LONDON WORKERS, SECULARISTS, ETC. 87 



five feet high by four or five wide, was at that time a wonder. 

 I also remember some curious clocks so constructed as to 

 look like perpetual motion, which greatly interested and often 

 puzzled us. But our evenings were most frequently spent at 

 what was then termed a " Hall of Science," situated in John 

 Street, Tottenham Court Road (now altered to Whitfield 

 Street). It was really a kind of club or mechanics' institute 

 for advanced thinkers among workmen, and especially for the 

 followers of Robert Owen, the founder of the socialist move- 

 ment in England. Here we sometimes heard lectures on 

 Owen's doctrines, or on the principles of secularism or agnos- 

 ticism, as it is now called ; at other times we read papers or 

 books, or played draughts, dominoes, or bagatelle, and coffee 

 was also supplied to any who wished for it. It was here that 

 I first made acquaintance with Owen's writings, and especially 

 with the wonderful and beneficent work he had carried on 

 for many years at New Lanark. I also received my first 

 knowledge of the arguments of sceptics, and read among other 

 books Paine's " Age of Reason." 



It must have been in one of the books or papers I read 

 here that I met with what I dare say is a very old dilemma 

 as to the origin of evil. It runs thus : " Is God able to pre- 

 vent evil but not willing? Then he is not benevolent. Is 

 he willing but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he 

 both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" This struck 

 me very much, and it seemed quite unanswerable, and when 

 at home a year or two afterwards, I took the opportunity one 

 day to repeat it to my father, rather expecting he would be 

 very much shocked at my acquaintance with any such infidel 

 literature. But he merely remarked that such problems were 

 mysteries which the wisest cannot understand, and seemed 

 disinclined to any discussion of the subject. This, of course, 

 did not satisfy me, and if the argument did not really touch 

 the question of the existence of God, it did seem to prove 

 that the orthodox ideas as to His nature and powers cannot 

 be accepted. 



I was also greatly impressed by a tract on " Consistency," 

 written by Robert Dale Owen, the eldest son of Robert Owen, 



