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THEISM OR ATHEISM: 
 
 WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE? 
 
 A PUBLIC DEBATE 
 
 BETWEEN 
 
 MR. W. T. LEE 
 
 {Lecturer to the Christian Evidence Society) 
 
 AND 
 
 MR. G. W. FOOTE 
 
 (Pi'-esident of the National Secular Society) 
 
 Held in the Temperance Hall, Derby, May 15 
 
 AND 16, 1895 
 
 Chairman : J. W. PIPER, Esq. 
 (Editor of " Tlie Derby Daily Telegraph^' ) 
 
 Revised by Both Disputants 
 
 London : 
 R. FORDER, 28, STONECUTTER STREET, E.G. 
 
 1896 
 
LOAN STACK 
 
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 THEISM OR ATHEISM: 
 
 WHICH IS THE MORE REASONABLE ? 
 
 FIUST NIGHT. 
 
 The Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen, — x\lIow me, in 
 the first place, to express my indebtedness to the members 
 of the local committee who are charged with the manage- 
 ment of this meeting, for having bestowed upon me the 
 compliment of inviting me to preside over this meeting. In 
 the next place, I should like to assure you of the deep sym- 
 pathy I feel in every honest effort to get at the truth with 
 regard to matters vitally affecting the peace of mind and 
 happiness of the people. Believe me, I have as little sym- 
 pathy or patience with the gay trifler who, referring to 
 matters of this importance, insists that ignorance is bliss, as 
 I have with those persons who blindly take their orders from 
 the priests and from the bookmen. Let me again frankly 
 admit that I have little sympathy with a reckless and indis- 
 criminate discussion on topics of this sacred character ; I 
 hold that the truth can best be arrived at, and a satisfactory 
 solution of difficulties best secured, by temperate and 
 orderly discussion. Happily for us to-night, we are sur- 
 rounded by all the elements of profitable debate. The con- 
 tending champions are gentlemen of acknowledged ability, 
 and, I believe, of sterling honesty of purpose. Li j\Ir. Lee — 
 {loud applause) — we have a powerful and high-minded expo- 
 
4 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 nent of orthodoxy, who has acquitted himself well upon many a 
 field of controversy ; and in his opponent we have one well 
 qualified to meet him. (Cheers.) I can, perhaps, pay Mr. 
 Foote no higher compliment than to say he has been 
 deemed worthy by his fellow-thinkers to succeed an eminent 
 orator and statesman, one whose acquaintance I was proud 
 to make and enjoy — I refer to the late Charles Bradlaugh. 
 Well, these friends of ours have mutually agreed to discuss 
 a certain topic, which, as you all know, is thus described : 
 "Theism or Atheism: Which is the more reasonable?'^ 
 and, in doing so, they have undertaken to be bound by 
 certain conditions ; and perhaps, at this point, I cannot 
 better consult your convenience and your information than 
 by reading some of the more salient parts of the arrange- 
 ments which have been drawn up : — 
 
 Mr. Lee to open the first night, Mr. Foote the 
 second. Order of debate : (a) Opener to speak for 
 thirty minutes ; (d) his opponent to speak for thirty 
 minutes. Each to speak twice for fifteen minutes after. 
 All the local business arrangements to be made by the 
 joint committee at Derby. 
 
 There are other points, which, for obvious reasons, I need 
 not trouble you with. 
 
 I have now to say, ladies and gentlemen, that you will 
 not elicit from me any critical opinion with regard to the 
 selected topic of discussion ; throughout this debate I shall 
 carefully abstain from making any such observations. I 
 hope to prove to your satisfaction that, in undertaking this 
 duty, I have been actuated by a desire to observe the 
 strictest impartiality ; and, with this end in view, I very con- 
 fidently appeal to you for assistance and support. Let us 
 listen with the utmost patience and consideration to what 
 both our friends have to say, and let us be careful not to 
 indulge in any act, however slight, which may have a 
 tendency to irritate or to distract them. 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 5 
 
 And now, ladies and gentlemen, I have only to express 
 the hope that this discussion throughout may be charac- 
 terised, both on the part of the disputants and on the part 
 of the audience, with good temper, so that we may hope for 
 profitable and useful results. In accordance with arrange- 
 ment, I propose sounding a bell three minutes before the 
 expiration of the allotted time to each speaker — you will 
 quite understand what that signifies — and again at the com- 
 pletion of the allotted time. 
 
 I will now, then, in accordance with arrangements made, 
 ask Mr. Lee to open the real business of this debate. 
 
 Mr. Lee : jMr. Chairman, Mv. Foote, Ladies and Gentle- 
 men, — The question we have met to discuss will necessitate 
 the use of four very important words. These words I 
 propose defining as follows : First, by the word " universe " 
 I mean the sum-total of all conditioned existence. Second, 
 by the term " reasonable " I understand what is in accord- 
 ance with the logical demands of the mind. Third, by the 
 word " Atheism " I understand that doctrine which rejects 
 the idea that the universe was produced by a Being called 
 God, and, in denying His existence, goes on to show that the 
 universe is eternal, or is the necessary outcome of the neces- 
 sary working of the substance it calls matter, and speaks of 
 as eternal. Fourth, the term " Theism," the name of that 
 doctrine which regards the universe as the consciously-willed 
 production of the unoriginated Being, who is absolute in 
 wisdom and power, who was before all things, and by whom, 
 and in whom, all things exist and consist. This Being is 
 spoken of by Theists as God. 
 
 These being my definitions, I must ask Mr. Foote to 
 accept them as true, or to show them to be untrue by 
 appealing to the great masters of lexicography, whose busi- 
 ness it is to treat of the origin, history, and meaning "of 
 words. This is due to me, his opponent, and also to you, 
 our judges. 
 
6 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 Having defined our terms, the question naturally arises, 
 Which is the more reasonable doctrine — Atheism, which 
 denies God, or Theism, which affirms God ? I assert, and 
 shall seek to prove, that the Theistic doctrine of the universe 
 is essentially reasonable, because it can be vindicated by 
 lines of argument and processes of reasoning admittedly 
 trustworthy in other fields of inquiry, and therefore to be 
 taken as reliable in this ; and, further, I fearlessly assert that 
 Atheism, as a doctrine of the universe, is utterly unsatis- 
 factory, being opposed to every accepted process of inductive 
 reasoning, violating the laws of scientific inquiry, rejecting 
 the fundamental deliveries of our consciousness, and out- 
 raging the collective testimony of all the progressive races 
 of the earth. 
 
 Having cleared the ground, let us proceed to the argu- 
 ment, the first proposition of which stands thus : The fact 
 of present existence necessitates the further fact — eternal 
 existence. To put our argument in a simple way, we will 
 place it thus : Something now exists ; hence something must 
 have existed always, because out of nothing comes nothing ; 
 therefore something must be eternal. To put this another 
 way, all thinkers agree that something must be eternal — 
 that is, there must be something which is underived, un- 
 conditioned ; something which always has been and for ever 
 will be — an eternal, self-existent substance. This position 
 I think Mr. Foote will admit without discussion ; I shall, 
 however, regard it as a favour if he will say definitely whether 
 this supposition is so or not. Taking it that Mr. Foote and 
 I agree as to the eternity of something, the question arises. 
 What is this something ? Is it the universe, or is it the 
 matter which composes the universe, or is it something 
 different from both ? 
 
 This brings me to my second proposition — that neither 
 the universe, nor the matter composing the universe, is the 
 eternal substance for which we seek. To those who are 
 acquainted with the trend of the most advanced science 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 7 
 
 this proposition \Yill sound like a truism ; but in this debate 
 we must take nothing for granted ; therefore it is clearly my 
 duty to prove, as it will be clearly Mr. Foote's duty to 
 analyse, and, if possible, disprove, the proposition which I 
 now advance. Until this is done, nothing will be gained by 
 Mr. Foote, nothing will be lost by me. I assert, then, that 
 the universe is not the eternal existence for which we seek, 
 because the universe has not always existed. There was a 
 time when this universe was not ; a time when this earth, 
 the sun, and all the orbs of heaven were non-existent ; a 
 time when the substance of all material things existed in a 
 highly-attenuated and gaseous state. And not only are we 
 scientifically sure that this universe has not eternally existed 
 — we are equally certain it will come to an end. For, just 
 as our world is slowly but certainly approaching the sun, so 
 all the moving bodies of the sidereal heavens are making for 
 a common centre ; every star and sun is getting cooler, and 
 energy, in the form of heat, is being dissipated, and an end 
 to the universe must be acknowledged. 
 
 Under these circumstances, to speak of the universe being 
 eternal, as Professor Haeckel does, is to lay one's self open 
 to the slashing reply of Herbert Spencer : " Haeckel is un- 
 philosophical ; it is the indestructibility of force arid the 
 eternity of motion which are a priori truths, transcending 
 both demonstration and experience." 
 
 But I expect before this debate closes to have the 
 pleasure of showing that Herbert Spencer is as unscientific 
 as Haeckel. 
 
 We must, then, admit, from numerous scientific facts and 
 inductions from them, that our universe has not always 
 existed ; and, if this universe is not eternal, its present 
 existence must be an effect due to some cause. But what 
 do we mean by the term " cause," and what by the word 
 " effect " ? By the former we understand something which 
 really exists, something which has power, something which 
 has power enough to account for the existence or happening 
 
8 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 of any given thing ; by the latter we mean the happening 
 of any event, or, to be more correct, by the word " effect " 
 we connote anything for the existence of which some out- 
 side efficiency is demanded. With these definitions before 
 me I assert that matter is not the cause of the universe, and 
 I further assert that Atheism is grossly unreasonable when 
 it speaks of matter as the cause of the universe, for matter 
 fails to account for its own existence. We take a parcel 
 of matter in our hands, and we find it to be made 
 up of parts ; we examine those parts, and find them to be 
 made up of other parts ; we continue our analysis until our 
 senses are no longer of any avail. Here science comes to 
 our aid with keener methods of investigation, until at last 
 we get to the atom, the ultimate condition of matter. But, 
 having found the atom, have we discovered the cause of the 
 universe ? Nay, for these atoms need as much explanation 
 as does the sun in the heavens. A great scientist has told 
 us that these ultimate bodies are of definite form and incom- 
 pressible ;• they continue to this day as when first formed, 
 perfect in number, measure, and weight. I am not sur- 
 prised, therefore, that Sir J. F. W. Herschel and Professor 
 Clerk-Maxwell should say that these atoms bear all the 
 marks of being " manufactured articles." I, therefore, con- 
 clude that the universe is not eternal, and that matter is not 
 the cause of the universe, because it not only fails to account 
 for its own existence, but, in its ultimate particles, witnesses 
 to the existence of a wise and powerful being, to whom it 
 stands related as effect to cause. 
 
 But I can imagine Mr. Foote saying : " I do not accept 
 Clerk-Maxwell or Herschel's theory of matter ; I believe all 
 matter is eternal in duration and infinite in extension, and 
 I, therefore, feel justified in conceiving it to be the substance 
 of all substances and the cause of all causes." Now, Mr. 
 Foote will excuse me if I say he cannot possibly conceive 
 of matter as eternal or infinite, and he will also excuse me 
 if I say that, apart from the ordinary conception of matter 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 9 
 
 as a vehicle of energy with the two attributes extension and 
 inertia, he cannot conceive of matter at all. 
 
 Let us see how the Atheistic position is stated, and then 
 how much this position is worth. 
 
 Professor Haeckel, the high priest of Monism, tells us 
 that the universe is both eternal and infinite, and that 
 matter and motion, inseparable from matter, remain eternal 
 and indestructible. Now, you will remember what Herbert 
 Spencer said about the statement of Haeckel's — he said it 
 was utterly unphilosophical ; and now we will prove this 
 statement of Herbert Spencer's to be true, for, " if matter be 
 infinite in extension, the universe must be full of matter, 
 and if the universe be full of matter, there can be no attrac- 
 tive force ; every spot being equally full, no particle can 
 draw closer to another, and there can be no rotatory motion, 
 for there would be no reason for turning one way more than 
 another, neither would there be any primitive heat, for heat 
 is motion, and no change of place is possible in a plenum 
 where no particle has any place to move into that is not 
 already full." So, then, matter fails to explain itself, while, 
 if it be infinite, motion and the origination of the universe 
 become philosophically impossible. Atheism, then, fails to 
 explain the existence of matter and the possibility of motion, 
 and, failing here, it must fail everywhere ; for, if it cannot 
 account for matter, how shall it account for life ? If it fails 
 to account for motion, how shall it account for mind ? If 
 it fails to explain the atom, how can it explain the universe ? 
 If it fails to account for motion, how can it account for that 
 mighty power of human reason which climbs the starry 
 stairs of the universe and reads the history of stars and suns, 
 projects itself into the very heart of things, and then con- 
 fesses the presence of a power greater than itself, and a 
 reason higher than its own ? (Applause.) 
 
 Thus far, then, we have shown x^theism to be utterly 
 unreasonable as a doctrine of the universe, and that it 
 always gets more into each succeeding effect than can be 
 
10 THEISM OR ATHEISM? 
 
 found in the alleged preceding cause. It begins with matter 
 and ends with mind ; it starts with mertia and rises to 
 motion ; from motion it passes to life, from life to thought, 
 from thought to what? — the grave; thus it begins and ends 
 with dust. 
 
 Now what have we accomplished ? We have seen, first, 
 there must be an eternal substance ; second, that this eternal 
 substance must be different from matter, and in the last 
 analysis the cause of the universe — in other words, we have 
 shown that, since something now is, something must be 
 eternal ; we have shown that this eternal something is not 
 the universe, and cannot be the matter of which the universe 
 is composed. It must, then, be something other than the 
 universe, something other than matter. What that some- 
 thing is we can tell to this extent — it is a real existence ; for if 
 it were not, there would be no existence : it must have real 
 power ; for if it had not, there would be no existence except 
 itself. These two facts, then, are certain — the existence of 
 an eternal substance, the possession of power by this sub- 
 stance. 
 
 Now, having established these two facts, we have also 
 established a third fact, and that fact is as follows. Since 
 there must be an eternal substance, and this eternal substance 
 must have power, this eternal substance must be the cause 
 by which the sum-total of conditioned existence has been 
 brought into being. No amount of mental analysis or argu- 
 ment will enable us to get rid of this third fact. 
 
 We now proceed to our next proposition — that this universe 
 is the manifestation of power directed by intelligence. "Now, 
 the result of our whole experience seems to amount to this — 
 there are but two ways in which we have observed the 
 different forms of matter to be thrown together, either at 
 random or with design and purpose. By the former we 
 have never seen produced a regular complicated effect 
 corresponding to a certain end ; by the second we uniformly 
 have. If, then, the works of nature and the productions of 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? II 
 
 men resemble each other in this one general characteristic, 
 will not this experience warrant us in ascribing to both a 
 similar, though, of course, a proportionate, cause ?" Admit 
 the facts, and the induction from the facts is amply justi- 
 fied. But the question naturally arises, Do the facts of 
 nature agree with the productions of men in the manifesta- 
 tion of aim, intention, purpose ? I believe they do, and 
 here are my reasons for so believing. Whatever our theory 
 of the origin of the universe may be, we must admit that 
 the earth, the sea, and the sky are full of beauty. From 
 far-off space, where the unresolved nebulas float, in all the 
 millions and millions of suns and systems of suns which 
 glitter in the brow of night, and here, even in this tiny speck 
 we call our world, order is everywhere manifested, order 
 everywhere known. In the midst of numberless varieties 
 there is a deep-seated unity, vast worlds and systems of 
 worlds, the marshalled battalions of heaven, alongside of 
 which our earth and our planets are as nothing, are rolling 
 through space in orbits millions and millions of times greater 
 than that of our solar system ; but everywhere the same laws 
 of gravitation, the same laws of light, of heat, of motion, are 
 found. From speck of dust to blazing sun and floating 
 nebulae, order and law everywhere prevail. But order and 
 law are the manifestation of power guided by intelligence. 
 Nowhere do we discover order and law apart from intelli- 
 gence, and, therefore, I hold that the cause of the universe 
 must not only have power, but also mind and intelligence. 
 (Cheers.) To put this another way, one great irrefutable 
 fact of the universe is this, it is a gigantic intelligible unity, 
 all its laws are mathematical relations, and can be expressed 
 in mathematical formula. This is undoubtedly true of the 
 law of gravitation, and of chemical combinations, the law of 
 colour and of music, the facets of crystals, the pistils of 
 flowers, the feathers of birds. Now, I put this question to 
 Mr. Foote. If it takes the intellect of a Copernicus, a 
 Kepler, and a Newton years upon years of anxious study to 
 
I 2 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 formulate a few of the mathematical relations and laws of 
 the heavens ; if it takes the life-long investigation of men like 
 Owen, and Darwin, and Flower to state the laws of com- 
 parative anatomy ; if it takes thinkers like Huxley, and 
 Allman, and Weismann to understand the laws of biological 
 science ; if it takes experimenters like Pritchard and Stokes 
 to discover the laws of optics — I say, if it takes minds like 
 these and intellects such as those of Faraday, of Balfour 
 Stewart, of Tait, Kelvin, Rayleigh, and thousands of others 
 we could name, to explain a few of the laws and mathe- 
 matical relations of the universe, what mind, what intellect, 
 must it have taken to have planned the whole universe, 
 and then to have realised the plan in this beautiful, 
 orderly universe ? (Applause.) I ask Mr. Foote, Could 
 matter have done this, could matter and undirected motion 
 have done this ? I say nay, a thousand times nay. Mere 
 matter and undirected motion have never been known to 
 make a child's toy or a mud pie, and it is flying in the face 
 of all experience and all the verified processes of scientific 
 investigation, as well as a gross insult to our common sense, 
 to ask us to believe that matter and undirected motion have 
 originated the wonderful mechanism which we call our 
 universe. (Applause.) 
 
 But I have not done. This universe is an intelligible 
 universe ; it can be understood. Now, from a child I have 
 always been taught that it is impossible to get out of a thing 
 that which it does not contain. Very well. I study the 
 stars, and I get thought out of them ; I study the rocks, 
 and I get thought out of them ; I study the sea, and I 
 get thought out of it ; I study the manifold forms of living 
 things on this earth, and I get thought out of them. Now, 
 evolution, we are told, cannot exceed involution ; if, then, 
 thought can be got out of the universe, thought must have 
 been put into the universe by the cause which has produced 
 the universe ; and, if thought was put into the universe by 
 the cause of the universe, that cause must have been intelli- 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 1 3 
 
 gent, or it could not have put thought into the universe. 
 Thus our third proposition is established ; this universe is 
 the manifestation of power directed by intelligence. In 
 others words, we have proved these four facts — first, the 
 existence of an eternal substance ; second, the possession 
 of power by this substance ; third, that this eternal substance 
 is the cause of the universe ; and, lastly, that the order, law, 
 purpose, intention manifested in nature are a proof that the 
 cause of the universe is possessed not only with power, 
 but with intelligence. In so far as these propositions are 
 established, in so far is Theism shown to be true, and in 
 proportion to the proof of the Theistic doctrine of the 
 universe is the Atheistic doctrine disproved. 
 
 And now I come to my fourth proposition — that the facts 
 of man's mental, moral, and religious nature cannot be 
 explained on the principles of Atheism, but are easily 
 accounted for by the doctrines of Theism. Every man has, 
 in his own consciousness (the mind's knowledge of its 
 own states) the evidence of the existence of mind ; in 
 other words, all of us are conscious of ourselves — we know 
 we exist, and we know we think. We also know that the 
 mind is altogether other than the body; in a word, that 
 mind and matter are not only distinct, but different sub- 
 stances, manifesting themselves to us by sets of different and 
 totally incompatible attributes. If Mr. Foote denies this, I 
 must ask him to show that the attributes of mind and matter 
 are alike. Until this is done, we shall continue to believe 
 that we have two sets of incompatible attributes ; and, when 
 we find that this belief is not peculiar to ourselves, but is 
 held in some form by all the peoples of the earth, we not 
 only feel that our belief is justified, but we believe that 
 it brings us into the presence of a fact which calls for 
 explanation ; and we turn to those who hold the x\theistic 
 position, and ask, How is the existence of this thinking sub- 
 stance, which we call self, to be accounted for ? That it has 
 not always existed is undeniable ; and, if it began to be, it 
 
14 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 must have a cause other than itself. That cause cannot be 
 the self of the parents, for that also is an effect ; it began to be. 
 Now, if the soul, or the self, cannot be accounted for by deri- 
 vation in an unending series of steps from those who preceded 
 us, neither can it be conceived of as the product of physical 
 forces, or combinations of such forces. We must, then, 
 conclude that our selves owe their existence to Him whose 
 wisdom and power are manifested in the heavens and the 
 earth, and in the mind of man. 
 
