These points made, while it is true that traditional theism has regularly opposed pantheism on the grounds that it tends to be impersonal, and true also that many pantheists would deny that God is personal, it is nonetheless the case that many other pantheists have thought mind-like attribution of some form or other to the cosmos absolutely central to their position (Bishop & Perszyk 2017; Hewitt 2019; Mander 2022, 2017).It is clear that pantheistic systems which start from the theistic God which they then find to be all-inclusive, or Absolute Idealist systems which derive all reality from a spiritual principle, will find it easier to attribute something like personhood to the cosmos than will those which are more naturalistically motivated. But it is important to realise that not even the latter are wholly resistant to personhood.For example, it has been argued (Baltzly 2003) that the Stoics believed in a personal deity. Just as they construed human beings as physical creatures animated by a physical soul, so too they regarded God as the mind of the world—with the cosmos as his body. Like a vast biological individual, to them God was a conscious rational being, exercising providence over life and to whom we might approach in prayer.Spinoza’s God is an “infinite intellect”, (_Ethics_ 2p11c) all knowing, (2p3) and capable of loving both himself—and us, insofar as we are part of his perfection (5p35c). And if the mark of a personal being is that it is one towards which we can entertain personal attitudes, then we should note too that Spinoza recommends _amor intellectualist dei_ (the intellectual love of God) as the supreme good for man (5p33). However, the matter is complex. Spinoza’s God does not have free will (1p32c1), he does not have purposes or intentions (1appendix), and Spinoza insists that “neither intellect nor will pertain to the nature of God” (1p17s1). Moreover, while we may love God, we need to remember that God is really not the kind of being who could ever love us back. “He who loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return,” says Spinoza (5p19).Another notable pantheist to insist that the supreme being is personal was Gustav Fechner, who develops a form of panpsychism according to which all organised matter must be thought of as possessing its own inner life or soul. The more complex and developed its structure, the more sophisticated its spiritual life; from the lowest soul-life of plants, through our own mental life, which is just the inner side of our bodies, through the soul-life of the planets and stars up to the most developed spirit of all, God, the consciousness which corresponds to the most complex organism there is, the cosmos itself. More recently, a very similar view has been put forward by Timothy Sprigge who maintains that that the only conceivable form of reality consists in streams of experience, such as we know ourselves to be, all of which must be thought of as included together within a single all-embracing experience; which we may call God or the Absolute. Sprigge, however, is more cautious than Fechner insofar as he declines to identify any physical systems other than those of animals (including human beings) that can confidently be said to possess their own inner conscious life (Sprigge 2006, ch.9). Against the idea that God is some type of all-embracing spirit or person it is often complained that this would undermine the autonomous personhood of finite individuals; for can one person be _part_ of another? Fechner suggests as a model for understanding this the way in which our different sense modalities (sight, smell, touch, etc), each inaccessible to each other, combine together into one unified consciousness (Fechner 1946, 144). While to extend such a model beyond the merely receptive to the active aspects of personhood, we might think of the way in which the agency of an organisation is exercised through the agency of its individual members. Here several pantheists have been influenced by Christian ideas of the indwelling spirit of God at work within the body of the Church.## 13. ValueSixthly (and perhaps most importantly of all) it is widely thought that the most important thing about God—thing that most makes us call him ‘God’—is his perfection or goodness. God is a being ‘worthy of worship.’ Can the pantheist say this of the cosmos as a whole? A variety of positions are possible. (1) Any pantheistic world-view arrived at by extending the reach of the traditional theistic God will find it relatively easy to assert the same value to the cosmos that it attributed to God, but there are other possibilities as well. (2) Insofar as the pantheist assertion of unity may be understood as an assertion of complete and coherent integration, and disvalue held to lie in conflict, disharmony or incompleteness, then it may be possible to argue that the culmination of metaphysical unity constitutes also the culmination of value. For example, the Absolute Idealist Bernard Bosanquet states, “We cannot describe perfection; that is, we cannot enumerate its components and state their form and connection in detail. But we can define its character as the harmony of all being. And good is perfection in its character of satisfactoriness; that which is considered as the end of conations and the fruition of desires” (Bosanquet 1913,194). (3) More naturalistically, it might be suggested than pantheism tells us that nature is our proper home and, as such, our proper good. Everything has its place in a wider system which both supports it and to which it contributes. As natural creatures our most fulfilling life is found in and at one with nature. (4) Lastly, it should be noted that many scientific pantheists argue that nature has no _intrinsic_ value whatsoever. It is merely something that _we_ happen to love and venerate in the highest degree.## 14. Pantheism and the Problem of EvilHistorically one of the strongest and most persistent objections to pantheism is that, because of its all-encompassing nature, it seems inhospitable to the differentiations of value that characterise life. In what might be thought of as a pantheistic version of the problem of evil, it is challenged that if God includes everything and God is perfect or good, then everything which exists ought to be perfect or good; a conclusion which seems wholly counter to our common experience that much in the world is very far from being so. Or to put the argument slightly differently, if whatever we do or however things turn out must be deemed the action of God, how can our pantheistic belief demand of us any specific duty? The only alternative conclusion, if we wish to hold on to the difference between what is good and what is bad, would seem to be equally unattractive claim that a universe _containing both_ values, _in itself_ possesses _neither_ ; the pantheistic deity in its own being lies beyond good and evil.To point out that classical theism faces its own difficulties over evil and God’s providence, while it may level the playing field, does nothing in itself to help solve the puzzle, and pantheists themselves have suggested a variety of explanations or theodicies. (1) The most popular model for dealing with evil is found in the philosophy of Spinoza who regards both error and evil as distortions that result from the fragmentary view of finite creatures; phenomena real enough to the finite beings who experience them but which would disappear in the widest and final vision of God. In this he was, of course, developing the Stoic sense that if we could see the world as God does, as the perfectly harmonious embodiment of the _logos_ , we would recognise how its apparent defects in fact contribute to the goodness of the whole. (2) It may be responded also that the objection that pantheism councils moral indifference is based on a modal confusion, comparable to that made by the proponent of logical determinism. If pantheism amounts to a doctrine of providence, it is true that what actually happens will be for the best, but it certainly does not follow from that that whatever else _might have_ happened _would have_ been for the best, and it possible that part at least of the perfection of the cosmos comes about through our own individual moral choices.## 15. Pantheism and the distribution of value