ATHEISM AS I KNEW AND TAUGHT IT.
The first step which leaves behind the idea of a limited and personal
God, an extra-cosmic Creator, and leads the student to the point
whence Atheism and Pantheism diverge, is the recognition that a
profound unity of substance underlies the infinite diversities of
natural phenomena, the discernment of the One beneath the Many. This
was the step I had taken ere my first meeting with Charles Bradlaugh,
and I had written:--
"It is manifest to all who will take the trouble to think steadily,
that there can be only one eternal and underived substance, and that
matter and spirit must, therefore, only be varying manifestations of
this one substance. The distinction made between matter and spirit is,
then, simply made for the sake of convenience and clearness, just as
we may distinguish perception from judgment, both of which, however,
are alike processes of thought. Matter is, in its constituent elements,
the same as spirit; existence is _one_, however manifold in its
phenomena; life is one, however multiform in its evolution. As the
heat of the coal differs from the coal itself, so do memory,
perception, judgment, emotion, and will differ from the brain which is
the instrument of thought. But nevertheless they are all equally
products of the one sole substance, varying only in their
conditions.... I find myself, then, compelled to believe that one only
substance exists in all around me; that the universe is eternal, or at
least eternal so far as our faculties are concerned, since we cannot,
as some one has quaintly put it, 'get to the outside of everywhere';
that a Deity cannot be conceived of as apart from the universe; that
the Worker and the Work are inextricably interwoven, and in some sense
eternally and indissolubly combined. Having got so far, we will
proceed to examine into the possibility of proving the existence of
that one essence popularly called by the name of _God_, under the
conditions strictly defined by the orthodox. Having demonstrated, as I
hope to do, that the orthodox idea of God is unreasonable and absurd,
we will endeavour to ascertain whether _any_ idea of God, worthy to be
called an idea, is attainable in the present state of our faculties."
"The Deity must of necessity be that one and only substance out of
which all things are evolved, under the uncreated conditions and
eternal laws of the universe; He must be, as Theodore Parker somewhat
oddly puts it, 'the materiality of matter as well as the spirituality
of spirit'--_i.e._, these must both be products of this one substance;
a truth which is readily accepted as soon as spirit and matter are
seen to be but different modes of one essence. Thus we identify
substance with the all-comprehending and vivifying force of nature,
and in so doing we simply reduce to a physical impossibility the
existence of the Being described by the orthodox as a God possessing
the attributes of personality. The Deity becomes identified with
nature, co-extensive with the universe, but the _God_ of the orthodox
no longer exists; we may change the signification of God, and use the
word to express a different idea, but we can no longer mean by it a
Personal Being in the orthodox sense, possessing an individuality
which divides Him from the rest of the universe."[3]
Proceeding to search whether _any_ idea of God was attainable, I came
to the conclusion that evidence of the existence of a conscious Power
was lacking, and that the ordinary proofs offered were inconclusive;
that we could grasp phenomena and no more. "There appears, also, to
be a possibility of a mind in nature, though we have seen that
intelligence is, strictly speaking, impossible. There cannot be
perception, memory, comparison, or judgment, but may there not be a
perfect mind, unchanging, calm, and still? Our faculties fail us when
we try to estimate the Deity, and we are betrayed into contradictions
and absurdities; but does it therefore follow that He _is_ not? It
seems to me that to deny His existence is to overstep the boundaries
of our thought-power almost as much as to try and define it. We
pretend to know the Unknown if we declare Him to be the Unknowable.
Unknowable to us at present, yes! Unknowable for ever, in other
possible stages of existence? We have reached a region into which we
cannot penetrate; here all human faculties fail us; we bow our heads
on 'the threshold of the unknown.'
"'And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see,
But if we could see and hear, this vision--were it not He?'
Thus sings Alfred Tennyson, the poet of metaphysics: '_if_ we could
see and hear.' Alas! it is always an 'if!'[4]
This refusal to believe without evidence, and the declaration that
anything "behind phenomena" is unknowable to man as at present
constituted--these are the two chief planks of the Atheistic platform,
as Atheism was held by Charles Bradlaugh and myself. In 1876 this
position was clearly reaffirmed. "It is necessary to put briefly the
Atheistic position, for no position is more continuously and more
persistently misrepresented. Atheism is _without_ God. It does not
assert _no_ God. 'The Atheist does not say "There is no God," but he
says, "I know not what you mean by God; I am without idea of God; the
word God is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation.
