Pantheists were striving after, and the reason and naturalness of
their error.


CHAPTER IV

PANTHEISM. II

The earlier Pantheists were misled by the endeavour [sic] to lay
hold of two distinct ideas, the one of which was a reality that
has since been grasped and is of inestimable value, the other a
phantom which has misled all who have followed it. The reality is
the unity of Life, the oneness of the guiding and animating
spirit which quickens animals and plants, so that they are all
the outcome and expression of a common mind, and are in truth one
animal; the phantom is the endeavour [sic] to find the origin of
things, to reach the fountain-head of all energy, and thus to lay
the foundations on which a philosophy may be constructed which
none can accuse of being baseless, or of arguing in a circle.

In following as through a thick wood after the phantom our
forefathers from time to time caught glimpses of the reality,
which seemed so wonderful as it eluded them, and flitted back
again into the thickets, that they declared it must be the
phantom they were in search of, which was thus evidenced as
actually existing. Whereon, instead of mastering such of the
facts they met with as could be captured easily-which facts would
have betrayed the hiding-places of others, and these again of
others, and so ad infinitum-they overlooked what was
within their reach, and followed hotly through brier and brake