Now, I know my title says forgotten atheists. I also know that many have at least heard the name of George Eliot. Many also know Eliot as a 19th century writer. Some of these may know that George Eliot was the pen name of a rather unconventional (especially for that time) woman named Mary Anne Evans (called Marian by family and friends). And some may even have read one or more of her books (if you have not, you should try them) – The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, and others – either in high school or college or for fun. A few may even know that in her novels she not only provided a vivid sense of realism, but was also interested in exploring the moral nature of humans. A very few may even know of her work before she started to write novels, that her accomplishments and influence extended well beyond just her novels, and existed before them too. However, most do not know that she was also an atheist, and thus qualifies as being a forgotten atheist.

Mary Ann Evans, the future George Eliot, was born on November 22, 1819 in Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire. Really don’t need to say England as that place name screams English. Marian was the youngest of three children. Her father was an agent for the Arbury estate – which meant that he managed the farms and land of his employer. From all accounts, he was very good at his work – hard working and treated both the farmers and workers he oversaw honestly and fairly.

Her formal education consisted of attending Miss Lathorn’s School from 1825 – 1827, Mrs. Wallington’s School from 1828 – 32, and then Miss Franklin’s School (operated by the daughters of a Baptist minister) from 1832 – 1835. Due to the death of her mother and having to then manage her father’s household (which included the workers on his farm), her formal schooling was done by the time she was 15. However, Eliot never finished her own studies. Her mind was too restless and curious to ever do so.

Marian started her life as a very religious and devout Christian. In fact, at Mrs. Wallington’s school she became close to the school governess, Maria Lewis, a strong evangelical believer,who served as a mentor for Eliot, and with whom she would carry on a correspondence for many years after leaving the school. Many noted the strength of her beliefs and her piety. In fact, her first publication was “Knowing That Shortly I Must Put Off This Tabernacle”, a religious poem that appeared in the Christian Observer in 1840.

She was also known both for her desire and ability to learn and to understand everything. By this time she was already an accomplished pianist. After school, and using books that her father procured for her that she studied on her own, and working with tutors from the town of Coventry when needed, she proceeded to become fluent in Greek, Latin, French, German, and Italian. She read both the older classical literature and also the works of the more modern thinkers of her day. Within just a very few years she was as well educated as any man who had graduated from university. However, as a result of her readings and studies, she started to question her Christian beliefs. Within a few years she was refusing to attend church, something that caused a rift with her father and brother. Eventually, though, she did agree to accompany her father to church and did so until his death in 1849.

During this time she was not only reading works by the leading intellectuals of her day, she was also translating them. She translated parts of Spinoza for Charles Bray – one of the leading intellectuals of Coventry and a freethinker. After visiting Dr. Brabant she agreed to take over his work of translating David Friedrich Strauss’s work of historical criticism, “The Life of Jesus”. She learned Hebrew at this time in order to help with the translation (she continued to add languages throughout her life, in 1864 adding Spanish to her list). In 1846, the three volume “The Life of Jesus” was published.

In 1851 she went to London to, initially, assist in editing the journal Westminster Review. By the time the first issue came out on Jan 1, 1852 she was the editor of the journal, as well as contributing book reviews. She continued her work of translating many of the works of Spinoza and of Feuerbach. She was also meeting, and impressing, a growing number of impressive people – Herbert Spencer, Charles Dickens, and Ralph Waldo Emerson to name just three.

She had already engaged in one scandalous act by this time of her life – rejecting the idea of God as being “inconceivable”. Now she engaged in her most scandalous act, marrying George Henry Lewes without the benefit of a formal marriage ceremony. Although most do not know of Lewes today, at that time he was widely known for being a philosopher and scientist as well as a theater and literature critic (and for a short period of time, an actor). Several of his works, especially those written for the general populace’s elucidation, were very popular and well reviewed. Further, he did make some original scientific contributions in the field of biology. He was very much running around with the same sort of people as Eliot.

At the time that Eliot met Lewes, Lewes also was an unhappily married man. His wife of 13 years was not a faithful woman, and their first child was not theirs. However, even though he knew this, he chose not to divorce her, instead giving her a second chance. She declined the second chance. Since he declined to divorce her the first time, the society of the time would not allow him a second chance to divorce her. He was stuck in a marriage with a woman who was no longer around.

When Eliot and Lewes fell in love, they were left with a limited set of choices – live together in unsanctioned wedlock, or not. They decided to live together in unsanctioned wedlock and from 1852 until her husband died, the still Mary Anne Evans, the future George Eliot, called herself Mrs. Marian Evans Lewes. They lived as husband and wife, both in name and in deed. From all accounts they had a happy marriage being both lovers and best friends.

Something to note here, there were no children from this unofficial marriage. This was a conscious decision on the part of Marian as she did not want her children to have to deal with the stigma associated with unmarried parents. Also worth noting, except for some short stories, all of Marian’s writings to this point had been translations, reviews of books, and essays. It was her husband who encouraged her to write novels. Without his encouragement, the 19th century would have, unknowing, missed one of its greatest writers. In 1858 Marian chose the name George Eliot.

