Download - Sprigge Pantheism
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 1/27
PANTHEISM
§1. Definition of 'pantheism'
The D.E.D. defines 'pantheism' thus:
1. The religious belief or philosophical theory that God and the universe are
identical (implying a denial of the personality and transcendence of God);the doctrine that God is everything and everything is God.2. The heathen worship of all the gods.
The second meaning can be ignored here, l so I shall take the first de
finition as canonical, with the parenthesis deleted. Although it is true that
most positions naturally described as pantheistic deny that God is
personal, there are positions which identify God and the Universe, and
hold that this one thing is a person (of which all finite persons are parts).
Josiah Royce, for example, held this view. As for transcendence, this is soessentially contested a concept that it will be simpler to let the implica
tions for this fall where they will in our discussion.
This is verbally a little different from the meaning which Michael
Levine, in his major study, selects from a variety ofdefinitions as the most
canonical, for which Pantheism is the view "that everything that exists
constitutes a unity [in some sense] and . . . this all-inclusive unity is divine
[in some sense]" (adapted from Alasdair Macintyre).2 However, the
actually held theories covered by the term will mostly be the same
whichever meaning is chosen.
§2. Types ofpantheism
So pantheism, in the sense in which I am taking it, identifies God and
the Universe. We can take this specification a little further, and somewhat
closer to Levine's favoured definition, if we say that, for the pantheist,
"God is the unified totality of all things." This avoids the charge that
pantheism consists merely in a cognitively vacuous renaming of the uni
verse by a differently emotive word, for not everyone agrees that the
"Pantheism" by T. L. S. Sprigge,
The Monist, vol. 80. no. 2, pp. 191-217. Copyright © 1997, THE MONIST, La Salle, Illinois 61301.
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 2/27
192 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
universeis
unified, in any sense likely to be intended; indeed some holdthat there is really no such thing as the universe, just lots and lots of things.
What is meant by the claim that the totality of things is unified? It
means, I suggest, that the totality is at least as much of a genuine individ
ual as the most individual part of it. In fact, it is more likely than not that
anyone who believes that the universe is a unified totality will believe that
it is more of a genuine individual than anything within it. As to what being
more or less of a genuine individual amounts to, it is a matter of how full
a conception of it may be formed which does not depend on or carry in
formation about how it is related to things outside it.
It is not merely the aggregate of all things that we worship as God . . . A sandheap is an aggregate, but it has no unity except to perception which figuresit as contained within certain bounding surfaces, and perhaps-where reflec
tion goes beyond that-as kept together by dead weight. But the birdalighting on it has a very different and relatively a more real unity. For thebird is not a mere aggregate. . . .
Now . . . it is often dangerous and always inconclusive to attempt anyanalogy between the finite and the infinite. Still, in this case the reasons forrejecting the suggestion that the Universe may be a mere aggregate appear tobe irresistible.3
To the notion of God as the unified totality of all things pantheism
often, indeed typically, adds the notion ofGod as the inner life or being of
every individual thing. Somehow, for most pantheists, the whole is
present in each of its parts. This means, I suggest, first that there is an
identical essence present in each (for some this would be consciousness)
and that the way in which it is present in each reflects the way in which it
is present both in each finite other and in the infinite Whole.4 So God, for
the paradigm pantheist, is both the universe as unified totality and
something one and the same, appropriately regarded as divine, existing as
the inner core of everything. And this whole and this shared essence are
said to be somehow identical.
So much for one side of the equation, but what of the other,-God?
I suggest that something is appropriately called "God" if and only if
(a) he, she or it satisfies at least one of the fourteen conditions below
(understood in some not too far-fetched sense),
(b) he, she or it satisfies more of them than does anything else.
1. He, she or it is creator of the universe (the totality of everything not
himself). (No pantheist will believe in a God answering to this de
scription.)
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 3/27
PANTHEISM 193
2.He, she or it is uniquely all-knowing.3. He, she or it is uniquely all-experiencing (that is, it feels the experi
ences of all beings). (This and the previous condition are not sharply
distinct.)
4. He, she or it is either uniquely real or real to a degree which nothing
else is.
5. He, she or it exists with a unique kind of necessity.
6. He, she or it is the explanation of the existence of all other things.
7. He, she or it is omni-present.
8. He, she or it is uniquely all-powerful.
9. He, she or it is morally perfect to a degree which nothing else is.
10. He, she or it is uniquely perfect in some possibly non-moral sense.
11. He, she or it is the one proper object of worship.
12. He, she or it is the one proper object towards which certain specifi
cally religious emotions should be felt.
13. He, she or it is the one thing through appropriate relation to which a
human being can be "saved".
14. He, she or it, or rather He or She, is an all-knowing and so far as Heor She wants to be, all-controlling person.
We cannot sample all the possible, or even actually advocated, types
of pantheism allowed by our lax definitions, but I shall briefly formulate
what seem to me the eleven most important. (Many pantheisms answer to
more than one of these descriptions.) The parenthesis after "God" is so
that we can count as pantheists some thinkers for whom something to
which they deny this name largely plays the role of God in their thought
and feeling.
A. God (or the somehow divine reality which takes his place for the
pantheist) is the animating spirit of nature.
God is the mind or animating spirit of physical nature as a whole,
related to it qua consciousness somewhat as each of us is related qua con
sciousness to our body or our brain. He satisfies at least conditions (3), (7)
and (12) and probably several of the others. (Wordsworth.)
B. God (or . . • is both the world mind and the world body.
God is the total physical universe (conceived as highly unified) and
a universal mind (including the minds of all true individuals in that uni
verse) these being the same thing differently conceived. As such, God is
the appropriate object of religious emotion, in particular, the right kind of
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 4/27
194 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
love and it is through such love alone or best that human beings can be'saved'. (Conditions 2, 3, 7, and most of the others, 1, of course,
excepted.) Spinozism is the chief example of this, but one might also cite
the pantheistic idealism of Gustav Fechner.
C. God (or ••• is simply the natural universe conceived as an appro-
priate object for religious feeling.
God is the total natural universe, more or less as scientifically
conceived, and this is the most appropriate objectof
such religiousemotions as reverence and awe; moreover, humans can only find real
peace by feeling thus about it. It is unified in the sense that it depends for
its existence on nothing but itself, thus contrasting with everything within
it. I f none, or few, of the other fourteen conditions are met we have a
rather weak form of nature pantheism.
