much can be done _without it_ and _against it_: a policy which dooms Democracy to ceaseless antagonisms in the attainment of its claims, and will, if persisted in, fetter it with impotence when the victory is won. 1. Repub. vol. xiv. p. 105. 2. Lion, vol. i. p. 3. 3. Repub. vol. xii. p. 3. 4. Repub. vol. xiv. pp. 5, 6. The progress of Carlile’s convictions respecting religion is evident and honourable to his thoughtfulness. He was twenty-seven years old before he conceived any error in the article religion. His attention was first drawn to the fact by finding that the suppressed writings of his day chiefly related to religion. When the Attorney General first called him profane, for publishing Hone’s Parodies, he was a very different man. Through several volumes of the _Republican_ he was a Deist only. But reflection led him onwards step by step. A first indication is in these words—‘Paine, in his lifetime, appears to have been the advocate of a Deistical church, but such an attempt shall ever find my reprobation, as unnecessary and mischievous.’(1) The reason he assigned was, that science alone could lead to true devotion, and lectures on science were, therefore, the proper worship. In his first controversy with Cobbett, he avowed himself, as Mr. Owen always has, a believer in a great controlling power of Nature. But at this point, Carlile’s belief had grown practical in its negation, as he wrote, ‘I advocate the abolition of all religions, without setting up anything new of the kind.’(2) By this time he had become a confirmed materialist, and soon after, defined mind as a portion of the organization of the human body, acted upon by the atmosphere and the body jointly, and dependent upon a peculiarity in the organization, in the same manner as voice and life itself.(3) The definitions he gave, in 1822, of Religion and Morality were essentially the same as those since rendered more elegantly by Emerson. Carlile defined Morality as a rule of conduct relating to man and man—Religion as a rule of conduct, relating not to man, but to something which he fancies to be his Maker.(4) Next he observed, ‘I may have said that the changes observed in phenomenon argue the existence of an active power in the universe, but I have again and again renounced the notion of that power being intelligent or designing.(5) ‘It is not till since my imprisonment that I have avowed myself Atheist.’(6) 1. Repub. vol. iv. p. 220. 2. Repub. vol. v. p. 201. 3. Repub. vol. vi. 4. Repub. vol. vi. p. 249. 5. Repub. vol. vii. p. 26. 6. Repub. vol. vii. p. 397. He reached the climax of his Atheism on the title page to his tenth volume of the _Republican_, where he declared ‘There is no such a God in existence as any man has preached; nor any kind of God and this declaration was so far carried out in detail, as to exclude from the _Republican_ _God, nature, mind, soul_, and _spirit_, as words without proto types.(1)