I do not deny God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no
conception, and the conception of which, by its affirmer, is so
imperfect that he is unable to define it to me."' (Charles Bradlaugh,
"Freethinker's Text-book," p. 118.) The Atheist neither affirms nor
denies the possibility of phenomena differing from those recognised by
human experience.... As his knowledge of the universe is extremely
limited and very imperfect, the Atheist declines either to deny or to
affirm anything with regard to modes of existence of which he knows
nothing. Further, he refuses to believe anything concerning that of
which he knows nothing, and affirms that that which can never be the
subject of knowledge ought never to be the object of belief. While the
Atheist, then, neither affirms nor denies the unknown, he _does_ deny
all which conflicts with the knowledge to which he has already
attained. For example, he _knows_ that one is one, and that three
times one are three; he _denies_ that three times one are, or can be,
one. The position of the Atheist is a clear and a reasonable one: I
know nothing about 'God,' and therefore I do not believe in Him or in
it; what you tell me about your God is self-contradictory, and is
therefore incredible. I do not deny 'God,' which is an unknown tongue
to me; I do deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without
God."[5] Up to 1887 I find myself writing on the same lines: "No man
can rationally affirm 'There is no God,' until the word 'God' has for
him a definite meaning, and until everything that exists is known to
him, and known with what Leibnitz calls 'perfect knowledge.' The
Atheist's denial of the Gods begins only when these Gods are defined
or described. Never yet has a God been defined in terms which were not
palpably self-contradictory and absurd; never yet has a God been
described so that a concept of Him was made possible to human
thought--Nor is anything gained by the assertors of Deity when they
allege that He is incomprehensible. If 'God' exists and is
incomprehensible, His incomprehensibility is an admirable reason for
being silent about Him, but can never justify the affirmation of
self-contradictory propositions, and the threatening of people with
damnation if they do not accept them."[6] "The belief of the Atheist
stops where his evidence stops. He believes in the existence of the
universe, judging the accessible proof thereof to be adequate, and he
finds in this universe sufficient cause for the happening of all
phenomena. He finds no intellectual satisfaction in placing a gigantic
conundrum behind the universe, which only adds its own
unintelligibility to the already sufficiently difficult problem of
existence. Our lungs are not fitted to breathe beyond the atmosphere
which surrounds our globe, and our faculties cannot breathe outside
the atmosphere of the phenomenal."[7] And I summed up this essay with
the words: "I do not believe in God. My mind finds no grounds on which
to build up a reasonable faith. My heart revolts against the spectre
of an Almighty Indifference to the pain of sentient beings. My
conscience rebels against the injustice, the cruelty, the inequality,
which surround me on every side. But I believe in Man. In man's
redeeming power; in man's remoulding energy; in man's approaching
triumph, through knowledge, love, and work."[8]
These views of existence naturally colour all views of life and of the
existence of the Soul. And here steps in the profound difference
between Atheism and Pantheism; both posit an Existence at present
inscrutable by human faculties, of which all phenomena are modes; but
to the Atheist that Existence manifests as Force-Matter, unconscious,
unintelligent, while to the Pantheist it manifests as Life-Matter,
conscious, intelligent. To the one, life and consciousness are
attributes, properties, dependent upon arrangements of matter; to the
other they are fundamental, essential, and only limited in their
manifestation by arrangements of matter. Despite the attraction held
for me in Spinoza's luminous arguments, the over-mastering sway which
Science was beginning to exercise over me drove me to seek for the
explanation of all problems of life and mind at the hands of the
biologist and the chemist. They had done so much, explained so much,
could they not explain all? Surely, I thought, the one safe ground is
that of experiment, and the remembered agony of doubt made me very
slow to believe where I could not prove. So I was fain to regard life
as an attribute, and this again strengthened the Atheistic position.
"Scientifically regarded, life is not an entity but a property; it is
not a mode of existence, but a characteristic of certain modes. Life
is the result of an arrangement of matter, and when rearrangement
occurs the former result can no longer be present; we call the result
of the changed arrangement death. Life and death are two convenient
words for expressing the general outcome of two arrangements of
matter, one of which is always found to precede the other."[9] And
then, having resorted to chemistry for one illustration, I took
another from one of those striking and easily grasped analogies,
facility for seeing and presenting which has ever been one of the
secrets of my success as a propagandist. Like pictures, they impress
the mind of the hearer with a vivid sense of reality. "Every one knows
the exquisite iridiscence of mother-of-pearl, the tender, delicate
hues which melt into each other, glowing with soft radiance. How
different is the dull, dead surface of a piece of wax. Yet take that
dull, black wax and mould it so closely to the surface of the
mother-of-pearl that it shall take every delicate marking of the
shell, and when you raise it the seven-hued glory shall smile at you
from the erstwhile colourless surface. For, though it be to the naked
eye imperceptible, all the surface of the mother-of-pearl is in
delicate ridges and furrows, like the surface of a newly-ploughed
field; and when the waves of light come dashing up against the ridged
surface, they are broken like the waves on a shingly shore, and are
flung backwards, so that they cross each other and the oncoming waves;
and, as every ray of white light is made up of waves of seven colours,
and these waves differ in length each from the others, the fairy
ridges fling them backward separately, and each ray reaches the eye by
itself; so that the colour of the mother-of-pearl is really the spray
of the light waves, and comes from arrangement of matter once again.
Give the dull, black wax the same ridges and furrows, and its glory
shall differ in nothing from that of the shell. To apply our
illustration: as the colour belongs to one arrangement of matter and
the dead surface to another, so life belongs to some arrangements of
matter and is their resultant, while the resultant of other
arrangements is death."[10]
The same line of reasoning naturally was applied to the existence of
"spirit" in man, and it was argued that mental activity, the domain of
the "spirit," was dependent on bodily organisation. "When the babe is
born it shows no sign of mind. For a brief space hunger and repletion,
cold and warmth are its only sensations. Slowly the specialised senses
begin to function; still more slowly muscular movements, at first
aimless and reflex, become co-ordinated and consciously directed.
There is no sign here of an intelligent spirit controlling a
mechanism; there is every sign of a learning and developing
intelligence, developing _pari passu_ with the organism of which it is
a function. As the body grows, the mind grows with it, and the
childish mind of the child develops into the hasty, quickly-judging,
half-informed, unbalanced youthful mind of the youth; with maturity of
years comes maturity of mind, and body and mind are vigorous and in
their prime. As old age comes on and the bodily functions decay, the
mind decays also, until age passes into senility, and body and mind
sink into second childhood. Has the immortal spirit decayed with the
organisation, or is it dwelling in sorrow, bound in its 'house of
clay'? If this be so, the 'spirit' must be unconscious, or else
separate from the very individual whose essence it is supposed to be,
for the old man does not suffer when his mind is senile, but is
contented as a little child. And not only is this constant,
simultaneous growth and decay of body and mind to be observed, but we
know that mental functions are disordered and suspended by various
physical conditions. Alcohol, many drugs, fever, disorder the mind; a
blow on the cranium suspends its functions, and the 'spirit' returns
with the surgeon's trepanning. Does the 'spirit' take part in dreams?
