The advocates of this system assume that the relations which subsist between _beings_ are the same as the relations which subsist between our _ideas_, and infer that _logic_ is sufficient to construct a system of _metaphysic_. But Professor Nicolas has well said, that "while it is certain we cannot know things but by the notions which we have of them, and a certain parallelism may thus be established between _what exists_ and _what we think_ of that which exists, yet from this to the _identity of being and thought_, such as Pantheism requires, there is a vast distance, and we have no ground for believing that the _logical relations_ of our ideas are identical with the _real relations_ of beings. Speculative Pantheism is wholly built on this assumption. It describes the relations of being according to the logical relations of our thought; and it takes _logic_ for a kind of _metaphysic_. It confounds the laws of thought with the laws of being. It seeks to solve the question, What is the first Being, and what are its relations to other beings? That Being must necessarily be the condition of all other beings, and must virtually contain them all; nay, it must be capable of becoming all things. It must therefore be simple, indeterminate, indifferent, possessing no essential character, resembling nothing that we actually know. All this is true of our _ideas_, but not of _beings_. The highest idea,--that which is the logical condition of all others, and also the most general, the most abstract, the most indeterminate,--this idea contains all others, and by receiving this or that determination, it becomes this or that particular idea. But what is true of the _idea_ is not true of the _being_; no such vague, indeterminate, indifferent being exists; and yet Pantheism confounds _the idea_ with _the being_, and rests entirely on that confusion of thought." * * * * * In bringing our review of Modern Pantheism to a close, we may offer a few remarks illustrative of its _nature and tendency_, whether considered as a system of speculative thought, or as a substitute for religious belief.