ing to the circumstances by which he is surrounded, and all wear more or less the livery of custom. This you, as Socialists, ought to know, and to remember, that for a society to be pure, its members must be pursuaded that correct practices cannot grow out of corrupt opinions. So far for the present. In my next, what was the principle of your society will be stated; what it is, or whether it have or have not a principle, will be inquired into. The policy, past and present, of your body will follow in due course, and every assertion here made, with more to boot, will be justified. The French have a saying, "C'est le premier pas qui coute," literally-It is the first step which costs. I have taken the first step, and please God, as divines say, will take another next week. There is something contemptible in doing things by halves, even though they be mischiefs. If men play the dog, let them, like that of friend Lance, be dog in everything; if they lay claim to the character of honest men, let them be honest and manlike in all their actions.

Let us

or philosophy run mad; a god for rationalists, who are sublimated into lunatics, which would be worshipped with great applause within the precincts of St. Luke's. This is severity, but not one whit more severe than true. take the stuff to pieces, so that we may view it at leisure, and with advantage. God, according to the above passage, is "an infinite and eternal mind;" well, what is mind? is it body? Oh no, these reasoning Deists will have it that god is a something not body; the attribute, without a subject; an active existence, without parts or organs wherewith to act; enters into all things without its being possible it should ever be out of any thing; an infinite cternal mind, intelligence, or power, that though everywhere, is nowhere; an incomprehensible kind of nothing, creating all somethings; coeternal, co-existent, and co-universal with matter; the two universals in one universe by no means disturbing each others tranquility. This shadow power regulates all substance weakness, "promulgates laws," and not only created this universe out of nothing, but this wonderful universal-nothing power also publishes laws and focts, as the Scotch call them, which are republished and "slightly explained" by Deistical philosophers. Without being itself either an atom or an aggregate, it magnanimously "In order to have what we call intelligence, it is neand most wonderfully "moves the atom and cessary to have ideas, thoughts, and will; to have controls the aggregate of nature." With these ideas, thoughts, and will, it is necessary to have or- sentimental Deists, there is no suspense of gans; to have organs, it is necessary to have a body; to act upon bodies, it is necessary to have a body; judgment; for what god is, and what he does, to experience disorder, it is necessary to be capable is treated of as though he lived in the next of suffering. Whence it evidently follows, that a street, which is hardly consistent in those who PURE SPIRIT can neither be intelligent, nor affected call god the "incomprehensible power;" but by what passes in the universe."-COMMON SENSE. consistency is a trifle compared with the buildTHE Atheism of these papers is not insinuat-ing up of a theory, or the deluding of a multiive but direct; not sham but real; and, good or bad, about the opinions we have ventured to broach-there is no mistake; there can be no mistake; THERE SHALL BE NO MISTAKE! We deny the rationality of all belief in a god or gods; in which denial is included the affirmation, that there is good and sufficient reason to disbelieve in any such existences.

Your well wisher,

CHARLES SOUTHWELL.

IS THERE A GOD?

V.

By the word god we understand a personality (let supernaturalists call it what they will) distinct from, and independent of matter.

It has been proved that neither motion nor space can be a god. By demonstrating that neither motion nor space (supposing there to be space) can be body; and every one knowing that there cannot be personality without body, the conclusion is inevitable.

tude." An incomprehensible power is one of the oddest things to make people acquainted with, or allow them to worship, that can well be imagined.

We should as soon expect that a school-boy well tickled by the whip upon his inferior parts would be perfectly still, as that these fine philosophers of the Drummond school should not wriggle and twist under this infliction, loudly complain of such ridiculous sarcasms, turn upon themselves, like dull and heavy lead, and still persist that there must be something not material, which, if anything at all, is certainly their own folly-a something evidently not material, but very apparent. God is a spirit, say these people, and then they quote Shelley, who, after declaring distinctly and unequivocally that

THERE IS NO GOD!

