Many Atheists conceal their sentiments on account of the odium which would certainly be their reward did they avow them.  But the unpopularity of those sentiments cannot, by persons of sense and candour be allowed, in itself, a sufficient reason for their rejection.  The fact of a creed being unpopular is no proof it is false.  The argument from general consent is at best a suspicious one, for the truth of any opinion or the validity of any practice.  History proves that the generality of men are the slaves of prejudice, the sport of custom, and foes most bigotted to such opinions concerning religion as have not been drawn in from the sucking-bottles, or ’hatched within the narrow fences of their own conceit.’  No prudent searcher after truth will accept an opinion because it is the current one, but rather view it with distrust for that very reason.  The genius of him who said, in our journey to the other world the common road is the safest, was cowardly as deceptive, and therefore opposed to sound philosophy.  Like horses yoked to a team, ’one’s nose in t’others tail,’ is a mode of journeying anywhere the opposite of dignified, pleasant, or improving.  They who are enamoured of ’the common road,’ unless handsomely paid for journeying thereon, must be slavish in feeling, and willing submitters to every indignity sanctioned by custom, that potent enemy of truth, which from time immemorial has been ’the law of fools.’

Every day experience demonstrates the fallibility of majorities.  It palpably exhibits, too, the danger as well as the folly of presuming the unpopularity of certain speculative opinions an evidence of their falsity.  A public intellect, untainted by gross superstition, can nowhere be appealed to.  Even in this favoured country, ’the envy of surrounding nations and admiration of the world,’ the multitude are anything but patterns of moral purity and intellectual excellence.  They who assure us vox populi is the voice of God, are fairly open to the charge of ascribing to Him what orthodox pietists inform us exclusively belongs to the Father of evil.  If by ‘voice of God’ is meant something different from noisy ebullitions of anger, intemperance, and fanaticism, they who would have us regulate our opinions in conformity therewith are respectfully requested to reconcile mob philosophy with the sober dictates of experience, and mob law with the law of reason.

A writer in the Edinburgh Review [15:1] assures us ’the majority of every nation consists of rude uneducated masses, ignorant, intolerant, suspicious, unjust, and uncandid, without the sagacity which discovers what is right, or the intelligence which comprehends it when pointed out, or the morality which requires it to be done.’  And yet religious philosophers are fond of quoting the all but universal horror of Atheism as a formidable argument against that much misunderstood creed.