Is it absent from the idiot, from the lunatic? Is it guilty of
manslaughter when the madman murders, or does it helplessly watch its
own instrument performing actions at which it shudders? If it can only
work here through an organism, is its nature changed in its
independent life, severed from all with which it was identified? Can
it, in its 'disembodied state,' have anything in common with its
past?"[11]
It will be seen that my unbelief in the existence of the Soul or
Spirit was a matter of cold, calm reasoning. As I wrote in 1885: "For
many of us evidence must precede belief. I would gladly believe in a
happy immortality for all, as I would gladly believe that all misery
and crime and poverty will disappear in 1885--_if I could_. But I am
unable to believe an improbable proposition unless convincing evidence
is brought in support of it. Immortality is most improbable; no
evidence is brought forward in its favour. I cannot believe only
because I wish."[12] Such was the philosophy by which I lived from
1874 to 1886, when first some researches that will be dealt with in
their proper place, and which led me ultimately to the evidence I had
before vainly demanded, began to shake my confidence in its adequacy.
Amid outer storm and turmoil and conflict, I found it satisfy my
intellect, while lofty ideals of morality fed my emotions. I called
myself Atheist, and rightly so, for I was without God, and my horizon
was bounded by life on earth; I gloried in the name then, as it is
dear to my heart now, for all the associations with which it is
connected. "Atheist is one of the grandest titles a man can wear; it
is the Order of Merit of the world's heroes. Most great discoverers,
most deep-thinking philosophers, most earnest reformers, most toiling
pioneers of progress, have in their turn had flung at them the name of
Atheist. It was howled over the grave of Copernicus; it was clamoured
round the death-pile of Bruno; it was yelled at Vanini, at Spinoza, at
Priestley, at Voltaire, at Paine; it has become the laurel-bay of the
hero, the halo of the martyr; in the world's history it has meant the
pioneer of progress, and where the cry of 'Atheist' is raised there
may we be sure that another step is being taken towards the redemption
of humanity. The saviours of the world are too often howled at as
Atheists, and then worshipped as Deities. The Atheists are the
vanguard of the army of Freethought, on whom falls the brunt of the
battle, and are shivered the hardest of the blows; their feet trample
down the thorns that others may tread unwounded; their bodies fill up
the ditch that, by the bridge thus made, others may pass to victory.
Honour to the pioneers of progress, honour to the vanguard of
Liberty's army, honour to those who to improve earth have forgotten
heaven, and who in their zeal for man have forgotten God."[13]
This poor sketch of the conception of the universe, to which I had
conquered my way at the cost of so much pain, and which was the inner
centre round which my life revolved for twelve years, may perhaps show
that the Atheistic Philosophy is misjudged sorely when it is scouted
as vile or condemned as intellectually degraded. It has outgrown
anthropomorphic deities, and it leaves us face to face with Nature,
open to all her purifying, strengthening inspirations. "There is only
one kind of prayer," it says, "which is reasonable, and that is the
deep, silent adoration of the greatness and beauty and order around
us, as revealed in the realms of non-rational life and in Humanity; as
we bow our heads before the laws of the universe, and mould our lives
into obedience to their voice, we find a strong, calm peace steal over
our hearts, a perfect trust in the ultimate triumph of the right, a
quiet determination to 'make our lives sublime.' Before our own high
ideals, before those lives which show us 'how high the tides of Divine
life have risen in the human world,' we stand with hushed voice and
veiled face; from them we draw strength to emulate, and even dare
struggle to excel. The contemplation of the ideal is true prayer; it
inspires, it strengthens, it ennobles. The other part of prayer is
work; from contemplation to labour, from the forest to the street.
Study nature's laws, conform to them, work in harmony with them, and
work becomes a prayer and a thanksgiving, an adoration of the
universal wisdom, and a true obedience to the universal law."[14]
To a woman of my temperament, filled with passionate desire for the
bettering of the world, the elevation of humanity, a lofty system of
ethics was of even more importance than a logical, intellectual
conception of the universe; and the total loss of all faith in a
righteous God only made me more strenuously assertive of the binding
nature of duty and the overwhelming importance of conduct. In 1874
this conviction found voice in a pamphlet on the "True Basis of
Morality," and in all the years of my propaganda on the platform of
the National Secular Society no subject was more frequently dealt with
in my lectures than that of human ethical growth and the duty of man
to man. No thought was more constantly in my mind than that of the
importance of morals, and it was voiced at the very outset of my
public career. Speaking of the danger lest "in these stirring times of
inquiry," old sanctions of right conduct should be cast aside ere new
ones were firmly established, I wrote: "It therefore becomes the duty
of every one who fights in the ranks of Freethought, and who ventures
to attack the dogmas of the Churches, and to strike down the
superstitions which enslave men's intellect, to beware how he uproots
sanctions of morality which he is too weak to replace, or how, before
he is prepared with better ones, he removes the barriers which do yet,
however poorly, to some extent check vice and repress crime.... That
which touches morality touches the heart of society; a high and pure
morality is the life-blood of humanity; mistakes in belief are
inevitable, and are of little moment; mistakes in life destroy
happiness, and their destructive consequences spread far and wide. It
is, then, a very important question whether we, who are endeavouring
to take away from the world the authority on which has hitherto been
based all its morality, can offer a new and firm ground whereupon may
safely be built up the fair edifice of a noble life."
