Ajax"; I was obliged to use a _nom de guerre_ at first, for
the work I was doing for Mr. Scott would have been injured had my name
appeared in the columns of the terrible _National Reformer_, and until
the work commenced and paid for was concluded I did not feel at liberty
to use my own name. Later, I signed my _National Reformer_ articles, and
the tracts written for Mr. Scott appeared anonymously.

The name was suggested by the famous statue of "Ajax crying for light", a
cast of which stands in the centre walk of the Crystal Palace. The cry
through the darkness for light, even if light brought destruction, was
one that awoke the keenest sympathy of response from my heart:

"If our fate be death,
Give light, and let us die!"

To see, to know, to understand, even though the seeing blind, though the
knowledge sadden, though the understanding shatter the dearest hopes,
such has ever been the craving of the upward-striving mind of man. Some
regard it as a weakness, as a folly, but I am sure that it exists most
strongly in some of the noblest of our race; that from the lips of those
who have done most in lifting the burden of ignorance from the
overstrained and bowed shoulders of a stumbling world has gone out most
often into the empty darkness the pleading, impassioned cry :--

"Give light."

XII.

My first lecture was delivered at the Co-operative Society's Hall, 55,
Castle Street, on August 25, 1873. Twice before this, I had ventured to
raise my voice in discussion, once at a garden-party at which I was
invited to join in a brief informal debate, and discovered that words
came readily and smoothly, and the second time at the Liberal Social
Union, in a discussion on a paper read by a member--I forget by whom--
dealing with the opening of Museums and Art Galleries on Sunday.

My membership of that same "Liberal" Social Union was not, by the way, of
very long duration. A discussion arose, one night, on the admissibility
of Atheists to the society. Dr. Zerffi declared that he would not remain
a member if avowed Atheists were admitted. I declared that I was an
Atheist, and that the basis of the Union was liberty. The result was that
I found myself coldshouldered, and those who had been warmly cordial to
me as a Theist looked askance at me after I had avowed that my scepticism
had advanced beyond their "limits of religious thought". The Liberal
Social Union knew me no more, but in the wider field of work open b