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the former imputation at the first glance looks more cruel and invidious (cf. ¤ 71 note). The imputation of
Atheism presupposes a definite idea of a full and real God, and arises because the popular idea does not
detect in the philosophical notion the peculiar form to which it is attached. Philosophy indeed can recognize
its own forms in the categories of religious consciousness, and even its own teaching in the doctrine of
religion - which therefore it does not disparage. But the converse is not true: the religious consciousness does
not apply the criticism of thought to itself, does not comprehend itself, and is therefore, as it stands,
exclusive. To impute Pantheism instead of Atheism to Philosophy is part of the modern habit of mind - of the
new piety and new theology. For them philosophy has too much of God: - so much so, that, if we believe
them, it asserts that God is everything and everything is God. This new theology, which makes religion only
a subjective feeling and denies the knowledge of the divine nature, thus retains nothing more than a God in
general without objective characteristics. Without interest of its own for the concrete, fulfilled notion of God,
it treats it only as an interest which others once had, and hence treats what belongs to the doctrine of God's
concrete nature as something merely historical. The indeterminate God is to be found in all religions; every
kind of piety (¤ 72) - that of the Hindu to asses, cows - or to dalai-lamas - that of the Egyptians to the ox -
is always adoration of an object which, with all its absurdities, also contains the generic abstract, God in
General. If this theory needs no more than such a God, so as to find God in everything called religion, it must
at least find such a God recognized even in philosophy, and can no longer accuse it of Atheism. The
C. PHILOSOPHY 72
PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
mitigation of the reproach of Atheism into that of Pantheism has its ground therefore in the superficial idea to
which this mildness has attenuated and emptied God. As that popular idea clings to its abstract universality,
from which all definite quality is excluded, all such definiteness is only the non-divine, the secularity of
things, thus left standing in fixed undisturbed substantiality. On such a presupposition, even after philosophy
has maintained God's absolute universality, and the consequent untruth of the being of external things, the
hearer clings as he did before to his belief that secular things still keep their being, and form all that is
definite in the divine universality. He thus changes that universality into what he calls the pantheistic: -
Everything is - (empirical things, without distinction, whether higher or lower in the scale, are) - all possess
substantiality; and so - thus he understands philosophy - each and every secular thing is God. It is only his
own stupidity, and the falsifications due to such misconception, which generate than imagination and the
allegation of such pantheism.
But if those who give out that a certain philosophy is Pantheism, are unable and unwilling to see this - for it
is just to see the notion that they refuse - they should before everything have verified the alleged fact that any
one philosopher, or any one man, had really ascribed substantial or objective and inherent reality to all things
and regarded them as God: - that such an idea had ever come into the head of anybody but themselves. This
allegation I will further elucidate in this exoteric discussion: and the only way to do so is to set down the
evidence. If we want to take so-called Pantheism in its most poetical, most sublime, or if you will, its
grossest shape, we must, as is well known, consult the oriental poets: and the most copious delineations of it
are found in Hindu literature. Amongst the abundant resources, open to our disposal on this topic, I select -
as the most authentic statement accessible - the Bhagavat-Gita, and amongst its effusions, prolix and
reiterative ad nauseam, some of the most telling passages. In the 10th Lesson (in Schlegel, p. 162) Krishna
says of himself:(1) - 'I am the self, seated in the hearts of all beings. I am the beginning and the middle and
the end also of all beings . . . I am the beaming sun amongst the shining ones, and the moon among the lunar
mansions.... Amongst the Vedas I am the Sama-Veda: I am mind amongst the senses: I am consciousness in
living beings. And I am Sankara (Siva) among the Rudras, . . . Meru among the high-topped mountains. . . .
the Himalaya among the firmly-fixed (mountains). . . . Among beasts I am the lord of beasts. . . . Among
letters I am the letter A. . . . I am the spring among the seasons. . . . I am also that which is the seed of all
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