The classical exponent of the philosophy of pantheism was Spinoza. But pantheism is very old and international. It is found in ancient India, perhaps i000 B.C., in the identification of Brah man with the universe. In Egypt also it is met with quite early in the successive identifications of Ra, Isis and Osiris, with everything that exists. According to Plutarch the temple of Isis bore the inscription: "I am all that hath been, is, or shall be ; and no mortal has lifted my veil." Among the Greeks there were pantheistic philosophers from the 6th century B.C. onwards. The best known of them are Xenophanes, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Cleanthes the Stoic, whose hymn to Zeus is one of the beauties of pantheistic poetry. During the Middle Ages a pantheistic strain is observable in Neoplatonism, and in some representatives of all the historic religions. Christianity is represented by John Scotus Erigena (9th century) and David of Dinant (12th cen tury) among others. Islam had its great pantheist in Averroes, or Ibn Roschd (12th century). Judaism had its pantheistic Kab balists. The Revival of Learning during the i4th, 15th and 16th centuries brought with it a more sympathetic attitude towards Nature, more like that of the Greeks and of the Hebrew nature poets than that which had found expression in the familiar quota tion which linked together "the world, the flesh and the devil." The most famous of the pantheists of this period of the Renais sance was Giordano Bruno, who perished at the stake in 1600, by order of the Inquisition. There followed Spinoza, and later John Toland, the first to introduce the term "pantheist," in 1705. Until near the end of the i8th century there was little induce ment to profess pantheism even if one embraced it. "Pantheism" was used as a synonym of "atheism" and applied as a term of abuse. But from then on one meets with renowned names in the chronicles of pantheism—the poets Lessing and Goethe, the philosophers Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, and even Christian theologians like Schleiermacher and Strauss.
The question of "personality" has always been one of the chief objections urged by opponents of pantheism. And that in two ways. On the one hand, the idea of a God who is not personal, towards whom they cannot feel as children towards their Father, leaves them rather cold and disconsolate. On the other hand, they cannot relish the thought that human beings are not permanent or eternal personalities. On both these points, omitting alto gether the more childish and cruder forms of the claims implied in these objections, there has been much misunderstanding. What pantheism really objects to is the conception of God as though He were a big man. Human personality is largely the result of limitations and deficiencies such as cannot be attributed to the Infinite. There must be something as infinitely superior to human
personality as human personality is superior to the unity of a grain of sand. If one insists on speaking of divine "personality" this must be conceived as differently from human personality "as the heavens are high above the earth." And then the term really loses its ordinary meaning, as Spinoza insisted in another connection. What alarms some people is probably the assumption that to say that God is not "personal" is to say that He is less than that ; but that, of course, is an absurd misinterpretation of a view which insists on the incomparable superiority of the in finite to the finite. With regard to the second point, the anxiety to be reassured about human immortality or the perpetuation of human personality, on this point, too, there has been much mis understanding. Pantheism, it is true, does not exactly encourage anything like a belief in personal resurrection. But it does leave room for the kind of immortality which can be accepted or de sired by people who think and are not vain.
Goethe in his poem "One and All" expressed the thought that to lose oneself in the Infinite is the way to find oneself. Many lesser men have felt that to identify oneself with some great cause is the worthiest kind of immortality. And, on the other hand, some of those who have achieved most have readily attrib uted the credit for their achievements to a greater power working through them.
As Spinoza was the great philosopher of pantheism so Goethe was its great poet. Strains more or less pantheistic may, of course, be found in all the great nature poets from some of the Psalmists to Wordsworth, just as a more or less pantheistic mood is to be found in many of the religious mystics. But Goethe's pantheism was partly at least the fruit of a close study of Spinoza's philosophy. It was both "Truth and Poetry" with him. The great systems of philosophy are all akin to great poetic creations. Plato already described philosophy as the highest kind of poetry. This is perhaps especially true of pantheistic philosophy. And what the student of pantheistic philosophy needs above all is "a heart that understands." In this respect the poetry of Words worth and, even more so, that of Goethe may be found most helpful and illuminating, at least as an introduction to the proper study of pantheism as a rational philosophy.
See METAPHYSICS, MONISM, SPINOZA, and the articles on the other subjects and persons named.
See also J. A. Picton, Pantheism (1914) and The Religion of the Universe (1904) ; J. Hunt, An Essay on Pantheism (1893) ; C. E.