WHY PANTHEISM IS UNSCIENTIFIC. 329 



in Of " orod " of whom we are the dream. Heaven is 

 as dumb and irresponsive to the prophesyings of the 

 philosophers of the Absolute as it ever was to the 

 priests of Baal. 



§ II. And earth also: for the Absolute is no 

 less incompatible with the methods of human science. 

 An infinite God is as much out of relation to human 

 knowledge as to human feeling. Pantheism ex- 

 plains nothing, just because it professes to explain 

 everything. For a principle which may be regarded 

 as the ultimate ground of all things cannot be used 

 as the explanation of anything in particular. Hence 

 we arrive at the paradox that the ultimate ground 

 of all things, and cause of their existence, is the 

 cause of nothing in the nature of that existence. In 

 other words, for the purposes of science as well as 

 for sentiment. Pantheism resolves itself into Atheism. 



It follows that there is an irreconcilable conflict 

 between Pantheism and all the finite methods by 

 which men have sought to understand the world. 

 The evolutionist method especially, regarding the 

 world as a process, is pledged to deny the Infinite 

 in every form {cp, ch. vii. § 20). For nothing infinite 

 can be in process, or if it is in process, the process 

 must be unintelliofible. 



The vulgar hear and admire such explanations of 

 things as that '' the Absolute can realize itself only 

 in the world," that '' it becomes self-conscious only in 

 man," and even that '' the history of the world is the 

 process whereby the Absolute returns into itself 

 enriched." But if such phrases can, upon reflection, 

 satisfy philosophic minds, the whilom adversaries of 

 anthropomorphism must have come to content them- 

 selves with the flimsiest metaphors of a very sorry 

 anthropomorphism. 



