Whether we should
recognise as true Pantheism any theory involving the evolution of a
finite world or worlds out of the divine substance at some definite
epoch or epochs, may be a debatable question, provided that the eternity
and inviolability of the divine oneness is absolutely guarded in
thought. Yet I will anticipate so far as to say that, in my view, the
question must be negatived. At any rate, we must exclude all creeds
which tolerate the idea of a creation in the popular sense of the word,
or of a final catastrophe. True, the individual objects, great or small,
from a galaxy to a moth, which have to us apparently a separate
existence, have all been evolved out of preceding modes of being, by a
process which seems to us to involve a beginning, and to ensure an end.
But in the view of Pantheism, properly so-called, the transference of
such a process to the whole Universe is the result of an illusion
suggested by false analogy. For the processes called evolution, though
everywhere operative, affect, each of them, only parts of the infinite
whole of things; and experience cannot possibly afford any justification
for supposing that they affect the Universe itself. Thus, the matter or
energy of which we think we consist, was in existence, every atom of it,
and every element of force, before we were born, and will survive our
apparent death. And the same thing, at least on the Pantheistic view, is
true of every other mode of apparently separate or finite existence.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25