 Deny this, and I demand that I shall have answers given 
 to these questions : First, how shall we account for man 
 being in possession of powers of intellect which are capable 
 of limitless expansion, and also a desire for knowledge that 
 is never satisfied ? How do you account for man having a 
 capacity for happiness which nothing in the whole world or 
 the whole universe can meet ? Ho\v do you account for 
 man having aspirations for the true, the holy, and the eternal, 
 if there be no true, no holy, no eternal? (Applause.) But 
 man is not only sure he exists, and that he thinks ; he is 
 conscious of a moral sense, a power by which he perceives 
 some things to be right and others to be wrong ; and no man 
 can will that to be right which his conscience tells him is 
 wrong ; neither can any man argue himself into the convic- 
 tion that he has done right when his conscience tells him 
 he has done wrong. Thus, our consciences possess an 
 authority which is above our reason and our will, and there- 
 fore could not have been derived from either of these, and 
 must therefore be something imposed upon us, and to which 
 we are required to be conformed by an authority out of our- 
 selves. This authority cannot be man, neither can it be 
 society ; it must, then, be something higher than man and 
 stronger than society ; in other words, it must be that strong 
 and wise Being who is the moral Dispenser of the universe. 
 Thus, as with mind, so with morals, God becomes the great 
 and necessary postulate. If this be so with mind and morals, 
 how much more must it be so with the religious sense? 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 15 
 
 I shall Stop by submitting to my friend a few questions, 
 and the first is this : What is the substance of which 
 this universe is composed ? ^How could an ordered 
 universe arise from an unordered state of physical 
 units ? How could an intelligible universe arise out of a 
 mindless physical condition ? How could an universe mani- 
 festing law have arisen from a condition where no law can 
 be found ? How could an universe without a moral nature 
 produce beings with a moral nature ? How could a number 
 of elementary substances called atoms have produced the 
 unity everywhere manifested in nature? How could life, 
 the power which moulds and builds^ up organisms, and 
 preserves them from the disintegrating influences which act 
 on mere matter, have been produced from the non-living ? 
 And, in the last place, how could a universe which, according 
 to Atheism, excludes the possibility of God have produced 
 a number of beings, the very flower of that universe, who 
 have become thoroughly persuaded there is a God? (Loud 
 applause.) 
 
 The Chairman : I have now, ladies and gentlemen, to 
 bespeak, on the part of Mr. Foote, the same conscientious 
 attention that you have given to his opponent, Mr. Lee. 
 
 Mr. Foote : Mr. Chairman, Mr. Lee, Ladies and Gentle- 
 men, — It would be absurd for me to assume that anything 
 more than an encouraging percentage of this audience was 
 in any kind of agreement with my ideas ; and as Mr. Lee, 
 in his otherwise extremely temperate speech, was good 
 enough to say that the Atheistic position was an outrage on 
 human intelligence, I must warn you, if that be correct, that 
 I am likely to say things which will be regarded as an out- 
 rage on human intelligence. (Laughter and cheers.) You 
 will, therefore, from that point of view, grant me the indul- 
 gence which we always expect from an educated, an 
 intelligent, and honest English audience. (Hear, hear.) 
 
1 6 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 ]\Ir. Lee has, in his own opinion, established a large 
 number of propositions ; and, not satisfied with that, he 
 wound up with an equally large number of questions, every 
 one of those questions involving a statement and an argu- 
 ment. Now, I am not so young a debater as to fall into a 
 trap of that kind. If any gentleman wants me to answer,, 
 upon the spur of the moment, a large number of questions, 
 which he reads off as rapidly as he can during the last 
 minute or two of a speech, he has altogether taken a false 
 measure of human capacity. No, I am not going to do any- 
 thing of the kind. Mr. Lee would have a perfect right, if 
 we were discussing on the Socratic method, to ask as many 
 questions as he pleased. But he speaks for half an hour, 
 and I do the same. He sets up one position, and I attack it; 
 to-morrow night he will have the same opportunity of attack- 
 ing me, and I do not intend to-night to occupy the defensive 
 for the greater ease of Mr. Lee in opposition. 
 
 Now, then, let us see what Mr. Lee's speech really comes 
 to. He says that the universe is the sum-total of all con- 
 ditioned existence. Let me ask him if he has any 
 experience of unconditioned existence. When he has 
 informed me of the extent of his experience in that direc- 
 tion, I will continue the discussion as to what may be outside 
 of the universe, which is a conditioned existence. For my 
 own part, I say frankly that I know absolutely nothing of 
 any existence which is not conditioned ; nor have I ever met 
 with any person who had any first-hand knowledge of un- 
 conditioned existence ; and, until unconditioned existence is 
 established as a fact, I decline the responsibility of either 
 accounting for it or arguing about it. 
 
 Mr. Lee said that what was reasonable was what con- 
 formed to the demands of human intelligence. I listened 
 with profound attention, but could not see any more in the 
 explanation than in the term; so that we come, at the finish, 
 to "what is reasonable is reasonable," and with that I 
 cordially concur. 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 1 7 
 
 In the next place, Mr. Lee was good enough, not only to 
 define Theism, but to define Atheism, and in a fashion 
 which suited himself. When this debate was being arranged, 
 it was suggested that the proposition for discussion should 
 be, "Theism or Atheism : Which is the more reasonable 
 theory of the universe?" and Mr. Lee is quite well aware 
 that I insisted upon the words " theory of the universe " 
 being struck out, because Atheism per se does not affirm a 
 theory of the universe. An Atheist like the late Charles 
 Bradlaugh may affirm, as a personal thinker, his theory of 
 the universe; but x\theism /^r j-^ simply means, not denial, 
 but rejection, in the sense of not accepting the Theistic 
 theory of the universe which Mr. Lee has put forward to- 
 night. I suppose everybody will admit that Charles 
 Bradlaugh, whose name was mentioned in such honourable 
 terms by our Chairman, was an eminent, and, in a certain 
 sense, a typical. Atheist. When I am told that I must go to 
 the lexicographers for a definition of terms, I reply that I 
 decline to do anything of the sort. Lexicographers all work 
 on their own individual responsibility. Webster will define 
 a word in one way, Richardson in another, Latham in 
 another ; and how can I accept the meaning of important 
 terms on the authority of these conflicting lexicographers ? 
 If I want to know what is Christianity, I am bound to find 
 out what Christians mean by the term ; if I want to know 
 what Buddhism is, I am bound to have the term explained 
 by Buddhists ; and if Mr. Lee wants to know what xA-theism 
 is, for the purpose of discussion, he must discover what 
 Atheists themselves mean by that term. Now, Charles 
 Bradlaugh, in the very first sentence of his pamphlet, Is 
 there a God? says : " The initial difficulty is in defining the 
 word God. It is equally impossible to intelligently affirm or 
 deny any proposition unless there is at least an under- 
 standing on the part of the affirmer or denier of the meaning 
 of every word used in the proposition. To me, the word 
 God, standing alone, is a Avord without meaning." I endorse 
 
1 8 THEISM OR ATHEISM? 
 
 every word of that sentence. Take another passage from 
 the same Charles Bradlaugh's Plea for Atheism. He says: 
 " The Atheist does not say there is no God ; but he says, I 
 know not what you mean by God ; I am without your idea 
 of God. The word God, to me, is a sound, conveying no 
 real or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I 
 cannot deny that of which I have no conception, and the 
 belief of which, by its affirmer, is so imperfect that he is 
 unable to define it to me. If, however, God is defined to 
 me as an existence other than the existence of which I am 
 a mode, then I deny God, and affirm that it is impossible 
 such God can be." Thus, the Atheist's position is not an 
 absolute denial of any conceivable God ; it is the denial of 
 any God so defined as to be in contradiction to the indis- 
 putable facts of nature and human nature. I say that Mr. 
 Lee cannot define a God so that I cannot furnish denials and 
 contradictions in the daily and hourly experience of all 
 sentient and intelligent beings upon this planet. It is so 
 easy to talk large, loose metaphysical phrases. Do you 
 imagine that you are going to get a deity that can figure as 
 an object of worship to the masses of the people upon this 
 planet by such involved syllogistical reasoning as Mr. Lee 
 has adopted to-night ? Men in this world never believe in 
 the existence of God upon grounds like these. If you ask 
 an ordinary man in the street why he believes in God, do you 
 think he will give you any of those reasons that Mr. Lee has 
 elaborated in his written paper ? Nothing of the kind. 
 Those are not the reasons that induce any man to believe 
 in God ; those are the reasons that are resorted to for 
 clinging to the belief when it is attacked by human intelli- 
 gence. The belief in God did not originate in the action of 
 human intelligence, fairly and wisely applied to the facts of 
 life. All the religions of to-day originated in ancient times, 
 and those religions of ancient times had their progenitors 
 in lower systems that preceded them ; in short, the most 
 elaborate religions of to-day are only, as it were, new weavings 
 
THEISM OR ATHEIS.M ? 19 
 
 of the old raw material of theology, or, as I should call it, 
 superstition. There is, in this respect, even in modern days, 
 nothing new ; it is but a fresh presentation of old material 
 in a new form. The masses of the people never believe 
 religion upon grounds of reason, but upon grounds of 
 authority and early education. The grounds of argument 
 are only adopted by the apologists of religion when they are 
 hard pressed by the critics of religion. (Applause.) 
 
 I deny, therefore, that Atheism per se denies the existence 
 of God ; I deny that Atheism per se affirms the eternity of 
 matter; and I decline to accept responsibility for any theory 
 of the universe. I tell Mr. Lee that, notwithstanding his 
 ability, his mind is not large enough to comprehend the 
 universe — ("Oh, oh") — or to fornmlate a satisfactory theory 
 about it. Further, I say that there is /lo intelligence on this 
 earth adequate to form a satisfactory theory of the universe. 
 And why? Because, in the very language which Mr. Lee 
 has employed, infinity is predicated ; and how can the mind 
 of man, which is admittedly finite, formulate a satisfactory 
 theory of an infinite existence ? The thing is a contradic- 
 tion in terms — (applause) — and it is no insult to Mr. Lee to 
 say that his powers are inadequate to an infinite task. 
 (Hear, hear.) 
 
 I noticed that Mr. Lee fell into, what seemed to me, at 
 any rate, a confusion about the universe. He spoke of the 
 universe and of the matter composing it. Are they two 
 distinct things? The universe simply means the whole, and 
 the whole is made up of what composes it. You cannot 
 have the universe separate, and the matter which composes 
 it separate. The universe is simply a term for the total 
 quantity of its composition. When Mr. Lee said that this 
 universe was not eternal, he took an illustration from our 
 solar system. Does Mr. Lee mean, because there is a dis- 
 sipation of energy from our planet, that energy is lost ? 
 Does Mr. Lee mean, if a planet should ultimately, in some 
 sidereal cataclysm, become broken and scattered through 
 
20 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 what he calls the universe, that it is lost ? All its com- 
 ponent matter would exist after the shock as well as before ; 
 and, if planets are not eternal, which no astronomer ever 
 thought of asserting, nevertheless the matter of which all 
 planets are composed appears to be eternal. Mr. Lee may 
 say it is not, but I defy Mr. I.ee's mind or any mind to 
 realise and prove the statement that this universe is not 
 eternal. (Applause.) 
 
 We then come to this supposed Creator, and we come, in 
 conjunction with this, to the atoms which Mr. Lee's 
 authority says bear all the marks of manufacture. I have 
 heard that before, and it may pass as a metaphorical ex- 
 pression ; but we must have logical propositions in debate. 
 One would think that somebody had seen an atom and 
 handled it. Well, nobody has ever done anything of the 
 kind. An atom is an hypothetical existence ; that is, it 
 cannot be demonstrated to the senses ; and, when a man 
 says that an atom bears marks of manufacture, it is really- 
 only another way of stating his own opinion that atoms were 
 created. But it cannot be proved that these atoms have 
 such characteristics, because nobody has ever seen them. 
 
 Now, we come to this point — that there was a mind that 
 created matter. Mr. Lee thinks it very curious that anybody 
 should start with matter and reach to mind. I think it is 
 still more curious that you should start wnth mind and reach 
 to matter. I can understand the process of evolution 
 through perpetual differentiation, climbing to higher and 
 higher stages of organic existence ; but I cannot understand 
 your perfect mind producing an imperfect universe, which 
 has existed ever since he created it, and seems to be no 
 better now than it was the very moment he started it. 
 (Applause.) If matter cannot produce mind, I ask you 
 how you arrive at the opposite view that mind can produce 
 matter? I deny that there is any analogy in human experi- 
 ence to justify the assumption that mind can a'eate. The 
 only mind of which we have any knowledge is our own ; 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 2 1 
 
 and, if you predicate a mind in the universe outside ours, 
 you must either- endow it with the essential powers of our 
 own mind, or you must give some reason for believing that 
 it belongs to an entirely separate category of inteUigence. 
 Now, I ask anyone to inquire of himself what he knows of 
 creation. We say the poet creates, the artist creates. But 
 ivhat does he create ? He does not produce sometl^ing out 
 of nothing. He works with matter that existed before he 
 was born, and will exist after he is dead. He changes 
 matter from one combination into another, but he cannot 
 create an atom of matter, and he cannot destroy an atom of 
 matter. I, therefore, say the term creation, in the meta- 
 physical sense of producing absolutely out of nothing, or 
 out of something discrete, is, to my mind, utterly unintelli- 
 gible; and I cannot possibly accept what conveys no reality 
 to my own intelligence. 
 
 Mr. Lee says that the Atheist begins with matter and ends 
 with mind. Then he talks about the grave, and says the 
 Atheist begins with dust and ends with dust. But we all 
 have to pass through the same stages of being. Mr. Lee 
 was born as I was ; Mr. Lee will die as I shall, for the 
 age of miracles has passed. What is the use of com- 
 plaining of the Atheist, when the Theist has to go through 
 exactly the same career ? You may tell me, of course, that 
 after you are dead something very agreeable is going to 
 happen to you ; but I will wait until I know it before I 
 assume it as a fact which should serve as the basis of a 
 discussion. 
 
 We came eventually to that something which was the 
 cause of this material universe, and that something is intelli- 
 gent, and that something is eternal ; that is, this something 
 eternally existed before it made up its mind to create the 
 material universe. Has Mr. Lee any idea of what could 
 have occurred to put a new thought into an infinite mind ? 
 Why, an infinite mind must live in an infinite now. Being 
 infinite, there is neither past, present, nor future to it ; for 
 
22 THEISM OR ATHEISM? 
 
 these terms are terms of conditioned existence in time and 
 space. How, then, could this eternal being have begun to 
 change? How could it have woke up, so to speak, to the 
 necessity of creating matter ? And out of what was that 
 matter created ? All that existed before its creation was 
 God ; there was no room for anything else ; for by the terms 
 of the argument this God is infinite and eternal. Then out 
 of what was the matter created ? for out of nothing could 
 come nothing. What comes out of anything must be con- 
 crete with it, and, as matter is asserted to be a distinct 
 substance altogether from mind, I want Mr. Lee, on his 
 own hypothesis, to tell me how it was that mind could 
 create something utterly discrete from itself, as he says his 
 God did when he produced the universe ? 
 
 This ultimate power is directed, says Mr. Lee, by intelli- 
 gence, and he believes there are only two possible alterna- 
 tives — either things happen at random, or with design and 
 purpose. I do not accept either view, but hold that a third 
 is conceivable, which Mr. Lee might easily have included ; 
 and that is, that things occur according to the inherent 
 properties of the elements that participate in the occurrence. 
 Fire burns — not at random, and I do not see that it burns 
 from intelligence. Fire burns because it is the quality of 
 heat to produce a certain effect upon the human skin or 
 the human fluids. When a child stumbles upon the fire 
 and gets burned, the fire does not act at random ; it is the 
 nature of fire to produce that efiect upon the child's skin ; 
 and it does not happen, as I conceive, by intelligence, for I 
 cannot understand intelligence directing the conibination of 
 child and fire, so that one should be ready to burn and the 
 other to be burnt. Are such the intelligent arrangements 
 of Mr. Lee's God ajid Creator ? 
 
 But there is beauty in the world. True, and there is 
 ugliness. Will Mr. Lee tell me who produces ugliness ? 
 God, he says, produced all, and if he is to take the credit 
 for the beauty, I want him to take the discredit of the ugli- 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 23 
 
 ness. As a matter of fact, very few of us are as good- 
 looking as we could wish to be, and I don't really think that 
 you can ground the existence of God upon the argument of 
 beauty. You yourself will admit that man has existed for 
 thousands of years ; surely by this time his Creator, with 
 that high sense of beauty, ought to have made him a more 
 presentable object than he is. 
 
 Then we are told there is intelligence because there is 
 law and order. I have to complain that Mr. Lee has used 
 for metaphysical purposes two terms which are commonly 
 used in another sense — in political and social conversation. 
 We speak of law and order in the" political and social world, 
 and what do we mean ? By order we mean good behaviour ; 
 by law we mean edicts, decrees, or acts promulgated either by 
 the king or the parliament of the country, and for the in- 
 fraction of which there is a prescribed penalty. I deny that 
 you have any right to use the word law in nature in any 
 such sense as that. All you mean by law is a certam 
 method in which things occur, and the question behind that 
 which Mr. Lee is asking is this, Is that method in which 
 things occur settled by intelligence, or is it the result of the 
 absolute, unchangeable, inherent properties of matter ? 
 When you use the word "law " in a metaphysical sense, you 
 are begging the very question at issue ; for under cover of 
 the term " law " you introduce the law-giver, which is the 
 very subject we are met this evening to discuss. 
 
 Mr. Lee says that he can think about the stars, and that 
 he can get thought out of them. (A laugh.) He cannot. 
 Let an idiot look at a star for a thousand years, if he lived 
 so long, and what thought would he get out of it ? (Hisses.) 
 Let a poet look at a star, and he might, to use this fashion 
 of speech, get thought out of it ; but the thought is not in 
 the star — the capacity for thought is in the poet's brain. 
 (Applause.) Mr. Lee did not get thought out of the star ; 
 he got it out of his own active intelligence. 
 
 Mr. Lee says that there is thought in the universe, and 
 
24 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 if it is there, an intelligent being must have put it in. 
 Now, I decline to countenance this language. One would 
 fancy thought was something you could put into nature as 
 you put water into a decanter. Wherever I see matter 
 organised in a certain way, I find thought, and without that 
 organisation I find no thought. When that organisation is 
 broken or impaired, thought is broken or impaired ; and 
 when that organisation dies, to all human knowledge the 
 thought dies with it. If you say that God put thought into 
 the universe, what do you mean by this expression ? Do 
 you mean that he gave the universe the capacity of thinking ? 
 But then I thought matter could not think ! God thus can 
 do what, according to your theory, is a contradiction in 
 language. God put thought into the universe ? Why, 
 thought is not general in the universe ; thought is rather the 
 exception. As a matter of fact, how much real thinking is 
 there among the masses of men all over this planet to-day? 
 And down below nmn there are more extensive orders of 
 organic existence that think less and still less, until at last 
 we get down to a point when no one would predicate thought 
 at all. I know that, through a long process of evolution, the 
 higher is evolved from the lower, and thought increases by 
 the stress of life and the operation of the law of natural 
 selection, leading to elimination of the unfit, the survival of 
 the fit, and the continuance of the fit through the law of 
 heredity. But when you tell me that thought is put into 
 the universe, I say that thought is not in it as a thing. 
 Thought to me is a condition : a condition confined to matter 
 in a certain state of organisation ; and I can attach no other 
 meaning whatsoever to the term. 
 