Such pantheism has been called rather aptly 'materialism gone sen-
timental'.5 (Richard Jeffries and Robinson Jeffers may be examples.)6
D. God (or ••• is a single Absolute Mind or Consciousness composedof souls and nothing else exists but Him and Them.
Nothing exists except souls and their states and wholes made out of
souls. God is a soul composed of all other souls. It satisfies at least condi-
tions (3) and (8). On many variants of this position it, and it alone, satisfies
most of the other conditions. This may be the position of qualified Advaita
Vedanta as expounded by Ramanuja.
E. The natural world and the mUltiplicity of conscious beings is anillusion, or at least a mere presentation, given to itself by a single
Absolute which may be called 'God' or at least plays something of the
role of God for this point of view. Salvation consists in consciously
realizing one's identity with this Absolute.
The world of daily life, both physical nature and all its conscious in-
habitants, are an illusion which one ultimate spiritual reality gives itself.
Our salvation consists in our grasping the illusory nature of our world and
of our separate existence and experiencing our identity with the One fromwhich we were never really separate. This is the position of Advaita
Vedanta as elaborated by Sankara. It is also the view of Erwin Schrodinger7
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 5/27
PANTHEISM 195
and in effect with that of the almost forgotten, but highly interesting,Christian evolutionary pantheist Allanson Picton.S
F. God (or . . • is the ultimate concrete universal of which minds like
ours are the sole genuine instances
God is a concrete universal whose instances are finite minds and
nothing exists except this concrete universal, finite minds, and things
which exist only as objects of their awareness. The explanation of all
things lies in the way in which this concrete universal actualises itself in
finite things as a way towards its own complete fullness of being (condi-tions 7 and 9). Different versions of this will be committed to different
ones of the other conditions. This is one way of interpreting Hegelianism.
Croce's philosophy is along these lines.
G. God (or . • . is the sole ultimate concrete universal of which all
finite things are the instances.
God is a concrete universal whose instances are the various ordinary
things of the natural world, including finite minds or conscious individu-als. The explanation of all things lies in the way in which this concrete
universal actualises itself in finite things as a way towards its own
complete fullness of being. This satisfies condition (6) and most versions
will satisfy several of the others. This is another way of interpreting
Hegelianism.
H. God (or ••• is the identical essence present in all minds.
God is an essence of which all finite minds are specifications and
nothing exists except this essence and those minds. This is much the same
as (F) but includes those who would not employ the notion of a concrete
universal, such as Erwin Schrodinger.
I. God (or . . . is the identical essence present in all finite things.
God is an essence of which all finite things are specifications. This is
similar to (G) but need not involve the full panoply of the Hegelian
concrete universal.
So far as proposition (H) or (I ) is the dominant principle in a panthe-istic philosophy it is more the view that every individual thing is God than
that God is the totality. Levine, indeed, holds that no respectable form of
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 6/27
196 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
pantheism allows the former doctrine and refers to, without endorsing,Hegel's denial that any religion or philosophy has included the claim with
reference to each thing that it is God.9 I disagree with both of them.
Consider the famous "Thou art that" of the Upanishads. (See especially
'The Education of Svetaketu' in the Chandogya Upanishad dialogue. IO)
The implication is, surely, not just that the whole is God but that every
thing within it is so too. This is likewise the meaning of the claim that 'the
Atman is both the infinitely small within us and the infinitely great outside
of US'.11
Concealed in the heart of all beings is the Atman, the Spirit, the Self; smaller
than the smallest atom, greater than the vast spaces. 12
I f each thing is God, then, of course, the totality is God (except
perhaps for some who deny that there is such a thing as the totality) but a
pantheist may put the emphasis more on formulation (H) or (I) than on the
other more totalistic formulations. Indeed, just as the Christian finds Jesus
more approachable than God the Father or the ultimate Three-in-One, so
many pantheists may relate more easily to the divine essence as present inindividual things than aspire to intimacy with the dizzying totality of
which they are such vanishingly small fragments.
J. God (or ... is the unified totality of all those finite experiences
which are the stuff of the world and the only such experiences are
those which for our everyday ontology pertain to humans and
animals.
Bosanquet would seem to be an example of this position, and so
perhaps is T. H. Green. Bradleyl3 tended towards it but he also had some
leanings towards position K below. Bradley was also committed to
something like (H) or (I).
K. God (or ... is the unified totality of all those finite experiences
which are the stuff of the world and these experiences include many
which constitute the inner essence of what are ordinarily regarded as
non-sentient things.
This is the position of Friedrich Paulsen,14 and it is one to whichBradley had some inclination. Josiah Royce is an interesting exponent of
this view. IS
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 7/27
PANTHEISM 197
§3. Is there anything much to be said about pantheism in general?
Thus the forms pantheism can take are very many on this definition.
On the face of it, there is not much in common, for example, between
those views which equate God with the total natural universe and those
which deny that there is such a universe, but only a spiritual One which
gives itself the illusion of such a thing. The first encourages us to feel that
we are likely to be closest to God when we wander in the woods and fields
(or perhaps as space travellers through the wonders of the solar system
and beyond) while the other suggests either that we are closest to Godwhen we act as agents in the advance of human culture (Hegel and Croce)
or, very differently, that we are so when we retire within ourselves and
exclude all outward impressions (Sankara).I6
What pantheists do have in common (by the very definition of
'pantheism') is that the totality of all that is does not divide into two great
components, a creator God, and a created world. They also share the view
that the rejection of the notion of a Creator still leaves room for some kind
of religious or quasi-religious attitude to the world, and that its object is
the totality of what is. But as to the nature of this totality, and how we
should seek to relate ourselves to it, the differences between pantheists are
greater than those which relate some of them to theism on the one hand
and to atheism on the other.
But are there any interesting features in common to all, or almost all,
forms of pantheism other than those which follow analytically from its de
finition?
Two such features have been proposed, usually as bad marks for
pantheism.First, it is often thought that pantheism is bound to include a deter
ministic or fatalistic aspect, thus a denial of the free will often thought to
be a necessary presupposition of morality.
I f one adheres without compromise to an extreme form of pantheism, hemust insist that God's being contains the human soul along with every finiteentity in the universe. In its idealist form, such a theory would invoke the
statement . . . that every finite entity, including the human soul, is no more
than an idea in the unity of God's mind....
Such a view, if persistentlydeveloped, would clearly pulverize ethical theory, for all moral action would
issue directly from God who would be the one moral agent in the universe.17
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 8/27
198 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
Second, pantheism is often charged with levelling all things upor
down to a single plane so far as value goes, and thereby making choice,
even if possible, largely pointless.
I am inclined to agree that pantheism tends to be deterministic, but I
deny that this is ethically harmful. As for the second point I think it only
applies to inadequate forms of pantheism.
§4. Pantheism in Indian Thought.
