Moreover, he was absolutely indifferent to all questions of social position; peer or artisan, it was to him exactly the same; he never seemed conscious of the distinctions of which men make so much.
Our first conversation, after the meeting at the Hall of Science, took place a day or two later in his little study in 29, Turner Street, Commercial Road, a wee room overflowing with books, in which he looked singularly out of place.

Later I learned that he had failed in business in consequence of Christian persecution, and, resolute to avoid bankruptcy, he had sold everything he possessed, save his books, had sent his wife and daughters to live in the country with his father-in-law, had taken two tiny rooms in Turner Street, where he could live for a mere trifle, and had bent himself to the task of paying off the liabilities he had incurred--incurred in consequence of his battling for political and religious liberty.

I took with me my MS.

essay "On the Nature and Existence of God," and it served as the basis for our conversation; we found there was little difference in our views.

"You have thought yourself into Atheism without knowing it," he said, and all that I changed in the essay was the correction of the vulgar error that the Atheist says "there is no God," by the insertion of a passage disclaiming this position from an essay pointed out to me by Mr.Bradlaugh.And at this stage of my life-story, it is necessary to put very clearly the position I took up and held so many years as Atheist, because otherwise the further evolution into Theosophist will be wholly incomprehensible.