Pantheism's destruction of boundaries - pagina 12

Pantheism^ 8 Destruction of Boundaries. powers on

tliis

one point

— that pantheism

effaces distinctions,

obscures boundary lines, and betrays the tendency to wipe out

This tendency derives

its impulse from th^ This is shown by religious pantheism, which, afraid of a God " afar off," has no peace even with God "at hand," but in the prayer-mystery here seeks to

every antithesis.

pantheistic jn-inciple

itself.

penetrate the being of God, and, in the hereafter, yearns after idcntiticatioa with the divine Being, until at length every boundary between God and the soul is lost. The same is true of i)ractical pantheism, which restlessly seeks to equalize all things and, as long as there is any upward growth, is bent, first upon tying down, then upon curtailing and cutting off, until, finally, every distinction between the cedar and the hyssop ceases to exist. But this is most clearly demonstrated by philosophical pantheism, which systematically fuses every thesis and antithesis into a synthesis, and, by the tempting notion of identity, explains everything which seems dissimilar as similar and, in the end, as being of like essence. Herein lies the explanation: This philosophy does not deal with reality, but with the image which it saw reflected in the mirror of its thought, or which, more correctly, it formed for itself. Kant struck a blow for this in proclaiming that reality escapes us, and that the form, at least, and the dimenThen sion of that which we observe have their rise in us. came Fichte, who thought it better not to reckon with that which escapes us, and declared that that which seemed the image had been imagined by ourselves, and hence Avas the only real. And finally Ilcgel transposed everything which existed into a purely logical formula, and, after the object had been destroyed together with its image, asserted that the idea alone ;

remained.

In this wise this phihisophy, with ever greater neces-

from the real, living world and in this world, of course, For then it has free play with every distinction and antithesis. we deal no longer with living ]ierfons, but with heads sketched by ourselves and from these crayon-sketches all sorts of lines and wrinkles may be effaced and charmed away as by magic, which from the living face will nevermore depart. And if pantheism in this wise creates for itself the possibility of escape from the dilemma of distinctions which really exist,

sity of consecpience,

transports us

into an abstract world of thought

;

;

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