PANTHEISM EXAMINED IN THE ORDER OF IDEAS.
109. The idea of substance and all its applications, as well to the external as to the internal world, are far from leading us to infer the existence of asinglesubstance; on the contrary, reason according with experience forces us to acknowledge amultitudeof substances. Why should we admit only one substance? This is one of the most important questions of philosophy, and from the most ancient times has given occasion to the most serious errors; it consequently deserves a careful investigation.
110. Those who admit only one substance must found their opinion either on the idea of substance or on experience; our mind can have no other recourse than to its primitive ideas, or the teachings of experience. Let us begin with thea priorimethod or that which is founded on the idea.
111. What do you understand by substance? we ask. If by substance you understand a being subsisting by itself, and by this subsistence you mean that it has no need of another, and never had any need of another in order to exist, then you are speaking of a being that isnot caused, of a necessary being which has in itself the sufficient and necessary reason of its existence. If you say this being is only one, or that there is no other of its kind, we agree with you, only we tell you that you take the name of substance in an improper sense. But at bottom the difference would be only in the name; and in order to come to a mutual understanding it is only necessary for us to knowthat by substance you understand an absolutely necessary, and consequently absolutely independent being. But if you assert that this being is the only one in the sense that there is nothing, and can be nothing beside it, then your assertion is gratuitous and we ask for joint proof.
Why should the necessary being exclude the possibility of other beings? Is it not more reasonable to conclude that it contains the reason of their possibility and existence? The being which has in itself the necessity of existing, must possess activity, and the external term of this activity is production. Why may not other beings be the result of this production? Inasmuch as produced they would be distinct from the being producing them.
112. Without going beyond our ideas we find contingency and multiplicity. Experience reveals a continual succession of forms within us; these appearances are something; they cannot be a pure nothing, for they must be something, though only appearances. In them we behold a continual transition from not-being to being, and from being to not-being; therefore there is a production of something which is not necessary, since it is, and ceases to be; therefore there is something besides the being which is supposed the only one. This argument is founded on the purely internal phenomena, and, therefore, is valid even against the idealists, against those who take from the external world all reality, and reduce it to mere appearances, to simple phenomena of our mind. These appearances exist at least as appearances; they are then something, they are contingent, they are not therefore necessary being. Therefore besides this being there is something which is not it; therefore the system which asserts the existence of only one being is not sustainable.
The idea of a being absolutely independent by reason of its absolute necessity does not exclude the existence of contingent beings; it only shows that the necessary being is the only necessary being, not that it is the only being.
113. Neither does it follow from the idea of necessary being that there cannot be contingent beings,caused, and yet subsisting by themselves in the sense that they are not inherent as modifications in others. Not to be caused and not to be inherent are two very distinct things; the first implies the second, but the second does not imply the first. Every being not caused must be free from inherence, because if it is not caused it is necessary, and contains in itself all that is necessary in order not to inhere in another. If necessary, it must be absolutely independent of all others, which it would not be if it needed them as a modification needs a substance. But not every thing which is not inherent is necessarily not caused, for its cause may have made it such that it does not need to be inherent as a modification in another. It would then depend on another as an effect on its cause, but not as an accident on its substance; there would be between them the relation of causality, but not that of substance; things which we have shown in the last chapter to be very distinct.
114. Never will the pantheists be able to prove that because a thing is not a modification it must be not caused; and this is precisely what they must prove in order to carry their system through in triumph. Once prove that whatever subsists in itself is not caused, and you will have proved whatever subsists in itself to be necessary. And as the necessary being must be only one, you will have proved that there is only one substance.
115. The secret of pantheism is the confounding of non-inherence with absolute independence; and the means of overthrowing its arguments is always to distinguish these two things. All that is not caused is substance, but not all that is substance is uncaused. All that is not caused isnecessary and therefore not inherent, but not every substance is necessary. Finite substance is not inherent in another being, but it is caused by another being. It cannot exist without this other being, it is true; but this dependence is not the dependence of a modification on its substance, but that of an effect on its cause.
The cause gives being to the effect; the substance sustains the accident: the cause is not modified by the effect; the substance is modified by the accident. These ideas are clear and distinct; by them pantheism is destroyed in all its transformations, and forced, as old Proteus was by Menelaus, to resume its primitive form. Atheism is its nature, and should be its name. Many of the erroneous systems which disturb the ideal world are founded on an equivocation; to oppose them with success, we must fix ourselves on the point which clears up their equivocation, and not go out of it. The equivocation will assume different forms, but we must not suffer ourselves to be deceived or confounded by it; we must always return to the same distinction and make that the battle-ground. The passage of the immortal poet in the place just alluded to, might be taken as a fable giving an excellent method of defeating sophisms: "Collect all your strength and courage," says the goddess Idothea to Menelaus, "and, throwing yourself upon him, hold him tightly despite all his efforts; for he will metamorphose himself in a thousand ways in order to escape from you: he will take the semblance of all the most savage animals. He will also change himself into water; he will become fire: but let none of these frightful forms terrify you, or force you to let him go; on the contrary, hold him and strain him the more tightly. But as soon as he returns tothe first formin which, he was, ... then use no more violence, but let him go.[50]" So it is with pantheism,it will speak of matter, of mind, of the reality of phenomenal, of theme, of thenot-me, of subsistence and non-subsistence, of the necessary and the contingent; but do not allow it to go beyond the fundamental ideas, lead it to them; it will at last return to its first form, and when it has returned to this, then let it go, showing it to the world as it is, saying: "See it in its horrible deformity; it has always been what it is now; notwithstanding all its transformations, it is nothing but atheism."