if there is anything in particular
which it actually is, it is thereby excluded from being any other thing.
But again, it must also be conceived as actually everything and
potentially nothing: for an unrealised potentiality is likewise a
limitation. If the infinite can be that which it is not, it is by that
very possibility marked out as incomplete and capable of a higher
perfection. If it is actually everything, it possesses no characteristic
feature by which it can be distinguished from anything else and discerned
as an object of consciousness."

Could any argument more thoroughly Atheistic be put before a mind which
dared to think out to the logical end any train of thought? Such
reasoning can lead but to one of two ends: despair of truth and
consequent acceptance of the incomprehensible as Divine, or else the
resolute refusal to profess belief where reason is helpless, and where
faith is but the credulity of ignorance. In my case, it had the latter
effect.

At the same time I re-read Mill's "Examination of Sir W. Hamilton's
Philosophy", and also went through a pretty severe study of Comte's
_Philosophic Positive_. I had entirely given up the use of prayer, not
because I was an Atheist but because I was still a Theist. It seemed to
me to be absurd to pray, if I believed in a God who was wiser and better
than myself. An all-wise God did not need my suggestions: an all-good God
would do all that was best without my prompting. Prayer appeared to me to
be a blasphemous impertinence, and for a considerable time I had
discontinued its use. But God fades gradually out of the daily life of
those who never pray; a God who is not a Providence is a superfluity;
when from the heaven does not smile a listening Father, it soon becomes
an empty space whence resounds no echo of man's cry.

At last I said to Mr. Scott: "Mr. Scott, may I write a tract on the
nature and existence of God?"

He glanced at me keenly: "Ah, little lady; you are facing then that
problem at last? I thought it must come. Write away."

The thought that had been driving me forward found its expression in the
opening words of the essay (published a few months later, with one or two
additions that were made after I had read two of Mr. Bradlaugh's essays,
his "Plea for Atheism", and "Is there a God?"): "It is impossible for
those who study the deeper religious problems of our time to stave off
much longer the question which lies at the root of them all, 'What