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Should anyone in the face of this persist in teaching that God is
an individual being, with faculties of consciousness, emotion and will,
these philosophers by that token rate him no thinker.
Plain men naturally wonder what it is that the philosophers have
found out new to make them so sure God is not individual.
This answer may not be philosophic, but it is believed fair:
The present swing to pantheism is not because thinkers have
discovered any new facts or developed any new logic which makes
personality in God incredible, but because the doctrine of monism is
the prevailing creed in metaphysics to-day and pantheism goes easily
with that.
But answering after this fashion manifestly throws back the inquirer
to another question why do modern philosophers so unanimously
take to monism? and that answer is not easy.
The monist, of course, says he believes in monism because it is
true that nothing else rationally explains existence. And the modern
monist is as dogmatic about it as ever the old-time Calvinist was about
his five-pointed creed; when you hear the withering scorn with which
he speaks of the exploded dualistic conception of the universe, you
feel that they must have been poor fools indeed who ever ventured
to hold that idea.
The fact is, however, that the issues at stake between monistic
philosophy and opposing propositions are questions that men have
been thinking of ever since they thought at all about the kind of world
they were living in; and the pendulum of speculation has first swung
toward the monistic idea and then away from it, leaving the puzzle of
it all still unsettled.
And although it seems brash to say it in the face of practically all
the metaphysicians of the time, even one who knows he is very much
of a non-metaphysician may venture the opinion that the present
ascendancy of monism is just another swing of the pendulum, which
settles nothing, but is presently to be succeeded by an opposite aspect
of philosophy.
At least, the appearance of Professor William James as a pluralist
suggests that monism is not just sure of permanence.
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The doctrine of monism is that all the universe is just one thing
one reality one substance and that all the different things men see
are merely phenomena of the one universal thing. Whence it is easy to
proceed to calling that one thing God which is pantheism.
Monism doesn t have to teach divine impersonality, however, for
if a monist holds that the one unifying reality which composes the
universe is Mind, then it is at least philosophically possible to conceive
that Mind as possessing consciousness, reason, purpose, love and all
the other attributes of personality.
But the general fact is, that if monism does not require an impersonal
Deity necessarily, it arrives there very readily indeed.
As long, therefore, as monism persists, the plain man need not be
surprised to hear a great deal of pantheistic talk among those to whom
metaphysics is a more vivid subject than life.
The writer of the above editorial is right when he gives to the
general scientific philosophical thought the credit for having
turned men s minds in the direction of monism, the doctrine
of which he correctly states as, that all of the universe is just
one thing one reality one substance and that all the
different things men see are merely phenomena of the one
universal thing. But is he likewise right in his conclusion that

when that conception is once held in the mind, it is at least

philosophically possible to conceive that mind as possessing
consciousness, reason, purpose, love, and all the other attributes
of personality ? Is there not a vast difference between an
absolute principle and a relative personality!
Another straw is seen in the popularity of poems bringing
out the idea of the Oneness of All, as, for instance, the following:
Illusion
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox
God and I in space alone,
And nobody else in view.
And Where are the people, O Lord, I said,
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143
The earth below and the sky o erhead,
And the dead whom once I knew?
That was a dream, God smiled and said;
A dream that seemed to be true;
There were no people living or dead,
There was no earth and no sky o erhead,
There was only Myself and you.
Why do I feel no fear, I asked,
Meeting you here in this way?
For I have sinned, I know full well;
And is there heaven, and is there hell,
And is this the judgment day?
Nay! those were dreams, the great God said,
Dreams that have ceased to be;
There is no such thing as fear, or sin;
There is no you you never have been
There is nothing at all but me!
When such verse as this verse which utters sentiments, and
expresses ideas, as radical and as advanced in line of Absolute
Idealism as any philosophical concept mentioned in this book,
not excepting the Vedantic idea then are we not warranted
in believing that the wind is blowing strongly from a certain
quarter of the world of thought are we not warranted in
calling attention to the fact that the pot is bubbling very fiercely
and that certain ingredients are appearing very frequently and
forcibly upon the surface of the seething compound; and in
believing that when the material is finally poured forth, and
exposed after cooling, then the new thing will be strongly
colored with Pantheistic Idealism?
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