 As to man's moral, mental, and religious nature, which is 
 said to require a God, I deny altogether that there is any 
 necessity for resorting to such an hypothesis. Man, we are 
 told, has a capacity for limitless improvement in mind. I 
 am not sure of that. That is prophecy, and a prophecy 
 should be no basis for discussion. Mr. John Morley says 
 
THEISiM OR ATHEISM ? 25 
 
 that the best way to answer a prophet is to prophesy the 
 opposite. As a matter of fact, one of our greatest juris- 
 pruclists, Sir Henry Maine, in his powerful work upon 
 Popular Government^ argues that there are perceptible limits 
 to man's intellectual capacity for improvement ; and, in the 
 face of this, it is idle to ask me to accept as an established 
 fact what is only a conjecture about the future on the part 
 of Mr. Lee himself. 
 
 Then man has aspirations for the true, the holy, and the 
 eternal, and there must therefore be the true, the holy, the 
 eternal ! But does the Atheist say there is nothing true ? 
 Surely the xltheist can aspire to truth as well as the Theist. 
 The motto of the National Secular Society, which does me 
 the honor to elect me President, is " We seek for Truth." 
 It is again idle to tell us the aspiration after truth involves 
 the existence of the Being whom Mr. Lee is endeavoring to 
 establish. Ar,d what do you mean by the word Jioly ? 
 Holy, as generally used, is something connected with 
 religion. A clergyman is " a holy person," a church is " a 
 holy building," and a Church festival, or Sunday, is "a holy 
 day." Very well ; if you use the word in that sense, I will 
 leave you its full possession. But if by the word holy 
 you mean anything which is dignified, honest, or pertains to 
 the highest moral nature of man, then we aspire to the holy 
 quite as much as any of the Theists who speak from the 
 platforms or preach from the pulpits of the world. 
 
 A word, in conclusion, about man's moral sense. It is 
 imposed from without by God, says ]\Ir. Lee. I say that 
 even men in your own Church, like Professor Henry 
 Drummond, contend that morality is a natural evolution, 
 without anything supernatural in it from beginning to end. 
 God imposes morality upon us ! Then why did he not 
 impose it so that in all parts of the world it was understood 
 alike ? You say we know when we do right and when we 
 do wrong. Do we ? If you commit bigamy in England, 
 you will get seven years' imprisonment ; but if you commit it 
 
26 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 in Turkey, you are acting in conformity with the laws of the 
 land and the consciences of the people. What is the use 
 of saying this morality is imposed from without by God, 
 when its variation with time and place, its absolute accord- 
 ance with the social and economic growth of man, proves 
 it to be natural in its origin and development ? (Loud 
 applause.) 
 
 The Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen, — I am sure 
 Mr. Lee cannot be insensible to the attention and con- 
 sideration you have shown to both the speakers, and I am 
 now about to ask Mr. Lee to continue the debate in an 
 address of fifteen minutes. That effort will be responded 
 to by his opponent in an address of similar length ; and, 
 after that, there will be another address from each gentle- 
 man, of corresponding proportions. 
 
 Mr. Lee : Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, — Mr. 
 Foote commenced by complaining of my putting a series of 
 questions to him, reading them out in the last three minutes 
 of my speech as fast as I could. Now, I am leading to- 
 night, and I demand that my questions be attended to. 
 Mr. Foote says he is not a young debater. Neither am I a 
 young debater. I therefore demand that my questions be 
 attended to. I will attend to his questions to-morrow night, 
 as far as I can. 
 
 Mr. Foote says that, in my own opinion, I have estab- 
 lished a series of propositions. I am glad to say Mr. Foote 
 has been unable to overturn them, and that, instead of 
 replying to my questions, he has managed, in his address, 
 to put questions to me. 
 
 Our friend says he does not intend to occupy the defensive 
 for the greater ease of Mr. Lee. Now, sir, as we are met to 
 discuss "Theism or Atheism : Which is the more reasonable?'^ 
 I submit you cannot discuss that question apart from the 
 universe ; and, therefore, you have to give some fact in favor 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 27 
 
 of Atheism, no matter what you say against Theism. Theism 
 may, or may not, be true ; but, if you say nothing in favor 
 of Atheism, you have not estabhshed your position. 
 
 Our friend said I defined the universe as the sum-total of 
 all conditioned existence. I did ; and I al)ide by that. 
 But Mr. Foote says I assume to know something of an un- 
 conditioned existence. I do ; and Mr. Foote cannot think 
 of any material object without thinking of that object as 
 conditioned ; and he cannot think of the conditioned with- 
 out being driven to the recognition of the unconditioned — 
 you are bound to go on to the unconditioned. Mr. Foote 
 may say there is nothing but the conditioned. I say there 
 are the conditioned and the unconditioned. 
 
 But our friend went on to say that I defined reasonable 
 as that which conforms to human intelligence. I did 
 nothing of the kind. Mr. Foote has managed to leave out 
 two very important words. I defined reasonable as that 
 which conforms to the logical demands of man's mind. This 
 is not saying that what is reasonable is reasonable, but that 
 that is reasonable which is in harmony with the logical 
 demands of the mental life we all possess. 
 
 But Mr. Foote says I defined Atheism and Theism to suit 
 myself. I did not. I defined them in harmony with the 
 great masters of language ; and I say, when we come to 
 debate terms which stand for great doctrines, we must use 
 those terms, not as any individual wishes them to be used, 
 but as the great masters of speech everywhere use them. 
 
 But he went on to say : "Atheism does not affirm per se 
 a theory of the universe." Will Mr. Foote kindly tell me 
 how Atheism can affirm anything per se ? Mr. Bradlaugh 
 said that, to him, the word " God " was a word without 
 meaning. Then how could Mr. Bradlaugh justify his 
 attempt to get rid of an affirmation which has a great deal 
 of meaning to others, but none to himself? But Mr. Foote 
 says he will quote Mr. Bradlaugh's words : " The Atheist 
 does not say there is no God." I admit that. Mr. Bradlaugh 
 
28 THEISM OR ATHEISM? 
 
 was far too wise a man to say, in so many words, " There is 
 no God." Yet Mr. Bradlaugh did more than say " There 
 is no God '' — he sought to prove there could be none ; and 
 if that is not Atheism, I do not know what is. 
 
 Mr. Foote goes on to say it is very easy to talk loose 
 metaphysical phrases. Yes ; we have had a sample of that 
 in Mr. Foote to-night. 
 
 Mr. Foote says : " Go to the man in the street, and ask 
 him what he thinks about God. Will he give you the 
 reasons Mr. Lee has given to-night ?" The man, if he is a 
 good man (I am not insinuating that an Atheist is not good), 
 will say, " I believe in God," and will give reasons. But I 
 am meeting a gentleman to-night who has no belief in God, 
 and I must therefore meet him on common ground — ground 
 on which we can both stand. I appeal, then, to reason, 
 that mighty power which seeks the solution of all problems, 
 and I say we cannot understand the facts of the universe 
 unless we postulate and put behind them the necessary and 
 absolute existence which is above and beyond both the 
 universe and Mr. Foote himself. (Applause.) 
 
 Mr. Foote denied that Atheism per se denied the exist- 
 ence of God. I say Atheism cannot deny anything per se. 
 We have no relation to that which vs> per se, " in itself." It 
 must be manifested to us in some way ; and, when Mr. 
 Foote talks of things in this slipshod way, he uses pretty 
 metaphysical phrases which have no meaning. 
 
 Mr. Foote paid me the compliment of saying my mind is 
 not large enough to form a theory of the universe. No ; 
 but when, then, the universe is formed, I may be able to 
 understand it. But, if my mind is not large enough to form 
 a theory of the universe, how is Mr. Foote's mind large 
 enough to show that my theory of the universe is not true ? 
 (Loud applause.) 
 
 Mr. Foote says, if we have no knowledge of the uncon- 
 ditioned, we have no right to assert its existence. Therefore, 
 before we can make statements implying the existence of 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 29 
 
 God, we must have a knowledge of God. This Mr. Foote 
 regards as impossible. But I would remind Mr. Foote that 
 some of the great German philosophers hold that, before we 
 can say anything is unknown and unknowable, you must be 
 above and beyond it. But, if you are above and beyond it, 
 you make it known ; and so you destroy your doctrine that 
 it is unknown. Thus, in getting rid of my proposition, ]\Ir. 
 Foote has got rid of his own contention that God is un- 
 known and unknowable. 
 
 But Mr. Foote says I fell into a mistake when I spoke of 
 matter and of the universe as different. I did so purposely 
 — in other words, I was dealing in the first part of my 
 remarks with the visible universe ; but the matter which 
 makes the universe, though a part of it, is not visible ; and, 
 when I used these two terms, I meant by the universe that 
 which we can see, and by matter that which is resolvable 
 into the atom, which we cannot see. I fail to see any 
 difficulty in this position. Then as to the atoms which I 
 referred to as bearing the marks of manufactured articles. 
 Mr. Foote says this is a metaphorical expression, as nobody 
 has seen them. Very well. If these atoms have not been 
 seen, how do you know they do not bear the marks of being 
 manufactured ? In other words, Mr. Foote has to go 
 through a process of reasoning in order to say these atoms 
 do not bear these marks, just as great physicists like Clerk 
 Maxwell have gone through processes of reasoning and say 
 they do bear the marks. Personally, I prefer taking the 
 statements of the physicists before those of Mr. Foote. 
 
 But, says our friend, if we think of this universe as the 
 outcome of an existence which is eternal, and which is 
 related to this universe as cause to effect, we are face to 
 face with this difficulty : we cannot possibly conceive of 
 creation. If by that you mean I cannot form an idea or 
 image in my mind as to the way in which it was done, I 
 agree with you ; but if you say I cannot understand or 
 apprehend the bringing of something into existence by a 
 
30 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 being possessing the creative power of God, then I deny the 
 statement. 
 
 Our friend further says : If you believe in creation, you 
 must beHeve that it is either something different from God, 
 or that it is God. Now, I have met this statement before 
 the late Charles Bradlaugh invented it ; but I put this sug- 
 gestion to Mr. Foote : I believe the Creator of the universe 
 stands in the same relation to the universe as I stand in 
 relation to my thoughts. When Mr. Foote proves that my 
 thoughts are me, then I will deal with his argument as to 
 this world being God. 
 
 But, says Mr. Foote, "You get thought out of the stars? 
 I deny that " ; and he says, " We will bring an idiot." But 
 who asked him to bring an idiot to get thought out of the 
 stars ? But " we will bring the poet." Yes, bring the poet ; 
 the poet looks at the stars, and he gets something out of 
 them, and he writes a poem on the heavens. "Ah!" says 
 Mr. Foote, " there is no thought in the universe ; the thought 
 is in the poet's brain." But how came it in the poet's 
 brain ? We will just press this a little closer. Let a man 
 read a book, say Balfour Stewart's Conservation of Energy^ 
 and he will have more thought after he has read it than he 
 had before. Where did the thought come from ? It came 
 from the thought in the book. In the same sense, this 
 universe is a book to the mind of man, and thought can be 
 got out of it. 
 
 But our friend talked about law being a certain method 
 in which things work ; but hoiv came they to work in that 
 method ? This is a big metaphysical problem, and I want 
 information. 
 
 Our friend says : " Wherever I see an organism in a certain 
 condition, I see thought, and if that organism is injured or 
 broken, thought is injured or broken." I hold in my hand 
 Professor Ferrier's great work on "The Functions of the 
 Brain," in which he says, at page 246 : " When one hemi- 
 sphere is removed or destroyed by disease, motion and 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 3 1 
 
 sensation are abolished unilaterally ; but jnenUil operations 
 are still capable of being carried on in their conipleteitess 
 through the agency of one hetnisphere.^'' 
 
 Mr. FooTE : ]Mr. Lee demands — (" Oh, oh ") — I repeat 
 that Mr. Lee demands what he has no power to exact. I 
 have already declined, as any man of sense would decline, 
 to answer questions read out to me, and not furnished to 
 me. Mr. Lee, by his own act, robbed himself of the right 
 to put questions. In the original conditions, as the Joint 
 Committee know, there was to be a certain space of time — 
 a quarter of an hour or so — allowed for questions between 
 the disputants. It was Mr. Lee's own suggestion that the 
 time for questions should be struck out. 
 
 Mr. Lee : I rise to a point of order. The part that was 
 struck out was the part relating to a Socratic method of 
 debate, in which the question should be put and immediately 
 answered ; but that does not rob me of the right to put 
 questions in the course of my address. In every debate in 
 which I have taken part these questions have always been 
 recognised and answered. 
 
 Mr. Foote : Then, with whatever explanation Mr. Lee 
 may qualify the statement, the statement is accurate, that at 
 Mr. Lee's suggestion the time allotted for questions and 
 answers was struck out from the original articles of debate ; 
 and I decline altogether to come here with the responsi- 
 bility of answering questions that have not been furnished 
 to me — questions that no memory could charge itself with 
 the task of accurately retaining. If Mr. Lee wants questions 
 of that kind answered, he shall furnish them beforehand, so 
 that one could get an acquaintance with their terms and 
 bearing. Every man knows that you can ask more questions 
 in a couple of minutes than the wisest man on earth can 
 answer in twenty-four hours. At any rate, Mr. Lee may 
 
32 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 demand as much as he pleases ; I refuse to accede to his 
 demand, and leave him to whatever remedy he can discover. 
 
 Mr. Lee says that I was wrong in saying that I would not 
 occupy the defensive in order that Mr. Lee might more 
 easily take the offensive. Did I not explain to you that it 
 is Mr. Lee's lead to-night ? All I am required to do is to 
 follow Mr. Lee, and to-morrow night he must follow me ; 
 otherwise, why does one disputant open on one night, and 
 the other on the second night? It is my business to-night 
 to oppose what Mr. Lee advances ; to-morrow night it will 
 be his business to oppose what I advance ; and I absolutely 
 decline to be drawn out of what I conceive to be the regular 
 line of logical debate. 
 
 Mr. Lee said I did not give a single fact in favour of 
 Atheism. Well, that is his opinion. My opinion is that he 
 did not give a single fact in favour of Theism. But what 
 is the use of bandying about mere expressions of opinion 
 like that? It is for the audience to judge calmly after the 
 debate is over, and not for the two disputants to say one 
 has not established his position, and the other has not 
 established his. 
 
 Mr. Lee said that he did not know anything of uncon- 
 ditioned existence, but he said that, after knowing con- 
 ditioned existence, we were bound to go on to the idea of 
 unconditioned existence. Permit me to observe that Mr. Lee 
 has a perfect right to say what he is bound to do, but he 
 has no right to say what /am bound to do. I do not feel 
 bound to go on to unconditioned existence. All I know of 
 is conditioned existence. I cannot conceive of what is 
 called unconditioned existence. Therefore his statement 
 falls absolutely to the ground, as it affects myself and a very 
 large number of other people. 
 
 I read from Charles Bradlaugh to the effect that Atheism 
 did not deny God — that is, any God ; but the moment you 
 define God Atheism asks whether your defined God is con- 
 sistent with the facts of experience ; and, if found incon- 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 33 
 
 sistent with those facts, then Atheism would have a perfect 
 right to deny the existence of that God so defined. That 
 is what Atheism does. If Mr. Lee tells me there is a God 
 all-powerful, all-wise, and all-good, I tell him that the facts 
 of life contradict the existence of such a being. (" No, no.") 
 We have heard the names of scientific men. Well, the 
 greatest naturalist that ever lived, Charles Darwin — (a laugh) 
 — the man that smiles at that name cannot know what he 
 is smiling at — I say, the greatest naturalist that ever lived, 
 Charles Darwin, said there is too much suffering in the 
 world ; and he, the greatest scientific intellect since Newton, 
 in face of the facts that science has revealed, felt himself 
 utterly unable to accept the God that Mr. Lee has put forward 
 to-night, and predicated as absolutely necessary to logical 
 human thought. 
 
 Now, we had a little merriment about '' Atheism per se" 
 but there is really nothing metaphysical about that. ^'Per se " 
 simply means, as Mr. Lee knows, " by itself." You cannot 
 think of a thing in universal connections. Man's powers 
 being finite, he must isolate, for purposes of convenience, 
 the objects of his thought ; although, in external nature, they 
 are all in infinite relations to each other. Thus, when 
 you define a line, owing to the imperfection of human 
 powers, you define it as " length without breadth "; but you 
 never find this in actual experience. It is a device you 
 have to resort to ; you take the idea of length separate from 
 the idea of breadth, although the two things are never found 
 except in conjunction with each other. Very well. Atheism 
 in itself, apart from the personal notion of individual 
 Atheists — or, as I expressed it, "Atheism per se" — does 
 not afifirm a theory of the universe. I said that individual 
 Atheists, like Mr. Bradlaugh himself, might affirm Monism 
 (like Spinoza, who was charged with Atheism, but aftirms 
 Pantheism) ; but that is a different thing altogether from 
 what are the logical contents of the term Atheism. I deny 
 that Atheism affirms a theory of the universe. And if Mr. 
 
34 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 Lee can establish his theory, he does not need to argue the 
 unreasonableness of Atheism, for Atheism then disappears. 
 Atheism is the rejection of those forms of Theism which, 
 from past experience, and from what we can infer from 
 present experience, are inconsistent with the facts of life. 
 And in that sense I say Atheism is not at all affected by 
 anything Mr. Lee has said. It is not for me to prove there 
 is no God; Charles Bradlaugh never set out to prove there 
 is no God. Charles Bradlaugh set out to prove that the 
 God defined by Theists was not consistent with facts that 
 were indisputable, and therefore he denied that conception. 
 
 Mr. Lee says that God explains all — does it? (I say "it," 
 because I take God now as an hypothesis.) God explain 
 all ? Not to me ; God does not, to me, make anything any 
 more intelligible. Here is an atom, you say ; minute, in- 
 visible; how did it originate? The very question, " How 
 did it originate ?" involves the statement that it did originate. 
 I deny your right to make the statement that the atom 
 originated. I say that you have to prove that it did 
 originate before you have a right to ask the " how." 
 
 Then, in the next place, if we assume, for the purpose of 
 argument, that the atom did originate, I deny that you can 
 think — you may believe, but you cannot think; that is, you 
 cannot think out, you cannot realise in your own mind the 
 idea — of a mind creating an atom. I deny altogether that 
 anybody has the power to conceive creation in the religious 
 or metaphysical sense of the word. All man can do by the 
 exertion of his utmost powers is to shift matter — pre-existent 
 matter, matter that will exist after he is dead — from one 
 position to another. All creation is to us the re-shaping of 
 pre-existent matter. I deny that the human mind is capable 
 of realising creation in any absolute sense of the word. 
 
 It is no explanation of the atom to tell me that God made 
 it. That is offering me one mystery as the explanation of 
 another mystery. The origin of the atom is a mystery ; a 
 Being is brought in hypothetically, who is a greater mystery 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 35 
 
 than the atom itself; and how can this mystery explain the 
 other? I will tell you how a thing is explained. A thing 
 is explained when Science shows us exactly its origin, its 
 .growth, its development, and possibly its decay and dis- 
 appearance ; tracing it from its initial stage to the completion 
 of its career. That is a scientific explanation ; and, when 
 Science explains a thing like that, we understand it ; but it 
 is not a scientific or a rational explanation of a thing to say, 
 "God did it." That is what ignorance has said in all ages. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 It used to be asked, "Who made the world?" until the 
 nebular hypothesis explained to us the history of worlds. 
 Then the question was shifted farther back, and it was 
 asked, " Who made all the various species of life upon this 
 planet ?" Darwin explained the Origin of Species — I will 
 not say to the satisfaction of all parties, but to the satisfac- 
 tion of scientific men. x^nd now the question is put farther 
 back — "Who made life? Or who made the atoms ?" In 
 other words, the banner of Theology is always planted at 
 the point where knowledge ends and ignorance begins. It 
 is driven farther and farther back. It is the banner, not of 
 Knowledge, but of Mystery. It is the flag of Superstition, 
 under which all the priesthoods of the world have gathered 
 for the exploitation of the people. (Applause.) 
 
