CHAPTER III. THE EDITOR AND THE ATHEIST

During Carlile's imprisonment in Dorchester Gaol, he edited the _Republican_, a Weekly Journal, which he conducted through fourteen volumes. Its circulation reached at one time as high as 15,000. He saw that a work had to be done, and he prepared to do it; if he could not do it so well as he could wish, he resolved to do it as well as he was able. He offered his ardour in the public cause as an apology for the want of a grammatical education. Drawn into authorship by the force of events, he hardly knew in what grammatical accuracy consisted, till he felt his own deficiency through the criticisms of his correspondents, some of whom did not hesitate to tell him, that he was unfit for a public writer. This state of things continued till the fourth volume of the _Republican_, where he wisely resolved to put his prison hours to educational uses.(1) But his editorial duties were his best education, and this he admitted; 'I give,' said he, in 1825, 'a receipt to the criticism of my friends upon my writings for the better part of the knowledge that I now possess.'(2) Some of Carlile's correspondents were men from whom it was an honour to receive direction. From Francis Place he gleaned all his ideas of Political Economy, and what Carlile called the 'all-surpassing question of the regulation of the numbers of the people.' It was from Jeremy Bentham, through Mr. Place, that he was instructed not to attempt the building of any system of his own, but to go on pulling down existing errors, every item of success in which, was in fact, so much good building.(3) In Carlile's last days he spoke of Francis Place as 'his old tutor who had a hard task to beat all the superstition out of him.'

1. See Repub. vol. iv. p. 191. 2. Lion, vol. i. p. 373.

4. Christian Warrior, p. 13.

While others were calling Carlile 'Atheist and Infidel,' Place was calling him 'the most, obstinately superstitious fellow alive;' but always paid him the compliment of admitting that he was worth the trouble, and that if he could be set right he would keep right.(1)

When Carlile's days of thinking began, he began with himself. He knew himself well, and this was the source of his strength. Like Cobbett he could write always well of himself. His first study was to form a mind of his own on the basis of the best known principles.(2) Carlile began to write a man. Nature made him for an agitator. He had an iron will and limitless self-reliance. I have been told by one who advised him frequently, that no man could control him. His first papers in the _Republican_, are thoughtful, manly, self-possessed, nervous, and resolute. Sherwin preceded Carlile in the publication of a work, called the _Republican_, but, after the fourth number, it was changed into '_Sherwin's Weekly Political Register_,' on the ground that people were afraid of its name. But Carlile resumed its title, and selected those articles only which had the real names and addresses of the author appended. He called upon the friends of his opinions to avow themselves, and declared himself ambitious of incurring martyrdom, if martyrdom was necessary to the cause of liberty.(3)

Carlile's political and religious prototype was Paine. Carlile always wrote with manifest purpose, and seems to have emulated the plain vigour of Cobbett and the invective of Junius.

Carlile's habits were marked by great abstemiousnesss. Seldom taking animal food,(4) he refused wine(5) when offered a dozen at Dorchester Gaol, preferring good milk. He was morally as well as physically particular. In the rules of the Deistical Society, he provided that only persons of good character should be eligible.(6) 'It is important to you, Republicans,' wrote he, from Dorchester Gaol, 'that however humble the advocates of your principles may be, they should exhibit a clear moral character to the world.'(7) He never sold a copy of any work which he would hesitate to read to his children.(8) He expressed a hope, when fairs were popular, that fairs would be put down all over the country. He was one of the first thus to oppose what the pious then approved.

1. Christian Warrior, p. 26. 2. Gauntlet, No. 8, p. 113. 3. Repub. No. 1, vol. i. 4. Repub. vol. ii. p. 148. 5. Repub. vol. ii. p. 234. 6. Repub. vol. v. ft. 31. 7. Repub. vol. vi. p. 3. 8. Repub. vol. vii. p. 36.

