CHAPTER IX.
THEORY OF SECULARISM .-- G.

J.HOLYOAKE.
Such is the new name under which Atheism has recently appeared among not a few of the tradesmen and artisans of the metropolis and provincial towns of Great Britain.

In literature, it is represented by Mr.G.J.
Holyoake, the author of an answer to Paley, the editor of "The Reasoner," and a popular lecturer and controversialist, whose public discussions are duly reported in that periodical, and occasionally reprinted in a separate form.[251] The extensive circulation which these and similar tracts have already obtained, the number of affiliated societies which have been formed in many of the chief centres of manufactures and commerce, the zeal and boldness of popular itinerant lecturers, and the urgent demands which have been incessantly made for the extension of their machinery by means of a _propaganda_ fund, are all indications of a tendency, in some quarters, towards a form of unbelief, less speculative and more practical, but only on that account more attractive to the English mind, and neither less insidious nor less dangerous than any of the philosophical theories of Atheism.
We have often thought, indeed, that should Atheism ever threaten to become prevalent in England, this is the form which it is most likely to assume.

The English mind is eminently practical; it has little sympathy with the profundity of German or the subtlety of French speculation on such subjects.

A few speculative spirits may be influenced for a time by the reasonings of Comte, or the representations of "The Vestiges;" but the general mind of the community will desiderate something more solid and substantial; not content with any scientific theory, however ingenious, it will demand a practical system.