 Mr. Lee said that he used the word universe to signify 
 visible matter. Now, there is no distinction between visible 
 and invisible matter, except in Mr. Lee's powers of percep- 
 tion. Visible matter means matter large enough to be seen. 
 But if you have millions upon millions of invisible atoms 
 forming a visible combination of matter, there is no difference 
 in the condition of the atoms because they are in collection, 
 and large enough for our organs of vision to perceive them. 
 That is a distinction without a difference. 
 
 A word about brain and thought. Who ever said that 
 man — who has two brains working in combination, though 
 sometimes not in entire harmony — who ever said that he 
 
36 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 could not think with one hemisphere when the other was 
 injured? A man sees with two eyes; but, if he loses the 
 sight of one eye, he can see fairly well with the other. It 
 is a question of focus. I did not say that two hemispheres 
 were absolutely necessary. I said that brain is necessary to 
 thought. If the second hemisphere goes too, thought dis- 
 appears. There is no thought without bodily organism. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 The Chairman : We have now reached the last stage of 
 this interesting and ably-conducted debate, and I will ask 
 Mr. Lee to give us what must be, for to-night, his final 
 contribution. 
 
 Mr. Lee : I want to go back to my first speech. Our 
 friend referred to a fire and a child, and he said he could 
 not believe that God had planned the fire and the child to 
 meet together. Neither do I. But Mr. Foote does not get 
 rid of \\\^fact of the fire and the child meeting. Whatever 
 his theory of the universe may be, he still has to face the 
 fact. Mr. Foote does not believe in Christianity because 
 God is represented as interfering in the world, and he does 
 not believe in God because he does not interfere in the 
 world. Is not that a contradiction ? The fact is, whatever 
 you do to please Mr. Foote, you cannot satisfy him. 
 
 Our friend says that law is a certain method in which 
 things occur. I asked him in my last speech kindly to 
 explain how the things came to have that method of working ; 
 but Mr. P'oote says he is not here to answer questions. We 
 are very much like the naughty boy ; we ought not to ask 
 questions. That is our opponent's privilege. 
 
 Mr. Foote goes on to say in reference to the National 
 Secular Society, of which he is President, that that Society, 
 as well as those who are on my side, are firm believers in 
 truth. Yes, but there is just this difference. Of course, it 
 is only a matter of opinion, Mr. Foote would say ; but with 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 37 
 
 US it is a question of conviction. Mr. Foote tells us the 
 National Secular Society is in search of truth. We Theists 
 believe we \\2cs^ found it. (Cheers.) 
 
 Mr. Foote says, no matter what Mr. Lee demands, Mr. 
 Lee struck out the part of the conditions of debate which 
 referred to a Socratic debate, and, therefore, has no right to 
 ask questions. The reason I struck that part of the con- 
 ditions out was this. I do not believe in mixing up things 
 that differ. If we want a Socratic debate, we will have it ; 
 but I object to wedging in half-an-hour of Socratic debate 
 in a debate of another character ; but I still have the right 
 to ask questions respecting matters which are fundamental 
 to my position and to Mr. Foote's. If we have no right to 
 ask such questions, why are we here to discuss ? 
 
 But Mr. Foote says that I have not been able to produce 
 a single fact in favour of Theism. Well, now, I have pro- 
 duced a series of propositions ; I have shown that some- 
 thing must be eternal. Mr. Foote has not attempted to 
 deal with that. I have shown you that that something must 
 have power ; Mr. Foote has not attempted to deal with that. 
 I have shown you that something must be the cause of the 
 changes in this universe ; Mr. Foote has not attempted to 
 deal with that. I have shown you that the different move- 
 ments going on in this universe are going on in accordance 
 with law ; Mr. Foote has not attempted to deal with that. 
 And I have shown you that we have reason, mind, a religious 
 and moral sense ; but ]\Ir. Foote has not attempted to deal 
 with that. The whole of my propositions stand untouched 
 — (applause) — and not only untouched, but the banner of 
 theology, which Mr. Foote has spoken of as floating above 
 the place where ignorance begins and knowledge ends — this 
 banner of theology — this banner, sir — floats high above our 
 heads, not as the symbol of "we do not know," but as the 
 sign of a coming victory which has already been shown to 
 be ours by your refusing to deal with these questions. 
 (Loud applause.) Ah, Mr. Foote says, " the banner of 
 
38 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? ■ 
 
 theology." I have never seen a banner yet where there 
 were not contending armies. And I have never seen a 
 banner floating only as the sign of victory ; and, if it floats 
 to-night on this platform, then on this platform we have 
 victory, and not defeat. 
 
 Mr. Foote says what is the use of bandying statements 
 one against the other. Well, I did not begin this practice ; 
 Mr. Foote commenced it, and, therefore, Mr. Foote must 
 not complain if I serve him in the same way he has served 
 me. 
 
 But he goes on to say that Mr. Lee said he did not know . 
 the unconditioned. I did not. I say I do know the un- 
 conditioned — that is, I apprehend it ; I do not form an 
 image of it, but I apprehend it. A cup is not big enough 
 to hold the sea, but it will hold some of it, so that we can 
 tell what kind of a thing the sea is. So we can know 
 something of God. We have shown him to be power, 
 intelligent, and personal, and, therefore, we have shown that 
 God is something, and that we know something of God. 
 
 Mr. Foote seems to have missed my argument on this 
 point altogether. He says he knows nothing but the con- 
 ditioned, and he refuses to go on to the unconditioned ; but, 
 I say, if you know the conditioned, by the laws of mental 
 life you 7;n/sf go on to the unconditioned, and the man 
 who refuses to go on to the unconditioned does not represent 
 the floating banner of victory, but rather has his back to 
 the doctrine which he seeks to overthrow. 
 
 But Mr. Foote says that Atheism denies the existence of 
 a defined God, and goes on to show that Atheism is the 
 rejection of those forms of Theism which we hold. Now, 
 I thought that awfully funny ; because, if it is only the rejec- 
 tion of the definitions of God which have been brought to 
 Mr. Foote's notice, then a definition of God may be framedj 
 which will ultimately overthrow Atheism, and God, after all,! 
 be established in his mind. In other words, Mr. Foote isi 
 not fighting God ; he is fighting definitions. Now I, for one, 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 39 
 
 do not believe in fighting definitions, unless I know that 
 those definitions are part and parcel of the thing I fight. I 
 have not attempted this evening to give you a definition of 
 God ; I have given you a few suggestions as to what I under- 
 stand God to be. I told you I believe him to be an eternal 
 something, having power and intelligence, and such-like. 
 But, while I do not know all about God, I know something 
 of God ; I do not know all about Derby, but I know some- 
 thing of Derby. Still, I have often said — I said it three 
 months ago — I am not one of those who say they believe in 
 God ; I have got a knowledge of God. I go beyond belief 
 — I knoiv God. 
 
 Our friend talked to us about the defects of definitions 
 and such-like, and went on to say that the atom is some- 
 thing, and that the universe is only a bigger atom. Well, 
 now, I object altogether to this position of Mr. Foote's, 
 because he said that an atom is something which cannot be 
 seen. Now, not only is an atom that which cannot be seen 
 — he has told us that — but he went on to say that this world 
 of ours must be the same as the matter which is unseen. 
 Now, if that is so, then the unseen atom must be under 
 the same conditions as this seen table; and, as this seen 
 table cannot move itself, how came the atom to move 
 itself? 
 
 But our friend says that I simply get rid of one difficulty 
 — the origin of the atom — in order to bring in a greater 
 difficulty — God. No, I do not. Mr. Foote has told us that 
 an atom is that which is so infinitely little that it cannot be 
 seen ; yet Mr. Foote must, if he is logical, seek to build up 
 this wondrous universe, with its teeming forms of living 
 activity, from a thing that cannot be seen, and that is so 
 infinitely powerless that it can do nothing of itself — because 
 "the unseen must be the same as the seen." Then he says 
 I bring in another subject which is equally unthinkable. 
 Did I not show you that something must be eternal ? Does 
 Mr. Foote believe the atom is eternal ? If so, he is opposed 
 
40 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 to the greatest physicists in the world, who say it is not 
 eternal. 
 
 Balfour Stewart will be my answer to another statement of 
 Mr. Foote's. He said : "When Science explains a thing, it 
 accounts for its origin, its growth, and its decay." I hold in 
 my hand Balfour Stewart on The Conservation of Energy^ 
 and he shows in this book, by scientific induction, that this 
 universe is like a candle lit, and must go out. He shows 
 what its origin was, what its growth has been, and what its 
 decay will probably be, by scientific facts, and proves that 
 this universe is not eternal. Mr. Foote will have to reckon, 
 not with Mr. Lee, but with Professor Balfour Stewart, the 
 greatest physicist England has ever produced. 
 
 Mr. Foote has given us a series of statements this evening 
 which I think he will find it very difficult to substantiate j 
 but to-morrow night, when he leads in this discussion, we 
 shall have, as I understand, a statement as to what sort of a 
 constructive system Atheism is. If Atheism is not a con- 
 structive system, it does not prove itself to be reasonable by 
 showing that Theism is unreasonable. What it has to do is 
 to show that it is 7}W2'e reasonable than Theism. 
 
 Now, I find I have a body — Mr. Foote has one. In 
 this body I find certain appetites — hunger, thirst. These 
 appetites prove to me that I need something, and that some- 
 where there is something to satisfy these wants ; in other 
 words, somewhere there are food and drink. So that these 
 appetites are proofs to me of a want, and proofs to me also 
 that there is, somewhere, something to supply that want. I 
 also have a mind, and this mind yearns for knowledge ; and 
 the existence of this appetite for knowledge is a proof to me 
 that I need knowledge, and that somewhere there is know- 
 ledge to be had. I have a spirit or self which yearns for 
 God, and this yearning in me proves to me that somewhere 
 there must be a God ; for, if you trust your physical appetites 
 and your mental appetites, why not trust your spiritual 
 appetites also? And if your hunger proves that somewhere 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 4I 
 
 there is food, if your mental hunger proves that somewhere 
 there is knowledge, the hunger of the soul proves that some- 
 where there is God. Mr. Foote may say, " I have not got 
 this appetite, I know nothing about it"; but, as we do not 
 trust a blind man when we wish to know something about 
 the sun, neither do we trust an Atheist when we want to 
 know something about God. (Cheers.) 
 
 The Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen, — I am sure 
 you must have undergone considerable inconvenience in the 
 heat of this crowded hall, especially those of you who are 
 standing ; but it seems to me so in harmony with the instincts 
 of fair play that Mr. Foote should have a full, a fair, and 
 impartial hearing to the end that I trust no one will leave 
 the meeting until Mr. Foote has finished his concluding 
 address. 
 
 Mr. Lee expressed a similar wish. 
 
 Mr. Foote : I am extremely obliged for the kindly spirit 
 which was manifested in the hint just given, but I hardly 
 think it is necessary. I do not feel so profoundly upon the 
 matter as it seems to be imagined, and if any lady or gentle- 
 man, at any time, does not want to hear me, I really do not 
 object to their withdrawing. On the other hand, I do not 
 think it is a right thing to assume that anybody would leave 
 the meeting. Personally, I think we ought to accept people's 
 innocence until there is reason to believe they are guilty. 
 (Dissent and interruption.) Apparently one disputant is 
 free to introduce a matter which the other disputant is not 
 to say anything about. Is that fair play? 
 
 Mr. Lee said that the child and the fire meet, and the fire 
 burns, and what I have got to do is to explain why it burns. 
 (" No, no.") I repeat that IMr. Lee said I was bound to 
 explain how it came to burn. Now, I say I am under no 
 such necessity. All I am obliged to do, if I want to be 
 
42 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 scientific, is to explain the action of fire upon the tissues of 
 the human organism. It does not matter one iota, in the 
 case of the child and the fire, by what argument you come 
 to the conclusion that atoms were endowed or not endowed 
 with their properties. It is enough for my guidance in this 
 world to know the action of fire upon the tissues of the 
 human organism. In that scientific explanation we have all 
 that is necessary to us here, and metaphysics and theology 
 are an useless burden upon our shoulders. 
 
 Mr. Lee says that the Secularists are in search of truth, but 
 the Christians have found it. Not all truth, I apprehend ? (A 
 laugh.) Then, if it does not mean that, it does not mean any- 
 thing. When the Secularist says he is in search of truth, he is 
 not to be understood to mean that he has not yet discovered 
 any truth. What he means is that he is in search of new truth, 
 fresh truth, the truth of to-morrow, with its higher stand- 
 point, with its command of a broader horizon, above the 
 lower truth or falsehood of yesterday, that kept us crawling 
 and abject, instead of making us dignified and independent. 
 
 Mr. Lee continues to assert that something is eternal, by 
 which he can only mean that there is something existing 
 which he is unable, in thought, to limit in time. No man 
 has any right to affirm dogmatically that anything existed 
 eternally. He has a right to say he cannot help thinking 
 so, but no one has a right dogmatically to affirm anything 
 which he does not knoiv ; and no man can know the eternity 
 of anything unless he himself is eternal, having eternally co- 
 existed with it. 
 
 Mr. Lee was good enough to say that I did not touch any 
 of his points, including the moral nature of man ; but I 
 thought I was called to time just at the very moment when 
 I was dealing with the moral nature of man in my first 
 speech. I am willing to let the audience decide, calmly and 
 dispassionately, when the debate is over, as to that. Whether 
 Mr. Lee thinks I have touched his points or not is a matter 
 of very small importance to me. Mr. Lee does not expect 
 
THEISM OR athp:is]m ? 43 
 
 to convert me, and, if I had answered all his propositions to 
 his satisfaction, he would not become an Atheist. What is 
 the use, then, of his saying I have not answered his ques- 
 tions ? All I can do is to reply. I do not expect Mr, Lee 
 to think that I have shattered all his positions. 
 
 Mr. Lee says he knows the unconditioned ; but I deny 
 that he knows, or can know, the unconditioned. He is 
 himself distinctly conditioned, every moment of his life 
 being absolutely dependent upon his environment. When 
 he talks about matter being incapable of moving itself, I 
 tell Mr. Lee that he himself, except in relation to external 
 nature, would lose all capacity of thought. Mankind can 
 only work under the stimulus of the external universe. We 
 begin with sensations, perceptions ; we weave them into 
 ideas ; but it is the stimulus of the external universe that 
 furnishes us with the sensations, and it is the stimulus of 
 that external universe that keeps alive the activity of our 
 powers. 
 
 Mr. Lee said it was no use fighting definitions. What 
 else can we fight in a discussion ? It is idle to talk about 
 fighting God : we are here to fight over ^/le defined God. If 
 God exists, he does not require any man's defence ; and if 
 God do not exist, no man's defence can establish his exist- 
 ence. Our object is discussion, and discussion can only 
 proceed upon definitions ; consequently it is really defini- 
 tions that we are here to debate. 
 
 We were told that the religious banner is a sign of victory. 
 Not necessarily. Both armies carry banners into the field, 
 and in general it is only one side that wins. And banners 
 are not confined to battle ; they are floated in times of 
 peace as well as in war. I do not think it is right to found 
 an argument upon a metaphor. A metaphor is a very good 
 thing as an adornment, a help, an illustration — but no more. 
 And when you say your banner is triumphant, I say the 
 very fact that, after thousands of years of priestly teaching, 
 and of the authority of religion over the child's mind — I 
 
44 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 say, the very fact that, after it all, we are met to-night to 
 discuss this very question of God's existence shows that 
 your banner is Jiot triumphant. (Applause.) 
 
 You have an appetite for knowledge, and you think that 
 that appetite postulates infinite knowledge ; you have an 
 aspiration for knowledge of God, and you think that that 
 postulates the existence of God. I say that there is no 
 logical connection between your desires and the certainty 
 of their satisfaction. A man may yearn for food in the 
 midst of starvation; the appetite and the food 7nay go 
 together, but they may 7iot^ or starvation would never 
 occur. Appetite is, of course, in its strict meaning, the 
 clamour of the stomach for food, owing to the depletion of 
 the organ under exercise and air. That is all its primary 
 meaning, and when you use the word in any other sense 
 you are only using it in a metaphorical, and not in a 
 debating sense. If you want knowledge, have you not field 
 enough in studying the universe without beginning with 
 dogmatism about its origin ? You want truth, you say ? 
 Well, all the scientists of the world have not learned all that 
 can be learned about Nature ; and even Shakespeare, the 
 greatest reader of human nature, has not fathomed all the 
 profound recesses of human thought and feeling. Surely 
 there is room within this great universe to expatiate, without 
 trying to fly in a vacuum. 
 
 Then I am told that Balfour Stewart says the atom was 
 created or originated ; I don't care which term you use, it 
 comes to the same thing. Now, it is quite true that the authors 
 — for there were hvo oi\.\\QVi\ — of "The Unseen Universe" did 
 take up that position, and it is equally true that Professor 
 ClifTord opposed them ; and Professor Clifford was one of the 
 first scientific men of this country, and probably of the 
 world. What is the use of saying I must bow down to the 
 authority of one scientific man when another scientific man 
 opposes him on grounds of science ? I say the man of 
 science has no more power of deciding about the creation 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 45 
 
 of matter than any common man that walks the streets. He 
 can tell you how atoms combine, and how they divide; he 
 can show you their chemical properties ; but he has no 
 knowledge whatever of their creation or origination. The 
 doctrine accepted by all scientists is that man cannot 
 create an atom, man cannot destroy an atom ; and I say 
 that, arguing from analogy, it is reasonable — at any rate, 
 more reasonable — to suppose that what cannot be destroyed 
 will never cease to be, and that what cannot be made never 
 began to be. 
 
 Finally, we were told, in poetical language, about God's 
 kindness j and we were given a poetical recitation, which I 
 hope Mr. Lee did not think was any contribution to the 
 debate. I might cite poetry, but then is that discussion ? 
 Shelley said the name of God has fenced about all crime 
 with holiness. You talk of the kindness of your God ! I 
 fail to see the kindness when I look at the history of the 
 world. The great Cardinal Newman, the keenest theological 
 intellect that this country has produced in the present 
 century, said that, although his being was full of the idea of 
 God, yet when he looked into the universe the impression 
 made upon him was as though he had looked into a mirror 
 and saw no reflection of his face. What he saw in the 
 world was incompatible with the doctrines of theology in 
 which he had been educated. The kindness of God and 
 religion ! The kindness of the auto-da-fel The kindness 
 of the thumb-screw, the rack, the torture chamber ! The 
 kindness of the heretic's dungeon ! The kindness of per- 
 verting and distorting the mind of the child ! I prefer the 
 kindness of Humanity to the kindness of all the gods the 
 world has ever known. (Loud applause.) 
 
SECOND NIGHT. 
 
 The Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen, — In com- 
 mencing the business of this evening I shall content myself 
 by expressing the hope that the courteous and careful 
 attention paid by the audience last night to both the 
 gentlemen who figure in this debate will be repeated on this 
 occasion. You are all, no doubt, well aware of the subject 
 of the discussion, and it will only remain for me to remark 
 for your information that certain regulations have been 
 drawn up by the Joint Committee who have the manage- 
 ment of the arrangements, and acquiesced in by both the 
 disputants. Last evening Mr. Lee opened the debate by 
 delivering an address of thirty minutes' duration. He was 
 replied to in a speech of similar length by Mr. Foote, and 
 subsequently both gentlemen delivered two speeches of a 
 quarter of an hour in length. The same order of pro- 
 cedure will be followed this evening, with this distinction, 
 that to-night Mr. Foote opens the debate, and he will be 
 replied to by Mr. Lee ; and then will follow, in the natural 
 order of events, a series of speeches corresponding to those 
 delivered last evening. 
 
 I will now, without further ado, and with a desire to 
 expedite the business of the meeting, ask Mr. Foote to open 
 the debate. 
 
 Mr. Foote : Mr. Chairman, Mr. Lee, Ladies and Gentle- 
 men, — The subject we are met to discuss to-night, as last 
 night, is " Theism or Atheism : Which is the More Reason- 
 able ?" My friendly opponent led off last night, and, of 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 47 
 
 course, had the opportunity of deciding the direction of the 
 evening's debate. To-night that opportunity lies with me. 
 I do not suppose that anybody who differs from me (and 
 in this I will include my opponent) will be quite satisfied 
 with the direction I take ; but I am in the conduct of my 
 own case, and I intend to do what I consider to be justice 
 to it, quite irrespective of the opinions of anyone else. 
 (Hear, hear.) 
 
