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This file made available by
Pat Kelley and the
Internet Infidels
for The Secular Web.
He was not only a distinguished German physicist and one of the most famous inventors on the staff at the Zeiss optical works at Jena but a notable social reformer, By a generous scheme of profit-sharing he virtually handed over the great Zeiss enterprise to the workers. Abbe was an intimate friend of Haeckel and shared his atheism (or Monism). Leonard Abbot says in his life of Ferrer that Abbe had "just the same ideas and aims as Ferrer."
And-Er-Rahman III (891-961)
The greatest of the Moslem Arab Caliphs, who raised Spain from a state of profound demoralization to one of unprecedented prosperity, culture and brilliance while Christian Europe lay in the darkest phase of the Dark Age. It was from the splendor of his empire that civilization was rekindled in France, then in Europe generally. See S.P. Scott's Moorish Empire in Europe (3 vols. 1904) Scott piously deplores his "infidelity" and sensuality and then describes his magnificent work in lyrical language. Stanley Lane Poole (The Moors in Spain, 1897) also says that he created a civilization "such as the wildest imagination can hardly conjure up." He defied the Koran all his life and was clearly an atheist.
Abelard, Peter (1080-1142)
The most learned and far away the most brilliant master in Christian Europe in the twelfth century. He was "the idol of Paris," and troubadour as well as a philosopher, until a canon of the cathedral had him castrated for an affair with his niece Heloise. This soured his disposition, so that it is andurd to call his letters to Heloise "love-letters," but his teaching was still so free that he was twice (1121 and 1141) solemnly condemned by the Church. His first principle was that "Reason precedes Faith." Compare the date with the preceding paragraph. The cultural splendor of Spain had just roused France from the Dark Age.
Ackermann, Louise Victorine (1813-1890).
A French woman writer of great distinction whose salon was one of the most brilliant intellectual centers of Paris. She is very resolutely Agnostic, without using that word in her Pensees d'une solitare (written later in life) and she wrote a poem for her tombstone which begins: "I do not know." In the strict sense she was an atheist.
Adams, John (1735-1826) Second President of the United States. He signed the Treaty of Tripoli, which began (article 11), "The Government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion," he continued, "The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus has made a convenient cover for andurdity." The treaty was ratified by the Senate in 1797 without a single exception. His rejection of Christianity, which he professed to admire morally, runs all through his letters to Jefferson, of which there is a good selection edited by Welstach (1925), through it is better to read them in the original edition (1856). The correspondence of the two men, the most accomplished who ever rose to high political office in America- they freely quote Greek, Latin, Italian and French to each other- it is very free and most interesting. The attempts of his grandson and a few others to represent Adams as a Unitarian is not honest. He was not even a very firm Deist. One letter he wrote to Jefferson (May 12, 1820), who says that its "crowd of skepticism" kept him awake at night, has been suppressed by the pious Unitarian grandson, but in another (January 17, 1820) he defines God as "an essence that we know nothing of" and says that the attempts of philosophers to get beyond this are "games of push pin." He calls the Incarnation an "awful blasphemy," and says of the First Cause "whether we call it Fate or Chance or God." He believed in personal immortality but admitted that he knew no proof of it. He was, he says in a letter of May 15, 1817, often "tempted to think that this would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it." His family fell away to respectable Unitarianism but his grandson Charles Francis Adams (1835-1915) the distinguished historian, was an Agnostic of the Leslie Stephen school, as is shown in the Life and Letters.
Adamson, Professor Robert (1852-1902)
Described in the Cambridge History of Modern Literature (XIV,48) as "the most learned of contemporary philosophers." He was an outspoken \Agnostic and a Utilitarian in ethics. In the symposium Ethical Democracy (1900) he says that even the most pretentious proofs of the existence of God are "intellectually unrepresentable" and that "the world conquered Christianity" instead of the other way about.
