CHAPTER XV. 



GOD AND THE WORLD. 



The idea of God in general. Antithesis of God and the world ; the 

 supernatural and nature. Theism and Pantheism. Chief forms 

 of Theism. Polytheism. Tritheism. Amphitheism. Mono- 

 theism. Religious statistics. Naturalistic Monotheism. Solar- 

 ism. Anthropistie Monotheism. The three great Mediter- 

 ranean religions. Mosaism. Christianity. The cult of the 

 Madonna and the saints. Papal Polytheism. Islam. Mixotheism. 

 Nature of Theism. An extramundane and anthropomorphic 

 God — a gaseous vertebrate. Pantheism. Intramundane God 

 (nature). The hylozoism of the Ionic Monists (Anaximander). 

 Conflict of Pantheism and Christianity. Spinoza. Modern 

 Monism. Atheism. 



For thousands of years humanity has placed the last 

 and supreme basis of all phenomena in an efficient 

 cause, to which it gives the title of God (cleas, theos). 

 Like all general ideas, this notion of God has under- 

 gone a series of remarkable modifications and trans- 

 formations in the course of the evolution of reason. 

 Indeed, it may be said that no other idea has had so 

 many metamorphoses ; for no other belief affects in 

 so high a degree the chief objects of the mind and of 

 rational science, as well as the deepest interests of the 

 emotion and poetic fancy of the believer. 



A comparative criticism of the many different forms 

 of the idea of God would be extremely interesting and 

 instructive ; but we have not space for it in the 

 present work. We must be content with a passing 



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