Other editions of book Pantheism, Its Story and Significance Religions Ancient and Modern

Pantheism is a philosophical and/or religious world view that sees the entire universe as a single, eternal, divine unity. It usually goes hand in hand with monism—the idea that the universe is made up of a single substance (matter) in a multitude of changing forms. Since nothing exists outside of this all-encompassing whole, the universe itself must be God. The Pantheistic God is not an anthropomorphic god, and individual believers differ on the level of divinity to ascribe to the deity. This ambiguity allows Pantheism to be compatible with the beliefs of various religions or even with the personal philosophies of secular freethinkers. Pantheism: Its Story and Significance is an essay by J. Allanson Picton that was originally published in 1905 as a 94-page book. Picton defines Pantheism and offers a brief overview of its history. The whole book centers, not surprisingly, around the writings of the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The title of the work and its brevity might lead you to believe that it’s an elementary overview, but it really requires a good deal of prior philosophical knowledge on the part of the reader. Spinoza’s Ethics is one of the most challenging books I’ve ever read, but somehow Picton manages to make Spinozan Pantheism sound even more complicated than Spinoza himself did. Picton opens with a discussion of Pantheistic beliefs among the ancient cultures of India, Egypt, and Greece. He explains that Chinese Buddhism is not a form of Pantheism, but he doesn’t even mention Daoism, which is. When Picton discusses whether various philosophies or religions were Pantheistic, he expects the reader to know their doctrines beforehand. When he brings up the Neo-Platonists or Hegel, for example, he assumes that the reader is already familiar with their works. Picton explains clearly how Pantheism differs from Atheism, and tends to emphasize how much Pantheism agrees with mainstream religions rather than how it differs from them. At one point he even goes so far as to compare Spinoza with Jesus. Throughout the book Picton seems to be leery of offending Christians. He doesn’t even mention prominent Pantheists Giordano Bruno, who was burned as a heretic, or John Toland, who published radical anti-Church tracts. Only in the concluding paragraphs does Picton indicate some sympathy towards a freethought viewpoint within the broad assertion that Pantheism can unite believers of all creeds or beliefs. In the original printed volume, each paragraph had a subtitle printed along its margin. In the Kindle file that’s available for free on Amazon, these subtitles were converted into separate lines in the text that begin with “[Sidenote:”. Unfortunately the sidenotes don’t always appear next to the paragraph they refer to. Eventually the reader learns to ignore these annoyances and just read the text. There are also footnotes at the end of every chapter, but not necessarily footnote numbers within the text to indicate what passages they refer to.

From the intro: "Pantheism differs from the systems of belief constituting the main religions of the world in being comparatively free from any limits of period, climate, or race. For while what we roughly call the Egyptian Religion, the Vedic Religion, the Greek Religion, Buddhism, and others of similar fame have been necessarily local and temporary, Pantheism has been, for the most part, a dimly discerned background, an esoteric significance of many or all religions, rather than a "denomination" by itself. The best illustration of this characteristic of Pantheism is the catholicity of its great prophet Spinoza. For he felt so little antagonism to any Christian sect, that he never urged any member of a church to leave it, but rather encouraged his humbler friends, who sought his advice, to make full use of such spiritual privileges as they appreciated most. He could not, indeed, content himself with the fragmentary forms of any sectarian creed. But in the few writings which he made some effort to adapt to the popular understanding, he seems to think it possible that the faith of Pantheism might some day leaven all religions alike. I shall endeavour briefly to sketch the story of that faith, and to suggest its significance for the future. But first we must know what it means. Pantheism, then, being a term derived from two Greek words signifying "all" and "God," suggests to a certain extent its own meaning. Thus, if Atheism be taken to mean a denial of the being of God, Pantheism is its extreme opposite; because Pantheism declares that there is nothing but God. This, however, needs explanation. For no Pantheist has ever held God is All.that everything is God, any more than a teacher of physiology, in enforcing on his students the unity of the human organism, would insist that every toe and finger is the man. But such a teacher, at least in But not Everything Is God.these days, would almost certainly warn his pupils against the notion that the man can be really divided into limbs, or organs, or faculties, or even into soul and body. Indeed, he might without affectation adopt the language of a much controverted creed, so far as to pronounce that Analogy of the Human Organism."the reasonable soul and flesh is one man"—"one altogether." In this view, the man is the unity of all organs and faculties. But it does not in the least follow that any of these organs or faculties, or even a selection of them, is the man."