PANTHEISM (from Gk. a-Fts, pus, all + 8e6s, thros, god). The name given usually by its op ponents, and with a touch of odium theological'', to any system of speculation which identifies the universe with God (aeosrism) or God with the universe. The latter kind of pantheism is further subjected to the accusation of atheism (q.v.) ; the former has often been the expression of an intense religious consciousness (as in Spinoza). The term pantheism was apparently coined by John Toland in the eighteenth century, but the antiquity of the view it designates is undouht edly great, for it is prevalent in one of the oldest known civilizations in the world—the Hindu. Yet it is a later development of thought than poly theism (q.v.). Hindu pantheism. as aeosmism, is taught especially by the Upanishads (q.v.) and by the Vedanta (q.v.). The Hindu thinker re gards man as born into a world of illusions and entanglements, from which his great aim should be to deliver himself. Neither sense nor reason. however, is capable of helping him; only through long-continued, rigorous, and holy contemplation of the supreme unity (Brahma ) can he become emancipated from the deceptive influence of phe nomena and fit to apprehend that he and they are alike but evanescent modes of existence as sumed by that infinite, eternal, and unchangeable being who is all in all.
Greek pantheism finds a somewhat inarticulate expression in Xenophanes (q.v.), but comes to full utterance in the writings of the Stoics (q.v.). To the views of Neo-Platonists (see NEO-PLATON isal) a pantheistic tendency is often attributed. hut it is doubtful whether emanationism does not logically escape pantheism.
During the Ages Johannes Scotus Erigena (see ERIGENA ) was one of the few Christian pantheists. Among the Arabian phi losophers pantheism was more current.
Modern pantheism first shows itself in Gior dano Bruno (q.v.). Spinoza (q.v.) comes next among modern pantheists in the order of time, and he is perhaps the greatest, certainly the most rigorous and precise, of the whole class that either the ancient or the modern world has seen. See Plumtre, General Sketch of the His tory of Pantheism (London, 1881).