h an
unfashionable reputation. To observe the way in which some people will
introduce into their conversation, speeches, or writings, the names of
well-known men, is a revelation of this mental snobbery. And the moral
equivalent of this is the fear of being found in the company of an
opinion that has been branded as immoral. Such people have all the fear
of an unpopular opinion that a savage has of a tribal taboo--it is, in
fact, a survival of the same spirit that gave the tribal taboo its
force. It is, thus, not a very difficult matter to warn people off an
undesirable opinion. Samuel Taylor Coleridge relates how the clergy
raised the cry of Atheism against him, although he had never advanced
further than Deism. And it is to his credit that in referring to this
charge he said:--

Little do these men know what Atheism is. Not one man in a thousand
has either strength of mind or goodness of heart to be an Atheist.
I repeat it. Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind
or goodness of heart to be an Atheist.

And we have also the oft-quoted testimony of the late Professor
Tyndall:--

It is my comfort to know that there are amongst us many whom the
gladiators of pulpit would call Atheists and Materialists, whose
lives, nevertheless, as tested by any accessible standard of
morality would contrast more than favourably with the lives of
those who seek to stamp them with this offensive brand. When I say
"offensive," I refer merely to the intention of those who use such
terms, and not because Atheism or Materialism, when compared with
many of the notions ventilated in the columns of religious
newspapers has any particular offensiveness to me. If I wish to
find men who are scrupulous in their adherence to engagements,
whose words are their bond, and to whom moral shiftiness of any
kind is subjectively unknown, if I wanted a loving father, a
faithful husband, an honourable neighbour, and a just citizen, I
would seek him among the band of Atheists to which I refer. I have
known some of the most pronounced amongst them, not only in life,
but in death--seeing them approaching with open eyes the inexorable
goal, with no dread of a "hangman's whip," with no hope of a
heavenly crown, and still as mindful of their duties, as if their
eternal future depended upon their latest deeds.

Still the moral c