It is far too intellectualistic.
Old fashioned theism was bad enough, with its notion of God as an
exalted monarch, made up of a lot of unintelligible or preposterous
'attributes'; but, so long as it held strongly by the argument from
design, it kept some touch with concrete realities. Since, however,
darwinism has once for all displaced design from the minds of the
'scientific,' theism has lost that foothold; and some kind of an
immanent or pantheistic deity working IN things rather than above
them is, if any, the kind recommended to our contemporary
imagination. Aspirants to a philosophic religion turn, as a rule,
more hopefully nowadays towards idealistic pantheism than towards
the older dualistic theism, in spite of the fact that the latter
still counts able defenders.
But, as I said in my first lecture, the brand of pantheism offered
is hard for them to assimilate if they are lovers of facts, or
empirically minded. It is the absolutistic brand, spurning the dust
and reared upon pure logic. It keeps no connexion whatever with
concreteness. Affirming the Absolute Mind, which is its substitute
for God, to be the rational presupposition of all particulars of
fact, whatever they may be, it remains supremely indifferent to what
the particular facts in our world actually are.
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