Tom Paine: The Greatest Exile. By David Powell. 303 plus unpaginated preface. Croom Helm, Beckenham, 1985.

Biographies of Paine are not ten a penny so another to the few which are available is, one hopes, an event to be celebrated, for there is always the hope that here at long last will be a significant addition to the available information on him. Unfortunately this new book, although well written and giving a reasonably comprehensive insight into the background events which the author feels influenced the development of Paine’s thinking, I do not think it gets above the routine.

Paine did not live in an intellectual vacuum, and he seems to have had a very agile and inquiring mind from an early date, plus a dislike for the position in society his background set him. From all accounts he was able to influence various people into helping him, notably Benjamin Franklin, who was almost a second father to him and certainly enabled Paine to find a reasonable form of employment when he arrived in the colonies in America. But the more I study the various claims that this or that event “influenced him” the less convinced I become that we have discovered the main influences. Paine, as he tells us, was passionately interested in science and attended classes in various subjects, particularly astronomy, when living London. He also became friends with various scientists and teachers, and it may not be amiss to bear in mind that Franklin himself was as interested in things scientific as was Paine. Science and technology embodied radical change, and I feel that this was the primary factor which influenced Paine towards a radical and progressive stance, and it is this aspect of his life which all too many authors, Mr. Powell included, do not pay sufficient attention to, although naturally not ignoring the fact of Paine’s active interest in science and technology.

Mr. Powell spends much time, particularly when presenting Paine’s earlier years, in examining background events, though he is not the first to do this, as readers of the late Audrey Williamson’s biography of Paine will know. This technique, while being quite acceptable in historical studies, and certainly placing figures in the context of their day and age, can be dangerous as we are left wondering to what extent the authors’ inclinations are right, and whether this will lead to the creation of a degree of historical mythology. Mr. Powell ignores certain studies of Paine, such as those by George Hindmarch, which argue that Paine was an active writer in his Sussex days as well as a would-be nonconformist clergyman when based in Lincolnshire. The latter would clearly indicate Paine’s inner urge to escape from what was the position in life his birth had destined him for in the socially layered society of England in the 18th century, while the former would indicate the school from which he graduated into journalism, for above all else Paine was a superb writer in a journalistic manner.

Paine’s ideas are still in many cases advanced, far too advanced for some countries, and he appeals to people across the political and religious spectrum, though The Age of Reason does not go down with fundamentalists in the United States and other countries, which highlights the irony of the fact that it was written to combat atheism in France. Had Paine not written this book I strongly suspect he would now be accepted unquestionably in the United States as an unquestioned founding father, but Chapman Cohen was right when he claimed that writing The Age of Reason played into the hands of Paine’s political foes. Mr. Powell certainly highlights the two faced attitude, not to mention the ingratitude, of many of those who had used Paine’s abilities to further their own ends, and this was never more stressed by the almost total official indifference to his death. Times have changed, however, and in both the United States, particularly there, and Britain, recognition is now being accorded Paine at an increasing tempo, though this side of the saga is beyond the scope of this book.

Tom Paine: The Greatest Exile is not a great book, but it is a competently written and very readable study of Paine which can be recommended. What does puzzle me is why it is so highly priced, for this will clearly place it beyond the reach of many who might otherwise buy it. There are no masses of coloured illustrations in it, indeed there are no illustrations apart from the frontis which reproduces an all too familiar portrait of Paine. The definitive biography of the great radical still remains to be written, if ever it can be in view of the all too obvious gaps in our knowledge of Paine.

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The Encyclopedia Of Unbelief. Edited by Gordon Stein. 2 vols. viii & 819pp. Roy8vo. Prometheus Books, Buffalo, N.Y., 1985. £75.

A work of this character invites comparison with Joseph McCabe’s, Nationalist Encyclopedia, published in 1948 and long out of print; but whereas his book was very much a ‘one man show”, with many of the defects expected in a work which covers subjects about, which its author lacked essential specialist knowledge, when dealing with church history McCabe wrote with authority, but on other subjects his treatment was often superficial. In contrast this new book embodies contributions from over a hundred scholars, many internationally known authorities in their fields and all specialists in the subjects they write on. The degree of specialisation this to the Encyclopedia is evident in the detail presented in most of the individual items, many being substantial pieces, some even, I suggest, major contributions to scholarship not just simply encyclopedia entries. On the other hand a few do not quite come up to expectations in that they should contain more material than they do, an example being the entry entitled ‘Evolution and Unbelief’.

