George Jacob Holyoake

“ There are two classes of thinkers—one who commence with ignoring Nature, seeking in something outside it for the origin of it, and who look upon the infinite processes of the worlds which people space, with the dull astonishment accorded to mere agencies, rather than with the native wonder and awe which the consciousness of original powers awakens—these are Theists.
The other class are those who regard matter as the very garment of the unknown God, to whom every spray, and pebble, and flower, and star is a marvel, a glory, and an inspiration ”

“ The vital inquiry is—are we to conduct life on the basis of what we hope or what we know? He who believes in what he wishes, and is willing to teach as true what he desires, has already passed through the gates of superstition.
To honour the brave, to reverence the good, to give thanks to the martyr, to be re-united to those you have loved and lost; if these be the incidents of immortality, there never was a disbeliever in it. The Cosmist only deplores the scantiness of the proof. There is no scepticism here which is wilful. Every doubt is reluctant, every misgiving is a self-denial. ”

“ I supplicate for no effeminate security—no eternity of indolence and singing—I am prepared for toil as well as enjoyment. The instinct of adventure is strong within me. Study and danger are welcome to me—even suffering, if it bring deeper knowledge, purity and improvement. I do not wish to be a 'Saint made perfect,' lingering through an eternity of monotony, in which there is nothing further to realise, but desire rather to enter upon the eternal discipline of indefinite progress. ”

“ In the simple, moral heart of man, God is one, and his name is Love; not a weak, vapoury sentimentality, but an austere, healthy love, whose expression is strength, purity, truth, justice, service, and tenderness. But this conception of Deity belongs to the empire of the emotions, it is a matter of feeling, not of proof, and can authorise no intolerance towards others, itself existing only by the sufferance of the intellect, which has chastened its expression, and is supreme over it. ”

“ I refer to Infidelity and Atheism.
Infidelity is a term I detest. It implies that you believe enough to subject you to reproach, and disbelieve enough to entitle you to be damned. It signifies disbelief too inveterate to allow you to go back to superstition, and too much timidity to carry your doubt to a definite or legitimate result. ”

“ How impertinent is half our modern worship, and how poor the other half! Educated ministers speak of God, and address to him praise they would be ashamed to offer to any gentleman. That delicacy of reverence, that reticence of laudation, that avoidance of presumption and familiarity, which the law of humanity imposes on all men of religious habits in human relations, has no existence in theology, where it is more to be expected and infinitely more needful. ”

“ True reverence lies rather in accepting unmurmuringly the order of things we find; in believing in the completeness and self sufficiency of nature and humanity, and that these contain within them elements of self-sustainment. Our duty is to search there for Truth, to work there patiently for Progress, to regard the humblest conquest there with glad surprise. All virtue is summed up in service and endurance. A wise humility in expectation is surely the first element of reverence. As to the Future Life of man, the whole question lies in a narrow compass. ”

“ Theism refuses to recognise the self-existence, the self-action, the self-subsistence, eternity, and infinity of the universe. Theism is the negation of Nature. It is a species of impiety towards nature, and supplants, by an artificial superstition, the instinctive reverence of the human heart.
Modern Atheism is falsely regarded as a mere negation, as a species of criminal vacuity of the understanding. To correct this idea is to win for these opinions attention if not assent. The negation of any error is useful, but it should be followed by its complement of positive truth. ”

“ Science finds them marvels and leaves them mysteries. The philosopher is no more provided with a solution than the peasant. Indeed, the wonder of the philosopher has a deeper intensity. He sweeps with his eye, and bends his ear over a wider field of nature, and no sign rewards his scrutiny, no response repays his attention. ”

“ Affirmative Atheism of the intellect is a proud, honest, intrepid, self-respecting attitude of the mind. The Negative Atheism of mere ignorance, of insensibility, of lust, and gluttony, and drunkenness, of egotism or vanity, whose talk is outrage, and whose spirit is blasphemy; this is the gross negation of God, which superstition begets in its slavery, and nurtures by its terrors. These species of Atheism I recognise only to disown and denounce them. ”

“ Condemned to poverty and pain, how many human beings are there whose every word is a prayer, and every thought a throb, and every pulsation a pang? Is it not far more reverential to struggle for the right with what powers we have, and with what Secular light is vouchsafed, and own Theism inscrutable, than connect all this misery with the name of God? ”