 Now I wish, at the outset, to say just a few words about 
 the direction the debate took last night. It was mainly of 
 a metaphysical character, and chiefly turned upon the 
 problem of the origin of the universe, if I may express it in 
 that summary fashion. Mr. Lee told us a great deal about 
 matter and atoms, and the whole argument really turned 
 upon what is admittedly incomprehensible — that is, incom- 
 prehensible in the present state of our knowledge. I am 
 not one of those who say that no particular problem will at 
 some future time be solved ; but one is entitled to say that a 
 certain specified problem is insoluble in the present con- 
 dition of human knowledge ; and, as a matter of fact, when 
 you discuss the origin of matter, you are discussing a thing 
 which, from the very nature of the case, you are not in a 
 position to determine. And it appears to me that you may 
 mix up with a discussion of that kind a great deal of very 
 questionable physics. For instance, we were told last night 
 that, if the universe were full of matter, there would be no 
 possibility of motion ; but, of course, that overlooks the fact 
 that combinations of matter are of various degrees of density. 
 Every time Mr. Lee and I walk along the street we walk, 
 as it were, through matter, for the air around us is as much 
 matter, although in a gaseous condition, as this table or the 
 floor upon which we stand. To illustrate this from another 
 standpoint : if you were to take a bottle and put half-a- 
 dozen marbles in it, and then fill the bottle fright up with 
 water, and hermetically seal it, you would find that, as you 
 moved the bottle about, the marbles, under the law of 
 
48 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 gravitation, would shift their position, and that they would 
 pass through the fluid medium of water, although the recep- 
 tacle which contained them was full. Now, of course, in 
 the same way, the various heavenly bodies move through 
 what is described as an infinite elastic substance — the inter- 
 stellar ether. If you have elasticity, and if you have bodies 
 of various degrees of density, it seems to me absurd to say 
 that, if the universe were full of matter, there would be no 
 room for and no possibility of motion. I might, of course, 
 take some other illustrations, but these will sufifice to show 
 that when you get discussing these questions about the 
 origin of matter, unless you happen to be as perfectly well 
 up in physics as, say, Balfour Stewart, it is easy to go astray. 
 Last night Mr. Lee defined Atheism, and he defined 
 Theism ; but I am not bound, all through this discussion, to be 
 tied up by his definitions. I am going to tell you what I mean 
 by Atheism, and I shall tell you in a moment. what I mean 
 by Theism. Atheism is simply " not Theism." Atheism 
 does not deny the existence of God — that is, of any God. 
 Atheism is opposed to every form of Theism which has yet 
 been propounded to the world. The Atheist is a person 
 who, if there be anything in Theism, is desirous of ascer- 
 taining what it is, and, if it be true, of accepting it. Con- 
 sequently he takes the trouble to examine the various 
 theories that are propounded, and, as far as he can, he 
 ascertains their worth. Now, the Atheist considers that all the 
 Theistic theories that have been propounded labour under 
 disadvantages, which, at any rate at present, seem impossible 
 of removal. An Atheist, then, is one who is not a Theist. 
 The prefix "A" does not mean denial; it means "without"; 
 and, consequently, I shall use the term "Atheism " to-night 
 as " not Theism " — or, if you please, " against Theism," in 
 so far as Theism endeavors to define its God, and defines 
 him in a manner which is contradicted by indisputable facts 
 of existence. Of course, I may be told — we zvere told last 
 night — that such an Atheism is not constructive ; in other 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 49 
 
 words, that Atheism does not explain the universe. Well, 
 no Atheist attempts to explain the universe. He is more 
 modest than to pretend to do anything of the kind. The 
 Atheist declares that the finite intelligence of man is not 
 capable of solving the infinite problem of the inconceivably 
 distant origin of this universe. (Cheers.) But if you pressed 
 me, and said that, as a thinker, I must have soine idea upon 
 the subject, I should say : " Very well ; I am not prepared 
 to assert that matter is either eternal or not eternal ; I am 
 not in a position to make a positive assertion where I have 
 no positive evidence ; but it is as open for me to conjecture 
 as for any man, and perhaps my conjecture would be as true 
 as his ; and, if you tell me there must be an eternal some- 
 thing, I should start from what I know, for I would rather 
 believe in the eternity of what I know than in the eternity 
 of something that I have not been able to discover. And 
 so, I say, matter exists ; matter is all about us ; our bodily 
 organism, at any rate, is material ; and I would prefer to 
 believe that the matter which, according to physical teaching, 
 is, by us at any rate, indestructible in its atoms, is essentially 
 indestructible ; that it never began to be ; that, as it exists 
 now, and did exist eternally in the past, so it will continue 
 to exist eternally in the future." In other words, if there is 
 to be an eternal something, I prefer an eternal something 
 which I know, to an eternal nothing which is only the postu- 
 late of an opponent in a discussion. (Applause.) 
 
 Atheism and Theism, except they come into dogmatic 
 relationship to morals and conduct, are speculations, and it 
 is well known that speculations — the very saine speculations 
 — can be entertained by men of all varieties of moral cha- 
 racter and condition. Indeed, when one speculation is 
 before the world, and another is opposed to it, and when 
 the world has been discussing these speculations for thou- 
 sands of years, and is still discussing them, with no hope of 
 arriving at a satisfactory conclusion, an impartial, honest, 
 and careful thinker is tempted to ask himself. What is the 
 
50 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 reason of this perpetual discord, in spite of this perpetual 
 discussion ? For my part, I am obliged — I cannot help 
 myself — to fall back upon the explanation that this discus- 
 sion has never been settled, because the disputants have not 
 the facts to go by. When you discuss a matter of science, 
 or a matter of history, you get at the facts ; and, by-and- 
 bye, the facts determine the judgment of the people who 
 study them. But, when you are speculating about the un- 
 known, you have no facts to go upon ; hence it is a mere 
 matter of conjecture ; and, as conjecture is determined by 
 individual preference, taste, predilection, and even imagina- 
 tion and fancy, it is quite natural that, in the absence of 
 facts to sway the judgment, this discord should continue as 
 long as men will look in that direction for truth. And I, for 
 one, fall back — as an Atheist falls back, as the old type of 
 Atheists all fell back — upon the position that man can never 
 sound, with his finite plummet, the depths of an infinite 
 universe \ that man cannot, with his finite intelligence, solve 
 an infinite problem ; and that it is his business to fall back 
 upon practical knowledge and practical conduct. In short, 
 the constructive side of Atheism is Secularism. Secularism 
 deals with this world. The Atheist, as such, may deny 
 Theism as it is propounded in definitions ; but you have the 
 constructive side of Atheism in the practical system of 
 Secularism. Theism itself is no more really constructive 
 than Atheism. It is a speculation about the origin and 
 government of the universe, and Atheism is in opposition to 
 that particular speculation. Before either of them can con- 
 struct, they must descend to the common ground of human 
 nature and human experience. That common ground is 
 open to every form of belief for constructive purposes ; it 
 is not the exclusive possession of Theism, to which school 
 my friendly opponent belongs. I say, therefore, that the 
 whole question between Atheism and Theism, as to their 
 reasonableness, resolves itself into the trial of Theism. It 
 is the Theist who propounds his theory. I have no theory 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 5 I 
 
 of the universe ; and, when the words were put down for 
 discussion, I declined to admit them. The Atheist has no 
 such theory. He does not set out to explain the universe ; 
 he tries to learn as much as he can about it ; and, if he learns 
 any new truth to-day, there is more to be learned to-morrow. 
 As long as man's mind is finite, and he has to inhabit this 
 world — which is really but as a speck of dust in the infinitude 
 of space — however far he advances, there will be the same 
 old horizon of knowledge. However we may gather know- 
 ledge in the years to come, our far-off posterity will have a 
 similar opportunity, and may they put it to a similar use ! 
 (Applause.) 
 
 Now, if we have to enter upon a trial of Theism, we must 
 understand what Theism is. Mr. Lee, last night, refrained 
 from defining God. His God accounts for everything, but 
 the very thing which was all-important in the case was never 
 defined. 
 
 I shall define Theism as "that form of belief which 
 declares that the visible, tangible, conditioned universe is 
 created and governed by infinite intelligence, which belongs 
 to an infinite personality, which is characterised by infinite 
 power and infinite wisdom ; nay, more — it is characterised, 
 according to Theistic teaching, by infinite goodness or 
 benevolence." What I am going to do in the trial of Theism 
 is to ascertain whether the facts fit in with the theory. I 
 am not going to rush oif to a supposed centre, to which the 
 sun, with all our system, is hurrying. I am not going to 
 peer with the microscope in the vain hope of discovering 
 the origin of the atom. I am going to speak about what 
 we know of the facts of life, instead of rushing off into 
 infinite space. I am going to see what can be found in this 
 world, the world in which we live. (Applause.) I submit 
 that, if Theism can be proved at all, it ought to be proved 
 from what we thoroughly know, rather than from what we 
 are only inadequately acquainted with. 
 
 Now, what is the great teaching of men of science — a 
 
52 THEISM OR ATHEISM? 
 
 teaching which, although originating outside the Churches, 
 is spreading within, and infecting them all? It is the 
 doctrine of Evolution. The bishops are accepting it ; the 
 foremost champions of Christianity are accepting it ; Mr. 
 Benjamin Kidd, one of the most powerful defenders of 
 religion, accepts Darwinism as a starting-point ; and Pro- 
 fessor Henry Drummond, the author of The Ascent of Man 
 — who differs from Mr. Kidd very largely, yet agrees with 
 him in this — starts with Darwinism as an established truth. 
 It does not matter if some of the clergy still look askance 
 at it j for, as Charles Darwin said, it is the business of men 
 of science to find out what is true, and, when the men of 
 science are agreed, all the clergy have to do is to say, 
 " Ditto." Now, what is this Evolution ? Evolution is not a 
 plan which you can imagine devised by infinite wisdom, and 
 carried out by infinite power, prompted by infinite benevo- 
 lence. What is the great principle which Charles Darwin 
 established to the satisfaction of the scientific world ? It is 
 natural selection ; and the result of that is what Herbert 
 Spencer calls " the survival of the fittest." What does 
 natural selection operate upon ? The struggle for existence. 
 This planet is limited in size. It is limited in the amount 
 of subsistence it affords to animal life. Nature is producing 
 animal life in superabundance ; it is impossible for all to 
 subsist; and the result is, they are all engaged, upon the 
 lines of evolution, in a struggle for life. One order of exist- 
 ence presses upon another, and, as Darwin's grandfather 
 said, the law of life on this globe is " eat or be eaten." 
 Now, I cannot imagine a God of infinite wisdom, infinite 
 love, and infinite power, planning a universe in which living 
 beings have to submit to the law of " eat or be eaten." 
 I would rather not have to kill ; I would rather not see all 
 living things about me engaged in killing each other. But 
 they do kill each other ; and man, with supreme impartiality, 
 kills all the rest when they stand in his way, or when he 
 wants them for his feast or sport. 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 53 
 
 Now, what does this struggle for existence mean ? It 
 means that the world, ever since the rise upon it of organic 
 life — at least, ever since the advent of beings who are capable 
 of feeling pleasure and pain — has been one great cock-pit, 
 running red with the blood of mutual slaughter. In this 
 struggle for existence there is no quarter given. You are not 
 let off to fight another day. As Professor Huxley says, the 
 result for the vanquished is death. And this red cock-pit, 
 which the world has been ever since sentient organisms 
 appeared upon it, I am told by the Theists was designed, 
 and that the Being who designed it foresaw all that would 
 happen, sees what does happen, and, in spite of all our 
 efforts to improve it, continues it as it is. I say that this is 
 too hard for common flesh and blood to believe, if we realise 
 what it means. I would rather be an Atheist, who says, " I 
 know nothing of God, and your definition of God does not 
 commend itself to my intelligence, in the face of the facts of 
 existence," than be a Theist, believing in a God who permits 
 ■ — nay, as Creator, ordained — that which every tender-hearted 
 man and woman would put a stop to, if possible, to-morrow. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 What is human history? Looked at through the long 
 records that have come down to us, it is more or less a long 
 succession of quarrelling, largely about religion, and wars of 
 dynasty and ambition, and the sacrifice of the lives, liberties, 
 and happiness of the great masses of the people, in the 
 interests of those who leaped into the seats of power, and 
 used mankind for their own purposes. Why, it is only 
 within recent memory that the people, even in civilised 
 countries, have been brought within the pale of a free con- 
 stitution. Their whole lives were previously decided for 
 them by a handful of upper classes. I can no more see in 
 human history, than I can see in Evolution, the signs of an 
 intelligent and moral governor. Even when we take man as 
 • he now is, where and how does Theism justify itself? The 
 human organism is extremely imperfect. Take the most 
 
54 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 splendid-looking specimen, and the physiologist will tell you 
 that, even in such a case, there are many variations from the 
 normal standard. And how many of us are splendid 
 specimens ? If you take the world all through, the con- 
 dition of man as an organism, stripped of the vanity of his 
 apparel, reflects no great credit upon his Creator. (Dissent.) 
 This Creator has been producing men for thousands of 
 years, and has not yet learned to produce men who can 
 bring about a state of society without workhouses, without 
 gaols, without pauperism. (Applause.) Why, I think if we 
 were constructed with something less than infinite wisdom, 
 with something less than infinite goodness, with something 
 less than infinite power, one might expect the human race 
 to be better than it now is after all these thousands of 
 years of experiment. (Applause.) 
 
 Even if you take the human organ which Paley, in his 
 Natural Theology^ laid so much stress upon, what is the 
 fact ? I observe that Mr. Lee, like myself, trusts to the aid 
 of glasses. Now, I went to a very eminent optician in 
 London, some few months ago, to have my eyes tested 
 afresh, and he said, in the way of conversation, as a practical 
 man, that the human eye was a very imperfect instrument. 
 Professor Tyndall says that the great German scientist, 
 Helmholtz, who died last year, declared that if a thing like 
 the human eye were sent to him by a workman, he would 
 send it back with severe reprobation. I cannot conceive 
 that infinite intelligence, after thousands of years of practice, 
 could not turn out better eyes than are now located in our 
 heads. And what have we found since rapid communication 
 came in, and engine-drivers were employed who had to be 
 signalled with colored lights? It has been discovered that 
 a very large percentage of people are color-blind, and cannot 
 distinguish colors accurately, especially blue and red and 
 green. Now, if this be so, it argues some defect in the 
 Infinite Designer of the universe, and I want to know who is 
 responsible for these defects. If some other being is not 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 55 
 
 responsible for them, then God is responsible for them. If 
 God produces eyes that cannot see, or eyes that can only 
 see very inadequately, it is idle to tell me that his wisdom 
 and power are infinite; for infinite wisdom would know how 
 to produce better eyes, and infinite power would be able to 
 second the designs of infinite wisdom. 
 
 Then look at the disasters that occur in the world. Man 
 is encouraged to build his house, to found his home, and 
 suddenly, without warning, the earthquake shatters it and 
 kills him ; or, if he is spared himself, perhaps his dearest are 
 buried beneath its ruins. Do you mean to tell me that an 
 infinite intelligence is [responsible for this ? Do you mean 
 to tell me that the work of that infinite intelligence is 
 prompted by infinite wisdom, and is carried out by infinite 
 power ? I say that these disasters that are constantly 
 desolating the world, that these pestilences, these blightings 
 of crops, are all confutations of your Theistic theory. Here 
 in England we send missionaries out to India, and when a 
 famine occurs in India through the failure of the harvest 
 we subscribe money in order to save from starvation the 
 people who, if left to providence, would starve by the action 
 of this God of infinite wisdom and goodness and power. 
 
 How, upon the Theistic hypothesis, can you reconcile 
 yourself to the fact of disease ? Disease is ever bafl[ling the 
 man of science. Often, as we master one disease, another 
 becomes more malignant. As we learn how to treat fevers, 
 cancer becomes more severe in its ravages ; and, as we 
 manage, by improved sanitation, to get a better condition 
 of general health among the people, we suffer from that 
 disease which is known as insanity, and which is gaining 
 ground in every civilised country. Now, what is the cause 
 of these diseases ? You may tell me it is the microbes ; but 
 who made the microbes to produce diseases ? Your infinite 
 deity planned the microbe and planned the man ; he 
 arranged it so that the microbe would get into the man's 
 blood, and set up an action there which produces terrible 
 
56 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 suffering, and perhaps death. A man is produced ; he may 
 be a splendid specimen of the human race ; but a cancer is 
 planted within him by the arrangements of this infinite 
 intelligence, and he becomes a mere provider for a malig- 
 nant, devouring parasite. 
 
 While these things continue, while destitution fills our 
 workhouses, while crime fills our gaols, while disease fills 
 our hospitals, while insanity fills our asylums, and while men 
 are engaged in mutual slaughter all over the world, I say I 
 remain an Atheist, and that the facts of life contradict the 
 Theism which you are asking me to accept. 
 
 The minute which is reserved to me now I will spend in 
 just enforcing, very briefly, a summary of my position. 
 
 Atheism is not a denial of any God. It is being without 
 God, because one cannot see the evidence of his existence } 
 or because the facts of life are opposed to Theism as it is 
 propounded. Atheism, as such, is not called upon to affirm, 
 as a result of finite speculation, any theory about the origin of 
 an infinite universe. When the Atheist, with men of science 
 to back him, looks through the process of evolution, looks 
 through the history of the world, examines the present condi- 
 tion of sentient existence upon the globe, he sees every where 
 about him strong demonstration that Theism, which defines 
 God as infinitely wise, powerful, and good, cannot be true. 
 The theory does not fit the facts. You must, therefore, either 
 remove the facts (which you cannot), or you must alter your 
 theory. As your theory stands, and as the facts stand, they 
 contradict each other. And the Atheistic position is sup- 
 ported by the contradiction between your theory and the 
 experience of our lives. (Loud applause.) 
 
 The Chairman : Ladies and Gentlemen, — Before calling 
 upon Mr. Lee to reply, I will take the liberty of suggesting 
 that those persons who feel somewhat impatient as they 
 listen to views which do not accord with their own should 
 repress their zeal, with the consciousness that their own 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 57 
 
 champion will, in due course, have the opportunity of 
 replying. I must, further, press this point, because, with 
 every desire to be impartial, I cannot be blind to the fact 
 that the majority of persons present are in distinct opposition 
 to the views expressed by the gentleman who has just sat 
 down. 
 
 I will take the liberty of saying that the attribute of fair 
 play demands that the courage he displays in standing 
 before an hostile audience, and so fearlessly expounding his 
 principles, should secure for him a patient and respectful 
 hearing. 
 
 I make these observations in good faith, and I also 
 bespeak for Mr. Lee your kindly consideration, as he has 
 been seriously indisposed to-day, and I can only regard his 
 presence here to-night as an indication of his pluck and 
 determination in carrying through his part of the program. 
 
 Mr. Lee : Mr. Chairman, Mr. Foote, Ladies and Gentle- 
 men, — I have listened to the address which Mr. Foote has 
 given us with a very great deal of attention, but, I must say, 
 with a very great deal of disappointment. I gathered that 
 Mr. Foote wished us to understand that Atheists had no 
 theory of the universe ; but, before Mr. Foote sat down, he 
 showed us that they have a theory of the universe ; that 
 they are able to judge of the Theistic theory, and declare 
 it to be bad, and speak of another — the Atheistic — as better. 
 
