A WORD A DAY.

Southland Times, Issue 21657, 19 March 1932, Page 6

A WORD A DAY.

PANTHEISM. This word has been coined from the Greek pan, “all,” and theos, “a god.” The term is used to designate the teaching that God is in all things, that the physical universe taken or conceived of as a whole is Deity, that there is no God but the combination of forces, and laws which appear to operate in the material world. The adjective form, “pantheistic,” is used to express “pertaining to, founded in, or leading to, pantheism.” In pantheism there is seen the obvious effort to merge the divergent views that God is omnipresent, and that matter in various degrees of air, water, mineral, etc., is also everywhere. The result has been a phase of pantheism known as cosmotheism, the worship of the physical universe as the only divinity. Pan-the-ism is accented on the first syllable ; sound a as in at, e as in event, i as in it, s as z. “The pantheistic views were seen to have no foundation.” lOTA. For H.J.B.— “Iota” is the Anglicized form of the name of the ninth and smallest letter of the Greek alphabet; and because it took so little effort to make the,character the word has come! to be applied to express “a very small quantity or degree.” Our word “jot,” with virtually the same meaning, is derived from the’same root, which, in turn, may be traced to the Hebrew yod, the name of the smallest letter of the Hebrew alphabet (corresponding to our “x”), whence come also the Dutch jot, and the Spanish and Italian jota. I-o-ta is accented on the second syllable; sound i hard as in ice, o as in old, a as in sofa.

“They never depart an iota from the authentic formulas of tyranny and usurpation.” (Burke).