During the middle ages, speculation was, for the most part, held in with tight reins by the church, and in consequence we hear little of pantheism. Almost the only philos opher who advocated, or who even seems to have thought about it, is John Scotus Erigena (see ERIGENA), who was probably led to it by his study of the Alexandrians, but his speculations do not appear to have been thought by him incompatible with a Chris tian faith; and iu point of fact there arc several profoundly mystical expressions employed in the New Testament, especially in the epistles of John, in which the soaring spiritualism of Christianity culminates in language that has at least a pantheistic form; e.g., is love; ond he that dwclleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." Erigena is regarded as the link that unites ancient and modern pantheism. We find him now a reflection of the east and of Greece, and now a foreshadowing of the doc trines of Schelling and Hegel. .His opinions were, with some scholastic modifications, introduced, in the 12th and lOth centuries, into theology by Amalric or Amaury de Chartres (a disciple also of Abelard), and his pupil David de Dinant, who were con demned as heretics by a council held at Paris.
Modern pantheism first shows itself in Giordano Bruno (q.v.), burned at Rome for his opinions in 1600. .In Bruno reappear the speculations of the Eleatics and of the Neo platonists, but with a still more definite recognition than we meet with in them of an absolutely perfect supreme spirit. The universe, in the eyes of the unfortunate Italian, is not, properly speaking, a creation, but only an emanation of the infinite mind—the eternal expression of its infinite activity; and hence the infinite mind penetrates and fills, with different degrees of consciousness, all the heights and depths of the universe. To see God everywhere, to realize that he alone is, and that all else is but a perishable phe nomenon or passing illusion—that there is but one intelligence in God, man, beast, and what we call matter—this should be the aim of all true philosophy. Spinoza (q.v.) comes next among pantheists iu the order of time, but he is perhaps the greatest, cer tainly the most rigorous and precise, of the whole class that either the ancient or the modern world has seen. His system is based, like the geometry of Euclid, on certain definitions and axioms, and he claims to have given it as conclusive and mathematical a demonstration as the latter. None will deny the keenness and cogency of his ratiocina
tion. But human beings will not be forced into pantheistic convictions by any mere logical goad, however sharp; and the system, impregnable as it seems, has never had a formal adherent. The principal result at which, after a long, firm-linked eltain of reasoning, Spinoza arrives, is, that there is but one substance, infinite, self-existent, eternal, necessary, simple, and indivisible, of which all else are but the modes. This substance is the self-existent God. To call Spinoza an atheist is ridiculous. The extrav agant phrase of Sehleiermacher, "a God-intoxicated man" (ein ?nann); would be greatly nearer the truth, for no human system of philosophy whatever exhibits such an all-controlling and even overwhelming sense of the omnipresent God. Many critics have said that lie was far more of an old Hebrew in his system than he dreamed. Although he had no direct followers; lie exercised great influence on the development of metaphysical speculation in Germany, where, with the exception of Kant (q.v.), the three greatest phi loophers of recent times—Fichte (q.v.), Sclielling (q.v),and Hegel (q.v.) —have all promulgated systems of a thoroughly pantheistic and ideal character. Neither England, France, nor America has produced a single great pantheistic philosopher (unless Mr. Emerson be regarded as such); but there is an immense amount of pantheistic sentiment floating about in the poetry, criticism, theology, and even in the speculative thinking, in these and all European countries in the present age. This is attributable to the ravages made by biblical criticism, and the progress of the physical sciences in the region of religions beliefs. M ltitudes of men are puzzled what to think and what to believe. They do not like to face the fact that they have actually lost faith in revelation, and are no longer relying for help and guidance on the spirit of God, but on the laws of nature; so they take refuge from the abhorred aspect of the naked truth, that they are "atheists," in a cloud of rose-colored poetical phrases, which, if they mean anything, mean pan theism.