India has been said to be 'the native homeof
pantheism'.I f
so, thereis some reason in the following observation of an early twentieth-century
Scottish critic of pantheism, as most fully exhibited, so he thought, in
Indian thought and religion.
I f our object is to discover the effect of Pantheism upon practical life-values,
we must find a set of circumstances in which Pantheism appears in its purityin an intellectual doctrine which for a lengthened period has formed a basisfor a philosophy of religion and morals. Such a combination of circum
stances we find in India. Nearly all writers on the subject admit that it is the
native home of Pantheism. It has been described as 'radically pantheistic,and that from its cradle onwards.' In Vedic thought we may trace the pantheistic tendency back almost to its emergence in the religiousconsciousness. In the Rig-Veda (x. 90) we read, 'He is Himself the veryuniverse. He is whatever is, has been, and shall be.' Through the interveningcenturies we can trace an unbroken line of development through theBrahmanas, Epics, and Puranas--down to the thought of the late nineteenthand even twentieth century writers who confess themselves of the same faithas their forefathers . . . . 8
This is from a little known book, Pantheism and the Value of Life(with Special Reference to Indian Philosophy) by W. S. Urquhart published
in 1919.19
Apparently from Aberdeen,2o Urquhart was Senior Professor of Phi
losophy in the Scottish Churches College, Calcutta, and appears to have
made an intensive study of Hindu philosophy.21 Although one of the
book's four parts is on Western pantheism the main focus is on its Indian
forms. One wishes that it said something more personal about his life in
India.The work provides an informative account of some of the different
schools of Hindu thought (which, so far as I can judge, is substantially
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 9/27
PANTHEISM 199
accurate) and subjects them to vigorous criticism. It provides a fascinat-ing insight into how a British representative of Christianity reacted to
Indian philosophy and religion at that time and, indeed, expresses a per-
spective on Hindu thought which may well continue to be the dominant
one of Christians. But Urquhart was no mere cultural imperialist and in
fact has much to say still worth attending to.
Urquhart contends that there are basically two forms of pantheism:
The fundamental formula of Pantheism would seem to be a double one-
Nothing is which is not God, and God is everything which is. There can beno other source of being than God, and no other power than His. We, and therest of the universe, are but phases of His Being. Nothing can be conceivedas having even temporary separation from Him. God and the universe mustbe identified, and, if any part of the universe cannot be identified with Him,that part must be negated.
Here at once we see the possibility of the emergence of two closelyrelated phases of Pantheism, which might be described as negative andpositive.
-Urquhart, (p. 25)
The first of these says that nothing really exists except the ineffably
unitary Brahman and that the ordinary world with all its variety and mul-
tiplicity is an illusion. The second says that, although the ordinary world
is more than a mere illusion, it consists entirely of modifications of the one
universal spirit. The first is the Advaita Vedanta of which Sankara is the
great classic exponent, the second is the qualified Vedanta classically for-
mulated by Ramanuja.
Now although these seem very different, their exponents correctly
infer from them some essentially identical conclusions, in particular, adenial of free will, a pessimism about the human condition, and a solution
to this pessimism which, from Urquhart's point of view, only makes
things more gloomy. These, he says, combine to constitute a conservative
view of the world for which "whatever is, is right".
The determinism or fatalism of Advaita follows from the fact that, so
far as there can be said to be agency in the world at all, the only agent is
Brahman. This conclusion also follows from the idea of qualified Vedanta
that we are simply aspects or modes of the single world spirit. For, sincethis world spirit is eternal and unchanging, we cannot expect its expres-
sion to change from age to age; thus the world remains essentially the
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 10/27
200 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
same throughout time and cannot get better. And although eachof
thesepositions claims to offer us a way of release from our miseries, that escape
is only a very negative blessing.
Urquhart is able to make out his case more easily in the case of
Advaita. Since all there really is is the undifferentiated One, our salvation
must consist in seeing through the illusion of variety and of ourselves as
individual beings. In doing so we simply become one with the One and
lose our apparent separateness from it. Nor is the bliss which is supposed
to be the life of the One anything like happiness in any ordinary sense.
Rather, the more ineffable it is seen to be, the less can it hold any genuine
attraction for us, since our finally becoming submerged in Brahman (as in
truth we always really were) seems indistinguishable from ceasing to exist
(that is, ceasing even to seem to exist). And, not so dissimilarly, even
qualified Vedanta only holds out to us the hope of a kind of peaceful
nonactive contemplation of our particular place in the One.
Urquhart also sees little good in the often claimed sublimity and
ethical richness of the Hindu idea that the one divine being is present in
us all. It is claimed, indeed, that so far as we sense that others are essen-tially identical with us, we will no longer feel in competition with them,
and will act nobly to all others. But, says Urquhart, if we are all the same
being, there can be no harm in my having more of the advantages of the
world than another, and working solely for "selfish" ends, since the bene-
ficiary is the same whether I take the line of least resistance and think just
of myself, or adopt a more altruistic style of life. What is more, since
everything in the ordinary world is an illusion, nothing in it is genuinely
better or worse than anything else, so that we have no motivation forseeking its improvement.
Urquhart allows that the Vedas are optimistic and positive about the
things of this world, but the more influential and credally more definite
Upanishads, and the whole Vedanta tradition, is, he thinks, deeply pes-
simistic. For it depicts the ordinary phenomenal world as unsatisfying and
unimprovable, while the escape it offers, through union with God, is
conceived so thinly and negatively that it can only appeal to those who
have despaired of any more positive good.
From my limited knowledge, it seems to me that something like this
is truer of Buddhism than of Hinduism (whether of the Vedanta type or
otherwise). But the subject is too vast and daunting to be pursued here.
More important, for our purposes, than the question whether Indian
pantheism is optimistic or pessimistic is the judgement that it levels all
values. Nothing in the world is really better than anything else. All are
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 11/27
PANTHEISM 201
equally illusions, from one Vedanta perspective, or manifestationsof
Brahman from another. Thus any object whatever is intrinsically as suit
able an object for worship, or contemplation, as any other, and the only
relevant criterion is the subjective satisfaction it offers. This is why
pantheism of the Vedanta type, according to Urquhart, is ready to justify
polytheism, since it is simply a matter of which conceived divinity
produces the deeper subjective feelings. 22 What is more, the notion of the
equal value and divinity of everything makes all attempts at progress
futile because everything is equally good and equally bad.23
Doubtless the judgements of a nineteenth-century Scottish Christian
missionary, distressed at the difficulty of westernising India, suffer from
the prejudices of those times; still, Urquhart says a good deal which is
worth considering not only about Hindu pantheism but about pantheism
in general.