The inexterminable SPIRIT it contains
Being nature's only god;

One class of believers tell us, that they "adore the god whom philosophy has taught them to consider as the infinite and eternal like a poetical rhapsodist, talks about mind, that formed, and that sustains the fair order of nature, and that created, and that preserves, the universal system." "Such is the which is, with all respect to so great a poet and god adored by Drummond, which idea of god, admirable a man, ridiculous verbiage; for that when well looked into and seen in all its naked-which is inexterminable must have a real exness, will appear very much like folly on stilts, istence, and there cannot be a real existence *See Sir W. Drummond's 'Preface to Edipus Judaicus.' which is not something, for to talk about no

thing being inexterminable or indestructible, | The mischief of this argument does not end is to talk more like wild men, than reasonable here, for as there are manifestly different debeings. If, however, these Deists take shelter grees of intelligence it follows that there must under the wing of Hobbes, who says that a be different degrees of deity. The intelligence spirit is determined by its place and figure, and of the Jew abominates pork, while the intelconsequently is a body, however thin and intan-ligence of certain Tartars will swallow the exgible: why, then, they save their necks at the crement of the grand lama, or high priestexpense of their heels; for if mind, spirit, or a filthy kind of intelligence-god it must be conintelligence, is body, it must be material; but fessed. In Europe, an intelligence-god is there cannot be two material universes; and if Christian; in Turkey, Mohammedan; in Into get out of the difficulty, they slide into Pan- dia, Brahmin; in China, a worshipper of Fo's theism, making god all, and all god, why they thumb; and so we might run round the globe, are caught in their own web of sophistry, as and find this intelligence-god playing the most a Pantheist is one who contends that matter is singular pranks we can well conceive-somegod, and god matter, the word all having no times praying, sometimes cursing, sometimes sense, if not applied to actual existences. This, affirming, sometimes denying his own existence; however, does not suit the philosophic Deists, calling that blasphemy here, which he proclaims who will have it, that the power, mind, spirit, to be pure religion somewhere else; promising or intelligence, which they call god, forms, heaven at the equator for that very conduct sustains, creates, regulates, and preserves mat- and opinion that at the poles he pronounces ter, though not matter itself—a mind-god, not worthy of hell. Such a god would be everything material, nothing so gross as body, that enters by turns, and nothing long; at one moment into all living bodies, though they are at present the sanctified sinner, "who plunders widows' undecided whether it enter into all dead ones; houses, and for a pretence makes long prayers," indeed, they have not made up their minds and at the very same moment a mocker and whether there be, or be not, any of the latter a scorner of all prayer, as thrice double ass-ism; character. According to these pleasant philo- a god filling up the knowledge-box of the sensophers, god, or the spirit, mind, or intelli- timental Deist, who feels that an intelligencegence of nature, is unquestionably in every liv- god exists, and urges on obstinate Atheists, like ing thing, all intelligent matter being the resi- ourselves, who deny that such a god exists. As dence of deity, or the intelligence spirit. Swift, intelligence is very fond of praying to god, here in his "Tale of a Tub," insinuates that men we have a god praying to himself, which would in general are but "suits of clothes," which idea be comical enough were it true. Certainly, noof Swift's is not amiss, and suggests another, thing can be so terribly ludicrous as this notion that Deists will think tolerably good, which is, of a mind or intelligence-god; for as many that the spirit of god is to matter what the body men, whom Mandeville confesses are studious of a man is to his garments, matter and mind peaceable men, and, all the world knows, with being nothing more than a god in full dress; a tolerable share of some sort of intelligence, so that if we could but tear off matter from the who are Atheists and, like ourselves, think all spirit, which is god's body, we should see him that has been written about a god or gods is stripped to the buff. Ithe veriest twaddle that ever abused and bemuddled the human intellect; here we have a god denying his own existence, and spitefully abusing those who have scribbled so much in his glorification, which would prove the intelligence-deity not only comical, but very ungrateful. But as though, to use the cant phrase, divine providence had determined, for some cause to us unknown, to make such goddites the laughing-stock of the world; this same intelligence-god must, if there be virtue in their divinity, be a tenant at will in the heads of calves, frogs, toads, asses, and certain insects, useful no doubt, but rather too dirty to mention. That even bugs have intelligence and strong affeetions for each other, and for us, we have sometimes intolerable proof. So that here we have a pretty kettle of fish-the supreme intelligence, or a piece of him, snugly housed in the tail of a louse, the snout of a hog, the hindquarters of a frog, or the head of an ass. These fine reasoners, so sublimely ridiculous, who tell us, that the eternal cause is the eternal intelligence, which eternal intelligence constitutes the universality of things called god, must be

Butler must surely have had in his mind's eye, an intelligence god philosopher, when he penned the following:

"By help of reasons (he professed,)