Addams, Jane (1863-1935)
Famous American reformer, founder of Hull House at Chicago, Nobel Prize Winner, and for 7 years President of the Womens' International League for Peace and Freedom. In view of her position Miss Adams, who was the aunt of the late Marcet Haldeman-Julius, had to be reticent about religion, but her biographer F.W. Linn says that she never departed from the Rationalism which her father had taught her and "just joined the Congregational Church as she might join a labor-union." Her German biographer, F. Rotten says the same. All Chicago respected her high character and followed her funeral, which by her direction was unsectarian. Addison: "Atheism is old fashioned word, I am a freethinker." (Webster's dictionary)
Aikenhead, Thomas (1678-1697)
A Scottish undergraduate of Edinburgh University who merits inclusion here as a martyr of freethought. Brooding over his Bible he came to the conclusion that it was "a rhapsody of ill contrived nonsense" and said so. After a travesty of a trial he was condemned and hanged.
Airy, Sir George Biddell, K.C.B., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S. etc. (1801-1892)
British Astronomer Royal, President of the Royal Society and loaded with European honors for his immense services to astronomy and other sciences. In the midst of his honors (1876) he published Notes of the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures in which he rejects revelation and miracles. He was a Theist but assured the public that he regarded "the ostensible familiarity of the biblical historian with the counsels of the Omnipotent as merely oriental allegories.
Akbar, the Great (1542-1602)
"greatest and wisest of the Mogui Emperors" (Enc. Brit.). He ruled the empire of India, which he conquered, with a wisdom and beneficence which few monarchs surpassed, and all historiand admit that he rejected the Moslem religion and cultivated and tried to establish a pure theism with tolerance of all sects. His Grand Vizier had the same views.
Alembert, Jean Le Rond D' (1717-1783)
the second greatest of the French Encyclopaedists, a foundling who became one of the most learned men of France, a member of the French and Berlin Academies and highly honored by Frederic the Great and Catherine the Great. He was the finest mathematician of his time and a man of simple ways and lofty character.. Alembert preferred to call himself a skeptic rather than an atheist, thinking that the latter implied an express denial of the existence of God.
Aleieri, Count Francesco (1712-1761),
Italian writer (science, history and philosophy) whose great learning won high favor with Frederic the Great, Augustus of Saxony, and even (at first) Pope, Clement XIV who pronounced him one of those rare men whom one would fain love even beyond the grave" Friend of Voltaire and a Deist. Frederic erected a monument to him.
Alice, Princess. See Victoria
Allbrutt, Sir Thomas Clifford, K.C.B., M.A., M.D., Sc. D. F.R.S. (1826-1925).,
one of the most distinguished British physiciand of his time. His works on medicine and the Middle Ages are valuable. He was an agnostic, writing that "the issues of being...is not solved but proved insoluble."
Allen, Colonel Ethan (1737-1789),
leader of the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont in the War of Independence, later in the State Legislature. He published what seems to have been the first anti-Christian (Deistic) work in America, Reason the Only Oracle of Man (1781). There is a statue of him in Montpelier.
Allenby, Viscount Field Marshal Edmund Henry Hynman (1861-1936)
one of the leading British Commanders in the First European War. He was a member of the British Rationalist Press Association, and in the course of an eloquent appeal for peace (Allenby's Last Message) at his inauguration as Rector of Edinburgh University shortly before his death he ruled out religion as a help.
Allingham, William (1824-1889) Irish poet and close friend of Froude, Tennyson, Rossetti and other famous writers whose conversations with him on religion are recorded in his Diary (1907). They were all skeptics, he shows. He professed to be an atheist but said that "we can not in the least comprehend or even think Deity."
Alma-Tadema, Sir Laurence, Litt. D.D.C.L., R.A., F.S.A., O.M. (1836-1912) famous British painter. He painted superb pictures of life in ancient Greece and Rome, and my friend the Hon. John Collier, an intimate friend of his, confirmed my inference that he had no religious beliefs whatever.
Amicis, Edmonde De (1846-1908) Leading Italian of the last century. He served in the army against the Pope's troops and then became, said the Athenaeum, "one of the most extensively read Italian authors of the last three-quarters of a Century." He professes Agnosticism in his Memorie and says that he is "fascinated and tormented by the vast mystery of life."
