position I took up and held so many
years as Atheist, because otherwise the further evolution into
Theosophist will be wholly incomprehensible. It will lead me into
metaphysics, and to some readers these are dry, but if any one would
understand the evolution of a Soul he must be willing to face the
questions which the Soul faces in its growth. And the position of the
philosophic Atheist is so misunderstood that it is the more necessary
to put it plainly, and Theosophists, at least, in reading it, will see
how Theosophy stepped in finally as a further evolution towards
knowledge, rendering rational, and therefore acceptable, the loftiest
spirituality that the human mind can as yet conceive.

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

CHAPTER VII.

ATHEISM AS I KNEW AND TAUGHT IT.

The first step which leaves behind the idea of a limited and personal
God, an extra-cosmic Creator, and leads the student to the point
whence Atheism and Pantheism diverge, is the recognition that a
profound unity of substance underlies the infinite diversities of
natural phenomena, the discernment of the One beneath the Many. This
was the step I had taken ere my first meeting with Charles Bradlaugh,
and I had written:--

"It is manifest to all who will take the trouble to think steadily,
that there can be only one eternal and underived substance, and that
matter and spirit must, therefore, only be varying manifestations of
this one substance. The distinction made between matter and spirit is,
then, simply made for the sake of convenience and clearness, just as
we may distinguish perception from judgment, both of which, however,
are alike processes of thought. Matter is, in its constituent elements,
the same as spirit; existence is _one_, however manifold in its
phenomena; life is one, however multiform in its evolution. As the
heat of the coal differs from the coal itself, so do memory,
perception, judgment, emotion, and will differ from the brain which is
the instrument of thought. But nevertheless they are all equally
products of the one sole substance, varying only in their
conditions.... I find myself, then, compelled to believe that one only
substance e