For Urquhart attempts to show that these baleful consequences
follow equally, if less obviously, from pantheism in its various Western
guises, the only difference being that having remained the province of
philosophers its impact has not been so great.Thus he contends that, although Spinoza is often called an optimist
the real upshot of his thought is pessimistic. However, his only real reason
for saying this is the supposed inadequacy of Spinoza's philosophy as a
preparation for dealing with the evils of life. The remedy, for Spinoza, he
says, is simply to understand intellectually that they are necessary, and
that there was never any real alternative to their occurrence. This he finds
a gloomy view in comparison with the progressive Christian view that,
through meeting them manfully,we
can hopeto
improve things bothin
this world and the next so that misery is not the essential feature of the
world which it must be for a naturalistic determinist. That seems to me a
feeble ground for calling Spinoza a pessimist, for he certainly thought that
life in the here and now could be made worth while and this is, surely, op
timistic rather than pessimistic.
In somewhat similar fashion, and with similar injustice, as it seems
to me, he tries to show that Hegel and Hegelianism (which he rightly
regards as a form of pantheism) is pessimistic despite itself, and he says
the same about other pantheistic systems from the Stoics till his own time.
Rather oddly Urquhart several times quotes from F. H. Bradley as
though he were a fellow opponent of pantheism. In fact, although Bradley
did insist that the Absolute should not be identified with the God of
religion, he was ready on occasion to call himself a pantheist. However,
Urquhart's charge that pantheism levels all values helps us understand
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 12/27
202 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
why thinkersof
that period whose position seems obviously pantheisticwere often reluctant to accept this classification of their positions.
Thus in the following passage Bradley rejects two types of
pantheism. For the one type the Absolute, although it is the sole genuine
reality, is something quite apart from the illusory world revealed to our
senses or to conventional thought. For the other type the Absolute is the
whole of things somehow equally present in each of its parts. Each in is
own way levels all things either up or down to the same value, up if the
world is seen as through and through equally divine, down if the world is
seen as an illusion to be transcended in our quest for unity with the undif-
ferentiated One of Sankara's vision.
It costs little to find that in the end Reality is inscrutable. It is easy to perceivethat any appearance, not being the Reality, in a sense is fallacious . . . . It is asimple matter to conclude further, perhaps, that the Real sits apart, that itkeeps state by itself and does not descend into phenomena. Or it is as cheap,
again, to take up another side of the same error. The Reality is viewedperhaps as immanent in all its appearances, in such a way that it is, alike and
equally present in all. Everything is so worthless on one hand, so divine onthe other, that nothing can be viler or can be more sublime than anything else.I t is against both sides of this mistake, it is against this empty transcendenceand this shallow Pantheism, that our pages must be called one sustainedpolemic. The positive relation of every appearance as an adjective to Reality,and the presence of Reality among its appearances in different degrees andwith diverse values-this double truth we have found to be the centre of phi-losophy. It is because the Absolute is no sundered abstraction but has apositive character, it is because this Absolute itself is positively present in allappearance, that appearances themselves can possess true differences of
value. Appearance and Reality p. 488
So whatever may be true of Indian thought, and many Hindus would
reject Urquhart'S charge that their religion is pessimistic, pantheism in the
West, in the case of thinkers like Bradley, is, surely, not pessimistic in tone;
indeed, it is more plausible to regard it as tending to an excess of optimism.
§5. My own pantheism
The view of reality to which my personal philosophical quest has led
me answers to the description ofpantheism of type (K). It may be summed
up briefly as follows:
(1) In literal truth, that is, in the kind of truth sought in metaphysics,
there is nothing except consciousness or sentient experience (I use these
expressions synonymously) and its elements.
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 13/27
PANTHEISM 203
(2) In literal truth the world consists of innumerable finite centres ofexperience. There is a system of mostly low level such centres which is
the reality behind the physical world, this being essentially a compulsory
construction through which high level centres like ourselves relate them
selves usefully thereto. There must be some way in which the relatively
high level centres of experience which constitute our consciousness fit
into the system, but whether they do so by constituting an extra to it, func
tioning according to partly fresh laws, or whether they are simply standard
elements within it is problematic.
(3) All finite centres of experience are elements in one single cosmic
consciousness, best called "the Absolute".
(4) The existence of these centres is no different from the fact that
there is a series of total momentary states of experience which constitute
their "biographies". These experiences are all just eternally there in the
Absolute, but each experience feels itself as emerging from, and passing
into, another in the same "biography" (a "first" and "last" such experience
perhaps excepted) so that the series seems a temporal one.
(5) In at least the most familiar cases the experiences which constitute the biography of a centre each have two aspects, an active aspect
which rightly feels itself to be acting either upon the not-self aspect or on
what the not-self aspect symbolises. The self aspect is the ego of that
centre of experience in its then state.
(6) Finite centres of experience are each qualified by characteristics
which they could only have as just the components they are in just that
"place" within the absolute Whole.
I cannot give more than a vague gesture to my reasons for holdingthis view. I infer it from the following premisses, for each of which I have
a battery of arguments which I cannot deploy here. 24(1) Nothing exists except experiences, and experiences are either
total units of the type which constitute the "what it is like to be it" of some
phenomenal individual, like a human being or an animal, or components
in such total units.
(2) The physical world exists, or at least something exists which is
what seems to be the physical world, and does not depend upon being
observed by humans or animals to do so.
(3) Things can only be related to each other in virtue of the fact that
they help together to constitute some individual which is more of a
genuine individual than any of its parts. Exception: when the relation is
the part/whole relation it is required instead that either the whole is more
ofa genuine individual than any of its parts or that it contains that part in
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 14/27
204 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
virtueof
itself being partof
a whole which is more ofa genuine individ-ual than any of its parts.25
(4) The inherent character of a part of a whole which is more of a
genuine individual than it is reflects the character of that whole, in the
sense that nothing could be just like that without being just such a part of
just such a whole.
(5) There is a truth about the past to which the so-called law of
bivalence applies and this can only be so if past, present and future are all
eternally just there.
It is through (1) and (2) that I reach the panpsychist view that
physical reality either consists in, or is the appearance of, a system of in
numerable mutually influencing streams of experience such as constitute
the biographies of sentient individuals of various degrees of mental
clarity.
It is through (3) that I reach the view that all these experiences
pertain to one total individual which experiences them as ingredients in its
own being.
It is through (4) that I reach the conclusion that each centre of experience is qualified by its precise role in constituting the absolute
experience.
It is through (5) that I reach the view that this total individual is not
subject to change but eternally includes the experiences of all individuals
at all times.