Anaxagoras (B.C. 500-428), a Greek philosopher of peculiar interest. He found-not unnaturally at that time-that the materialistic philosophy of the Ionic School was not satisfying and he introduced Reason or Mind (Nous) into the Universe. This was the beginning of the "Design Argument" for the existence of God, which Socrates and Plato developed and modern theists have used so extensively, but Anaxagoras did not mean a personal God. The irony of his life is that in spite of this service to mysticism he was under the protection of Pericles, for impiety; and the particular impiety was to say that the stars were white-hot bodies not the abodes of spirits.
Andrews, Stephen Pearl (1812-1886)social reformer. He opened a brilliant career at the American bar and sacrificed it by his zealous work for the abolition of slavery. It is said that he knew 32 languages, and he invented a universal language and a universal (non-theistic religion). Besides several works on religion he contributed frequently to the Truthseeker.
"Angel Norman" See Lane. R.N.A.
Annunzio, Prince Gabriele D' (1863-1938). greatest of modern Italian poets, who received his title for his distinction in letters (novels, poetry, and tragedy). The Church, for which he always expressed a profound contempt, put all his work on the Index, the Pope expressly warned Catholics not to read them. In one of his works he describes himself (in the guise of one of his characters) as "a princely artist of magnificent sensuality." He led the Neo-Pagan movement in Italy and was an atheist.
Anthony, Susan Brownell (1820-1906) reformer, leader of the American agitation for the rights of women. Of Quaker origin and in earlier years very puritanical-in mid-life she wore for a time the kind of pants that were then called "bloomers" from her friend Amelia Bloomer- she threw herself into the Abolitionist, Temperance and Feminist movements and led a life of struggle and sacrifice. Like most of her American colleagues in the arduous years of the movement she was an Agnostic, and she freely criticizes religion in the large and standard work on the struggle which she and Mrs. Gage wrote. She never married and, though she grew more liberal, was greatly respected for her high type of character.
Arago, Dominique Francois Jean (1786-1853), "one of the most illustrious savants of the nineteenth century," says the French Grande Encyclopedie. His early work in mathematics and astronomy was so brilliant that the French Academy, against its own rules, admitted him at the age of 23. He was equally distinguished in physics, in manuals of which his name still occurs, and was honored by all the learned academies of Europe. But he was an outspoken atheist and republican even under Napoleon (who greatly esteemed him) and Louis Napoleon, and he fought at the barricades, at the age of 62, in the revolution of 1848. In his published correspondence with Baron von Humboldt, another scientific freethinker, he often attacks religion. His brother Etienne, a distinguished dramatist, was not less honorably out-spoken. His son sustained the tradition but in his later years entered the higher regions of politics.
Aranda, Count Pedro Pablo Abaraca Y Bolea D' (1718-1798) the greatest of Spanish statesmen. He became in time President of the Council of Castile and First Minister of Spain, and he carried a whole series of measures of social reforms on the lines of the French philosophers. He corresponded with Voltaire and shared his Deism. The clergy and monks conspired against him, drove him from office, and dragged Spain back to its medieval condition. The Inquisition threatened him but did not venture to take action.
Argenson, Count Marc Pierre De Voyer De Paulmy D' (1696-1764), French statesman, at one time Governor of Paris and Minister of War. He was a friend of Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, and it was largely owing to his powerful protection that they got out their work in Paris in an age of despotic bigotry. He shared their Deistic views.
Aristippus (B.C. 435-356), founder of the Cyrenaic School of Greek philosophy. He was a pupil of Socrates who turned to the Skeptics and held that no knowledge beyond common human experience possible-in modern language Agnosticism. His native city Cyrene was in that part of Africa which is now called Libya but was at that time a lovely and populous region, the Florida of the Greek world. So what is called the philosophy of the Cyrenaic school was simply that man ought to make life as pleasant as possible. It is, however, false that he advocated surrender to sensual pleasure. He often andtained for a long period to show that he was master of himself and his pleasures.
Aristotle (B.C. 384-322), the greatest thinker of the ancient world and the encyclopaedic organizer (like Herbert Spencer in the 19th century) of all knowledge. The common idea, that he and Plato are the two typical thinkers of ancient Greece, is very far astray. As the highest authority on Greek philosophy , Zeller, says, nine-tenths of the Greek thinkers were materialists, while all admit that Plato's spiritualism had extraordinarily few followers. Aristotle himself rejected the idea of spirit but invented the idea of the immaterial, saying that man's mind, for instance, is not material yet could exist only in an intimate union with matter. For this he got a few more followers than Plato, and although he made some personal contributions to science he did great harm by despising the evolutionary materialistic science of the Ionic School and introducing the metaphysical method. No one today follows his semi-mystic ideas anymore than the mystic ideas of Plato. Another popular fallacy is to imagine him as one of those thinkers without red blood in his veins. He was very fond of his pretty mistress Herpyllis.
