Pantheism (Gr. pan, 'all,' and theos, 'God'), the name given to that system of speculation which, in its spiritual form, identifies the universe with God (akosmism), and, in its more material form, God with the universe. It is only the latter kind of pantheism that is logically open to the accusation of atheism; the former has often been the expression of a profound religiosity. The word Pantheist is comparatively modern, and seems to have been coined by the Deist John Toland in 1705, and is used shortly after that date by his opponents and orthodox writers like Waterland. Earlier pantheistic systems, such as Spinoza's, were regularly assailed under the name of atheism. But the antiquity of this mode of belief is undoubtedly great; it is prevalent in one of the oldest known civilisations in the world—the Hindu. Though it may dimly underlie various polytheistic systems, it is obviously in any definite shape a later development of thought than polytheism, and most probably originated in the attempt to divest the popular system of its grosser features, and to give it a form that would satisfy the requirements of philosophical speculation. Hindu pantheism as akosmism is taught especially by the Upanishads, the Vedānta and Yoga philosophies, and by those poetical works which embody the doctrines of these systems; for instance, the Bhagavad Gitā, which follows the Yoga doctrine. It is poetical and religious, rather than scientific, at least in its phraseology; but it is substantially similar to the more logical forms developed in Europe. The Hindu thinker regards man as born into a world of illusions and entanglements, from which his great aim should be to deliver himself. Neither sense nor reason, however, is capable of helping him; only through long-continued, rigorous, and holy contemplation of the supreme unity (Brahma) can he become emancipated from the deceptive influence of phenomena, and fit to apprehend that he and they are alike but evanescent modes of existence assumed by that infinite, eternal, and unchangeable Spirit who is all in all. Hindu pantheism is thus spiritual in its character; matter and (finite) mind are both alike absorbed in the fathomless abyss of illimitable and absolute being. Buddhism (q.v.) denies or ignores the existence of God, but in many modes of regarding the universe is rather akin to pantheism than to absolute atheism. Sufism is a pantheist outgrowth of Islam.
Greek pantheism, though it doubtless originated in the same way as that of India, is at once more varied in its form, and more ratiocinative in its method of exposition. The philosophy of Anaximander may be described as a system of atheistic physics or of materialistic pantheism. Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic School (q.v.), has been held to be the first classical thinker who promulgated the higher or idealistic form of pantheism. Alexandrian Neoplatonism is substantially pantheistic; the universal reason and the world-soul of mediaeval thinkers have the same tendency.
The Mosaic account of the Creation (q.v.) of all things out of nothing by God expressly excludes any pantheistic cosmogony; and Christian controversialists strenuously assert against every form of pantheism that it involves an antichristian theory of the origin of Evil (q.v.), subverts the personality of God and man, renders free-will impossible (see WILL), and destroys all real moral responsibility. Many heresies have been pantheistic. Gnosticism is based on an essentially pantheistic doctrine of emanation. Dionysius (q.v.) the Areopagite and Scotus Erigena (q.v.) were pantheists within the Christian fold; and the later Christian Mysticism (q.v.) has a highly pantheistic flavour (see ECKHART, BOEHME). Bruno, Vanini, and Paracelsus were outspoken pantheists; and there were various minor pantheistic sects in the middle ages. Spinoza is perhaps the greatest, certainly the most rigorous and precise of the whole class that either the ancient or the modern world has seen. Schelling's Nature-Philosophy proposed to limit the meaning of the term pantheism to the doctrine of the immanence of all things in God, but leaving doubtful the precise scope of what was meant by immanence; and some forms of Hegelianism are directly pantheistic in character. Neither England, France, nor America has produced a single great pantheistic philosopher; but there is an immense amount of pantheistic sentiment floating about in the poetry, criticism, theology, and even in the speculative thinking of these and all European countries in the present age.
See the articles on the thinkers mentioned, and those on PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, and THEISM; the works on Pantheism by Jäsche (1826-32), Böhm (1851), Weissenborn (1859), and Driesenberger (1880); Saisset, Modern Pantheism (Eng. trans. 1863); Fellens, Le Panthéisme (1873); Hunt, Pantheism and Christianity (1866; 2d ed. 1884); Flint, Anti-Theistic Theories (1877); Plumptre, History of Pantheism (2 vols. 1881).