These conclusions imply the somewhat Spinozistic view that the
world is both a single spatio-temporal physical system (or at least what
appears as such) and a single consciousnessof
which all finite consciousnesses are components. Thus we have arrived at a pantheism which is both
of type (B) and of type (K). Or at least have done so to whatever extent
the world thus conceived is appropriately called "God". So let us see how
many of the fourteen conditions which favour calling something "God"
apply to the universe for what I shall verbally beg the question by calling
"our pantheism" or rather, for simplicity, just "pantheism". I shall put "Y"
or "N" or "0" after each condition to indicate either that the universe, as
I conceive it, satisfies it, does not satisfy it, or that this must be left as an
open question.
1. He, she or it is creator of the universe (the totality of everything
not himself). N
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 15/27
PANTHEISM 205
This is denied by our pantheism as it is by definition by pantheism ingeneral.
2. I t (he or she) is uniquely all-knowing. Y
3. I t (he or she) is uniquely all-experiencing (that is, it feels the ex
periences of all beings). (This and the previous condition are not
sharply distinct.) Y
The universe or Absolute, qua consciousness including all other con
sciousnesses as its parts or aspects, is certainly all-experiencing, for it
experiences the total experience of every individual centre of conscious
ness and how they relate to each other, that is, ultimately how they are
arranged to constitute the one cosmic experience which it is. It seems to
follow that the Absolute knows every matter of fact, for there are no
matters of fact other than such facts about the character, filling and
arrangement within itself of all finite centres of consciousness.
Or may it experience all this and yet not know all or any such facts?
After all, one may think that a lizard experiences all its experiences
without knowing any facts about it. If this means that the Absolute maynot know things primarily in a propositional way, (except in so far as these
are matters thought of within finite centres) the point is arguable, yet as
the cosmic all-container its knowledge can hardly be cognitively deficient.
But what of abstract truths, say about each natural number and how
it relates to each of the others? There must be such truths, surely, never en
tertained in any finite mind. Are we to suppose that the Absolute knows
all such truths?
One approach is to make a distinction like that which Whiteheadmade between the primordial nature of God, which is the home of eternal
objects and their relations one to another, and the consequent nature of
God which concerns how some of the eternal objects have entered into
history or into finite thought. But whether this is the best approach must
depend heavily on the general view taken of such "abstract" truths, and we
can hardly enter into that issue here. The general tenor of our thought is
certainly to regard the Absolute as all-knowing and all-experiencing, and
thus as possessing the first two characteristics in our family resemblance
type analysis of the concept of "God".
4. I t is either uniquely real or real to a degree which nothing else is.
Y
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 16/27
206 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
It is a matterof
debate whether reality can have degrees. However,if
we are to attach sense to this expression at all, it must, surely, be in a way
in which the Absolute comes out as the maximally real being. For example,
saying that one thing is more real than another may mean that it is less of
an abstraction than the other. By calling something an abstraction here is
meant that the proper way of conceiving it is as an element in the nature
of something else.
S. I t exists with a unique kind of necessity. Y
It seems to me (to speak boldly on a point of such traditional con-
tention) that the question whether something exists or not always concerns
the character or filling of something whose existence is presupposed.
Thus the question whether the Loch Ness monster exists is a question
about the filling of Loch Ness, the question of whether Yettis exist or not
is a question about what roams the Himalayas, the question whether
unicorns exist or not is either a question about what roams the earth or
what roams somewhere in our physical universe. According to this view,
when we come to such questions as whether the physical universe existsor not we are asking whether Reality is partly or wholly physical in
character. Thus the big existential questions are questions about the
character of Reality. There can thus be no question of Reality not existing,
for to ask whether it does is to ask whether Reality includes or is Reality
and this is either meaningless or a question whose answer must be affir-
mative. In either case Reality must somehow be there, whatever it is.
But granted that there is a reality, the arguments just so briefly
sketched show that it must be an absolute consciousness which includesall such finite consciousnesses as there are as its components, which is as
much as to say that it must answer to our description of the Absolute. So
it is necessarily true that something answering to our description of the
Absolute exists, or at least is there.
But granted that there must be such an Absolute, does it have to be
an Absolute like ours in greater detail, perhaps in every detail?26 Is it, for
example, not contingent rather than necessary that the absolute con-
sciousness contains you and me behaving just as we have done and will
do. The initially obvious answer is affirmative. However, the idea that
things might have been different, as we ordinarily entertain it, depends
heavily on the assumption that at any moment there are all sorts of things
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 17/27
PANTHEISM 207
about the future which are open.So if
the Absolute contains all times, aswe have contended that it does, there can be no such openness for it, and
that does suggest that there is at least one sense in which things could not
have been otherwise.
It seems fairly obvious from all this that the Absolute is
6. the explanation of all things. Y
in the sense that an adequate grasp of it (such as only itself can have)
would show that there was no alternative to things being as they are.
7. I t is omni-present. Y
The Absolute for which I have argued is a uniquely genuine whole
whose character is reflected in each of its parts; moreover, each part shares
in the same generic character or essence of consciousness. Thus it does,
indeed, in a significant sense possess this traditional feature ofGod. As for
being
8.all-powerful. 0This seems to me an unhelpful description but so equally is its
negation.
9. I t is morally perfect to a degree which nothing else is. N
The pantheist of our type will not regard God or the Absolute as a
person. It is not an individual who makes choices which can be regarded
as good or bad. Thus it can hardly be regarded as morally perfect.
10. I t is uniquely perfect in some non-moral sense. Y
However, he may well think that there is some non-moral sense in
which it is perfect.27 As a unifying consciousness including all things it
must presumably have some over-all hedonic state, and it is hard to regard
that as an unhappy one. For how can there be unhappiness without an urge
to move to a different state of mind? Yet the Absolute includes all time,
and cannot feel urges to move beyond what it is. In some sense it must be
aware of itself as good. But does it have to regard itself as absolutely
good, and good to a degree that nothing else is or can be? Well, since on
our view there was never any real possibility of an alternative there is no
alternative possible universe than which it can think itself worse. It may
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 18/27
208 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
be said that if there could have been nothing better equally there couldhave been nothing worse. That is true, but that only takes away from its
perfection if its over-all state is bad rather than good.
This may seem horribly optimistic in the fashion of Leibniz or of
Pope. Well, the world certainly contains a vast amount of the horrible, and
I cannot believe that much of this is somehow redeemed by its contribu
tion to some greater good. I cannot accept that the Nazi concentration
camps were 'partial Evil, universal Good' .
I see no other solution to this pantheistic version of the problem of
evil than that the whole thing is both necessary in every detail and in its
totality good. As such, it includes, of necessity, much evil which does not
in any way contribute to its goodness. The only compensation for this is
that, on balance, the whole necessary thing is worth while.