Arnold, Sir Edwin, K.C.I.E., M.A. (1832-1904) British poet.
During years of service in India he conceived an immense admiration of Buddhism which he thought superior to Christianity, and wrote an epic poem, The Light of Asia, on the life of Buddha, which did much to broaden the public mind. He received the highest honors of India, Persia, and Turkey. His view about God is obscure, but in a small work Death and Afterwards, he rejects the belief in personal immorality.
Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888) famous British critic and poet.
He had immense influence on the educated public of his time and made no concealment of his Rationalist views in his widely-read works. He disbelieved in a future life and Christianity and believed in God only as an impersonal "Power not ourselves, which makes for righteousness." Religion he defined as "morality tinged with emotion."
Arnoldson, Klas Pontus (1844-1916) Swedish reformer, Nobel Prize Winner.
The prize was awarded for his heroic work in the cause of peace, to which he devoted the money, though he was a poor man, but he worked just as energetically for freethought in Sweden.
Arrhenius, Professor Svante August (1859-1927), famous Swedish chemist and Nobel Prize Winner.
He was Director of the Nobel Physioco-Chemical Institute. He was openly associated with Haeckel in his Monistic (atheist) Association and a man of high ideals. Several of his works are available in English.
Arriaga Manoel Jose D' (1839-1917), President of the Portuguese Republic. Disinherited by his father, who claimed to be of royal blood, for becoming a freethinker and republican at the university, he turned to law and politics and had so brilliant a success that after the Revolution of 1911 he was appointed President. He was an atheist and both humanitarian and anti-clerical in the legislation he passed.
Asoka (B.C. 200-232), most famous of Hindu monarchs.
H.G. Wells says that in the world-list of Kings "the name of Osaka shines, and shines almost alone, a star". He became a zealous Buddhist in mid life and did wonders for the vast empire he had inherited. His moral code was severe and dogmatic but did not interfere with the ingenuous sexual freedom that then ruled in India. Vincent Smith, the leading authority on Hindu history, says that "he ignored, without denying, the existence of a Supreme Deity." (Akosa, p 31). In other words he embraced Buddhism in its pure atheistic form (see Buddha) and gave the world a wonderful example of "the fruits of atheism."
Aspasia (5th century B.C.), the most famous woman of the ancient world.
She lived as wife with Pericles (See) but he could not marry her under Athenian law as she was a foreigner, or a Greek from Asia Minor (Ionia). She was one of the most beautiful and the most accomplished of the women who came to Athens and were known as Hetairai (which meand "pals" or companions, not courtesand as is often said. Aspasia was one of the most respected figures in the brilliant circle round Pericles in the Golden Age. She was put on trial for irreligion and, through Pericles defended her and got her acquitted, she shared the skepticism of the group.
Ataturk, President Mustafa Kamal (1881-1938), President of the Republic of Turkey.
He was in early years one of the young Turks of the Committee of Union and Progress, fought with great distinction in the European War, and led the revolution at the close. They made him first President of the Republic with dictatorial powers, and he humanized and modernized Turkey with great vigor. In his biography (Grau Wolf) Armstrong shows that he had a profound contempt for all religion and tried to extinguish it but was forced to compromise. They gave him the name Ataturk (the Great Turk) for his wonderful work. Like so many atheistic rulers he showed that personal asceticism is no more required of a state than belief in the spiritual.
Avebury, Baron The Right Hon. John Lubbock, P.C., P.C.L., L.L.D., F.B.S., (1834-1913).
A British banker who studied and wrote with authority on so many branches of science (particularly anthropology) that in its obituary (Nature) called him "President General of his Age". One of his works, The Pleasures of Life sold half a million copies, and was translated into 40 languages, and he was loaded with civic and academic honors. He was a vague Deist, admitting a "Divine Power" but impatient of "contradictory assertions under the name of mystery."
