God the Known and God the Unknown | Page 9

we can do nothing
with them but look at them and pass them by.
In my next chapter I propose to show the end which the early
Pantheists were striving after, and the reason and naturalness of their
error.


CHAPTER IV
PANTHEISM. II
The earlier Pantheists were misled by the endeavour [sic] to lay hold of
two distinct ideas, the one of which was a reality that has since been
grasped and is of inestimable value, the other a phantom which has
misled all who have followed it. The reality is the unity of Life, the
oneness of the guiding and animating spirit which quickens animals
and plants, so that they are all the outcome and expression of a

common mind, and are in truth one animal; the phantom is the
endeavour [sic] to find the origin of things, to reach the fountain-head
of all energy, and thus to lay the foundations on which a philosophy
may be constructed which none can accuse of being baseless, or of
arguing in a circle.
In following as through a thick wood after the phantom our forefathers
from time to time caught glimpses of the reality, which seemed so
wonderful as it eluded them, and flitted back again into the thickets,
that they declared it must be the phantom they were in search of, which
was thus evidenced as actually existing. Whereon, instead of mastering
such of the facts they met with as could be captured easily-which facts
would have betrayed the hiding-places of others, and these again of
others, and so ad infinitum-they overlooked what was within their
reach, and followed hotly through brier and brake after an imaginary
greater prize.
Great thoughts are not to be caught in this way. They must present
themselves for capture of their own free will, or be taken after a little
coyness only. They are like wealth and power, which, if a man is not
born to them, are the more likely to take him, the more he has
restrained himself from an attempt to snatch them. They hanker after
those only who have tamed their nearer thoughts. Nevertheless, it is
impossible not to feel that the early Pantheists were true prophets and
seers, though the things were unknown to them without which a
complete view was unattainable. What does Linus mean, we ask
ourselves, when he says :- "One sole energy governs all things" ? How
can one sole energy govern, we will say, the reader and the chair on
which he sits? What is meant by an energy governing a chair? If by an
effort we have made ourselves believe we understand something which
can be better expressed by these words than by any others, no sooner
do we turn our backs than the ideas so painfully collected fly apart
again. No matter how often we go in search of them, and force them
into juxtaposition, they prove to have none of that innate coherent
power with which ideas combine that we can hold as true and
profitable.

Yet if Linus had confined his statement to living things, and had said
that one sole energy governed all plants and animals, he would have
come near both to being intelligible and true. For if, as we now believe,
all animals and plants are descended from a single cell, they must be
considered as cousins to one another, and as forming a single tree-like
animal, every individual plant or animal of which is as truly one and
the same person with the primordial cell as the oak a thousand years
old is one and the same plant with the acorn out of which it has grown.
This is easily understood, but will, I trust, be made to appear simpler
presently.
When Linus says, "All things are unity, and each portion is All; for of
one integer all things were born," it is impossible for plain people-who
do not wish to use words unless they mean the same things by them as
both they and others have been in the habit of meaning-to understand
what is intended. How can each portion be all? How can one Londoner
be all London? I know that this, too, can in a way be shown, but the
resulting idea is too far to fetch, and when fetched does not fit in well
enough with our other ideas to give it practical and commercial value.
How, again, can all things be said to be born of one integer, unless the
statement is confined to living things, which can alone be born at all,
and unless a theory of evolution is intended, such as Linus would
hardly have accepted?
Yet limit the "all things" to "all living things," grant the theory of
evolution, and explain "each portion is All" to mean that