Although very detailed, this particular essay gives the impression of being an example more of the ‘great man history’ school of writing than a fully comprehensive analysis of the debate which prepared the ground for the impact of Darwinian evolutionary propositions. I do not denigrate great men, and they need to be considered biographically as much as in terms of their ideas, and the writer of the article does this, but he also omits any discussion of some of the crucial matters which can be said to have destroyed the status of the bible as a determining factor in the interpretation of natural phenomenon. For example, the reception in the 18th and early 19th centuries of an increasing flood of geological knowledge which was found to be totally incompatible with biblical writ except by theological contortions of the most extraordinary and obvious type, is ignored, though it gave rise to the furious conflict between biblical catastrophists and supporters of what was to become eventually the uniformitarianism of Charles Lyell, which so influenced Darwin and Huxley, we find no mention, or even reference to, such a key figure as James Hutton, an outstanding geologist and noted religious sceptic, yet the clash of Huttonian ideas and those of A.G. Werner was to be a major contribution in making both informed public and scientific opinion favourable towards the idea of evolution. Absent, too, is any reference to the controversy caused by the discovery of animal and human remains in cave deposits which could not be interpreted in terms of catastrophism, namely seen as the biblical flood. The frequently bitter debate the new ideas gave rise to smashed the theological domination over scientific thinking and, incidentally, covered and destroyed many of the ideas now being advanced by our contemporary exponents of so-called ‘scientific creationism’, who do not appear aware that their ‘new’ data was worked over and destroyed over a hundred and forty years ago.

The term unbelief used in the title of this work is, in the words of the editor, ‘not an easy job to define’, but he then suggests that the ‘the closest synonym for unbelief, ‘ is heterodoxy”, which Dr. Stein says it can be taken as meaning, ‘not holding orthodox or traditional opinions – on religious matters, in the context of the encyclopedia’. This allows for the incorporation of many ideas and individuals in the work which to some readers may not be readily seen as representative of unbelief viewed from a more narrow standpoint, however, the broad interpretation of unbelief is welcome and adds to the strength and standing of the Encyclopedia. Nevertheless, despite this the emphasis upon unbelief in terms of religious unbelief can pose some difficulties about what should be included and what was to be left out, and not everyone will concur with the editor’s choice one way or another even if agreeing that some might be covered in detail in other readily available reference sources. It is difficult to understand – why, say, Karl Marx gets a lengthy entry while Frederick Engels, despite ten references in the index, is ignored, So, too, are the Marxists, Karl Kautsky, who wrote a history of Christianity from a materialist and atheist viewpoint, and Rosa Luxemburg.

Contributions include surveys covering unbelief in various geographical areas, including Latin America, the United Kingdom, the United States, Scandinavia, the Soviet Union (closeted with Russia for some reason), China, the Netherlands, and other countries. There is a most interesting contribution on unbelief within Christianity, which may well startle not a few Christian readers. The paranormal is subjected to a well balanced critical analysis, while there is a telling contribution from James Randi on ‘Conjuring and Unbelief in the Supernatural’. 

Mention has already been made of the contribution on evolution, but cannot help wonder why Teilhard de Chardin is termed a “geopaleontologist”, which is, I confess, a singularly unusual description for the Jesuit, who is best described, when wearing his scientific biretta, simply as a palaeontologist.

Important as he was in the history of unbelief, I did find the entry on Voltaire rather more extensive than it need be, although it makes fascinating reading. G.A. Wells presents a summary of the case against the historicity of Jesus, though without entering into any detailed presentation of the history of this hypothesis, which frankly I found disappointing, as did the failure to include in the Encyclopedia an entry for Herbert Cutner, a notable promoter of the myth theory and excellent freethought writer.

There is much in this work which you would find difficult to locate elsewhere, while the insights into some subjects and individuals make refreshing reading and could well lead to scholarly reappraisals of some in due course. Unfortunately there are also some glaring omissions, particularly in the biographical field. I was sorry to see no biographical notes on F.A. Ridley, G.A. Taylor and F.A. Hornibrook, to name but three which spring to mind; such omissions notwithstanding, I have no hesitation in stressing the fact that this is a very important work, perhaps the most important in the field of freethought published for many years, which will become an essential reference tool not just to those associated with organised unbelief but all serious scholars and researchers interested in the fields the work covers. Dr. Stein is to be congratulated on a job well done, and not an easy job at that, I would hope that all university libraries obtain copies and also the libraries of all theological colleges. The students (and staff) at the latter should find such to stimulate their thinking in the Encyclopedia, even if they do not share the outlook and attitudes of many of the contributors. It may seem an expensive work to purchase, but in terms of the prices being asked for many academic works at the present time this is not really so. It is to be hoped that the editor will eventually be able to have a supplementary volume published which will, perhaps, give biographical notes in respect of some of the individuals excluded from the Encyclopedia, as well as expand upon certain other issues, not least the scientific debate referred to above.

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