In 1878 Lewes died. Eliot refused to see anyone for several weeks after his death. She spent this time completing Lewes’ major philosophical work, the three volume “Problems of Life and Mind” and preparing it for the press.

In May of 1880 Eliot married again, this time to a man 20 years younger than herself. While this was also controversial, some, such as her brother, were relieved that at least this was a regular and legal marriage. However, this marriage did not last long as Eliot became ill and died on December 22, 1880. Because of her atheism and her unsanctioned marriage, Eliot was not buried in Westminster Abbey. Instead, she was buried, next to Lewes, at Highgate Cemetery an area reserved for atheists and agnostics.

Anyone who actually knows anything about atheists knows that they are not a monolithic and homogenous group. Most people tend to think of atheists as being uniformly against religion and derisive of it, a la Madeline Murray O’Hair or the Richard Dawkins. Most people though are wrong. In fact, George Eliot was as opposite as an atheist can be from Dawkins.

Eliot never denounced Christianity or religion. Eliot believed that while religion was objectively false, it was subjectively true. In fact, despite the change in her beliefs, she carried her religious feelings and sympathies from when she was a Christian with her into her atheism. She would have considered getting rid of these as throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Eliot did not accept that any religious doctrines were true. She did not believe in God’s existence, nor in a life after death. Despite this she believed that religion and Christianity were true. Not in a historic sense or in its doctrines, but instead about what it expressed and communicated about human needs and desires. She saw religion as the objectification of the subjective needs of humans and saw Christianity as its highest form.

She was greatly influenced by the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach’s “The Essence of Christianity”. Basically, in his critique of Christianity, Feuerbach (and Eliot) believed that God is nothing more and nothing less than the outward projection of humanity’s inward nature. And while Eliot disagreed with its theology and dogma, she thoroughly agreed with its expression of needs and desires along with its promotion of duty to others and subordination of the self. She felt sympathy with those needing the support of religion – in the face of the vastness and the often uncaring cruelty of the universe, we all need a sense of belonging, of sustaining ourselves during periods of loneliness and frustration, and a way of understanding and controlling the often mysterious forces outside of ourselves.

This is why she never spoke ill of religion.

For her, human suffering and morality were of primary importance; especially in light of her belief, from reading Comte, Mill, Spencer, and Lewes, that humanity lives in an indifferent universe that neither cares for or against them. She was deeply concerned about how a person can lead meaningful and morally satisfying lives in a universe that just does not care.

In a letter to Sara Hennell, she wrote “The test of a higher religion might be, that it should enable the believer to do without the consolations that his egoism would demand. “ Bernard J. Paris, “George Eliot’s Religion of Humanity”

For her, the answer for how to accomplish this lies in what humans are – social creatures. We care for others, have a sense of empathy for the plight and condition of our fellow humans. Because of this there is, in addition to the natural order of the universe, there is a human moral order which is the source of our morality. This moral order is worked out in our cultures, our laws, and our institutions of societies, as well as in our “creeds, symbols, and ceremonies of religion” (Paris).

Expressed in the words of Lewes, Eliot saw humans as the “product of the animal kingdom and the social organism – ‘the soul of man has thus a double root, a double history’. Man’s egoistic impulses, his concern for himself at the expense of others, are manifestations of his animal nature; but his moral life, his desire for the welfare of others, is largely the consequence of his relation to society” (Paris).

She valued religion and Christianity not because it created morality. It did not. However they are of value because they were “inspired and sanctioned by the moral emotions and perceptions of mankind”. This belief thus makes her a religious atheist, something of a seeming rarity in today’s atheist world.

The Choir Invisible

by George Eliot

O May I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence: live

In pulses stirr’d to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

For miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,

And with their mild persistence urge man’s search

To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:

To make undying music in the world,

Breathing as beauteous order that controls

With growing sway the growing life of man.

So we inherit that sweet purity

For which we struggled, fail’d, and agoniz’d

With widening retrospect that bred despair.

Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,

A vicious parent shaming still its child,

Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolv’d;

Its discords, quench’d by meeting harmonies,

Die in the large and charitable air.

And all our rarer, better, truer self,

That sobb’d religiously in yearning song,

That watch’d to ease the burthen of the world,

Laboriously tracing what must be,

And what may yet be better,—saw within

A worthier image for the sanctuary,

And shap’d it forth before the multitude,

Divinely human, raising worship so

To higher reverence more mix’d with love,—

That better self shall live till human Time

Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky

Be gather’d like a scroll within the tomb Unread forever.

This is life to come,

Which martyr’d men have made more glorious

For us who strive to follow. May I reach

That purest heaven, be to other souls

The cup of strength in some great agony,

Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,

Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,

Be the sweet presence of a good diffus’d,

And in diffusion ever more intense!

So shall I join the choir invisible

Whose music is the gladness of the world.