There was no intolerance in Carlile's habits. 'I have no wish,' these were his words, 'to force my opinions on any man--if he wishes to have them, he must either buy them or challenge me to defend them; and, in this last instance, it must be some one whom I consider worth contending with, before I would open my mouth.'(1) He was of a retiring turn, and utterly incapable of obtruding himself, where there was the possibility of his not being desired. It was a sense of duty alone that made him brave, his moral courage was great, but it was the courage of conviction. Carlile was an illustration of Bulwer's remark, that courage in one thing, is not to be mistaken for courage in everything. He who opposed himself without fear to the spies of Sidmouth, and the edicts of Castlereagh, who singly withstood public opinion on the questions of Marriage and Religion, when that opinion knew no reason and no mercy, he felt, through his whole life, a want of fair confidence in himself, when addressing a public audience. Large numbers, called together by his name, produced in him a sense of disturbing responsibility and embarrassment.(2) When liberated from imprisonment in Dorchester Gaol--an ill discipline certainly for oratory--he trembled at committing his reputation to the lapses of an inexperienced tongue. His friends thought he would never make a speaker, but his perseverance prevailed. Still his efforts were irregular; sometimes he was as eloquent as the best, at others timidly hesitating. Probably his stolid nature wanted passion to excite it--some nature's, like deep waters, are only to put in motion by a storm. A paralytic stroke, in March 1841, affected the muscles of the mouth and tongue, and diminished his acquired power.

Hume has said that Christian sects manifest intolerance, which increases in intensity the nearer their valuing creeds coincide. This has been true of some classes of infidels, but Carlile wisely regarded with favour the approximation of sects to reason. He encouraged the Rev. Robert Taylor's Deistical friends, because, like the Unitarians, they would break up some part of the superstition of other sects. His impression was that, 'Though not themselves free from superstition, they would lessen the sum total among all the sects, and, in so doing, do a certain amount of good.'(3)

1. Repub. vol. iv. p. 33. 2. Gauntlet, No. 30 p. 385. 3. Repub. vol. xvi. p. 130.

Carlile's writings abound in instances of great political penetration: thus he placed on the title page of the second volume of the _Republican_ these words--'Liberty is the property of man: a Republic only can protect it.' The same volume contained his qualification ot equality. 'Equality,' says he, 'means not an equality of riches, but of rights merely.'(1) Yet the contrary is asserted to this hour. 'Timidity,' wrote he in 1828, 'maybe seen sitting on the countenance of almost every Politician. He speaks and speculates with a trembling which generates a prejudice in others. As it is the slave who makes the tyrant, so it is timidity in the Politician which creates the prejudice of the persecutor.'(2) In words to this effect, he pourtrayed that conventional caution of the newspaper press, which is to this hour the bane of popular progress. He had a distincter conception of the part to be played by education in public reform, than any other agitator of his rank at that time. 'I have before advised your majesty,' said he, in dedicating vol. 12 of the _Republican_ to George IV., 'to patronise Mechanics' Institutions, and you will become a greater monarch than Buonaparte. Kings must come to this, and he will be the wisest who does it first and voluntarily.' Republicanism was not with Carlile, as with so many--politics in rags; he never divested it of efficiency and dignity. To one who said that his exacting L100 shares for his Book Company was aristocratic, he answered, 'Call it what you please, that is republican which is done well.'(3) Carlile took a view of the rationale and initiation of revolution in England as manly as it was sagacious. 'In the beginning of my political career,' he writes, 'I had those common notions which the enthusiasm of youth and inexperience produces, that all reforms must be the work of physical force. The heat of my imagination shewed me everything about to be done at once. I am now enthusiastic, but it is in _working_ where I can work _practically_ rather than theoretically; and though I would be the last to oppose a well-applied physical force, in the bringing about reforms or revolutions, I would be the last in advising others to rush into useless dangers that _I would shun, or where I would not lead_. I have long formed the idea that an insurrection against grievances in this country must, to be successful, be spontaneous and not plotted, and that all political conspiracies may be local and even individual evils. I challenge the omniscience of the Home Office to say whether I ever countenanced anything of the kind in word or deed. I will do nothing in a political point of view which cannot be done openly.'(4) There is a strong vein of political wisdom in all this, not yet appreciated by popular politicians, and this has the merit of having been written at a time, when (as indeed now) the maxim of English popular progressive politics is not to find how much can be done _within the law_, but how much can be done _without it_ and _against it_: a policy which dooms Democracy to ceaseless antagonisms in the attainment of its claims, and will, if persisted in, fetter it with impotence when the victory is won.