I then proceeded to analyse revelation and intuition as a basis for
morals, and, discarding both, I asserted: "The true basis of morality
is utility; that is, the adaptation of our actions to the promotion of
the general welfare and happiness; the endeavour so to rule our lives
that we may serve and bless mankind." And I argued for this basis,
showing that the effort after virtue was implied in the search for
happiness: "Virtue is an indispensable part of all true and solid
happiness.... But it is, after all, only reasonable that happiness
should be the ultimate test of right and wrong, if we live, as we do,
in a realm of law. Obedience to law must necessarily result in
harmony, and disobedience in discord. But if obedience to law result
in harmony it must also result in happiness--all through nature
obedience to law results in happiness, and through obedience each
living thing fulfils the perfection of its being, and in that
perfection finds its true happiness." It seemed to me most important
to remove morality from the controversies about religion, and to give
it a basis of its own: "As, then, the grave subject of the existence
of Deity is a matter of dispute, it is evidently of deep importance to
society that morality should not be dragged into this battlefield, to
stand or totter with the various theories of the Divine nature which
human thought creates and destroys. If we can found morality on a
basis apart from theology, we shall do humanity a service which can
scarcely be overestimated." A study of the facts of nature, of the
consequences of man in society, seemed sufficient for such a basis.
"Our faculties do not suffice to tell us about God; they do suffice to
study phenomena, and to deduce laws from correlated facts. Surely,
then, we should do wisely to concentrate our strength and our energies
on the discovery of the attainable, instead of on the search after the
unknowable. If we are told that morality consists in obedience to the
supposed will of a supposed perfectly moral being, because in so doing
we please God, then we are at once placed in a region where our
faculties are useless to us, and where our judgment is at fault. But
if we are told that we are to lead noble lives, because nobility of
life is desirable for itself alone, because in so doing we are acting
in harmony with the laws of Nature, because in so doing we spread
happiness around our pathway and gladden our fellow-men--then, indeed,
motives are appealed to which spring forward to meet the call, and
chords are struck in our hearts which respond in music to the touch."
It was to the establishment of this secure basis that I bent my
energies, this that was to me of supreme moment. "Amid the fervid
movement of society, with its wild theories and crude social reforms,
with its righteous fury against oppression and its unconsidered
notions of wider freedom and gladder life, it is of vital importance
that morality should stand on a foundation unshakable; that so through
all political and religious revolutions human life may grow purer and
nobler, may rise upwards into settled freedom, and not sink downwards
into anarchy. Only utility can afford us a sure basis, the
reasonableness of which will be accepted alike by thoughtful student
and hard-headed artisan. Utility appeals to all alike, and sets in
action motives which are found equally in every human heart. Well
shall it be for humanity that creeds and dogmas pass away, that
superstition vanishes, and the clear light of freedom and science
dawns on a regenerated earth--but well only if men draw tighter and
closer the links of trustworthiness, of honour, and of truth. Equality
before the law is necessary and just; liberty is the birthright of
every man and woman; free individual development will elevate and
glorify the race. But little worth these priceless jewels, little
worth liberty and equality with all their promise for mankind, little
worth even wider happiness, if that happiness be selfish, if true
fraternity, true brotherhood, do not knit man to man, and heart to
heart, in loyal service to the common need, and generous
self-sacrifice to the common good."[15]
To the forwarding of this moral growth of man, two things seemed to me
necessary--an Ideal which should stir the emotions and impel to
action, and a clear understanding of the sources of evil and of the
methods by which they might be drained. Into the drawing of the first
I threw all the passion of my nature, striving to paint the Ideal in
colours which should enthral and fascinate, so that love and desire to
realise might stir man to effort. If "morality touched by emotion" be
religion, then truly was I the most religious of Atheists, finding in
this dwelling on and glorifying of the Ideal full satisfaction for the
loftiest emotions. To meet the fascination exercised over men's hearts
by the Man of Sorrows, I raised the image of man triumphant, man
perfected. "Rightly is the ideal Christian type of humanity a Man of
Sorrows. Jesus, with worn and wasted body; with sad, thin lips, curved
into a mournful droop of penitence for human sin; with weary eyes
gazing up to heaven because despairing of earth; bowed down and aged
with grief and pain, broken-hearted with long anguish, broken-spirited
with unresisted ill-usage--such is the ideal man of the Christian
creed. Beautiful with a certain pathetic beauty, telling of the long
travail of earth, eloquent of the sufferings of humanity, but not the
model type to which men should conform their lives, if they would make
humanity glorious. And, therefore, in radiant contrast with this,
stands out in the sunshine and under the blue summer sky, far from
graveyards and torture of death agony, the fair ideal Humanity of the
Atheist. In form strong and fair, perfect in physical development as
the Hercules of Grecian art, radiant with love, glorious in
self-reliant power; with lips bent firm to resist oppression, and
melting into soft curves of passion and of pity; with deep, far-seeing
eyes, gazing piercingly into the secrets of the unknown, and resting
lovingly on the beauties around him; with hands strong to work in the
present; with heart full of hope which the future shall realise;
making earth glad with his labour and beautiful with his skill--this,
this is the Ideal Man, enshrined in the Atheist's heart. The ideal
humanity of the Christian is the humanity of the slave, poor, meek,
broken-spirited, humble, submissive to authority, however oppressive
and unjust; the ideal humanity of the Atheist is the humanity of the
free man who knows no lord, who brooks no tyranny, who relies on his
own strength, who makes his brother's quarrel his, proud,
true-hearted, loyal, brave."[16]
A one-sided view? Yes. But a very natural outcome of a sunny nature,
for years held down by unhappiness and the harshness of an outgrown
creed. It was the rebound of such a nature suddenly set free,
rejoicing in its liberty and self-conscious strength, and it carried
with it a great power of rousing the sympathetic enthusiasm of men and
women, deeply conscious of their own restrictions and their own
longings. It was the cry of the freed soul that had found articulate
expression, and the many inarticulate and prisoned souls answered to
it tumultously, with fluttering of caged wings. With hot insistence I
battled for the inspiration to be drawn from the beauty and grandeur
of which human life was capable. "Will any one exclaim, 'You are
taking all beauty out of human life, all hope, all warmth, all
inspiration; you give us cold duty for filial obedience, and
inexorable law in the place of God'? All beauty from life? Is there,
then, no beauty in the idea of forming part of the great life of the
universe, no beauty in conscious harmony with Nature, no beauty in
faithful service, no beauty in ideals of every virtue? 'All hope'?
