Hindu rehgions, — or as those of 

 Bruno and Vanini, Schelhng, Oken, Schopenhauer, 

 and Hartmann, in our modern era.^ But various 

 as these schemes are, they may all be recognised 

 as falling into one or other of the two forms sug- 

 gested by the common name. The two forms, evi- 

 dently, may be respectively styled the atheistic and 

 the acosmic, as the one puts the sensible universe 

 in the place of God, and thus cancels his being ; 



1 The names of Plato and Aristotle, among the ancients, and of 

 Spinoza, Fichte, and Hegel, among the moderns, are omitted from 

 this list because the question of their pantheism is with many still 

 in dispute. As to Plato and Aristotle, of course the dispute is well 

 founded, their position being more or less ambiguous, presenting a 

 struggle between pantheism and individualism; though my own 

 conviction now is that the drift of both is unquestionably panthe- 

 istic. At the time of writing the essay (18S5), I still held the opin- 

 ion that an idealistic monism such as Hegel's was compatible with 

 moral freedom; the persuasion that theism involves such an imma- 

 nence of God in souls, more or less pervades the paper in its original 

 form. This explains still more pertinently why I then omitted the 

 names of Spinoza and Fichte from the list. I regarded Plato, Aris- 

 totle, Spinoza, Fichte, and Hegel as forming a single growing but clear 

 tradition of genuine rational theism. I hardly need add, that in getting 

 convinced of the inconsistency of this whole tradition with moral free- 

 dom, I have changed my view both of theism and of the relation 

 borne to it by these noted thinkers. I should now list all of the 

 modern names among them as pantheists. 