11. I t is the one proper object of worship. 0
Is the Absolute, as we have characterised it, a suitable object of
worship or even the only suitable object of worship? It has been though
that it is not so, since worship implies an I-thou relationship not open topantheists of whatever stripe.28
True, Wordsworth described himself as having been at one stage a
'worshipper of Nature' .29 However, upon the whole the notion of worship
seems more at home in ceremonial contexts than in rapturous communion
with Nature and it is this formalised worship (and ceremonial prayer) so
essential to most of what is called "religion", which has seemed unavail
able to pantheists, and not merely through their contingent failure to unite
in a church.Such a view was challenged by Allanson Picton who actually en
visaged the development of a pantheistic church, emerging from tradi
tional Christianity, in which there would be ceremonies which would
assist the sense of union with the intellectually unknowable one substance
of which all phenomena, including ourselves, are the appearance, and
which for him was the non-superstitious replacement of the traditional
creator God. It would include procedures for inducing experiences of just
the kind Wordsworth describes at his most pantheistic,30Since my own pantheism is not so far from Picton's, I regard this so
far unfulfilled hope (unless we regard some intellectually wild "new age"
practices as such) with respect. On the other hand, I have some doubts as
to whether worship of, as opposed to the search for felt participation in, is
the proper attitude to our pantheistic God or Absolute, or, indeed, even to
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 19/27
PANTHEISM 209
a more traditional creator God. For worship reeks too much of the propi-tiation of a dangerous cosmic egotist (a "jealous God") who is a glutton
for praise. Why should God not be happier expressing himself in loving
human relationships or in the creativity of the artist than in being wor-
shipped by cringing fawners upon his favours?
A fuller discussion would need to consider the Vedantist view of
Bhakti Yoga as the prime way in which the less sophisticated may reach
union with the divine. Instead, I finish with the suggestion that religious
institutions and formal worship should be seen as cultural phenomena to
be judged by their moral and spiritual fruits rather than for the intellectu-
al satisfactoriness of the associated theology or metaphysics. It would
indeed be rather odd if the pantheist did not think pantheistic belief and
sentiment among the world's goods, but, as Bradley for example empha-
sised, he need not think that the metaphysics he holds for true is
everywhere and every when the best basis for a satisfactory human life.
12. I t is the one proper object towards which certain specifically
religious emotions should be felt. 0This being so, the pantheist may believe that religious emotion may
appropriately be felt towards various supposed divine beings, or perhaps
false personalisations of the natural world, which cannot be regarded as
the All. On the other hand, he is likely to feel that there is an appropriate
religious emotion of a pantheistic type.
It seems that this must consist in a sense of oneness with the
universe, either induced by the mere belief in the truth of pantheism or,
and more profoundly, by the real partial breaking down of barriersbetween one's own consciousness and consciousness beyond, a phenom-
enon of the possibility of which our pantheism may provide the best
intellectual explanation.
13. I t is the one thing through appropriate relation to which a
human being can be "saved". Y
To live a fulfilled life requires that one somehow adapts to the
universe, and to one's particular place in it.I f
the pantheist does notbelieve in a life after death this seems a good a way of understanding
"salvation". But does not salvation traditionally consist in winning a place
after one's death in Heaven, rather than in Hell? Yes, but even if there is
a life after death it can only be heavenly there, as much as here, if one is
adapted to the universe and one's particular place in it. So salvation taken
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 20/27
210 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
in this sense will come, if pantheism is true, through, and only through, anappropriate relation to God, qua universal consciousness. As for the
question of life after death, our pantheism, like most others, does not, as
such, settle the matter one way or the other.
14. It , or rather He or She, is an all-knowing and so far as He or She
wants to be, all-controlling, person. N
If a person has to be an agent living in time and coping with an
external world, then the Absolute, or pantheistic God, is not a person, so
not a person of this description)!
Count of the indicators
Thus out of fourteen conditions which favour calling something God,
the universe or Absolute, as our pantheism conceives it, satisfies eight of
them, fails to satisfy three, while there are three on which I have not ad
judicated.
It hardly requires much argument to show that our pantheism will not
acknowledge that there is anything else with a higher score than this. Soit seems appropriate to call the Absolute, or the Universe as we conceive
it to be, "God" and thus describe our position as genuinely pantheistic.
§6. Nature Mysticism
It is often supposed that the main inspiration for pantheism lies in
mystical or quasi-mystical experiences of "nature" and that the pantheist
believes that these experiences provide our best clue to how Reality really
is. It is worth remarking, therefore, that some philosophers properly
described as pantheists have shown no particular love of nature. This
seems to be true of Croce, for example. II spirito, for him, seems to be
expressed almost exclusively in man and his works, particularly cultural
works. Actually, I agree with Santayana that those absolute idealist pan
theists who seem to think that the world spirit fulfills itself almost
exclusively in human life are guilty of "cosmic impiety" towards the great
natural scheme of things. No pantheism or idealism to which I could
subscribe would play down the vastness of the non-human (or non-animal)cosmos.
Spinoza certainly does not do this, though there is no evidence of his
having had any great enthusiasm for the great outdoors (after all, he had
little chance to see mountains which are among the main evokers of a
spiritual sense of oneness with nature, though he enjoyed a pleasant walk).
On the other hand he was clearly of the opinion that God was expressing
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 21/27
PANTHEISM 211
himself as truly in the non-human as in the human. And I personally thinkthat the pantheist should regard nature mysticism as a significant, though
by no means the only, support for his view of things.
Pantheism founded in nature mysticism finds its fullest expression in
the poetry of Wordsworth (though in later life he moved to a more
orthodox Christianity than that expressed in his earlier work) .
. . . the one interior life
That lives in all things . . .
In which all beings live with God, themselves are God. . . . 32
Wordsworth's pantheism, at its height, (1797-1800) conceived of a
power which rolls through all things and with which one communicates
when entranced by natural beauty and that this is both a tranquillising and
a moralising experience. Its great statement is in 1intern Abbey.
IfI may be so prosaic about great poetry, Wordsworth's ideas on this
matter cause me some worries. Does nature really have the almost delib
erately moralising power which Wordsworth seems to ascribe to it?
One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Or moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can.33
But is not nature just as much as Tennyson so fearfully saw it?:
[Man] trusted God was love indeedAnd love Creation's final l aw-
Tho' nature red in tooth and clawWith ravine, shrieked against his creed.34
In this connection it is significant that Wordsworth's nature descrip
tions mostly concern mountains, plants and the sky, not animal life (birds,
to some extent, excepted).
For nature then . . .