He had FIRST MATTER seen undressed He took him naked-all alone, Before one rag of form was on." Many of these reasoners, who contend that god is in all intelligent organisations, stoutly maintain that he is out of all non-intelligent matter: that the intelligence-spirit, or god, is in the living, not the dead; which, if we grant, it surely follows, that dead bodies have no god in them: so that the inexterminable spirit is not everywhere or omnipresent. Besides, we stumble over consequences vastly funny; for if god don't occupy all matter, it is plain some must be without him, that is seeable as the nose on one's face; not to mention that if the world or the universe be partly living and partly dead-a god tenanting the parts cannot be unity or trinity, but as it were chopped up into pieces, so small and so numerous, that eye could not see, nor tongue enumerate, them.

sadly hobbled with such an intelligent-unintelligible, unless they, like true and genuine poets, reason themselves into a "fine frenzy," when no argument will disturb nor sense be heeded. Having put on the armour of invinsibility, any attempt to pierce them with logical arrows, would be the vanity of a dead shot, who, because he had been accustomed to hit when he could see his mark, should hope to hit the bull's eye, which, like god, is neither see-able, hit-able, or understand-able. Must not men who sincerely pretend to believe in such a god as this, be first cousins to fools-as vain as they are foolish; whose ridiculous gibberish has been much admired, because it has not been understood. It is high time the human mind should throw off its load of bigotry, and no longer be disgraced by such fooleries. The vain are invulnerable to the shafts of sarcasm, however just and well directed; for the vain man, if called fool, will receive it as a compliment. If the more sensible Deists complain that the foregoing is a caricature of their opinions, and only calculated to provoke mirth, derision, and contempt, they may be told that these opinions are so broad farcical, and absolutely idiotic, that it is impossible to caricature them, their bare mention being a sufficient caricature of all good sense, and cannot but provoke mirth, derision, and pity.

When the tyrant Appius Claudius, in the play of Virginius, complains that the free speech and biting sarcasms of Siccius Dentatus, bring the decemvirs into contempt, honest Dentatus boldly replies "The decemvirs bring themselves into contempt, Appius:" so say we to the silly reasoners who pretend that intelligence is a god, you bring yourselves into contempt, and therefore need not our assistance. All ridicule is bad; but ridicule and argument are excellent, and should never be seperated in reasonings addressed to the popular mind. Ridicule is the test of truth, where it shows the ludicrous features, and, as it were, sets them off, without distorting, or misrepresenting them. All argument may do for the wise-all ridicule for fools; but those who most need instruction, are neither absolutely wise nor entirely foolish; and he who would get at the popular mind, must write popularly; always, however, connecting the ridiculous and the serious by the safe fastening of good sense.

(Orthoceratite, a horn.)

THEORY OF REGULAR GRADATION.

V.

"The assertion that the solid earth has condensed from mass of vapour, will seem strange and startling to

the mind unaccustomed to scientific inquiry; but
when we reflect that water may be frozen into a
substance, ice, which is as hard as a rock, or again
may be melted into water, or sublimed into vapour,
and again condensed into water, and frozen again'
into ice; or, finally, may, by chemical decomposition,
be reduced to its two component gases, oxygen and
hydrogen, we may cease to wonder at phenomena
which are produced by the same laws, and may be
explained on similar principles."-BRITISH QUEEN
AND STATESMAN.

PALEONTOLOGY, is that science which treats
of animals, plants, &c., that existed when solid
matter first formed, and what is called earth,
thrust its head above the watery abyss. "Geo-
logians (says Boitard) have given that name to
the study of animals that lived before the de-
luge, and the bones and fossil remains of which
are buried in the various beds of earth which'
form the crust of our globe." He adds, "that
geologians have collected seventeen kinds of
fossil shells, which characterised that period
(before the deluge)." The engraving represents
one of these shells, in shape like a cylindrical
cone, perfectly straight, with simple exterior or
outside, partitioned in the inside, and provided
with typhons, a kind of water spouts, without,
however, any power of contraction.

"You will remark (observes Boitard) that all living beings, with the exception of some vegetables, were formed in the water, and inhabited it. At the epoch when the Orthoceratite was formed, which has nothing analogous to it in nature, there was not a single animal capable of breathing our globe's atmosphere, not one that inhabited the earth. Profound silence reigned over all nature, and no voice had murmured the accents of love or hate, in the solitude of the forests."

