Page:Confessions of an Economic Heretic.djvu/54



I had never become a full-blooded rationalist in the sense of holding that reasoning was the sole method of attaining truth and of assessing values, my mind hdd long been set in that direction, and when I came to London I soon found myself consorting with persons who had shed theology and who sought to apply rationalism in the fields of ethics and politics. One of my earliest and most intimate associates was Bradlaugh’s chief intellectual lieutenant, J. M. Robertson, who was assistant editor of the National Reformer, which took for its leading tenets Atheism, Republicanism, and Birth Control. Equipped with unrivalled powers of controversy, immense industry in the acquisition of knowledge in history, science, and philosophy, and a wonderfully accurate and ready memory, he devoted the greater part of his life to the history and the current practice of free-thought. Though later on in the early twentieth century he was drawn into active participation in the Free Trade controversy, was elected into Parliament and even held office as Under-Secretary in the Board of Trade, his heart never lay in politics. He could never become a sound party man, for, though certain early excesses