WCP2725

[1]

Didsbury, Manchester

11 Feb. 08.

Dear Mr Wallace,

I am very sorry that my weak type-impression has inconvenienced you. One main reason I use a type-writer is to spare my readers the inconvenience they often cause me in deciphering their caligraphy [sic] . I have such a mass of writing that I hardly seem to get a new ribbon but it is worn out. Now, I get a new one on your special behalf.

Your letter¹ just received is another link in the fetters of friendship which bind me to you. You are elemental, ferociously comminatory — a very Peter the Hermit for your agnostic dogmatism, and I love you. You are downright and true; no decadent sinuosity, truckling verminosity, theatrical verbosity about you. How can I help loving you? And how can I help telling you to get out of that fog? Yes, my hero of a thousand scrimmages, you're in a thick greenery-yallery, and I'm going to run amuck at you just as you have been doing at me for ever so long.

You say that you "totally dissent" from my "fundamental principle, because it assumes a knowledge of the Infinite mind of the Universe — while denying the equally assumed knowledge of other people". I challenge you to find thewords "infinite mind² of the universe" in any writings of mine. I know nothing whatever about any "mind" of any universe. I know nothing about any universe but my own thoughts, feelings, sensings. If you know any universe but such thoughts, feelings, sensings of your own, I shall be glad if you will enable me to know that universe. So soon as you so equip me with knowledge, I give you my word I will proclaim it.

In stating that my fundamental principle "assumes" a knowledge, I suppose you to imply that my knowledge of God's existence is assumption without proof. I claim that my proof on this point is incomparably stronger that your proof of evolution, in the sense in which you hold the concept, implying changing events independently of yourself as determining the events as your experience, or knowledge. You are the one who bases on assumption, and your assumption has no value as demonstration outside practical utility, as systematic tabulation of illusory transformations and necessary sequences, which only exist through your determinism as causal agent.

I know that God exists, as a person and Cause; that is, as Cause He owns all; that if men assert ownership-right, they repudiate God's ownership-right; that, as being God's property, human capacity and its output (wealth) must be administered as a trust, for the greatest practicable equality of enjoyment by God's creatures. I demonstrate God's existence, as Cause, by as rigidly intellectual method as a mathematician demonstrates the qualities of a triangle.

You say that you have not had time to read the pamphlets and books I have lately sent you. Will you read them, calmly and dispassionately, and judge them as you would judge a biological problem? If you can expose a fallacy in them, I pray you do it! If you enable me to believe that the God I affirm does not exist, I will deny that God as resolutely as I now affirm Him.

In stating that my "fundamental principle" denies " the equally assumed knowledge of other people, and is therefore another dogmatic religion," I suppose you to mean that I claim something like papal infallibility and status to suppress all that opposes what I propound. This is utterly remote from my position. I would have nobody affirm what I affirm, unless he believed it. I have not a particle of desire to impose myself as a credal despot. I want every³ [2] man to be his own credal authority. To that end, I supply him with the proofs which enable me to be my own credal authority. A grievance which I have against you and your school is that you ignore my proofs, while I meet yours. You are the one who seeks to impose a "dogmatic religion" which practically denies the God Whom I demonstrate to exist. And I say that your dogmatic religion is more dangerous than any theological one; that your dogmatic religion is now turning back multitudes of men and women to the brute stage.

I deny no knowledge of other people; not of a person assured that the moon is made of green cheese. I simply assert my knowledge that the moon is not so constituted. My knowledge is simply my holding the belief or faith. Qua "knowledge", there is no difference between me and the green-cheese-moon-believer. There is only difference regarding what our knowledge affirms or denies: in other words, between what we hold by belief or faith. I am as "agnostic" as you are. I "know" nothing, except as believing. By believing I "know" that God really knows in a way that I cannot know. By believing, I know that God tells me what to do. I try to enable others to believe as I do. If I fail, God determines them not to believe as I do. I try to enable them to believe; not to dictate to them what they are to believe. To this end, I face all criticisms of what I propound. That is not the method of your school. It does not face what I propound. It cries "metaphysic", and slinks into its hole.

You say that you will having nothing to do with the League. I'm sorry, and I do not see why you should stand out, apart from your affection for your dogmatic religion. The League embraces all the material objects for which you have been striving so long. It makes for the abolition of oppression of man by man; of poverty and its terrible incidents; it affords a momentum to your schemes for sensual betterment which they, at present, entirely lack. It would be cruel to add a further burden of labour for you. I did not mean that. I only wanted your name as endorsing the League's principle of equalisation by mulcting affluence. I will not urge the matter further.

Your seeming notion that my ideas only commend themselves "to a few metaphysically inclined religionists" is much off the mark, as you would know did you see correspondence I have about the books and pamphlets from all parts of the world, as well as this country, and from "all sorts and conditions of men". "Metaphysic" is certainly efficient as a bad name to apply to the dog; but there is metaphysic and metaphysic. Mine is so desperately practical that it is going to be more fatal to Mammon than all your physics, physiology, biology, evolutionism, economics.⁴

Your stuff goes into the press of Mammon as freely as water goes down a street drain, and Mammon is no more afflicted than is a duck by a shower. There is not a paper that dare give my stuff a show. That Mammon-ridden press smells poison in my "metaphysic", aye, more than poison: in articulo mortis! You hate the stink of that press, and you turn your back on my League, and tell me that my "metaphysic will have no real influence on the amelioration of our vile social conditions". What, my friend, is the show to date, after 20 years or so of your atheistic utilitarianism? Eureka! The skinning of one poor man to pay a poorer a beggarly dole at 60. Pensions, hurrah! Behold the mouse after the strivings of the Labour-cum-Socialist mountain! Listen, my friend! Give my "metaphysic" a year of your machinery, there will be more achievement of social betterment than your atheism will achieve in a century. You are tinkering. You want my "metaphysic". [3] Your dogmatic religion is hitting at air. Your materialism is a dismal failure. Your want that God Whom you deny.

I assume that you will allow me, as on other occasions, to print your letter. I am now issuing another pamphlet with correspondence about the League.

Always sincerely yours, H. C. Hiller⁵ [signature]

[4]⁵