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May 1853 My dear Martineau, You have performed a painful but wholesome duty in your review of Atkinson and Martineau. To me it is a satisfaction to find you so pointedly avow that there is no logical coherence in their book,—I do not speak of sentences, but of the entire substance,—for I now and then distrust my own understanding of recondite metaphysics, when my only reply is to undervalue the good sense, and the common sense of one who professes to have devoted so much time and effort to it. What has the Mesmerism to do with Atheism? was my constant cry while I read the book. It also gratified me that you gave the seal of your judgment (and Jacobi's) to what I fancied was a sort of discovery of my own, viz., that the arguments against Theism are arguments against Moral Distinctions. In short, Morality, Free-will, and Theism, all three, fall or stand together. This appears to me to be just now the thing which needs to be practically laid before common people. . . . Let me add that I know Mr. Holyoake of late. He is a very candid, kind, simple-minded man, who has taken to puffing off me and my book on the Soul very strangely, but I believe very sincerely, and in order to refute Theism in my person. He was shamefully persecuted at law some years back, and is a true enthusiast in his cause. His moral goodness gives power to his doctrine. Now it would be very important to show that the two are in collision. At the same time I do not feel much alarm at an Atheism which is spread by such agencies. It surely can only be a transition towards a new and better religion. Where the heart retains a love and reverence for goodness, it is essentially a worshipper, and will find a God in due time. The stronghold of philosophic Atheism seems to me to be the dogma of the inductive philosophy, "All we know is phænomena." I often used to hear this at Oxford, from clerical teachers! and always resisted it, though not then imagining its anti-religious tendency. When last I was in Oxford, in Balliol walls (1846), the same doctrine was propounded by an eminent gentleman, a clerical tutor, who is said to be deep in Hegel, and he set me down (almost in so many words) as very puzzle-headed because I resisted it. You make me wonder that I have not always answered as you do. My resistance to Dr. Thomas Brown I have sometimes suspected to be fanatical, but indeed it is not for nothing. Your doctrine that all Power is Will seems to me to need explanations which amount to evasions. But perhaps I am still in some confusion. My "Political Economy" will not satisfy you in the defective points, yet it leans in your direction. Ever affectionately yours,
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