“Your letter is not of a kind to remain unacknowledged, and my time is often less worthily employed than it will be in making a few remarks upon some parts of it.
“You tell me of the prevalence of Atheism and Deism* among those persons with whose opinions you are acquainted. Are those persons, think you, fair representatives of the higher orders, whom you suppose to be inflicted with such opinions in the same proportion? Or are they not mostly young men, smatterers in literature, or literati by profession?
“Where the principles of reasonable religion have not been well inculcated in childhood, and enforced by example at home, I believe that infidelity is generally and perhaps necessarily one step in the progress of an active mind. Very many undoubtedly stop there; but they whose hearts escape the corruption which, most certainly, irreligion has a direct tendency to produce, are led into the right path, sooner or later, by reflection, inquiry, and the instinct of an immortal spirit, which can find no other resting place in its weal, no other consolations in its afflictions. This has been the case in the circle of my
* “In numbering those with whose opinions I am acquainted, I find one-half of them to be Atheists and two-thirds of the remainder Deists: I should not be surprised if this were found to be about the general proportion in the higher orders of society, and infidelity has been brought among the lower orders by political disaffection.”—to R. S., Aug. 1. 1824. |
| Ætat. 50. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 185 |
“According to my estimate of public opinion, there is
much more infidelity in the lower ranks than there ever was before, and less in
the higher classes than at any time since the Restoration. The
indifferentists—those who used to conform without a thought or feeling upon the
subject—are the persons who have diminished in numbers. Considering the
connection of infidelity with disaffection in all its grades, and the alliance
for political purposes between Catholics, Dissenters, and Unbelievers, I think
with you that a
| 186 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE | Ætat. 50. |
“The progress of my own religious opinions has been slow, but steady. You may probably live to read it; and what is of more consequence—may, without reading it, follow unconsciously the same course, and by God’s blessing rest at last in the same full and entire belief.