 In spite of these facts, Mr. Foote has repeated his state- 
 ment that Atheism does not deny God, and that Atheism 
 has no theory of the universe. I hold in my hand Mr. 
 Charles Bradlaugh's debate with the Rev. T. Lawson, of 
 West Hartlepool, on Is Atheisjn the True Doctrine of the 
 Ufiiverse ? Mr. Foote quoted Mr. Bradlaugh several times 
 last night ; I am therefore appealing to his own authority to 
 refute his statements. Mr. Bradlaugh says : " By Atheism 
 I mean the affirmation of one existence. This affirmation 
 is a positive, not a negative, affirmation, and is properly 
 
58 THEISM OR ATHEISM? 
 
 describable as Atheism, because it does ?wt include in it any 
 possibility of Theism — that is, of God^ On page 2 of this 
 book he very justly says : " Either Atheism or Theism must 
 be the true doctrine of the universe. I assume that no 
 other theory is feasible. Theism is either Pantheism, Poly- 
 theism, or Monotheism. Atheism denies alike the reason- 
 ableness of Pantheism, Folytheis?7i, and Monotheism^ 
 
 In face of this, our friend says Atheists have no theory 
 of the universe — that is, I presume, no constructive theory. 
 They can criticise another theory, but, when it comes to 
 actual building up. Atheists find they have no foundation 
 on which to rest, and, like the man who built upon the 
 sand, the first blast of the storm topples the structure to 
 the ground. (Applause.) 
 
 Mr. Bradlaugh says, on page 3 : "If Monism be true, 
 and Atheism be Monism, then Atheism is necessarily the 
 true theory of the universe. I submit that there cannot be 
 more than one ultimate explanation." Thus Mr. Charles 
 Bradlaugh, who was a great authority on these subjects, is in 
 distinct antagonism with Mr. Foote, for he (Mr. Bradlaugh) 
 says Atheism has a theory of the universe, and, if that theory 
 be true, no other theory can be. 
 
 I pass on to notice what Mr. Foote said last night, in 
 reference to the relation between the brain and thought. He 
 told us that, whenever he finds an organism in a certain 
 condition, there he finds thought ; but is it not a fact that, 
 in some cases, where the brain cannot be shown to have any 
 physical defect, no thought can be exhibited ? Is it not 
 true also that, where the brain has ma7iy physical defects, 
 thought is not injured ? I shall be glad if Mr. Foote will 
 kindly answer these questions in his next speech, whether 
 we are engaged in a Socratic debate or not. 
 
 Our friend said that, where he finds a given physical con- 
 dition, there he finds thought. Now, Dr. Carpenter, in his 
 Mental Physiology (page no), says: "Further, it has been 
 often established, alike by experiments on animals and by 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 59 
 
 observations on the phenomena of disease and accident in 
 man, that the substance of the cerebrum is itself insensible 
 — that is, no injury done to it, or physical impression made 
 upon it, is felt by the subject of it." And Dr. Carpenter 
 goes on to say : " It is clear, therefore, that the presence of 
 the cerebrum is 7iot essential to consciousness ^ 
 
 So much for Mr. Foote's contention that, where he finds 
 a certain physical condition, there he finds thought. Dr. 
 Carpenter distinctly opposes that view. Indeed, it is agreed 
 by all great mental physiologists that it is impossible for us 
 to explain the passage from the physics of the brain to the 
 facts of self-consciousness ; while Professor Tyndall assures 
 us that self-consciousness is the rock on which Materialism 
 splits. 
 
 But Mr. Foote says that he denies my right to assert that 
 matter has originated. I repay the compliment by denying 
 his right to assert that it did not originate. 
 
 But what does Mr. Foote mean by the word " matter " ? 
 He has used the term several times. Every word I used I 
 defined as I used it. I therefore demand an explanation of 
 this word " matter." 
 
 Mr. Foote last night denied that he is compelled to think 
 of something as eternal, and he spoke of the changing 
 phenomena of this earth and the worlds around us, implying 
 that an infinite series of causes and effects is the explanation 
 of the evolution of the visible universe. That was the 
 implication ; or, if it was not, what was the implication ? 
 And if it was, then Mr. Foote ca7i think of the eternal, for 
 he speaks of an eternal series of causes and effects. But if 
 we carefully analyse what is meant by an infinite, or eternal, 
 series of causes and effects, we find it means that a long 
 series of finite changes can make up a total which is infinite. 
 This is opposed to common sense, educated reason, and the 
 first principles of scientific induction. You cannot get an 
 infinite total by the multiplication of finite units. j\Ir. 
 Foote may try, but he will fail. 
 
6o THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 Mr. Foote goes on to say that he knows only the con- 
 ditioned. Then how does he know it is conditioned ? 
 This is important. If he knows only the conditioned, how- 
 does he know it is conditioned ? I must have that explained 
 to-night ; and, though we are not having a Socratic debate, 
 I have a right to ask a question like this, and I demand to 
 have it answered. 
 
 But, Mr. Foote says. Cardinal Newman, one of the 
 keenest intellects of this century, saw certain things in 
 nature which he could not understand, or reconcile with the 
 idea of God. That may be so ; but is it not rather strange 
 that Cardinal Newman, with his keen intellect, was so 
 thoroughly opposed to Atheism that he became one of those 
 exalted souls who live in the very atmosphere of the realised 
 presence of the living, eternal God ? (Applause.) 
 
 But Mr. Foote says no man has a right to affirm what he 
 does not know, and to affirm the eternal you must know it ; 
 but, in order to know it, you must be eternal. Now, this is 
 a play on the word " know." Does Mr. Foote mean, by the 
 word "know," absolute knowledge, absolute information, 
 about anything ? Does he mean such a knowledge of any 
 given thing that nothing more can be added to the know- 
 ledge ? If so, I deny that he knows anything in this sense. 
 But, if I can have a partial knowledge of Mr. Foote, if I 
 can have a partial knowledge of this table, if I can have a 
 partial knowledge of this universe, why cannot I also have 
 a partial knowledge of God ? The very fact that we exist 
 demands that something must have existed without begin- 
 ning, that something must be eternal ; and, whatever our 
 theory of the heavens or the earth, or man, may be, deep 
 down under every theory and form of belief there is this 
 absolute fact of the mind — something must be eternal. 
 
 But, Mr. Foote says, if God exists, he does not need to 
 be defended. No, he does not. But, when we find men 
 trying to rob the nation of its belief in God, we come 
 forward with our little reasoning powers, and, in the struggle 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 6 1 
 
 of intellect with intellect, and mind against mind, we shatter 
 the beliefs of those who say there is no God. (Applause.) 
 
 In reference to my statement that we have certain bodily, 
 mental, and spiritual appetites, Mr. Foote says : " Yes, I 
 admit we have these appetites for knowledge; but have we not 
 room enough in the universe to satisfy these appetites ?" I 
 say. No; and the/acf that all the progressive races of the 
 earth have not been content to rest in the universe is a 
 proof that man is not satisfied with the universe. When 
 he looks upon this universe, as it comes within the field of 
 his vision, he sees upon its face the indications of a Being 
 behind and above the universe — a Being to whom he must 
 go on, and before whom he must bow. No, our friend has 
 not shown that we must be satisfied with the universe which 
 is around us ; rather, we rise "through nature up to nature's 
 God." 
 
 Our friend has referred to a sentence which occurred in 
 the little poem"^ which I recited to you last night, in which 
 the " szuee^ kindness " of God is spoken of. He said (and I 
 think I never heard a more illogical argument in my life) — 
 " Kind," said he, " when this God has designed thumb- 
 screws and racks to tear and rend men ?" God designed 
 thumbscrews and racks ! Why, it is man who has done 
 this, not God. No, not God, but man, on the nature of 
 whom Mr. Foote builds his philosophy, saying there exist 
 guarantees of morality in human nature. Guarantees of 
 morality in human nature ! History and experience refute 
 the statement, and show that, when man is astray from the 
 moral Governor of the universe, these guarantees become 
 guarantees of so many ferocious appetites, which wreak 
 themselves on the weak, the defenceless, the poor, and the 
 holy. The fact is, no trust can be put in man ; our trust 
 must be in the living, eternal God. (Applause.) 
 
 * This poem will be found at the end of this report, the reporter 
 having omitted to take it down in its proper place. 
 
62 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 Our friend says we cannot get thought out of the universe: 
 I am not now referring to the idiot he brought forward last 
 night, because we never said an idiot could get thought out 
 of the universe. I simply ask Mr. Foote this question : If 
 this universe is not intelligible, how can we have any science 
 at all ? Science is systematised knowledge, and, if there is 
 no system in the happening of things, how can you have a 
 science of the happening of them ? But Professor Lodge, 
 one of the greatest of living physicists, in his address before 
 the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Asso- 
 ciation, at Cardiff, made use of these words : "And I would 
 say, have faith in the intelligibility of the universe. Intel- 
 ligibility has been the great creed, in the strength of which 
 all intellectual advance has been attempted and all scientific 
 progress made." So, then. Professor Lodge, the great phy- 
 sicist, the great experimentalist, comes forward, and I put 
 his statement as to the intelligibility of the universe along- 
 side Mr. Foote's denial that it is so. 
 
 But we have another strange fact, and it is this : That this 
 Atheism, of which our friend has been speaking, is a won- 
 derful something ; but he is afraid to say what it is. He 
 says he will not allow me to define his terms ; yet he claims 
 the right to define my terms. But, if Mr. Foote will not 
 give me the right to define his terms, I refuse to give him 
 the right to define my terms. Our friend says : " Atheism 
 does not mean denial of God ; it means without God." But 
 the history of the word and the use of the word go against 
 the individual opinion of Mr. Foote ; and I am here to say 
 that the great masters of language have a right to be heard 
 on this matter. If Mr. Foote wants Atheism simply to mean 
 "without God," why does he not say he is an Agnostic, and 
 have done with it ? 
 
 But our friend says : " How can mind produce matter?" 
 Will our friend kindly tell me what he means by matter ? I 
 defined matter as " the vehicle of energy." If that be true, 
 then the universe is the expression of the will of God ; and. 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 65 
 
 until our friend shows this to be impossible, our position is 
 unshaken. 
 
 But Mr. Foote says : " Can God have designed this 
 universe, when the law of it is ' eat or be eaten ' ?" I will 
 deal with this doctrine in a few minutes, and probably I 
 shall be able to eat it before I have done. 
 
 Our friend says, when I speak of motion being impossible 
 in an infinitely extended universe of matter, I forget the 
 different densities of matter. I do not. I say that you 
 cannot have different density in matter where you have a 
 perfect vacuum. Every particle of matter must be of the 
 same weight in a perfect vacuum. If, however, the universe 
 be///// of matter, every point of space must be occupied. 
 Therefore, there can be no space unoccupied. To talk of 
 the differeftt densities of matter is to say there is room in 
 space, points where matter is not. 
 
 Our friend says he is not prepared to say matter is eternal 
 or not eternal. That is standing on the edge — not going 
 one way or the other ; and, if Atheism is in that position, I 
 do not envy it. 
 
 Our friend says he would rather believe in the eternity of 
 something which he knows than of something he does not 
 know. But he does not know matter ; he knows only his 
 sensations. In other words, he can thinkof matter o?ily in 
 terms of mind. Now, Sir, if you can think of matter only 
 in terms of mind, the most certain fact is mind, and you 
 reach matter by inference. You really know mind ; you 
 only infer 7Jiatter. 
 
 Our friend says we have these perpetual discords and 
 debates because we have not got at the facts ; but the 
 universe is all around us, and we are seeking to understand 
 it. Men have understood it, and, in proportion as they 
 have understood it, they have risen above the universe, and 
 found themselves in the presence of One " greater than I, 
 and holier than thou." 
 
 But our friend says he falls back upon the fact that man 
 
64 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 cannot sound the depths of infinity. Nobody dreams of 
 his doing so ; but we do believe we can apprehend the 
 infinite, and know it exists. We can know a Httle of it, 
 though not all. 
 
 Our friend says the whole question of the reasonableness 
 of Atheism or Theism resolves itself into analysing the 
 claims of Theism. Oh, indeed ! I deny this ; for, if 
 Theism be proven untrue as I represent it here to-night, it 
 does not follow that Atheism is true, for some Theistic form 
 of belief may be proven intensely reasonable. In trying to 
 attack my position, instead of defending his own, as he 
 ought to have done, Mr. Foote has simply been fighting, 
 not for Atheism, but against Theism. 
 
 Mr. Foote defines Theism as " that form of belief which 
 declares that the visible, tangible, conditioq,ed universe is 
 created and governed by infinite intelligence, which belongs 
 to an infinite personality, and is characterised by infinite 
 power and infinite wisdom." I agree with all that. And 
 now I hope we shall be able to discuss something that is 
 reasonable. I wonder whether Mr. Foote will say that a 
 personal being must be limited ? We shall see. 
 
 Meanwhile our friend asks : " What is the teaching of 
 modern science ?" and he answers : " It is Evolution." Very 
 well. Our friend implied that Evolution has destroyed 
 intention in the universe ; and, therefore, having destroyed 
 the design — the intention — there is no room for the recog- 
 nition of God in the world. I hold in my hand the second 
 volume o{ Studies in the Theory of Descent, by Dr. Weismann, 
 probably the greatest of living Evolutionists, and this is 
 what he says : " I believe that I have shown that the theory 
 of selection by no means leads, as is always assumed, to the 
 denial of a teleological universal cause, and to Materialism ; 
 and I thereby hope that I have cleared the way for this 
 doctrine, the importance of which it is scarcely possible to 
 over-estimate. Mechanism and teleology do not exclude 
 one another ; they are, rather, in mutual agreement. With- 
 
THEIS-M OR ATHEISM ? 65 
 
 out teleology there would be no mechanism, but only a 
 confusion of crude forces ; and without mechanism there 
 would be no teleology, for how could the latter effect its 
 purpose ?" Against Mr. Foote's statement I place this 
 quotation from Dr. Weismann. 
 
 But our friend says he cannot imagine a God designing a 
 world in which " eat or be eaten " is the law of existence. 
 Our friend forgot to tell us how he gets this fact of " eat or 
 be eaten." In other words, he got the eater before he got 
 the life to eat ; and I want to know where he gets the life 
 before he gets the eater. But if this universe, or this world, 
 is, as he described it, " one great cock-pit, running red with 
 human slaughter," I ask him how he can reconcile this with 
 his coming here to-night and advocating the teaching of 
 Atheism, when this blind, mindless, cruel, biting, slaying 
 machine, which he calls the world, grinds the lives, and 
 blasts the hopes, and crushes the affections of those whom 
 it has produced, only to destroy. No future life, no future 
 good ; but blindly, aimlessly, uselessly, simply to play with, 
 it produces men only to destroy them, only to crush them, 
 only to make them suffer. That, Sir, is the teaching of 
 Atheism. But we Theists believe that, through these 
 sorrows and sufferings, there is a great purpose being 
 worked out — that God is working out a plan ; and, until 
 our friend can show that the plan is not being realised, 
 he has no right to reject the belief that there is such a 
 plan. 
 
 Now, if Evolution means anything, it means that everything 
 which is, and which has been, has a purpose and a function ; 
 and therefore Evolution itself witnesses to the great Being 
 who has arranged it thus and thus. 
 
 But is it true that this universe is a great, brutalising, 
 " eat-or-be-eaten " machine? ("Yes," "No.") There are 
 more smiles than tears in the world, more days of sunshine 
 than rain ; and, on a mere balance of probabilities, there is 
 more good in God than evil. So that our friend has not in 
 
66 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 any way got rid of the fact of these things witnessing to a 
 Being who is actively at work in the universe. 
 
 Our friend says there are earthquakes, and I know not 
 what besides. True, but think. We cannot get rid of the 
 facts. Suffering is in the world, earthquakes are in the 
 world ; but in reference to human suffering, remember this, 
 that nearly every instance, if not every instance, can be 
 traced to the carelessness or the wickedness of the man 
 himself or his parents. In other words, law has been 
 violated, and violated law must avenge itself. If it were 
 not so, we could go and stick our hands in the fire and let 
 them be burnt off without pain ; but the good God has 
 given us nerves, so that when we feel the fire we should pull 
 our hands away. (Applause.) 
 
 But our friend says that these things destroy, in his mind, 
 the possibility of the recognition of purpose. Yes, but other 
 great men have looked into these matters, and have come 
 to an opposite conclusion. Take the case of earthquakes. 
 I am quoting from a speech on " Earthquakes and Volca- 
 noes," by Professor W. C. Williamson, and on page 235 of 
 the book he says : " I have now done. I would only, in 
 conclusion, again remind you that it is a short-sighted 
 philosophy which sees in these events only calamitous in- 
 struments of destruction and evil. While there have been 
 dark days in the history of the world occasioned by these 
 agencies, on the whole their effect is beneficial." I could 
 give you other quotations from this work if time would 
 permit. 
 
 Our friend says : " I notice Mr. Lee has to seek the aid 
 of spectacles." Yes. And he said : " I went to a great 
 oculist recently, and this oculist said that the eye was a very 
 imperfect instrument." Well, now, if this eye which we 
 have has somehow been evolved without mind and intention, 
 how is it this great oculist, with power to plan, has not 
 given us a better one ? Our friend quoted a great German ij 
 author on the eye, Helniholtz ; but our friend forgot to say 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 67 
 
 that, when Helmholtz had pointed out what he regarded as 
 imperfections in the eye as an optical instrument, he con- 
 cluded his address by saying that, if every improvement 
 which he had suggested were put into the eye, it would 
 render it less fit for its purpose than it now is ; and he went 
 on to say that no sane man would think of taking a razor 
 to cleave blocks — he would take an axe ; and that for the 
 rough-and-ready work which the human eye was called 
 to perform, it could not be improved. So, then, our friend 
 has his own authority with whom to settle. But I want our 
 friend to answer this : If it is necessary for an optician to 
 make my glasses and his glasses (which cannot be com- 
 pared to the w^ondrous mechanism of the human eye), does 
 not the human eye itself demand a maker who shall be 
 greater in wisdom and power than all the opticians on 
 earth ? 
 
 But our friend says we see men destroyed all around us. 
 Yes, but there is this difference between the position of the 
 Theist and that of the Atheist. The Theist does not say the 
 man is destroyed. God has given him life, and God has a 
 right to remove that life to any other sphere He pleases. 
 He does not destroy the being of man. He simply changes 
 the place of being, and, therefore. He has a right, if a man 
 does not square with His demands, or if He thinks fit to 
 elevate him to some other condition, to do it, because He 
 is the originator of all life, and in Him only can life exist. 
 
 But our friend says there are diseases. Yes, even 
 microbes. Again, I ask you to think. If we were travelling 
 on your Midland Railway, so long as the engines kept their 
 proper lines, we should say the powers in the engine were 
 good ; but if two engines coming in opposite directions 
 collided, that power which was good would become an evil. 
 Why ? Because the arrangements which had been laid 
 down for their safety had been violated, either by the care- 
 lessness or wickedness of man. Now, the vital forces of 
 our body and of all living organisms God intended should 
 
68 THEISM OR ATHEISxM? 
 
 work aright j but men, by disregarding the laws of health 
 and such hke, cause those forces to be misdirected, so that, 
 instead of healthy organisms, we have unhealthy ones. Yet, 
 even here, God's goodness is shown, for it makes us more 
 careful of our conditions ; they are deputations from God's 
 Sanitary Department, urging cleanliness on the world. 
 
 Now let us see what we have done. Mr. Foote has given 
 us a series of statements. I have touched them every one. 
 But the questions I gave him last night are still evaded ; the 
 propositions I laid down he has not refuted. Those proposi- 
 tions stand, those questions will be printed in the report ; 
 and if the people see the propositions have been evaded or 
 not dealt with, and the questions have been unanswered, 
 they will draw their own conclusion, and, like wise people, 
 say Atheism can only attack another system, it cannot build 
 up, it cannot defend its own. (Applause.) 
 
 The Chairman : I have now, ladies and gentlemen, to 
 call upon Mr. Foote to give us the first of four short speeches 
 which have still to be delivered. 
 
 Mr. Foote : My opponent began by confessing to a dis- 
 appointment. I am not surprised. It is what an Atheist 
 generally hears from a Theist. It would be a curious thing 
 if an Atheist were to deliver a speech which satisfied a j 
 Theist. (Hear, hear.) 
 
 I have further to say that the major part of Mr. Lee's 
 speech to-night was simply a re-dealing with matters we 
 discussed last evening. I admit his right, when he leads 
 off, to determine the direction of the discussion for that 
 night ; but I claim the same right to determine the direction 
 of the discussion when it is my turn to lead the debate. 
 
