Part 2 (1/2)

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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.serted 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' Inst.i.tutions, 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 100 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 publis.h.i.+ng 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 a.s.signed was, that science alone could lead to true devotion, and lectures on science were, therefore, the proper wors.h.i.+p. 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 t.i.tle page to his tenth volume of the _Republican_, where he declared 'There is no such a G.o.d in existence as any man has preached; nor any kind of G.o.d and this declaration was so far carried out in detail, as to exclude from the _Republican_ _G.o.d, 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, pa.s.s, in old age, like Sir Francis Burdett, into extreme Conservatism: but it is a phenomenon in intellect, that Carlile, whose convictions, not his pa.s.sions, 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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.s upon the philosophy of his latter days shall not be exparte. I subjoin that pa.s.sage 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 superst.i.tion, 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 const.i.tuency 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 subst.i.tute for superst.i.tion in the education of the people, begins at once to regenerate the people, the parliament, the inst.i.tutions, and the throne.

It is the subst.i.tution 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,