1. Repub. vol. xiv. p. 105. 2. Lion, vol. i. p. 3. 3. Repub. vol. xii. p. 3. 4. Repub. vol. xiv. pp. 5, 6.

The progress of Carlile's convictions respecting religion is evident and honourable to his thoughtfulness. He was twenty-seven years old before he conceived any error in the article religion. His attention was first drawn to the fact by finding that the suppressed writings of his day chiefly related to religion. When the Attorney General first called him profane, for publishing Hone's Parodies, he was a very different man. Through several volumes of the _Republican_ he was a Deist only. But reflection led him onwards step by step. A first indication is in these words--'Paine, in his lifetime, appears to have been the advocate of a Deistical church, but such an attempt shall ever find my reprobation, as unnecessary and mischievous.'(1) The reason he assigned was, that science alone could lead to true devotion, and lectures on science were, therefore, the proper worship. In his first controversy with Cobbett, he avowed himself, as Mr. Owen always has, a believer in a great controlling power of Nature. But at this point, Carlile's belief had grown practical in its negation, as he wrote, 'I advocate the abolition of all religions, without setting up anything new of the kind.'(2) By this time he had become a confirmed materialist, and soon after, defined mind as a portion of the organization of the human body, acted upon by the atmosphere and the body jointly, and dependent upon a peculiarity in the organization, in the same manner as voice and life itself.(3) The definitions he gave, in 1822, of Religion and Morality were essentially the same as those since rendered more elegantly by Emerson. Carlile defined Morality as a rule of conduct relating to man and man--Religion as a rule of conduct, relating not to man, but to something which he fancies to be his Maker.(4) Next he observed, 'I may have said that the changes observed in phenomenon argue the existence of an active power in the universe, but I have again and again renounced the notion of that power being intelligent or designing.(5) 'It is not till since my imprisonment that I have avowed myself Atheist.'(6)

1. Repub. vol. iv. p. 220. 2. Repub. vol. v. p. 201. 3. Repub. vol. vi. 4. Repub. vol. vi. p. 249. 5. Repub. vol. vii. p. 26. 6. Repub. vol. vii. p. 397.

He reached the climax of his Atheism on the title page to his tenth volume of the _Republican_, where he declared 'There is no such a God in existence as any man has preached; nor any kind of God and this declaration was so far carried out in detail, as to exclude from the _Republican_ _God, nature, mind, soul_, and _spirit_, as words without proto types.(1)

The two extremes of Carlile's career exhibit a coincidence of terms, but betray to the initiated observer a radical progress and distinction of opinion. In his first work, he wrote, 'Science is the Antichrist;'(2) in his last, 'Science is the Christ.'(3) When he wrote the first he was a Deist, when he wrote the last he was an Atheist.

