Indeed,
their favourite comparison of creature life to the ray of a candle is
not really a Pantheistic conception; because to the true Pantheist the
creature is not an emanation external to God, but a finite mode of
infinite Being. Still the mystics did much to prepare the devout for an
acceptance of Spinoza's teaching. And although so amazing a
transfiguration of religion rather dazzled than convinced the world at
first; nay, though it must be acknowledged that one, and perhaps more of
Spinoza's fundamental conceptions have increasingly repelled rather than
attracted religious people, yet it can hardly be disputed that he gave
an impulse to contemplative religion, of which the effect is only now
beginning to be fully realised.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: If Buddha occurs to the reader, it should be remembered
that he was not a Pantheist at all. His ultimate aim was the dissolution
of personality in the Nothing. But that is not Pantheism.]
CHAPTER I
PRE-CHRISTIAN PANTHEISM
[Sidenote: Its Origins Doubtful and Unimportant.]
[Sidenote: The Secret of Pantheism is Within us.]
It has been the customary and perhaps inevitable method of writers on
Pantheism to trace its main idea back to the dreams of Vedic poets, the
musings of Egyptian priests, and the speculations of the Greeks. But
though it is undeniable that the divine unity of all Being was an almost
necessary issue of earliest human thought upon the many and the one, yet
the above method of treating Pantheism is to some extent misleading; and
therefore caution is needed in using it.
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