The utmost unanimity among a thousand deities would not amount to particular, but only to general unity, and general only for some one district of the planet. In short, to think finitely of God is to think of him from the resistance of matter, and the environment of adverse circumstances, and not from love, wisdom, order, and unity, the omnipotent principles to which nature is completely plastic, and the grounds of the endless forms that minister to each other in their degrees, and specifically answer to one infinitely manifold end in the mind of the Creator.
The Pagan polytheism, then, can afford no place to a doctrine of universal correspondence; because Paganism does not admit the fact of a creation, but regards matter as either eternal or non-existent, and only conceives of an arbitrary modification of natural powers by a multitude of beings generically like ourselves; and, we may almost say a fortiori, neither can that more condensed and compact form of the same sensuality, which may be denominated Christian Polytheism. The theory of three gods and a devil, the cautious Heathenism and Manichæism of polite nations, is as destructive of all notions of regime and unity as if the three were three thousand; and darkness and light, good and evil, were co-equally universal and divine. Thus, the Tritheist has no doctrine of a Creator, from which to deduce the universality of correspondence. But the counterpoise to this Tritheism lies naturally in the abstract admission of a unity in the Godhead, combined with the practical worship of the three mental idols; which brings us to the second point, or the aspect of Philosophy towards Correspondences.
The present philosophies are the re-action of the human mind, thoroughly ashamed of its theology, but unable to escape from it, except into pure negations. This is the reason of their abstract character; for, were they to let themselves down into shapes or images, they would alight at once among the monstrosities of the existing churches. Hence they flit over the whole of our intellectual possessions, as though there was no church in the world; and, in their unresting isolation from reality, proclaim in the strongest manner the want of correspondence between the different
