spirituality that the human mind can as yet conceive.

In order that I may not colour my past thinkings by my present
thought, I take my statements from pamphlets written when I adopted
the Atheistic philosophy and while I continued an adherent thereof. No
charge can then be made that I have softened my old opinions for the
sake of reconciling them with those now held.




CHAPTER VII.

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,