The probable formation of these shelly creatures, as, indeed, solids in general, it will be useful to inquire into. Many thinking people, who mistake haste for speed, with impetuous organisms that forbid suspense of judgment, galloping to false conclusions rather than none at all, will, without doubt, at once pronounce this attempt to develope a theory of regular gradation, or account for the formation of solids, as a kind of moral alchemy. For ourselves, we like out-of-the-way thinkers, as Dr. Darwin, for example, who proposed a scheme by which icebergs were to be towed from the poles to the tropics, and the winds to be brought as completely under the control of man, as though the imaginary god, who was said by the ancients to let them out from his cave, had delegated his authority to mortals. The alchymists did not find the philosoper's stone, but something far more valuable, the facts upon which to build the science of chemistry; for as the fictions of astrology, prepared the human soil for the truths of astronomy, so was alchemy the necessary forerunner of chemistry. We grant that a cripple in the right road, will beat a racer in the wrong one; but the man, or beast, that never moves at all, can't reach the winning post: so that while due care should be used

ander may now be "stopping a bung hole," how should they understand that philosophic sentence, when the real nature of things is never explained to them? Our public academies, from those great conservatoires of igno

that the right road is taken, let it always be through all these, which are merely the various remembered, that mind and matter are wedded, states of matter; and, though thousands have incorporated two in one, and must keep mov-lisped at school, that the noble dust of Alexing, even though like crabs they should go backward. The fabled parent was wise, who, when on his death bed, recommended his sons to dig in the garden, as they would find a hidden treasure there; for, though they were at first deceived, not finding gold, yet they soon dis-rance and corruption, the universities of Oxford covered that the labour employed upon the soil, cured its barrenness, and yielded a rich treasure of useful commodities. They did not find the gold they sought; but a richer prize that they did not seek: so we who dig for intellectual wealth, in a soil hitherto despised as barren and worthless, if we find not that we look for, may light on treasure of even greater value.

This is not written in defence of idle speculation, which have no practical bearing on the happiness of man, often so vain and useless; but speculation which keeps close to the analogies of nature, that in its boldest flights, is still within the range of reason's vision, and carries into the darkest recesses of imagination's world the torch of analogy: like Heltzler, who showed that more than all the wonders of fiction may be realized in the world of realities. The great fallacy of the present age, lies in the supposition, that all necessary and useful truth can be concentrated in any single individual, or any one society, however scientific, or however intelligent. The ancients instituted games of the torch, in honour of Prometheus, or natnre, in which games they who ran for the prize, carried lighted torches; but if any torch went out, the bearer withdrew himself and gave way to some other, who, if more fortunate in keeping his torch a light, won the prize: "which fable (says Lord Bacon) conveys an extremely prudent admonition, directing us to expect the perfection of the sciences from no single person; for he who is fleetest and strongest in the course, may, perhaps, be less fit to keep his torch a light, since there is danger of its going out from too rapid, or too slow, a motion."

While we have a clergy whose business it is to cramp the mind, with a view to fetter the body, the torch of reason is not likely to go out from its too rapid, however dangerous the slowness of its motion may be. This is obvious, especially to the teachers of the incomprehensible, who seem to think that human beings, like cats, can see best in the dark. So great is the darkness, that the simple fact of the matter of our globe existing in various conditions, sometimes solid, at others fluid, at others ærial, or gaseous, is not generally known. The people in general know that there is such a thing as gas, air, fluid, and matter; but they do not know that all is matter, fluid, air, and gas, by turns, and that, as Jacquetot expresses it, "all is in all, and every thing is in every thing." They do not know that bodies pass successively * See "Paradise within the reach of all men."

and Cambridge, down to the village school, the spirit of priestcraft hovers over and darkens the intellects of men.

The ancients taught that, of all things, chaos was the first, which chaos was called by the greater part of ancient philosophers, water, According to which notion, all is chaos, when, as there is good reason to believe, was once the

case

A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe. It is well known, that by heat, were it of a certain intensity, the whole of the solid crust of this globe, might be dissolved into steam, or gas. The diamond is one of the hardest bodies; yet Newton made the diamond blaze as though it had been paper; while we are fully aware, that a certain degree of coldness, or absence of heat, would give to gas, air, or water, the hardness of diamond. Whether the sun be, as supposed by Anaxagiras, a huge red-hot stone, or, as believed by others, a perfectly cold body, it is beyond question the cause of heat in us; so that, could our globe be placed beyond the reach of its influence, not only would all the forms of vegetable and animal matter be destroyed, but even mineral existences would assume appearances, and manifest phenomena entirely different from any thing with which our race is at present acquainted. Fluids are but solids in motion; air is nothing more; and what more can gas be? they are all but different conditions of the one thing, called nature, universe, or all, which is precisely the idea conveyed by the "all in all, every thing in every thing," of Jacquetot.