We commonly find that extreme political enthusiasts in youth, pass, in old age, like Sir Francis Burdett, into extreme Conservatism: but it is a phenomenon in intellect, that Carlile, whose convictions, not his passions, led him to hold positive materialism, should lapse into a more than Swedenborgian mysticism. 'I have discovered,' said he, 'that the names of the Old Testament, either apparently of persons or places, are not such names as the religious mistakes have constructed, but names of states of mind manifested in the human race, and, in this sense, the Bible may be scientifically read as a treatise on spirit, soul, or mind, and not as a history of time, people, and place.'(4) To insist on the utility of such a theory, except as a mere theory of theological explanation (useful as explaining it away altogether), was very strange in Carlile. It seems like the artifice of a beaten man to conciliate an implacable enemy. But Carlile was no beaten man. A few months only before his death, he wrote to Sir Robert Peel, in reference to the imprisonment of Mr. Southwell and myself, avowing his determination to renew martyrdom, if Sir Robert persisted in reviving persecution. But Carlile did make the capital error of proposing to explain science under Christian terms, which was giving to science, which is universal, a sectarian character. Hence, he was found using the words God, soul, Christ, etc., with all the pertinacity of a divine, and scandalising his friends by taking out his diploma as a preacher. In this, he manifested his old courage. He was still true to himself, and was still an Atheist, but veiling his materialism under a Swedenborgian nomenclature.

1. Repub. vol. xiv. p, 770. 2. Preface, p. 14. to vol. i. of Repub. 3. Christian Warrior. 4. Christian Warrior, p. 30.

But the adoption of Swedenborgian terminology was a virtual recantation, and Carlile lost caste by it as did Lawrence. Lawrence gained no practice, and Carlile no influence. Indeed, I never knew any of these virtual recantations to be believed, or even respected by the world, who forced them on. A real recantation I never knew beyond this, that Atheists have acceded to Pantheism, or perhaps, relapsed into Unitarianism. But they have always remained Rationalists. None that 1 have known and watched--not even the weakest, have fallen into Evangelism. Carlile, by his new course, exposed himself to be distrusted by his less observing but warm friends, and he conciliated no foe among the Christians. Carlile, however, was no hypocrite, nor did he take this new course for venal ends. He was as in all things else conscientious. Still his course was one of choice, not of necessity. He was free as ever to expound science, as science, or to expound it in the language of religion. He adopted the mystic course. This was his error of judgment, not an alteration of conviction. If I may explain the paradox of his conduct in a paradox of terms, this is the expression of it:--From being a Material Atheist, he became a Christian Atheist. His definition of a Christian at this stage, was 'a man purged from error.'(1) That this course was no more than a mode of inculcation of his favourite Atheism is evident, intrinsically, and also from the fact that he was so much a realist, as to still avow his detestation of fiction; and so coherently did he keep to this text, that he never ceased to make war on poetry, theatres, and romance, from the commencement of his career down to the last number of the _Christian Warrior_.

But the condemnation I pass upon the philosophy of his latter days shall not be exparte. I subjoin that passage in which he has most powerfully stated his own case.

'The first problem in human or social reform is _through what medium must it be made_. In what is called a religious state of society, that is, a state of idolatry and superstition, can reform be carried out through any other medium than its religion! My experience, added to the best advice I could find, is, that, with a religious people, religion is the only medium of reform. If I were opposed in that problem, I could successfully defend my side of it. The Charter shall change the constituency of the House of Commons, without improving the House. Socialism may create 20 Tytherlies, but it has still done nothing for the nation. But science thrown into the church as a substitute for superstition in the education of the people, begins at once to regenerate the people, the parliament, the institutions, and the throne. It is the substitution of the known for the unknown, the real for the unreal, the certain for the uncertain. Religion is the erroneous mind's chief direction. It must be corrected by and through the medium which it most respects. It rejects all other opposing conditions, and increases its tenacity for its errors. To reform religion by science, is to regenerate fallen man, and to save a sinking country.

1. Cheltenham Free Press, Any. 1842. 2. Christian Warrior, p. 31,

There is great wisdom in this language. The question is, _how_ shall the problem be solved? In this Carlile erred, as he did with the theory of personalities, which he conceived with equal ability. I conceive that Science is independent of Theology in its essence and its terms. Religion may be brought to science by adroit interpretations, and improved in character and significance; but Science can never be brought to Religion without being 'paltered in a double sense,' and lowered in dignity and intelligibility.