PHILOSOPHIC PANTHEISM. 325 



§ 8. But before we can engage upon this task It 

 will be necessary to wage a lengthy war with philo- 

 sophic Pantheism, in order to demonstrate that the 

 grounds on which it claimed to be rationally un- 

 assailable are without exception illusory. 



The philosophic conception of God is that of the 

 unity of the universe, the all-embracing, all-sustain- ' 

 Irig whole of which all things are parts, the under- 

 lying reality of which all things are manifestations. 

 All is God, even where It Is attempted to deny that 

 God = the All, and there is attributed to him an 

 existence for himself. But by God, through God, 

 for God, and In God all things are. 



§ 9. This conception of God, which In the more 

 consciously anti-thelstic systems is also called that 

 of the Absolute or Infinite, occurs more or less 

 explicitly in nearly all modern philosophers. An 

 honourable exception must be made in favour of 

 Mr. Mill, who alone In modern times has pleaded In 

 favour of a limited God.^ Such limitation, more- 

 over, is really required by consistency in all indi- 

 vidualistic systems, notably in those of Berkeley 

 and Leibnitz. Greek philosophy, on the other hand, 

 is almost exclusively dualistic, and hence, though the 

 Deity Is rarely conceived as personal, he Is never = 

 the All, i.e., Is never Infinite. But down to the 

 latest times of Neoplatonism, Matter Is conceived as 

 a principle which contests the supremacy of the 

 Good. And though of course this dualism of Matter 

 and Reason, of the unknowable and knowable. Is 

 objectionable on several grounds — and not least 

 because Matter is not able to explain itself, much 

 less the world and the limitation of the Deity — it 

 may be thought a moot point whether a false dis- 

 ^ In his Essays on Religion (3rd ed.), p. 36 ff., p. 176 fif. 