Why, I give you more than hope, I give you certainty; if I bid you
labour for this world, it is with the knowledge that this world will
repay you a, thousand-fold, because society will grow purer, freedom
more settled, law more honoured, life more full and glad. What is your
heaven? A heaven in the clouds! I point to a heaven attainable on
earth. 'All warmth'? What! you serve warmly a God unknown and
invisible, in a sense the projected shadow of your own imaginings, and
can only serve coldly your brother whom you see at your side? There is
no warmth in brightening the lot of the sad, in reforming abuses, in
establishing equal justice for rich and poor? You find warmth in the
church, but none in the home? Warmth in imagining the cloud glories of
heaven, but none in creating substantial glories on earth?' All
inspiration'? If you want inspiration to feeling, to sentiment,
perhaps you had better keep to your Bible and your creeds; if you want
inspiration to work, go and walk through the East of London, or the
back streets of Manchester. You are inspired to tenderness as you gaze
at the wounds of Jesus, dead in Judaea long ago, and find no
inspiration in the wounds of men and women, dying in the England of
to-day? You 'have tears to shed for Him,' but none for the sufferer at
your doors? His passion arouses your sympathies, but you see no pathos
in the passion of the poor? Duty is colder than 'filial obedience'?
What do you mean by filial obedience? Obedience to your ideal of
goodness and love--is it not so? Then how is duty cold? I offer you
ideals for your homage: here is Truth for your Mistress, to whose
exaltation you shall devote your intellect; here is Freedom for your
General, for whose triumph you shall fight; here is Love for your
Inspirer, who shall influence your every thought; here is Man for your
Master--not in heaven, but on earth--to whose service you shall
consecrate every faculty of your being. 'Inexorable law in the place
of God'? Yes; a stern certainty that you shall not waste your life,
yet gather a rich reward at the close; that you shall not sow misery,
yet reap gladness; that you shall not be selfish, yet be crowned with
love; nor shall you sin, yet find safety in repentance. True, our
creed _is_ a stern one, stern with the beautiful sternness of Nature.
But if we be in the right, look to yourselves; laws do not check their
action for your ignorance; fire will not cease to scorch, because you
'did not know.'"[17]
With equal vigour did I maintain that "virtue was its own reward," and
that payment on the other side of the grave was unnecessary as an
incentive to right living. "What shall we say to Miss Cobbe's
contention that duty will 'grow grey and cold' without God and
immortality? Yes, for those with whom duty is a matter of selfish
calculation, and who are virtuous only because they look for a 'golden
crown' in payment on the other side the grave. Those of us who find
joy in right-doing, who work because work is useful to our fellows,
who live well because in such living we pay our contribution to the
world's wealth, leaving earth richer than we found it--we need no
paltry payment after death for our life's labour, for in that labour
is its own 'exceeding great reward.'"[18] But did any one yearn for
immortality, that "not all of me shall die"? "Is it true that Atheism
has no immortality? What is true immortality? Is Beethoven's true
immortality in his continued personal consciousness, or in his
glorious music deathless while the world endures? Is Shelley's true
life in his existence in some far-off heaven, or in the pulsing
liberty his lyrics send through men's hearts, when they respond to the
strains of his lyre? Music does not die, though one instrument be
broken; thought does not die, though one brain be shivered; love does
not die, though one heart's strings be rent; and no great thinker dies
so long as his thought re-echoes through the ages, its melody the
fuller-toned the more human brains send its music on. Not only to the
hero and the sage is this immortality given; it belongs to each
according to the measure of his deeds; world-wide life for world-wide
service; straitened life for straitened work; each reaps as he sows,
and the harvest is gathered by each in his rightful order."[19]
This longing to leave behind a name that will live among men by right
of service done them, this yearning for human love and approval that
springs naturally from the practical and intense realisation of human
brotherhood--these will be found as strong motives in the breasts of
the most earnest men and women who have in our generation identified
themselves with the Freethought cause. They shine through the written
and spoken words of Charles Bradlaugh all through his life, and every
friend of his knows how often he has expressed the longing that "when
the grass grows green over my grave, men may love me a little for the
work I tried to do."