 Mr. Lee was good enough to quote from a debate of f 
 Charles Bradlaugh's. I fail to see a single word in what he 
 quoted which was at variance with what I quoted from 
 Mr. Bradlaugb last night. To use. Mr. Lee's own words, I 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 69 
 
 should have been disappointed had it been so, because my 
 estimate of Charles Bradlaugh was that, whether right or 
 wrong, he was one of the most careful thinkers and one of 
 the most careful expressers of his thought. Now, Charles 
 Bradlaugh says in explicit terms, as I read to you last night, 
 that Atheism does not say there is no God ; and I submit 
 that a man's explicit statement to that effect is of more im- 
 portance than any inference which Mr. Lee or anyone else 
 may derive from some other passage which he has penned or 
 spoken, in written or oral debate. Here is a man's written 
 and explicit declaration which cannot be evaded : " The 
 Atheist does not say there is no God." The Atheist takes 
 the definitions of God which are laid before him for his 
 acceptance, and, finding that they do not fit in with the 
 facts of existence, he contradicts them, because the facts 
 contradict them. Now, if that is not an intelligible position 
 for a man to take up, then we must admit that we use 
 words in a totally different signification, and any further 
 discussion, at least upon that point, is simply a waste of 
 time. 
 
 But we were told that what Mr. Bradlaugh's statement 
 came to was that Atheism denies Theism, including Pan- 
 theism, Polytheism, and Monotheism. Well, I admitted as 
 much in my opening speech, and there was no occasion to 
 elaborate what was admitted. 
 
 It was stated by my opponent that Atheism had no 
 foundation. It has the same foundation that anything else 
 has, or possibly can have. The only foundation for anything, 
 as Mr. Lee knows well, is man's knowledge. Mr. Lee also 
 knows that there have been Atheistic scientists, like Pro- 
 fessor Clifford, and that there have been Agnostic scientists 
 (which comes to the same thing), like Charles Darwin, Pro- 
 fessor Huxley, and Herbert Spencer, whose names will stand 
 as high as any upon the Theistic roll that Mr. Lee can 
 produce. 
 
 Mr. Lee wants to know what I mean by " conditioned," 
 
70 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 but Mr. Lee himself first introduced the term. In his 
 opening speech last night he defined the universe as " the 
 sum-total of all conditioned existence," and if Mr. Lee 
 wants to know what I mean by conditioned, why did he 
 not tell us what he means by it himself? I did not suppose 
 there was going to be any quarrel over "conditioned." 
 " Conditioned " means existing in relation to other things. 
 All knowledge is conditioned, and the very fact that it is 
 conditioned debars it from ever being infinite. Knowledge 
 means discrimination, the separation of things, the marking 
 out of categories of similarity and dissimilarity ; and that 
 means analysis, distinction, and classification. Knowledge 
 is never complete until it arrives at definition. And to define 
 a thing is to limit it, and, having limited it, you cannot 
 regard it as infinite ; consequently to know a thing is to 
 define it, and to define it is to place it beyond the category 
 of infinitude. 
 
 We were told, too, that Cardinal Newman, with his keen 
 intellect (I believe the word I used was " the keenest 
 theological intellect of this century " — I am not prepared 
 to admit that he was the keenest intellect) — but Cardinal 
 Newman, we are told, came to be a Theist. Why, he was 
 brought up one. He never had the opportunity of becoming 
 one when left to himself. And it is not a fact that Cardinal 
 Newman felt that Theism was safe in argument. Cardinal 
 Newman said to the Protestant : " If you submit the first 
 principles of your faith to the criticism of reason, they will 
 never stand the test." " Nothing," he said, " in religion 
 will stand the test of discussion — nothing will escape 
 dissolution under the play of the restless intellect of man." 
 That is confessing that, if Theisni were submitted to an 
 analytical discussion, it could not hold the field, and must 
 fall back upon the very grounds on which children receive 
 it — grounds of authority and grounds of faith. Men do not 
 become Theists, in the main, because they reason themselves 
 into Theism ; they are trained in it as children, and are 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 7 1 
 
 made Theists before they are able to judge for themselves. 
 I was charged with " robbing the community of its faith 
 in God." Robbing ! that is a term from the Old Bailey. 
 
 Mr. Lee : I did not wish to use it in that sense, and, if it 
 is repugnant to Mr. Foote, I will withdraw it. 
 
 Mr. Foote : Every man who thinks he has a glimmer of 
 truth not only has the right to present it to his fellow-men, 
 but is under a duty to do so. If a man finds, in listening 
 to another man, that a belief which he thought true is only 
 half true, or not true at all, instead of being deprived of 
 anything valuable, he is deprived of something which occu- 
 pied the door of his mind, and kept the truth out of it. 
 When this intruder is removed, the truth can enter in the 
 place of the falsehood that usurped its situation. (Applause.) 
 
 We were told, too, that there was no guarantee of morality 
 in human nature, and that we must trust entirely to God ; 
 yet I find that some of the most notorious villains of our 
 time have been well-known professors of religion. I do not 
 say they were so because of their religion, but in the face of 
 their profession, and in the face of the statistics of crime, it 
 is idle to tell me we must trust to God for morality. Wher- 
 ever a human heart beats with sympathy ; wherever mothers 
 love their children ; wherever fathers protect them ; wherever 
 parents will, with their own lives, save the lives of their dear 
 ones ; wherever one man will rush to the aid of another — 
 there is the guarantee of morality. Your argosy of faith 
 floats upon the great sea of humanity. You declare that 
 the water would dry up without your fleet ; yet, if your fleet 
 were to sink, the mighty ocean of humanity would roll on 
 the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. (Applause.) 
 
 Now, we come to what has been said about my opening 
 speech. Mr. Lee quoted from Weismann, and said that 
 he put against ]\Ir. Foote's views of design the words of a 
 great German. But there is no particular sanctity about a 
 
72 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 German. Charles Darwin was a greater than Weismanri. 
 Charles Darwin is universally allowed by the scientific 
 world to be the greatest scientific intellect of the present 
 century. ("No, no"; "Yes, yes.") 
 
 Charles Darwin says — I am quoting from his own state- 
 ment, which may be found in his Life and Letters — " The 
 old argument from design in nature, as given by Paley, that 
 formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails now that the law 
 of natural selection has been discovered. There seems to 
 me no more design in the variability of organic beings, and 
 in the action of natural selection, than in the course which 
 the wind blows." There is Darwin against Weismann \ and 
 if you say they extinguish each other, then it leaves us where 
 we ought to have been left — to a discussion on the facts of 
 the case, without bringing in an arbitrary authority. This 
 matter is not to be settled by authorities, or else what is the 
 use of discussion ? If authorities would settle it, you have 
 merely to get books, see what the authorities have written, 
 and then bow down to them. I do not follow that plan. 
 I think for myself. And you are here to judge of the argu- 
 ments advanced, and based upon the facts. It is nothing 
 to say that one eminent man is on Mr. Lee's side, and 
 another eminent man is on my side. All that counts for 
 nothing. I do not believe in the truth of authority. I 
 stand up for the authority of Truth. (Applause.) 
 
 Mr. Lee said that God's kindness had not made the 
 racks and thumbscrews. But God's kindness made the 
 men — made them what they were — and they invented the 
 racks and the thumbscrews. Mark you, the racks and thumb- 
 screws were not invented and used by Secularists or Atheists. 
 They were invented and used by believers in God — ("yes," 
 "no") — and they were used in the name of God. ("No.") 
 Now, if anyone were to commit atrocity in my name, and 
 in my name were to take innocent men, whose only crime 
 was daring to think for themselves, put them upon a rack 
 and stretch every fibre of their sensitive frames, devising 
 
THEISxM OR ATHEISM ? 73 
 
 apparatus to inflict agony upon every part of their being — 
 if I could not stop it, I would denounce it, and disown all 
 responsibility for it. Such things were done in the name of 
 your God, yet he never stopped it, but let it go on. It is 
 science and humanity that have put down the brutalities of 
 your religion. (Applause.) 
 
 There are, says Mr. Lee, more smiles than tears in the 
 world, and so he strikes a balance in favour of his God. A 
 balance in favour of infinite wisdom, infinite power, and 
 infinite goodness ! And man strikes it ! I can understand 
 a balance to a man's credit ; but a balance to God's credit ! 
 And this is the God I am asked to believe in. I cannot 
 believe in a God like that. 
 
 If God makes poor eyes, and the oculist sees their defects, 
 how is it — Mr. Lee asks — that the oculist cannot make 
 better ones ? Why, " making " is a term of art, and not a 
 term of nature. Eyes are not made ; human beings are not 
 made ; lower animals are not made ; plants are not made ; 
 you cannot even make a crystal ; you cannot make the 
 crystallised frost upon your window-pane. The word in 
 nature is " growth," and, if the eye has grown, it is God's 
 method, according to Mr. Lee's argument, of bringing it 
 into existence ; and God is responsible for his handiwork. 
 It is idle to say we have not the right to point out errors in 
 a theory unless we have a better theory of our own. We 
 have such a right. I may not be able to explain the 
 universe, and I admit I cannot; yet, if you put forward 
 a theory that is contradicted by facts which you and I 
 alike admit, I have a right to say that, whatever may be 
 the true theory, yours \s false; because a theory which does 
 not fit the facts is false, according to the canons of logic. 
 (Cheers.) 
 
 Mr. Lee : You w^ill observe that the questions which I 
 put to Mr. Foote in my last speech have not been dealt 
 with. Mr. Foote has not told us what he believes or under- 
 
74 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 Stands by matter ; and the many other questions I put to 
 him, which are really of vital importance from my point of 
 view, have again been ignored. Things which we cannot 
 deal with we ought to say we cannot explain. If Mr. Foote 
 cannot deal with these questions, will he tell us so ? For, 
 if he cannot deal with them, and in so far as he does not 
 deal with them, the Atheistic position is worthless. 
 
 My friend says : " My opponent commenced by confessing 
 a disappointment." I did. And he says : " Of course, we 
 cannot possibly expect a Theist to be satisfied with the 
 Atheistic position." Quite so. But I was not confessing 
 my disappointment with Mr. Foote's position. I was con- 
 fessing my disappointment with the fact that Mr. Foote had 
 not seen that it devolved upon him to construct something, 
 and with his not attempting to vindicate Atheism. We 
 have met here to decide which is the more reasonable, 
 Theism or Atheism ; but Mr. Foote has fled from Atheism 
 as a man flees from the plague. Disproof of Theism does 
 not mean proof oi Atheism. I want Mr. Foote to remember 
 that, as an Atheist, it is his duty to present something like a 
 constructive system. He may say what he likes about Mr. 
 Bradlaugh and my quotations from him. Mr. Bradlaugh 
 distinctly says : " It [that is, Atheism] does not include in it 
 any possibility of Theos or God." And he says by Theism 
 — that is, the system I am defending — " I mean either 
 Pantheism, Polytheism, and Monotheism, and Atheism 
 denies alike the reasonableness of Pantheism, Polytheism, 
 and Monotheism." If this is correct, then Atheism denies 
 'I'heism ; and, if it denies Theism, Mr. Foote has no right 
 to say that it does not deny God, for, since Theism afiirms 
 God, the denial of Theism is the denial of God. 
 
 Our friend says Atheism does not construct. Mr. Brad- 
 laugh says it does, and he enters into a written discussion — 
 not a spoken, but a written discussion — in order to show 
 that Atheism is the true doctrine of the universe. Now, if 
 that is not constructing, then I do not know what construe- 
 
 i 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 75 
 
 tion is. I am bound to say that Mr. Bradlaugh himself 
 seems to me to fail to construct anything, and all Atheists 
 must share in the same fate. 
 
 Our friend says I used, last night, the word "conditioned." 
 Yes. And I also said what I meant by it — (cheers) — 
 namely, that which witnesses to something other than itself, 
 and demands for its existence some other thing. Now, Mr. 
 Foote has no right to say that we do not explain our words 
 where we take every care to explain them. But 'Mr. Foote 
 says that by conditioned he means " existing in relation to 
 other things "; but this universe is one, not many. Then 
 what does this witness to, what is it in relation to ? If in 
 relation to something, what is that something ? If not in 
 relation to something, then it has no relation at all ; and, 
 if it has no relation at all, then it is not conditioned, and 
 you do not know it, for you know only the conditioned. 
 
 Our friend quotes a number of scientists, Darwin and 
 others, and he says these men were men who believed in 
 Atheism or Agnosticism. I say that these men, almost 
 without exception, repelled the charge of Atheism. Tyndall 
 said that this word was affixed to him unfairly, and repelled 
 it. Huxley has rejected the name again and again, Darwin 
 never said he was an Atheist, and not one of the men to 
 whom reference has been made ever said he was an Atheist. 
 In order to show their humility, they took up the position 
 that they did not know whether there is any God, but they 
 did not say there is none, and they did not try to prove 
 there is none ; they simply said they did not know. So our 
 friend failed altogether even in his references to these men. 
 
 But our friend says, in reference to the problem of know- 
 ledge, that knowledge is only relation. Very well. If know- 
 ledge is only relation, and this universe is one, and, therefore, 
 according to your position, is not relative to any other thing, 
 how can you, a part of the universe, be conscious of another 
 part, unless that other part be other than yourself; and if 
 that other part be other than yourself, then you are in 
 
76 THEISM OR ATHEISM? 
 
 relation to something ; and, if you are conditioned by that 
 something which possesses the same nature as yourself, that 
 something must be conditioned, and that conditioned some- 
 thing must witness to another existence which is not con- 
 ditioned. Our friend will see that if we have that one 
 substance which Mr. Bradlaugh understood by Monism, you 
 can have no relationship at all, and, therefore, knowledge 
 drops out of the mind. 
 
 In reference to Cardinal Newman, that keen theological 
 intellect (I think Mr. Foote emphasised theological. But 
 because it is a theological intellect, does it alter the intellect ? 
 Is not an intellect equally reliable in theological as in 
 scientific inquiries ?), who was only too pleased to confess 
 himself enrapt by a presence higher and greater than himself. 
 " Yes," says Mr. Foote, " but he was born and trained 
 amidTheistic influences." True. But, Mr. Foote, according 
 to your theory, every child is born an Atheist ; according to 
 your theory, every man that has ever lived was born an 
 Atheist. Then how came the idea of God into the world 
 at all ? (Cheers.) If a man has to be taught there is a 
 God, then God must have taught the first man, and to say 
 that this is not so is to say that the law of evolution has 
 been broken. The law of evolution means continuity — the 
 constant unravelling and unrolling of what was previously 
 hid ; but, if Atheism is true, the recognition of God is a 
 great spring with no continuity in it — a spring across a 
 chasm ; it is a miracle in mind, and requires a great super- 
 natural power to make that miracle possible. So that our 
 friend has another question to deal with. Where did the 
 idea of God come from if it has to be taught ? Perhaps 
 Mr. Foote will pass this over without reply. 
 
 Our friend says, in reference to my statement that 
 guarantees of morality do not exist in human nature, that 
 God made this nature. Ah, yes. He did. God made man 
 upright ; but he has sought out many devices. Men have 
 thrust God away from them as far as they can, and, turning 
 
 1 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 77 
 
 to this earth, and this earth alone, and fixing their affections 
 and their minds on things of time and sense alone, they 
 have thought themselves to be part and parcel of a brutal- 
 ising world ; and so they have crushed and torn each other, 
 not because of God, but because their hearts have been 
 opposed to God. 
 
 God, our friend says, has allowed this to occur, and, in a 
 very thrilling statement, he said : " Now, if any man were 
 to injure another in my name, if I could not stop it, I would 
 denounce it." Yes, and the great God has put into men a 
 power of mind which we call conscience, and that power of 
 mind has bitten men like a serpent when they dared to 
 break the law of God's world, " Love thy neighbour as 
 thyself." (Applause.) 
 
 Our friend says God has not interfered in this world. We 
 have no right to go into the question of revelation to-night, 
 but we believe God has interfered. But our friend, Mr. 
 Foote, does not believe in God because he has not interfered 
 to stop certain cruelties ; and when he did interfere for the 
 salvation of man from sin, our friend denied that he had 
 interfered at all ! This is a very strange contradiction, and 
 a very strange position to be in. (Derisive laughter.) 
 
 Mr. Foote referred to Weismann, and seems to imagine 
 that I thought there is a strange charm in a Germa?t scientist. 
 
 Mr. Foote : I said there is no magic in a German name. 
 
 Mr. Lee : That implied the same. The reason I empha- 
 sised that Weismann was a German was that a great deal 
 of our philosophy and science comes from Germany. The 
 foremost thinkers in Europe to-day are to be found in 
 Germany ; great experimenters and observers in Germany 
 have given to the world facts, and inferences from facts, 
 which English and other thinkers have been careful to follow 
 out. That is why I emphasised German. 
 
 But our friend says that these quotations from Weismann 
 
78 theis:m or atheism ? 
 
 can be met by others froai Darwin. Darwin denies that the 
 argument from design can ever be held again as a proof of 
 God. That is very strange, for Professor Huxley distinctly 
 rejects that notion, and tells us that the teleologist — that 
 is, a man who believes in design in nature — can always push 
 the evolutionist, and ask him how it is that evolution happens 
 to do these wonderful things ; so I put Professor Huxley 
 against Darwin. 
 
 But our friend says : " I am not going to appeal to 
 authority. Eminence counts for nothing." I beg your 
 pardon ; it counts for much. Neither Mr. Foote nor 
 myself — and I say this without the least disrespect for Mr. 
 Foote, because no one has a greater appreciation of Mr. 
 Foote's abilities than I have — but neither Mr. Foote nor 
 myself has the right to speak about these facts without 
 adducing the testimony of a man of eminence who knows 
 all about them ; and therefore we appeal, not to the authority 
 of these men, but to the facts which these men produce ; 
 and we bring these facts forward, and, by the use of that 
 reason which Mr. Foote glorifies, we infer from these facts 
 certain conclusions, which are in favor of belief in God, 
 and not against such belief. 
 
 But our friend says that God's kindness made the men 
 who invented the rack and the thumbscrews, and sjjch like. 
 (" No.") I want to refer to that once more. These things 
 exist ; but, before you can say they ought not to exist, you 
 must know all about the universe — you must know what is 
 right for all the universe — and whether the forces to make 
 this right are really now in operation, or whether better 
 forces could be in operation. In other words, in order to 
 re-judge the mechanism of the universe, you want an infinite 
 mind and infinite knowledge, and neither Mr. Foote nor I 
 possess them. Therefore, I say, when we see these blemishes, 
 we must look for a meaning in them, and, if we can find a 
 meaning in them, then the blemishes must be read through 
 the meaning. 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 79 
 
 A word as to Darwin and his Descent of Man. Dr. 
 Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer with Darwin of 
 the principle of Evolution, has gone into the question of 
 suffering very thoroughly, and, in his work on Darivinism^ 
 he shows, in some three or four pages, that what Mr. Foote 
 has attempted to establish on that point to-night is not what 
 is in nature, but what exists only in Mr. Foote's mind. 
 (Applause.) 
 
 The Chairman : We have now reached the final stage 
 of this debate. I am about to call upon Mr. Foote to give 
 us his last contribution to it ; and I would take the liberty 
 of again saying that he is entitled, and I hope will receive, 
 your careful and courteous attention. It is more than pro- 
 bable — I do not say I expect it — that he will adduce 
 arguments and make statements which may trouble the 
 minds of some who listen to them ; but I will again remind 
 such persons that they will, on this occasion, have the oppor- 
 tunity of hearing the final word from their own champion. 
 
 Mr. Foote : My attention is drawn to the fact that no 
 new matter is to be introduced into the last speech. That 
 is a point which my opponent must be careful about, as he 
 has got the last speech, not I. ]My position is one which I 
 generally find the Atheist has to accept. Theism, of course, 
 is true, and Atheism, of course, is false ; yet Theists usually 
 feel the advantage, even in the case of truth against error, 
 of having the last word. 
 
