CH. iil] cosmic theism 423 



thropomorphisni which represents the infinite Deity as acting 

 through calculation and contrivance, just as finite intelligence 

 acts under the limitations imposed by its environment. And 

 thus, finally, we perceive the hopeless error of the Positivist, 

 who would give us a finite knowable, like Humanity, for an 

 object of religious contemplation. The reasoning which de- 

 monstrates the relativity of knowledge, demonstrates also the 

 failure of all such attempts to bind up religion in scientific 

 formulas. 



The anthropomorphic tlieist, habitually thinking of God 

 as surrounded and limited by an environment or " objective 

 datum," will urge that the doctrine here expounded is neither 

 more nor less than Pantheism, or the identification of God 

 with the totality of existence. So plausible does this objec- 

 tion appear, at first sight, that those who urge it cannot .fairly 

 be accused either of dulness of apprehension or of a desire 

 to misrepresent. Nevertheless it needs but to look sharply 

 into the matter, to see that the doctrine here expounded is 

 utterly opposed to Pantheism. Though the word " pantheism " 

 has been almost as undiscriminatingly bandied about among 

 theological disputants as the word '* atheism," it has still a 

 well-defined metaphysical meaning which renders it inappli- 

 cable to a religious doctrine based upon the relativity of 

 knowledge. In the pantheistic hypothesis the distinction 

 between absolute and phenomenal existence is ignoi ed, and 

 the world of phenomena is practically identified v ith Deity. 

 Of this method of treating the problem the final outcome is 

 to be seen in the metaphysics of Hegel, in which the process 

 of evolution, vaguely apprehended, is described absolutely, 

 as a process of change in the Deity, and in which God, as 

 identified with the totality of phenomenal existence, is re- 

 garded as continually progressing from a state of comparative 

 imperfection to a state of comparative perfection. Or, in 

 other words — to reduce the case to the shape in which it was 

 presented in the first chapter of this work — the Universe, as 



