Annie Besant — 09 - ATHEISM AS I KNEW AND TAUGHT IT part 1

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."