424 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. hi. 



identified witli God, is regarded as self-evolved. Such a 

 hypotliesis, equally with that of the anthropomorphic theist, 

 implicitly limits Deity with an " objective datum," and ren- 

 ders it finite ; for, as Mr. Mansel has observed in another 

 connection, " how can the Infinite become that which it was 

 not from the first ? " Obviously for the change an ulterior 

 Cause is needed; and thus the pantheistic hypothesis resolv^es 

 itself into the affirmation of a limited Knowable conditioned 

 by an unlimited Unknowable, — but it is the former, and not 

 the latter, which it deifies. 



Hence to the query suggested at the beginning of this 

 chapter, whether the Deity can be identified with the Cosmos, 

 we must return a very different answer from that returned 

 by the Pantheist. The " open secret," in so far as secret, is 

 God, — in so far as open, is the World ; but in thus regarding 

 the ever-changing universe of phenomena as the multiform 

 revelation of an Omnipresent Power, we can in nowise iden- 

 tify the Power with its manifestations. To do so would 

 reduce the entire argument to nonsense. Prom first to last 

 it has been implied that, while the universe is the mani- 

 festation of Deity, yet is Deity something more than the 

 universe. 



The doctrine which we have here expounded is, therefore, 

 neither more nor less than Theism, in its most consistent and 

 unqualified form. It is quite true that the word " theism," 

 as ordinarily employed, connotes the ascription of an an- 

 thropomorphic personality to the Deity. But in this conno- 

 tation there has been nothing like fixedness or uniformity. 

 On the other hand the term has become less and less an- 

 thropomorphic in its connotations, from age to age, and in 

 the sense in which it is here employed the deanthropomor- 

 phizing process is but carried one step farther. There was a 

 time when theism seemed to require that God should be 

 invested vnth a quasi-human body, just as it now seems 

 to require that God should be invested with quasi-human 