“ If matter has existed for ever, this stone in its countless transmutations is a geological Wandering Jew of eternity. If we cannot tell the history of a single stone, who shall tell the history of God? If a poor pebble be a surpassing mystery, who shall understand the Deity? ”

“ Opinion in a minority should never have recourse to invective. Prejudice is inveterate enough without being inflamed by denunciation. Unpopular and unfriended truth must consent to placate opposition by respectfulness of tone and fairness of speech. It must never compromise principle—that is submission, and gives the errorist insolent confidence. It must never outrage—that makes the errorist indignant, and deaf to all reason. The force of truth lies in invincible patience and in invincible perseverance of exposition. ”

“ Grote, in his great history of Greece, in a memorable passage that ought not to die out of recollection, 'I hope, when I come to the lives of Socrates and Plato, to illustrate one of the most valuable of their principles, that conscious and confessed ignorance is a better state of mind than the fancy without the reality of knowledge.' And in a passage which I cannot now recall, Lord Brougham has said that 'a mind uninformed is better than a mind misinformed.' In a state of ignorance we do nothing, in a state of error we do wrong. ”

“ But when he who believes less than the multitude, confesses to the fact in the face of public disapproval, the probability is that he has inquired into, and sifted evidence which others have taken for granted, and discovered some error which they have accepted. His greater accuracy of mind and exactness of speech are an offence, because a reproach to the careless or unscrupulous intellects of those who conduct life on secondhand opinions. Yet austerity of intellect and austerity of speech is as wholesome in character, as austerity of morals. ”

“ It is wonderful how truth has been perilled by passion. The battle of opinion has always been fought on impulse, rather than on calculation of forces; and the small band of the combatants for new truths has often been trampled down by the multitudinous army of error.
4. Conceptions of Humanity, or, in other words, Reliance of Humanity, is a law and limit of Affirmative Atheism. Every man who thinks, must choose one of two things, a standard without the universe, or a standard within. I choose one within, I choose humanity. ”

“ It is a relief to get out of the crowd who believe because their neighbours do, who pray by rote, and worship through fear; and win your liberty to wander in the refreshing solitude where the heart may be honest, and the intellect free. ”

“ The mind that has wandered in the torrid zones of error, thirsts ardently for the cooling draughts of positive truth. It is this sentiment which causes Freethought to take the form of Secularism, and exchanges the verbal distractions of conflicting creeds for the clear criterions of moral truth. It is the same wise impatience of metaphysical unrealities which leads to Affirmative Atheism, and explains it. A series of material and mental facts arrest the attention of one taking an unbiased and independent view of the universe, of time, and space, and matter. ”

“ If we say God is Light, Love, Truth, Power, Goodness, Law, Principle, we confound attributes with existence. If we say God is a Spirit, God is space, we merely fill the imagination, not satisfy the understanding: it is feeding the thoughts with air, and leaving the intellect hungry. A Trinitarian Deity is one of the scholastic perplexities of the intellect. ”

“ The theory of a God of Prayer who hears and aids, of a Providence who orders and controls, all issues to one great Will, and who receives at last the sorrow-stricken, the worn, struggling and weary spirit, after those conflicts which all who think, and feel, and aspire, encounter, are primitive and enduring conceptions, which all humanity, in every age and in every slime, cherishes in its perplexity and clings to in its weakness. ”

“ To pack up the household gods of superstition and leave the fireside bare, will hardly do.. Affirmative Atheism must teach that nature is the Bible of truth, work is worship, that duty is dignity, and the unselfish service of others consolation.
There is nothing wholly bad. Superstition has in it some elements of good. I no more believe in perfect error than in perfect truth. Error, like truth, is hardly ever found pure; error is mixed with good, and truth alloyed by evil. The mind must have something to feed upon, and if it cannot have truth, it will have superstition ”

“ The popular theology, it must be owned, has many repulsive aspects. The vulgarest and most illiterate believer is encouraged to profess a familiar and confident knowledge, hidden from the profoundest philosophers. It is an unanswerable position, that had God spoken, the universe would have been convinced. Had Deity desired that his personal existence should be daily recognised and eternally bruited abroad among men, he would have placarded the fact on the walls of nature in letters of light—so luminous, that time should never pale them ”