Needless to say that, in the many controversies in which I took part,
it was often urged against me that such motives were insufficient,
that they appealed only to natures already ethically developed, and
left the average man, and, above all, the man below the average, with
no sufficiently constraining motive for right conduct. I resolutely
held to my faith in human nature, and the inherent response of the
human heart when appealed to from the highest grounds; strange--I
often think now--this instinctive certainty I had of man's innate
grandeur, that governed all my thought, inconsistent as that certainty
was with my belief in his purely animal ancestry. Pressed too hard, I
would take refuge in a passionate disdain for all who did not hear the
thrilling voice of Virtue and love her for her own sweet sake. "I have
myself heard the question asked: 'Why should I seek for truth, and why
should I lead a good life, if there be no immortality in which to reap
a reward?' To this question the Freethinker has one clear and short
answer: 'There is no reason why you should seek Truth, if to you the
search has no attracting power. There is no reason why you should lead
a noble life, if you find your happiness in leading a poor and a base
one.' Friends, no one can enjoy a happiness which is too high for his
capabilities; a book may be of intensest interest, but a dog will very
much prefer being given a bone. To him whose highest interest is
centred in his own miserable self, to him who cares only to gain his
own ends, to him who seeks only his own individual comfort, to that
man Freethought can have no attraction. Such a man may indeed be made
religious by a bribe of heaven; he may be led to seek for truth,
because he hopes to gain his reward hereafter by the search; but Truth
disdains the service of the self-seeker; she cannot be grasped by a
hand that itches for reward. If Truth is not loved for her own pure
sake, if to lead a noble life, if to make men happier, if to spread
brightness around us, if to leave the world better than we found
it--if these aims have no attraction for us, if these thoughts do not
inspire us, then we are not worthy to be Secularists, we have no right
to the proud title of Freethinkers. If you want to be paid for your
good lives by living for ever in a lazy and useless fashion in an idle
heaven; if you want to be bribed into nobility of life; if, like silly
children, you learn your lesson not to gain knowledge but to win
sugar-plums, then you had better go back to your creeds and your
churches; they are all you are fit for; you are not worthy to be free.
But we--who, having caught a glimpse of the beauty of Truth, deem the
possession of her worth more than all the world beside; who have made
up our minds to do our work ungrudgingly, asking for no reward beyond
the results which spring up from our labour--we will spread the Gospel
of Freethought among men, until the sad minor melodies of Christianity
have sobbed out their last mournful notes on the dying evening breeze,
and on the fresh morning winds shall ring out the chorus of hope and
joyfulness, from the glad lips of men whom the Truth has at last set
free."[20]
The intellectual comprehension of the sources of evil and the method
of its extinction was the second great plank in my ethical platform.
The study of Darwin and Herbert Spencer, of Huxley, Büchner and
Haeckel, had not only convinced me of the truth of evolution, but,
with help from W.H. Clifford, Lubbock, Buckle, Lecky, and many
another, had led me to see in the evolution of the social instinct the
explanation of the growth of conscience and of the strengthening of
man's mental and moral nature. If man by study of the conditions
surrounding him and by the application of intelligence to the subdual
of external nature, had already accomplished so much, why should not
further persistence along the same road lead to his complete
emancipation? All the evil, anti-social side of his nature was an
inheritance from his brute ancestry, and could be gradually
eradicated; he could not only "let the ape and tiger die," but he
could kill them out." It may be frankly acknowledged that man inherits
from his brute progenitors various bestial tendencies which are in
course of elimination. The wild-beast desire to fight is one of these,
and this has been encouraged, not checked, by religion.... Another
bestial tendency is the lust of the male for the female apart from
love, duty, and loyalty; this again has been encouraged by religion,
as witness the polygamy and concubinage of the Hebrews--as in Abraham,
David, and Solomon, not to mention the precepts of the Mosaic
laws--the bands of male and female prostitutes in connection with
Pagan temples, and the curious outbursts of sexual passion in
connection with religious revivals and missions. Another bestial
tendency is greed, the strongest grabbing all he can and trampling
down the weak, in the mad struggle for wealth; how and when has
religion modified this tendency, sanctified as it is in our present
civilisation? All these bestial tendencies will be eradicated only by
the recognition of human duty, of the social bond. Religion has not
eradicated them, but science, by tracing them to their source in our
brute ancestry, has explained them and has shown them in their true
light. As each recognises that the anti-social tendencies are the
bestial tendencies in man, and that man in evolving further must
evolve out of these, each also feels it part of his personal duty to
curb these in himself, and so to rise further from the brute. This
rational 'co-operation with Nature' distinguishes the scientific from
the religious person, and this constraining sense of obligation is
becoming stronger and stronger in all those who, in losing faith in
God, have gained hope for man."[21]
For this rational setting of oneself on the side of the forces working
for evolution implied active co-operation by personal purity and
nobility." To the Atheist it seems that the knowledge that the
perfecting of the race is only possible by the improvement of the
individual, supplies the most constraining motive which can be
imagined for efforts after personal perfection. The Theist may desire
personal perfection, but his desire is self-centred; each righteous
individual is righteous, as it were, alone, and his righteousness does
not benefit his fellows save as it may make him helpful and loving in
his dealings with them. The Atheist desires personal perfection not
only for his joy in it as beautiful in itself, but because science has
taught him the unity of the race, and he knows that each fresh
conquest of his over the baser parts of his nature, and each
strengthening of the higher, is a gain for all, and not for himself
alone."[22]
Besides all this, the struggle against evil, regarded as transitory
and as a necessary concomitant of evolution, loses its bitterness. "In
dealing with evil, Atheism is full of hope instead of despair. To the
Christian, evil is as everlasting as good; it exists by the permission
of God, and, therefore, by the will of God. Our nature is corrupt,
inclined to evil; the devil is ever near us, working all sin and all
misery. What hope has the Christian face to face with a world's
wickedness? what answer to the question, Whence comes sin? To the
Atheist the terrible problem has in it no figure of despair. Evil
comes from ignorance, we say; ignorance of physical and of moral
facts. Primarily, from ignorance of physical order; parents who dwell
in filthy, unventilated, unweathertight houses, who live on
insufficient, innutritious, unwholesome food, will necessarily be
unhealthy, will lack vitality, will probably have disease lurking in
their veins; such parents will bring into the world ill-nurtured
children, in whom the brain will generally be the least developed part
of the body; such children, by their very formation, will incline to
the animal rather than to the human, and by leading an animal, or
natural, life will be deficient in those qualities which are necessary
in social life. Their surroundings as they grow up, the home, the
food, the associates, all are bad. They are trained into vice,
educated into criminality; so surely as from the sown corn rises the
wheat-ear, so from the sowing of misery, filth, and starvation shall
arise crime. And the root of all is poverty and ignorance. Educate the
children, and give them fair wage for fair work in their maturity, and
crime will gradually diminish and ultimately disappear. Man is
God-made, says Theism; man is circumstance-made, says Atheism. Man is
the resultant of what his parents were, of what his surroundings have
been and are, and of what they have made him; himself the result of
the past he modifies the actual, and so the action and reaction go on,
he himself the effect of what is past, and one of the causes of what
is to come. Make the circumstances good and the results will be good,
for healthy bodies and healthy brains may be built up, and from a
State composed of such the disease of crime will have disappeared.