To me was all in all ,-I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite . . . 35
No mention of animals here, yet animal life seems the most obvious, and
in some ways the most alarming, place in which to look for what a spirit
rolling through all things might be like. For if there is a divine mind
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 22/27
212 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
present everywhere, it must, surely, be most clearly present where the factof sentience forces itself upon us in what we observe.
But perhaps the sense that the jungle, or even the countryside, is, so
far as animals are concerned, primarily a scene of horror is misconceived.
The moment of final fright and pain before an animal is seized by a
predator are only a small part of that animal's life, and the general
searching for food and mating which is the dominant theme in animal life
(out of the laboratory) may be cheerful enough and may even have its
pauses in which there is a certain joy in the mere fact of sentient being.
Perhaps not only every plant, but every animal, 'enjoys the air it breathes'.
Another worry is that the sensory panorama to which the nature lover
of the more mystical kind responds does not seem to be a very genuine
unit. Indeed we find Wordsworth himself congratulating Coleridge on his
awareness of this fact.:
. . . Thou art no slaveOf that false secondary power, by which
In weakness, we create distinctions, thenDeem that our puny boundaries are things.36
It is, indeed, of the essence of Wordsworth's pantheistic view that
what the nature lover experiences is the joint product of his own activity
and the power working in objective nature. All the same, it somewhat
dashes quasi-mystical responses to nature to conceive it to any extent as a
solipsistic, or at least merely human, creation
. . . we receive but what we give
And in our life alone does Nature live. . . .37
This is particularly problematic where one is responding to a
panorama whose apparent unity can hardly reflect any especial together
ness of its components, as for example with a beautiful sunset. However,
a possible answer, suggested above, is that certain scenes, especially when
experienced in solitude, weaken the barriers which divide our conscious
ness from that consciousness which is the in-itself of what surrounds us,
and that this provides a joyful sense ofrelieffrom one's usual egotism and
a sense of belonging to something greater than oneself. One does not haveto think that the surrounding environment is in itself more sublime than
that in many less beautiful places, but one's barriers are kept up in the one
as they are not in the other.38
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 23/27
PANTHEISM 213
So since these experiences can be so strong, and our own meta-physics can make some sense of them, I am inclined to regard them not as
mere illusions but as a genuine experience of what Spinoza called 'the
union of our mind with the whole of nature'.
This, then, is certainly one form of pantheism, but as the examples of
Hegel and Croce show, pantheism need not be associated with any special
feeling for what we loosely call "nature" in this kind of context.
§7. Pantheism, Ethics and Pessimism
Does pantheism have anything much to say about ethics? I believe
that it does. And I do not accept Urquhart's claim that such an ethics
makes unselfishness pointless, since clearly benefiting the One by always
putting oneself first will not conduce to general satisfaction.
I f aspects of Schopenhauer's thought were not evidently expressions
of such a flawed personality, he might well be chosen as the great Western
exponent of the pantheistic and Vedantic account of the basis of ethics as
residing in the intuitive realization that
... all plurality is only apparent; ... in all the individuals of this world,
however infinite the number in which they exhibit themselves successivelyand simultaneously, there is yet manifested only one and the same truly
existing essence, present and identical in all of them.39
However, Schopenhauer scorned pantheism on two grounds. First, it
risks amounting to no more than the use of "God" as another name for the
universe, casting no further light on its nature. Second, he thought that to
call "such a mean, shabby world"as
this "God" was absurd.40
Nonetheless, his one cosmic Will meets many of the indicators for
being called "God". What makes this inappropriate is that it is so nasty
and futile in Schopenhauer's opinion. It is not impossible, however, to
agree with Schopenhauer that the phenomenal world is the way in which
a single world Will presents itself to itself, and to take a more positive
view of this world Will and of its manifestations than he does. In short,
much of Schopenhauer's metaphysics could be made the basis of a less
pessimistic view of the world. This would, in fact, make better sense of
his ethics, as the recognition of the other as in essence oneself again,
which upon the whole represents for me the ethics to which pantheism
points.41 What is strange in Schopenhauer is that he bases ethics upon the
fundamental identity of every subject of experience while thinking of that
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 24/27
214 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
identical essence (the world Will) which is present in each as prettyloathsome. Levine several times denies that pantheism holds that the
universe is perfect. (This is associated with his denial that metaphysical
monism is essential to or even typical of pantheism. Levine, pp. 197 and
207-218). Apart from the fact that the pantheism of Spinoza and Bradley,
to which I am closest in outlook, is certainly monistic, I rather doubt his
more general claim about pantheism. Similarly I believe that pantheism
tends to be deterministic, something Levine denies. However, such points
cannotbe
argued here. Thus it does not rest upon any reverence for thisuniversal shared essence, as it does in similar Hindu treatments of ethics.
What you see when you look into another person's eyes, that is the Atman,immortal, beyond fear, that is Brahman.
-Chandogya Upanishad42
The ethics implied by this is nothing more novel than that of the
ethics based primarily upon compassion of all the great religions at their
best. So the precepts of pantheism here are not especially different from
those to which we almost all give at least notional assent. However,pantheism, as the doctrine that the same world essence is identically
present in each of us, and that therefore we should love our neighbour as
ourself, gives its own special cognitive grounding to this, and thus its own
particular answer to ethical scepticism.
Such an ethics of compassion, in my opinion, must be balanced by
an ethics of self-realization. Concern for others arises most healthily from
the realization that their happiness matters as much as one's own,
something hardly possible if one regards one's own happiness as of noaccount. It is not merely unrealistic, but undesirable, to attempt such
complete selflessness that one has no concern for one's own flourishing.
To do so is to risk being the curmudgeon which, unfortunately, accounts
of Schopenhauer (one hopes unfairly) tend to represent him as having
been, in contrast to Spinoza, who saw concern for others as an outgrowth
of concern for oneself. Put in pantheistic terms the divine spark must be
recognized in oneself if it is to be recognized in others.
We saw above that W. S. Urquhart claims that pantheism is necessarily deeply pessimistic. In its Hindu form it regards the world of every
day life as an unfortunate illusion, and life in it as bound to be a wretched
thing. But the only better world to which intellectual Hinduism beckons
us is one in which, merged with the Absolute (for Vedanta or as monadic
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 25/27
PANTHEISM 215
individuals for Samkbya Yoga) we experience a blank dim sense of selfidentity, not so much blissful as hardly distinguishable from unconsciousness.