Homer, who, like Thales, supposed all things engendered, or begotten of water, saith— The ocean, whence all things RECEIVE THEIR BIRTH.

That such was the opinion of Thales, we find in Plutarch, who says, "that he (Thales) conceived water to be the first principle of all natural bodies, whereof they consist, and into which they resolve, for the following reasons: First-Because natural seed, the principle of all living creatures, is humid; whence, it is probable, that humidity is also the principle of all other things; Secondly-Because all kinds of plants are nourished by moisture, wanting which they wither and decay; Thirdly-Because fire, even the sun itself, and the stars, are nourished and maintained by vapours, proceeding from water, and consequently the whole consists of the same."

This opinion of Thales is that of all antiquity,

and by no means peculiar to him; for Thales, though affirmed by many to be the first who made disquisitions upon nature, and styled by Cicero, prince of the wise men, was but a retailer of Egyptian learning, as he himself acknowledges in his epistle to Pherycides, where it is stated, that his last journey was into Egypt,

to confer with priests and astrologers, who initiated him into the mysteries of their religion, and the truths of their philosophy.

Jamblicus affirms, that he was instructed by the priests, at Memphis; while Laertius informs us, that he learnt geometry of them. Stanley, in his "History of Phylosophy," has given, among other minute and useful information with regard to Thales, that "having studied philosophy in Egypt, he returned to Miletus, and transported that vast stock of learning, which he had there collected, into his own country," which leaves us little reason to doubt, that the idea of water being the first principle of bodies, &c., was taught by the sages of Egypt, as it will be shown in our papers, on "Symbol Worship," was the philosophy of the priests of India. The opinion of Hesiod, that the chaos, whereof all things were made, was water, which settling, became slime, and afterwards condensed into solid earth, it is contended by some writers, was borrowed from the Phoenecians, with whom the Grecians had a very ancient correspondence; for Orpheus, who had his learning from Phoenecia, taught that

OF WATER SLIME WAS MADE.

So that the notion of a universal deluge is by no means inconsistent with the ancient philosophy; but then it was a deluge, so far from miraculous, that the miracle would have been, for any to have seen matter, before matter, called solid, was formed; it was a deluge before man, or any of the animals named as having gone "sweating and stinking into Noah's ark," could have existed. When all the solid matter of the globe on which we stand, was in a fluid state, how could there be anything but a deluge? or, if we stretch further back, and by the teaching of facts and analogy, are led to conclude, that this earth was at some period incalculably remote-one huge ball of gas-is it not certain that nothing, which, in the ordinary acception of the term, now has life, could then have lived?

"It was usual with the less ancient Egyptians, after
they had degenerated from the simplicity of their
original theology, to represent the supreme being and
his attributes by various emblems and hieroglyphics.
They depicted Cneph in the form of a serpent, which
was with them, AS WITH THE INDIANS, the emblem
of eternity, and they added to the body of the ser-
pent the head of the sharp-sighted hawk. Their
ideas being thus perverted, they, by degrees, lost
sight of the divine original, and at length adored the
symbol for the reality.
On the ancient
sculptures and medals, allusive to the cosmogony,
these hieroglyphic symbols, the egg and the serpent,
perpetually occur in great variety, single and com-
bined."--MAURICE.

*

*

Geologists, who have made this subject their peculiar study, have done no more, in many THE wise and subtle serpent that plays so concases, than dress up, as new, the old wisdom of the spicuous a part in the theological farce called ancients the merit of the moderns, rather con- Genesis, was, in Egypt, the symbol of many sisting, as it seems to us, in collecting new facts ideas. It was the symbol of eternity; for the than in the development of new and bold ideas. serpent, with its tail in its mouth, is without Some one has said that it would be impossible beginning and without end. It was the symbol to say anything that had not been better said of immortality; for, by the casting off, and before; and really we are favourably impressed renewal of, its skin, it seemed to throw away with the conviction that it would be difficult to old, and take on new, life, which the priests think any thing that had not been better thought taught was infinite, eternal, and supremely before; and every hour's experience tends more wise. It was the symbol of deity; for with and more to reconcile us to the opinion of the Indian and Egyptian philosophers the uniJeremy Taylor, that more has been forgotten verse was held to be god, which universe god