Thus is our work full of hope; no terrible will of God have we to
struggle against; no despairful future to look forward to, of a world
growing more and more evil, until it is, at last, to burned up; but a
glad, fair future of an ever-rising race, where more equal laws, more
general education, more just division, shall eradicate pauperism,
destroy ignorance, nourish independence, a future to be made the
grander by our struggles, a future to be made the nearer by our
toil."[23]
This joyous, self-reliant facing of the world with the resolute
determination to improve it is characteristic of the noblest Atheism
of our day. And it is thus a distintly elevating factor in the midst
of the selfishness, luxury, and greed of modern civilisation. It is a
virile virtue in the midst of the calculating and slothful spirit
which too ofter veils itself under the pretence or religion. It will
have no putting off of justice to a far-off day of reckoning, and it
is ever spurred on by the feeling, "The night cometh, when no man can
work." Bereft of all hope of a personal future, it binds up its hopes
with that of the race; unbelieving in any aid from Deity, it struggles
the more strenuously to work out man's salvation by his own strength.
"To us there is but small comfort in Miss Cobbe's assurance that
'earth's wrongs and agonies' 'will be righted hereafter.' Granting for
a moment that man survives death what certainty have we that 'the next
world' will be any improvement on this? Miss Cobbe assures us that
this is 'God's world'; whose world will the next be, if not also His?
Will He be stronger there or better, that He should set right in that
world the wrongs He has permitted here? Will He have changed His mind,
or have become weary of the contemplation of suffering? To me the
thought that the world was in the hands of a God who permitted all the
present wrongs and pains to exist would be intolerable, maddening in
its hopelessness. There is every hope of righting earth's wrongs and
of curing earth's pains if the reason and skill of man which have
already done so much are free to do the rest; but if they are to
strive against omnipotence, hopeless indeed is the future of the
world. It is in this sense that the Atheist looks on good as 'the
final goal of ill,' and believing that that goal will be reached the
sooner the more strenuous the efforts of each individual, he works in
the glad certainty that he is aiding the world's progress thitherward.
Not dreaming of a personal reward hereafter, not craving a personal
payment from heavenly treasury, he works and loves, content that he is
building a future fairer than his present, joyous that he is creating
a new earth for a happier race."[24]
Such was the creed and such the morality which governed my life and
thoughts from 1874 to 1886, and with some misgivings to 1889, and from
which I drew strength and happiness amid all outer struggles and
distress. And I shall ever remain grateful for the intellectual and
moral training it gave me, for the self-reliance it nurtured, for the
altruism it inculcated, for the deep feeling of the unity of man that
it fostered, for the inspiration to work that it lent. And perhaps the
chief debt of gratitude I owe to Freethought is that it left the mind
ever open to new truth, encouraged the most unshrinking questioning of
Nature, and shrank from no new conclusions, however adverse to the
old, that were based on solid evidence. I admit sorrowfully that all
Freethinkers do not learn this lesson, but I worked side by side with
Charles Bradlaugh, and the Freethought we strove to spread was
strong-headed and broad-hearted.
The antagonism which, as we shall see in a few moments, blazed out
against me from the commencement of my platform work, was based partly
on ignorance, was partly aroused by my direct attacks on Christianity,
and by the combative spirit I myself showed in those attacks, and very
largely by my extreme Radicalism in politics. I had against me all the
conventional beliefs and traditions of society in general, and I
attacked them, not with bated breath and abundant apologies, but
joyously and defiantly, with sheer delight in the intellectual strife.
I was fired, too, with passionate sympathy for the sufferings of the
poor, for the overburdened, overdriven masses of the people, not only
here but in every land, and wherever a blow was struck at Liberty or
Justice my pen or tongue brake silence. It was a perpetual carrying of
the fiery cross, and the comfortable did not thank me for shaking them
out of their soft repose.
The antagonism that grew out of ignorance regarded Atheism as implying
degraded morality and bestial life, and they assailed my conduct not
on evidence that it was evil, but on the presumption that an Atheist
must be immoral. Thus a Christian opponent at Leicester assailed me as
a teacher of free love, fathering on me views which were maintained in
a book that I had not read, but which, before I had ever seen the
_National Reformer_, had been reviewed in its columns--as it was
reviewed in other London papers--and had been commended for its clear
statement of the Malthusian position, but not for its contention as to
free love, a theory to which Mr. Bradlaugh was very strongly opposed.