Whether we agree or not with Urquhart that Indian pantheism is pes
simistic (something Hindus today usually contest) I do not think
pantheism need be so. It by no means implies that there is nothing really
worth while in existence and that all is vanity or worse. Nor need it regard
everything in the world as of equal value. In spite of Urquhart's attempt
to depict all forms of Western pantheism, too, as implicitly pessimistic,
and as flattening all values, rather the opposite seems true. Spinoza,
Wordsworth (in his pantheistic days), Allanson Picton and Bradley all
thought that life at its best is wonderful, but that unless societies organize
themselves well, and individuals live in the light of a clear grasp of their
own needs and those of others, it tends to the dreadful. But there is
nothing in pantheism which suggests that life, if lived nobly, cannot be a
great good, and if greater optimism than that is required of a faith, the re
quirement is absurd. If pantheism is deterministic, it can make the
distinction Spinoza made so well, between determination by rational or
intuitive insight and determination by irrational impulses, or asWordsworth put not so different a point from a full imagination of the
effects of action. Moreover, since to wish to be determined in the first
more positive way is to be on the path to being so, the wish should not be
in vain.43
T. L. S. Sprigge
The University ofEdinburgh
NOTES
1. However, see below at n. 23.
2. Michael P. Levine, Pantheism: A Non-Theistic Concept ofDeity (London and NewYork: Routledge, 1994), p. 25. I do not have the space to say much about how our views
of pantheism relate; there is much agreement and some disagreement. In particular, I
conceive pantheism as more intimately related to metaphysical monism (individual
substance, not type of substance, monism) than does Levine.
3. J. Allanson Picton, The Religion of the Universe (London: Macmillan, 1904), pp.
152-53.
4. Throughout this article 'infinite' and 'finite' will be used, not in the mathematicalsense, but to contrast the concrete whole of concrete things and its parts or part-like
aspects.5. W. S. Urquhart, Pantheism and the Value of Life with Special Reference to Indian
Philosophy (London: Epworth Press, 1919), p. 614. At that period the extension of 'mate-
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 26/27
216 T. L. S. SPRIGGE
rialism' included naturalistic theories for which the mental was the product of the physical,even if not strictly physical itself.
6. See Richard Jeffries, The Story ofmy Heart and George Sessions, "Spinoza and
Jeffers on Man in Nature", (Inquiry 201977), discussed in Levine p. 44 and p. 125 n. 3.7. See Erwin SchrOdinger, My View of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1964).
8. See the work cited at n. 3, above.9. Levine (cited in n. 2, above), p. 35.
10. Juan Mascaro (trans.), The Upanishads (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books), p. 119.
11. Urquhart, p. 35.12. From the Katha Upanishad in Mascaro, p. 58.
13. It is true that Bradley, unlike, for example, Josiah Royce, refused to identify theAbsolute with God. But he did describe himself as a pantheist, and certainly in some
respects the Absolute plays the role of God for him.
14. Friedrich Paulsen (trans!.), Frank Thilly, Introduction to Philosophy (New York:
Henry Holt, 1930). [First German edition was 1892.]15. See Josiah Royce The World and the Individual, 2 vols., (New York: Dover, 1959;
first pub!, 1899 and 1901) and other works.16. Thus Vivikenanda, the turn-of-the-last-century Vedantist, says: 'We may all be
perfectly sure that it [the world] will go on beautifully without us, and indeed not bother
our heads wishing to help it.' by Swami Vivikenanda, Karma-Yoga (Calcutta: Advaita
Ashrama), p. 91.
17. Newton P. Stallknecht, Strange Seas of Thought: Studies in William Wordsworth'sPhilosophy ofMan and Nature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1945), p. 143.
18. Urquhart, p. 58. I f it is true that Indian Hinduism is in essence pantheistic then somequalification is required of Levine's remark that pantheism has never functioned as acommunal religion with 'an established body of religious teaching' .
19. See n. 5, above, for details.20. Or at any rate with a Ph.D. thesis from Aberdeen University on which the book is
based.
21. The book's reference to its sources is (like others of that time) not very full; it is notclear even whether he read the relevant texts in Sanskrit, though it would seem that he did.
22. Urquhart, pp. 425-40.23. Urquhart, p. 659 et passim.
24. T. L. S. Sprigge, The Vindication ofAbsolute Idealism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983).
25. The Absolute could still be proved to exist if these italicised words were replaced
by "is more of a genuine than, or as much of a genuine individual as" and premiss (5) were
dropped. However, the proof would establish less about the nature of the Absolute. See
T. L. S. Sprigge, James and Bradley: American Truth and British Reality, (Chicago: OpenCourt, 1993) pp. 264-76.
26. I shall avoid the tricky and, in the end, rather pointless distinction some would make
between its being necessary or contingent that the Absolute which does exist is our one, or
its being necessary or contingent that our one is completely or partially just as it is.27. I find it a little surprising that Levine says that 'in pantheism God (i.e., the divine
unity) is not understood to be a perfect being' (Levine, pp. 159-60). It is so for both
Spinoza and Bradley, and, surely, for many other pantheists.
28. See Levine pp. 313-28; 342-47 for an excellent discussion of the matter.
7/28/2019 Sprigge Pantheism
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/sprigge-pantheism 27/27
PANTHEISM 217
29. In "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey". For a discussion of
Wordsworth's philosophical development during the years of his greatness see Alan Grob,The Philosophical Mind: A Study of Wordsworths Poetry and Thought, 1797-1805
(Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, 1973). See also Stallknecht.30. J. Allanson Picton discussed the possibility of a church with institutionalised pan
theistic nature worship calculated to produce an experience of nature akin to that describedin Wordsworth's poetry. See Picton, p. 319ff.
31. Cf. Levine pp. 8-11.
32. From The Prelude.
33. From 'The Tables Turned".
34. 1n memoriam LV.
35. From "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey".36. From The Prelude.37. From Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode", iv.
38. Cf. Levine, p. 357.
39. On the Basis of Morality by Arthur Schopenhauer, transl. E. F. J. Payne (Indi
anapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), p. 207. The original work was first published in 1841.40. "A Few Words on Pantheism" in Arthur Schopenhauer (selected and trans. from
Parerga and Paralipomena by T. B. Saunders), Religion and Other Essays (London: Sonnenschein, 1980); see also Arthur Schopenhauer (transl. E. F. Payne), The World as Will
and Representation (New York: Dover, 1966), vol. II ch. L and elsewhere in this work as
indexed.
41. It is sometimes objected that this ethics of identity misses the significance ofabsolute otherness for ethics. However, the identity with oneself of what looks out at one
from another's eyes is an 'identity-in-difference', the same theme with variations, and therequired respect for otherness is satisfied by enjoyment of the fresh variation or sense thatsome hidden one is there.
42. Mascaro translation, (cited in n. 10, above), p. 122.43. Postscript: Since writing this article I have found cause to modify my remarks about
the possibility of a pantheistic church. This is because I have discovered that someUnitarian churches answer very successfully to this description without any of the crankiness of New Age religions.