 Now, with respect to Germany, I do not object to 
 Germany ; my only surprise was that " German " should be 
 put before "science," as it was. Science is not English, 
 French, German, or of any nationality. Science is universal. 
 Science speaks an universal language when it speaks fact 
 and truth. And I deny that all our English science and 
 philosophy comes from Germany. It is a libel upon 
 England. Charles Darwin, the greatest biologist of this 
 
8o THEISM OR ATHEISM? 
 
 century, was an English aian ; and I thought last night we 
 heard the name of a man that Mr. Lee ventured to call the 
 greatest of physicists — Balfour Stewart — who, I believe, was 
 a Scotchman, and that is pretty near to an Englishman. 
 
 Mr. Lee says I have not noticed many things he said. 
 That is possible ; it is possible that I might say the same 
 thing of him. (" No, no.") What you declare to be im- 
 possible I make possible by saying it. Mr. Lee talks about 
 the printed debate. Well, I do not want to be reminded 
 of that ; I am content to abide by the printed debate. You 
 see that sort of thing cuts two ways. (" Answer the question," 
 and " Order, order.") I am answering what Mr. Lee chose 
 to say, and I will answer what he said in my own way, and 
 not in any way dictated by any member of this audience. 
 (Cheers.) 
 
 Mr. Lee talked a great deal last night about matter, and 
 I did not quarrel with his definition ; and, as there was no 
 quarrel about the definition of matter, why on earth should 
 the point of definition be raised again to-night ? There is 
 no necessity for a fresh definition until we have objected to 
 each other's definitions. If Mr. Lee is anxious about 
 another definition of matter, I tell him that, to my mind, 
 matter is the substance of all phenomenal changes which 
 we ascertain from sensation. But there is really no necessity 
 for the definition being given at all when there is no quarrel 
 whatever about definitions in relation to this particular 
 matter. 
 
 Mr. Lee once more complains that Atheism does not 
 construct something. I tell him again that, in my judgment, 
 Theism does not construct any more than Atheism con- 
 structs. Theism is merely a speculation, and that specula- 
 tion can only be linked on to construction through systematic 
 religion, taught, not as Theistic speculation, but as God's 
 commands to men to guide them in their walk through life ; 
 and that is, properly, no part of Theism, but always has to 
 be derived from what is called Revelation. 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 8 1 
 
 Then, again, Mr. Lee says that Atheism and Agnosticism 
 are different. What is the difference ? It is very largely 
 the difference between courage and timidity. I have 
 defined — rather ironically, it may be, but I may repeat it as 
 I have said it before— I have defined an Agnostic as an 
 Atheist with a tall hat on ; and really Agnostics, who, as 
 Mr. Lee says — giving the names of Huxley and Spencer — 
 declare they do not know there is a God, are, to all intents 
 and purposes, in the same position as the Atheist. If they 
 do not know there is a God, it is clear that they are without 
 God, and to be without God is to be an Atheist. 
 
 Then we were told that God made man, but man's heart 
 went astray and was opposed to God. (" Oh.") I should be 
 sorry to misrepresent Mr. Lee. 
 
 Mr. Lee; The words were "but man has sought out 
 many devices." 
 
 Mr. FooTE : That is not the expression I was referring 
 to. Mr. Lee said that man's heart had got opposed to 
 God. I should be sorry to misrepresent him, but that is 
 what I have written down, and what, I think, I heard — at 
 any rate, it is the substance of what Mr. Lee said upon this 
 point. Just take a human father and his child. If a child 
 of mine go astray, and I have fulfilled all my duties towards 
 him, I am not responsible for his wandering ; because, in 
 bringing him into the world, I was not able to determine 
 absolutely his intellectual and moral character. But if a 
 father could absolutely determine the intellectual and moral 
 character of his child, and that child \vent astray, the 
 father would be responsible for not exercising his power. 
 (Applause.) God is not in the position of an earthly father. 
 An earthly father works under what to us, however in- 
 scrutable, are laws of heredity ; for a child is not simply the 
 child of his father, he is a child of his father's father, and 
 his mother's father, and their mothers and fathers. Heredity 
 
82 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 is not confined to one generation ; it sweeps through the 
 history of the race. The individual parent is often baffled 
 by it ; there is a power greater than his own — the power of 
 the whole past of the race over the present generation. But 
 your God, on your theory, can^ if he pleases, absolutely 
 determine the mental and moral character of every child 
 brought into the world. And, if man's heart goes wrong and 
 gets opposed to God, God does not exercise the infinite 
 power you say he possesses over his creatures. 
 
 We were told that there is a purpose in suffering. Easy 
 words to utter ! but they carry no balm of consolation to 
 my mind. I have witnessed suffering : I have felt a little, and 
 witnessed much. I have experienced mental suffering. I have 
 been made to suffer by the religion, or the professors of the 
 religion, that Mr. Lee advocates. This suffering is a grim 
 fact. You say there is a purpose in it. Tell us what you 
 mean by a purpose. A purpose must have some sort of 
 explanation. Do not call it a purpose unless you can give 
 us some indication of what the purpose is. The general 
 theory is that suffering is for the education, and chiefly the 
 moral education, of the race. Ah, but it gets distributed in 
 the wrong way. And there comes a time when suffering, 
 instead of helping you, thrusts you down, degrades you, 
 brings you to impotence, abjectness, and despair. If the 
 suffering is for education in ethics, how is it that the very 
 poorest, who, by the hard labour of their lives, are under 
 less temptation than the idle or luxurious, get by far the 
 most of it, while the idle and luxurious frequently go scot 
 free ? I see no purpose in this at all. Why, we actually 
 band ourselves together to abolish or diminish the very 
 suffering which you say is so beautifully designed. God has 
 a purpose in inflicting it, and we put the sufferers into a 
 place we call a hospital, and we say to the men of science 
 " fight it." We appoint nurses, and we say to them " fight it." 
 We ask the public at large to find the money to assist in 
 doing away with it. God is sending the suffering for moral 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 83 
 
 purposes, and we are striving to abolish it, and so to prevent 
 the ethical education which you say God intends by his in- 
 flictions. 
 
 God, we are told, has a right to take the life he sends. 
 For the sake of argument I will not impugn that. There is 
 no time to discuss it. But, assuming that God has the right 
 to take life, let us see how it works out. Under the law we 
 have a right to take life. A criminal is tried and sentenced 
 to execution. But society insists that, if he is to be killed, 
 he shall be killed in the most painless manner possible. 
 We insist that the hanging shall be done with the utmost 
 dispatch. In America they are trying whether electricity is 
 not even less painful than hanging. In short, although we 
 must (as we say) kill (though I doubt if anybody has that 
 right), still, if we must kill, we are refined enough to say we 
 must kill swiftly and painlessly. But that is not God's 
 method ; what we see in nature is not sivift killing ; it is 
 slow killing. When man is killed by " the act of God," it 
 is often done very slowly ; not in a moment as by the 
 hangman's noose or by electrocution. A lingering disease 
 comes on and kills him week by week, month by month, 
 and year by year. It is an agonising form of cruelty. If 
 God has the right to take life, I deny that he has the right 
 to take it in that way. If life must be taken, it should be 
 taken swiftly and painlessly. All this cruelty in nature, all 
 this killing of human beings by slow disease and long agony, 
 gives the lie to the statement that your God is a being of 
 infinite kindness and love. 
 
 Mr. Lee says that I object to revelation because I am 
 told that God does interfere in the world, and that I object 
 to Theism because God does not mioxioxQ in the world. He 
 says that is a contradiction. There is no contradiction ; it 
 is a harmony. I object to Theism, because God does not 
 interfere to prevent injustice, cruelty, and suffering. You 
 try to justify his non-interference. Afterwards you offer me 
 a revelation, in which he does interfere. The contradiction 
 
84 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 and discord are, therefore, on your own side; and my 
 position is consistent throughout. 
 
 But I am to tell you how the idea of God came ! Well, 
 the idea is of slow growth. What you Theists call God is 
 not the conception of God which is entertained in lower 
 stages of mental culture. Man begins by ascribing to the 
 universe like thoughts and feelings with his own. He fancies 
 that the leaf, which is blown along, moves by some power 
 akin to his. He fancies he sees in the lightning, and hears 
 in the thunder, the wrath of some outraged being ; and he 
 falls prostrate, beseeching that he may be saved. When we 
 understand these things, that sentiment vanishes. The man 
 who knows what a thunderstorm is, instead of falling and 
 crouching, will stand erect, and his whole being will dilate 
 with the splendour of the spectacle. 
 
 Man goes on, and works out for himself, as he advances, 
 a multiplicity of deities — all beings like himself; bigger, 
 greater, but like himself. And, as he learns more of the 
 universe, and finds there is a general interdependence, finds 
 there is regularity, finds that things happen in a definite 
 order, he places one supreme God over the mob of Gods, 
 as one noble out of the old aristocracy rose to the position 
 of constitutional monarch. Then this one God becomes 
 the God, the great God. The others drop away, and he is 
 left the survivor of all the multitude that have perished ; and 
 my opinion is that he will go too. 
 
 Mr. Lee says the idea of God came in by God's telling 
 the first man, and yet Mr. Lee talks about evolution as if 
 he accepted it ! You cannot understand evolution if you 
 talk about the first man ; it is a contradiction to all the 
 teaching of evolution. " The first man " is the language 
 of those who believe in the Bible. There never was a 
 first man, according to Darwinism. Evolution works 
 through natural species, and not through supernatural in- 
 dividuals. 
 
 But I am told I have only one minute before this debate 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 85 
 
 (so far as I am concerned) must be brought to a close. I 
 do not expect that what I have said in this debate will 
 have pleased everybody. All I can say is that it was my 
 duty to say what I thought necessary. I took my own 
 position and defended it, and attacked what Mr. Lee himself 
 advanced. The world moves by this constant agitation. 
 You find sound water in the eager, flowing current. The 
 still pool is stagnant and loathsome. And when the air 
 gets overcharged at times, we see the beautiful spectacle 
 of the lightning. But you cannot have the lightning without 
 the clash of the thunder-clouds. And when we differ in 
 opinion we have these friendly meetings, so that out of the 
 thunder-clash of debate there may leap forth the lightning 
 of truth. (Loud applause.) 
 
 The Chairman : In fifteen minutes more this debate 
 will be brought to a close. That space of time will be 
 occupied by Mr. Lee, whom I now call on. 
 
 Mr. Lee : I do not know whether I understood Mr. Foote 
 to say that Theists like the last word. If I did understand 
 him to say that, may I remind him that he suggested that I 
 should open the first night, and he would open the second 
 night ? That is not my arrangement, but his. So, then, 
 our friend has made a mistake in saying I like the last word. 
 
 Our friend says that the putting of the word " German " 
 before the word " science " was what he quarrelled with, 
 because science is universal. It does not belong to Germany 
 or England; it is universal. If science is universal, then 
 knowledge is universal, and the great Scientific Being — if 
 you will allow me to use the word — must be an universal 
 Knowing Being ; and that Being can be no other than God. 
 The truth is that, out of all the scientific facts to be found 
 everywhere in nature, we can get lines of evidence which 
 lead up to one great fact — God is, and God reigns. 
 
 But our friend says it is an insult to England to say most 
 
86 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 of our science comes from Germany. I say it is not an 
 insult to say that which is true ; and, if this is true, it is not 
 an insult, and all the great thinkers in England to-day 
 would, I think, confess that the vast mass of our scientific 
 thought and philosophy has been handed to us from the 
 Germans. 
 
 But our friend referred to a great man whom I quoted 
 last night — Balfour Stewart. Alas ! Balfour Stewart is dead. 
 He died in the year 1887, I believe; but, before he died, 
 he wrote me a letter, which I have here on this platform to- 
 night, in which he gave me his scientific belief as to the 
 point which I have been seeking to establish — that science 
 leads to a recognition of God. Our friend admits this is a 
 great man, and this great man holds that science leads to 
 God. 
 
 Our friend says I referred to him as not having noticed 
 many things, and that he can repay the charge. I always 
 think it is wise, when statements are made, to specify the 
 facts. In all the charges which I have made as to Mr. 
 Foote's not having dealt with my positions, I have said what 
 those positions are. My questions are not answered, and 
 my propositions have not been dealt with ; and Mr. Foote 
 has not shown one single argument in his speeches which I 
 have not dealt with. Why has he not done so ? 
 
 Our friend says that he does not wish to be informed 
 there is to be a printed report of this debate. I did not 
 wish to inform Mr. Foote of that ; I wished to inform the 
 audience, so that the audience may know, and get the 
 debate when it is printed, and carefully think it over ; and 
 this action I am sure Mr. Foote will endorse. 
 
 Our friend says : " Mr. Lee talked a great deal about 
 matter, and I took no exception to his definition of matter ; 
 therefore it was not necessary for him to bring up this 
 question until I did." It was because Mr. Foote was using 
 the word " matter " in connections which my meaning of the 
 term would not allow, and therefore it was necessary for me 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 87 
 
 to ask for a definition ; and Mr. Foote, in answer to my 
 request, ought to have given me a definition. But we have 
 it now, and it comes to this — matter is the substance of all 
 the phenomena which come under his sensations. But 
 what are your sensations ? Sensations are not matter ; they 
 are the mind's recognition of material existences and con- 
 nections. Then there is something other than matter; and 
 the thing for which I have been contending, the recognition 
 of 7nind as a separate entity and substance, is now estab- 
 lished in the confession of Mr. Foote. (Applause.) 
 
 Mr. Foote says that Atheism does not construct, any 
 more than Theism constructs ; it is a speculative system. 
 But the speculation has shown itself in this way — that, while 
 I have been brave enough to lay down a series of given 
 propositions, each of them leading up to another, and to 
 construct an argument on definite propositions and evi- 
 dences, Mr. Foote has not constructed any argument, but 
 has simply been criticising the ideas and theories which he 
 fancies represent Theism. So, then. Atheism, in the person 
 of Mr. Foote, has not constructed anything. Theism, in 
 the person of Mr. Lee, has constructed something ; and 
 that something has not been touched. (Applause.) 
 
 But Mr. Foote admits there is a difference between 
 Atheism and Agnosticism. The one, he would say, re- 
 presents courage, and the other timidity. But is it not 
 funny that some of the men to whom he has referred as 
 not believing in God are the men who write themselves 
 down Agnostics, and, therefore, are characterised by Mr. 
 Foote as being too timid to say what their behef is? Not 
 by any means a flattering position to be in. 
 
 But Mr. Foote objects to the statement that man's heart 
 is opposed to God. I am not sure whether I made use of 
 those words— probably I did ; but, whether I used them or 
 not, they describe a great fact, and facts are stubborn things. 
 Man's heart is opposed to God, for what has Mr. Foote 
 shown us to-night ? "Tell me," he said, " that a God like 
 
88 THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 this exists, and I denounce him." His heart is opposed 
 to God. 
 
 He says a human father is not able to control his 
 child's intellectual and moral development. (Mr. Foote : 
 " Capacity.") So that, while the father would save his 
 children from going wrong, he has not the power to 
 determine their going. God, he says, if He be what I say 
 He is, has the power. I deny that. God has given to man 
 free-will, and God could not — Almighty as He is, God could 
 not — determine the ways of man without destroying man's 
 free agency. But, in blazing star, in fragrant flower, in 
 beating heart, in living conscience, God has shown to man 
 that obedience to law is safe, disobedience brings destruc- 
 tion j and everywhere around us Nature cries with million 
 tongues : " Obey law, and you are safe ; disobey, and you 
 are ground to powder." God, then, has given a revelation 
 to man in the very make and frame of the universe, and in 
 the very make and frame of his mind and heart ; and, if 
 man breaks that law, do not charge God with what follows 
 — charge man. (Applause.) 
 
 Our friend says. If God has a right to remove life, I deny 
 that God has the right to remove it by causing long suffering 
 and agony ; but are these long sufferings and agonies caused 
 by God? Have I not sought to show you to-night that 
 violated law must be avenged, and when you violate the 
 law you are flying in the face of God, and, therefore, as a 
 wise father will seek to educate his children to avoid these 
 things in future, God seeks to educate the human race to do 
 the same. Obey the law, and you will be blessed. 
 
 Our friend goes on to say that God does not interfere in 
 this world. How does our friend know ? I believe that 
 God interferes in this world more frequently than we are 
 aware of; and frequently, if God did not, as it were, reach 
 out his hand to save us, we should be caught amid the 
 wheels of this world and be crushed. God interferes more 
 frequently than we imagine. 
 
THEISM OR ATHEISM? 89 
 
 Our friend says that the idea of God was of slow growth, 
 and he gave us a remarkable history as to how the idea of 
 God grew ; but, while the story was pretty, it was opposed 
 to ascertained facts, for we know, by the science of com- 
 parative religion, that the first form of religion known 
 to man was not belief in many Gods, but belief in one 
 God. 
 
 Ah, says our friend, but in battles of this nature clouds 
 come together, and in the shock the lightning flash of 
 truth comes forth. Yes, yes ; but what is truth? I feel 
 sometimes, as I think of the sufferings through which I have 
 seen some small section of the human race pass, that I also 
 know something of suffering. I have seen my little ones 
 taken out of my home and hidden in the earth ; but to tell 
 me, Sir, that I have been produced by a mindless, brainless, 
 purposeless, heartless universe, only to have affections 
 quickened in my heart, only to have children born and 
 placed in my arms, and then for this blind, ruthless thing 
 you call the universe to wreck those affections and destroy 
 those lives, is to say that your universe is an incarnate fiend. 
 But if there be a God, and that God possesses mind, inten- 
 tion, heart, my children are not dead — they live. And out 
 of the shock of brain with brain, and heart with heart, there 
 comes this truth : " Thank God, heaven is above all yet, 
 and there lives a Judge whom no king can corrupt." (Much 
 applause.) 
 
 Mr. Lee, again rising, said : It is now my duty, my 
 pleasurable duty, to move that the very best thanks of this 
 meeting be given to our worthy chairman for so generously, 
 patiently, and ably presiding over our meeting on these two 
 evenings of debate. 
 
 Mr. FooTE : I beg, with the most profound sincerity, to 
 second that vote of thanks. 
 
 Upon being put, the vote was carried by acclamation. 
 
9© ' THEISM OR ATHEISM ? 
 
 In response, the Chairman said : Ladies and Gentlemen, 
 — When I assumed the chair yesterday evening, I told you I 
 would endeavor, as far as my powers enabled me, to con- 
 duct this debate impartially, and secure for each disputant 
 a fair, careful, and courteous hearing. I have striven to do 
 so, but I take no credit to myself for that, for I have observed 
 with great interest the desire you have all exhibited to carry 
 out those instructions of mine which I submitted to you, 
 and submitted with great respect. I can remember, ladies 
 and gentlemen, when such a debate as we have listened to 
 would have been utterly impossible. In the first place, the 
 champions of thought were themselves exceedingly in- 
 temperate, and the passions which ran riot in the minds of 
 their audiences were correspondingly violent ; and the result 
 was that too frequently these debates partook of results which 
 were always disappointing, and frequently demoralising. I 
 call you all to witness that this state of things has been 
 vastly improved upon ; great subjects have been discussed — 
 ably discussed-^with a due regard for the sensibility of the 
 listener ; and, altogether, it seems to me that those who have 
 been privileged to listen to this debate must have derived 
 enlightenment, must have derived pleasure, and, I hope, a 
 good deal of useful information. I congratulate both dis- 
 putants on the zeal and the obvious sincerity which have 
 characterised all their exertions. I congratulate, also, the 
 committee of management for having arranged the debate ; 
 and I further congratulate you, my fellow-townsmen of 
 Derby, for having assembled in such large numbers, and 
 listened with such obvious interest to the speeches which 
 have been submitted to you. 
 
(Poem omitted through Reporter's error (see page 6i). 
 
 Who shall say that to no mortal 
 Heaven ere ope'd its mystic portal ? 
 Gave no dream or revelation, 
 Save to one peculiar nation ? 
 Souls sincere, now voiceless, nameless, 
 Knelt at altars, fired and flameless ; 
 Asked of nature, asked of reason. 
 Sought through every sign and season, 
 Seeking God. Through darkness groping, 
 Weeping, praying, panting, pining 
 For the light on Israel shining. 
 Ah, it must be God's sweet kindness 
 Pities erring human blindness ; 
 And the soul whose pure endeavor 
 Strives toward God shall live forever — 
 Live by the great Father's favor, 
 Saved by the all-sufficient Savior. 
 
J I