Nor were the attacks confined to the ascription to me of theories
which I did not hold, but agents of the Christian Evidence Society, in
their street preaching, made the foulest accusations against me of
personal immorality. Remonstrances addressed to the Rev. Mr. Engström,
the secretary of the society, brought voluble protestations of
disavowal and disapproval; but as the peccant agents were continued in
their employment, the apologies were of small value. No accusation was
too coarse, no slander too baseless, for circulation by these men; and
for a long time these indignities caused me bitter suffering,
outraging my pride, and soiling my good name. The time was to come
when I should throw that good name to the winds for the sake of the
miserable, but in those early days I had done nothing to merit, even
ostensibly, such attacks. Even by educated writers, who should have
known better, the most wanton accusations of violence and would-be
destructiveness were brought against Atheists; thus Miss Frances Power
Cobbe wrote in the _Contemporary Review_ that loss of faith in God
would bring about the secularisation _or destruction_ of all
cathedrals, churches, and chapels. "Why," I wrote in answer, "should
cathedrals, churches, and chapels be destroyed? Atheism will utilise,
not destroy, the beautiful edifices which, once wasted on God, shall
hereafter be consecrated for man. Destroy Westminster Abbey, with its
exquisite arches, its glorious tones of soft, rich colour, its
stonework light as if of cloud, its dreamy, subdued twilight, soothing
as the 'shadow of a great rock in a weary land'? Nay, but reconsecrate
it to humanity. The fat cherubs who tumble over guns and banners on
soldiers' graves will fitly be removed to some spot where their clumsy
forms will no longer mar the upward-springing grace of lines of pillar
and of arch; but the glorious building wherein now barbaric psalms are
chanted and droning canons preach of Eastern follies, shall hereafter
echo the majestic music of Wagner and Beethoven, and the teachers of
the future shall there unveil to thronging multitudes the beauties and
the wonders of the world. The 'towers and spires' will not be effaced,
but they will no longer be symbols of a religion which sacrifices
earth to heaven and Man to God."[25] Between the cultured and the
uncultured burlesques of Atheism we came off pretty badly, being for
the most part regarded, as the late Cardinal Manning termed us, as
mere "cattle."
The moral purity and elevation of Atheistic teaching were overlooked
by many who heard only of my bitter attacks on Christian theology.
Against the teachings of eternal torture, of the vicarious atonement,
of the infallibility of the Bible, I levelled all the strength of my
brain and tongue, and I exposed the history of the Christian Church
with unsparing hand, its persecutions, its religious wars, its
cruelties, its oppressions. Smarting under the suffering inflicted on
myself, and wroth with the cruel pressure continually put on
Freethinkers by Christian employers, speaking under constant threats
of prosecution, identifying Christianity with the political and social
tyrannies of Christendom, I used every weapon that history, science,
criticism, scholarship could give me against the Churches; eloquence,
sarcasm, mockery, all were called on to make breaches in the wall of
traditional belief and crass superstition.
To argument and reason I was ever ready to listen, but I turned a
front of stubborn defiance to all attempts to compel assent to
Christianity by appeals to force. "The threat and the enforcement of
legal and social penalties against unbelief can never compel belief.
Belief must be gained by demonstration; it can never be forced by
punishment. Persecution makes the stronger among us bitter; the weaker
among us hypocrites; it never has made and never can make an honest
convert."[26]
That men and women are now able to speak and think as openly as they
do, that a broader spirit is visible in the Churches, that heresy is
no longer regarded as morally disgraceful--these things are very
largely due to the active and militant propaganda carried on under the
leadership of Charles Bradlaugh, whose nearest and most trusted friend
I was. That my tongue was in the early days bitterer than it should
have been, I frankly acknowledge; that I ignored the services done by
Christianity and threw light only on its crimes, thus committing
injustice, I am ready to admit. But these faults were conquered long
ere I left the Atheistic camp, and they were the faults of my
personality, not of the Atheistic philosophy. And my main contentions
were true, and needed to be made; from many a Christian pulpit to-day
may be heard the echo of the Freethought teachings; men's minds have
been awakened, their knowledge enlarged; and while I condemn the
unnecessary harshness of some of my language, I rejoice that I played
my part in that educating of England which has made impossible for
evermore the crude superstitions of the past, and the repetition of
the cruelties and injustices under which preceding heretics suffered.
But my extreme political views had also much to do with the general
feeling of hatred with which I was regarded. Politics, as such, I
cared not for at all, for the necessary compromises of political life
were intolerable to me; but wherever they touched on the life of the
people they became to me of burning interest. The land question, the
incidence of taxation, the cost of Royalty, the obstructive power of
the House of Lords--these were the matters to which I put my hand; I
was a Home Ruler, too, of course, and a passionate opponent of all
injustice to nations weaker than ourselves, so that I found myself
always in opposition to the Government of the day. Against our
aggressive and oppressive policy in Ireland, in the Transvaal, in
India, in Afghanistan, in Burmah, in Egypt, I lifted up my voice in
all our great towns, trying to touch the consciences of the people,
and to make them feel the immorality of a land-stealing, piratical
policy. Against war, against capital punishment, against flogging,
demanding national education instead of big guns, public libraries
instead of warships--no wonder I was denounced as an agitator, a
firebrand, and that all orthodox society turned up at me its most
respectable nose.