A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume...

161Tracts for the Times, No. 3. ↑

162Id. No. 32. ↑

163 Cross’s Life, 1-vol. ed. p. 79. ↑

164Account of the Printed Text of the Greek N. T., 1854, pref. and pp. 47, 112–13, 266. ↑

165 A third brother, Charles Robert, became an atheist. This, as well as his psychic infirmity, insures him sufficiently severe treatment at the hands of his theistic brother in the introduction to the latter’s Contributions Chiefly to the Early History of the late Cardinal Newman, 1891. ↑

166 Latterly abandoned by the learned author, who before his death disclosed his name—W. R. Cassels. ↑

167 See the testimonies of Pfleiderer, The Development of Theology since Kant, Eng. tr. 1890, p. 397, and Dr. Samuel Davidson, Introd. to the Study of the New Testament, pref. to 2nd ed. ↑

168 Ptie. i, liv. i, ch. v. ↑

169Id. i, liv. iii, ch. ii. ↑

170 It is further to be remembered, however, that Mr. Matthew Arnold saw fit to defend Chateaubriand, calling him “great,” when his fame was being undone by common sense. ↑

171 C. Wordsworth, Diary in France, 1845, pp. 55–56, 124, 204. ↑

172Essais sur la philosophie et la religion, 1845, p. 193. ↑

173Histoire, tom. vii, Renaissance, introd. § 6. ↑

174 M. Faguet writes (Études sur le XIXe Siècle, p. 352) that “Michelet croit à l’âme plus qu’à Dieu, encore que profondément déiste. Les théories philosophiques modernes lui étaient pénibles.” This may be true, though, hardly any evidence is offered on the latter head; but when M. Faguet writes, “Est-il chrétien? Je n’en sais rien ... mais il sympathise avec la pensée chrétienne,” he seems to ignore the preface to the later editions of the Histoire de la révolution française. To pronounce Christianity, as Michelet there does, essentially anti-democratic, and therefore hostile to the Revolution, was, for him, to condemn it. ↑

175 Letter to Sainte-Beuve, cited by Levallois, Sainte-Beuve, 1872, p. 14. ↑

176 Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, p. 951. ↑

177 “L’incrédulité de Sainte-Beuve était sincère, radicale, et absolue. Elle a été invariable et invincible pendant trente ans. Voilà la vérité” (Jules Levallois, Sainte-Beuve, 1872, préf. p. xxxiii). M. Levallois, who writes as a theist, was one of Sainte-Beuve’s secretaries. M. Zola, who spoke of the famous critic’s rationalism as “une négation n’osant conclure,” admitted later that it was hardly possible for him to speak more boldly than he did (Documents Littéraires, 1881, pp. 314, 325–28). And M. Lavisse has shown (as cited above, p. 406) with what courage he supported Duruy in the Senate against the attacks of the exasperated clerical party. See also his letter of 1867 to Louis Viardot in the avant-propos to that writer’s Libre Examen: Apologie d’un Incrédule, 6e édit. 1881, p. 3. ↑

178 That Wordsworth was not an orthodox Christian is fairly certain. Both in talk and in poetry he put forth a pantheistic doctrine. Cp. Benn, Hist. of Eng. Rationalism, i, 227–29; and Coleridge’s letter of Aug. 8, 1820, in Allsopp’s Letters, etc., of S. T. Coleridge, 3rd ed. 1864, pp. 56–57. ↑

179 Leslie Stephen, George Eliot, p. 27. ↑

180 Mr. Benn (Hist. of Eng. Rationalism, i, 226, 309 sq.) has some interesting discussions on Scott’s relation to religion, but does not take full account of biographical data and of Scott’s utterances outside of his novels. The truth probably is that Scott’s brain was one with “watertight compartments.” ↑

181 At the age of twenty-five we find him writing to Gifford: “I am no bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that because I doubted the immortality of man I should be charged with denying the existence of God” (letter of June 18, 1813). ↑

182 By the Court of Chancery, in 1822, the year in which copyright was refused to the Lectures of Dr. Lawrence. Harriet Martineau, History of the Peace, ii, 87. ↑

183 W. Sharp, Life of Severn, 1892, pp. 86–87, 90, 117–18. ↑

184 On reading Lamb’s severe rejoinder, Southey, in distress, apologized, and Lamb at once relented (Life and Letters of John Rickman, by Orlo Williams, 1912, p. 225). Hence the curtailment of Lamb’s letter in the ordinary editions of his works. ↑

185William Allingham: A Diary, 1907, p. 253. Cp. p. 268. ↑

186Id. p. 232. ↑

187 Allingham, as cited, p. 254. ↑

188Id. p. 211. Carlyle said the same thing to Moncure Conway. ↑

189 Cp. Prof. Bain’s J. S. Mill, pp. 157, 191; Froude’s London Life of Carlyle, i, 458. ↑

190 Bain, p. 128. ↑

191 See Brougham’s letters in the Correspondence of Macvey Napier, 1879, pp. 333–37. Brougham is deeply indignant, not at the fact, but at the indiscreet revelation of it—as also at the similar revelation concerning Pitt (p. 334). ↑

192My Relations with Carlyle, 1903, p. 2. ↑

193Morning Post, March 9, 1849. ↑

194Germany, by Bisset Hawkins, M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P., Inspector of Prisons, late Professor at King’s College, etc., 1838, p. 171. ↑

195History, ch. xix. Student’s ed. ii, 411. ↑

196 Sometimes he gives a clue; and we find Brougham privately denouncing him for his remark (Essay on Ranke’s History of the Popes, 6th par.) that to try “without the help of revelation to prove the immortality of man” is vain. “It is next thing to preaching atheism,” shouts Brougham (Letter of October 20, 1840, in Correspondence of Macvey Napier, p. 333), who at the same time hotly insisted that Cuvier had made an advance in Natural Theology by proving that there must have been one divine interposition after the creation of the world—to create species. (Id. p. 337.) ↑

197 In 1830, for instance, we find a Scottish episcopal D.D. writing that “Infidelity has had its day; it, depend upon it, will never be revived—NO MAN OF GENIUS WILL EVER WRITE ANOTHER WORD IN ITS SUPPORT.” Morehead, Dialogues on Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 266. ↑

198 Cp. the author’s Modern Humanists, pp. 189–94. ↑

199Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System (1797), 8th ed. p. 368. Wilberforce points with chagrin to the superiority of Mohammedan writers in these matters. ↑

200 “In point of tendency I should class her books among the most irreligious I ever read,” delineating good characters in every aspect, “and all this without the remotest allusion to Christianity, the only true religion.” Cited in O. Gregory’s Brief Memoir of Robert Hall, 1833, p. 242. The context tells how Miss Edgeworth avowed that she had not thought religion necessary in books meant for the upper classes. ↑