Averroes (1126-1198) or (properly) Ibn Roshd.
One of the two greatest Arab Scholars of the Middle Ages. The Arand had the quaint custom of choosing the most learned men for high political positions and he was Governor of Seville for 20 years, when the Moorish fanatics got him imprisoned. The pious Spaniards later burned all his works but Michael Scotus had translated some of them into Latin for Frederic 11, and they had a good deal of influence in Italy. Practically they taught Thomas Aquinas his philosophy, and Dante (Canto iv) speaks of his "great commentary" on Aristotle. But he preferred to believe in a vague Pantheistic "World Soul" instead of Aristotle's (impersonal) God, and even that may have been a cover for atheism, which in his day, the decline of the Arab civilization, it would be dangerous to admit.
Avicenna (960-1017) or (properly) Ibn Sind.
The second of the two greatest scholars of the Arab-Persian civilization. He belonged to the Persian half and was the son of a peasant, yet he became, apparently, more learned than Averroes or any other medieval scholar; and it is piquant that, while Averroes is said to have studied far into every night except his wedding night, Avicenna was boisterously sensual and a frequenter of taverns. Yet his work on medicines were the standard works for ages, and he wrote also on theology, philosophy, philology, mathematics, astronomy, geology, physics, and music. Few have any idea of the cultural brilliance at that time of the Arab-Persian civilization. To baffle the fanatics Averroes professed a sort of Pantheism, but tradition ascribed to him the saying that "the world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit."
Azana, Manoel (1800-1940).
President of the Spanish Republic. Son of a Catholic mayor he discarded the faith in his university years and graduated in law. He took a prominent part in politics as a strongly anti-clerical republican, and after the Revolution of 1931, became Premier and later President. To him chiefly were due the anti-Church laws which the Cortes passes and the nation approved.
Bacon,Francis, Lord Verulam & Viscount St. Alband (1581-1626), the famous writer on science.
A note on Bacon's opinions may be useful, as his essay Of Atheism is quoted by all religious writers as if he were most zealously orthodox. They never mention that the next essay in the classical collection of "Bacon's Essays" has the title Of Superstition, and if it were not for the preceding essay you might be tempted to think that Bacon was an Atheist. "It were better" he says, "to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of him. ...And, as the contumely is greater towards God, so the danger (of superstition) is greater towards man ____. Atheism did never perturb s---es, and we see that the times inclined to Atheism (as the time of Augustus Caesar) were civil times." Doubtless Bacon was a Theist, though probably not more, but it is useful to remember that in Elizabethan England in spite of the skepticism of the Queen herself (See), atheism was a dangerous creed to admit.
Bakunin, Mikhail (1814-1876), political reformer.
The famous Anarchist was a Russian of nobel family, considerable accomplishments-he was educated in philosophy-and very extensive travel. In his chief work God and the State he gives full expression to his atheism and materialism.
Baldwin, Professor Mark, M.A., Ph. D. Sc. D., L.l.d. (1861-1934), psychologist.
Baldwin might almost be classed as an atheist. In his Fragment of Philosophy and Science (1903) he not only rejects all creeds but reduces God to the "ideal self" or "a construction of the imagination". He escapes atheism by claiming a vague objective basis for the idea.
Ballance, The Hon. John (1839-1893) Premier of New Zealand.
He was an Irish youth who emigrated to New Zealand and entered journalism and politics. He was Premier (1891-1893) at the time when its most progressive social legislation was passed, and a number of its leaders like Ballance and Stout (See) openly professed and worked for atheism or agnosticism.
Balmaceda, Jose Manoel (1838-1891), President of the Republic of Chili. He was educated in the Jesuit College at Santiago but became an atheist and joined the anti-clerical Liberals in the fight against the Church. He was President 1886 to 1890 but his policy was harsh and autocratic, and when he was driven out he ended his life.
Balzac, Honore De (1799-1859), French novelist.
"The Christ of Modern Art" according to some French critics. His skepticism pervades the whole 47 volumes of his famous Human Comedy and 24 other novels. He wrote also a caustic history of the Jesuits.
Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1832-1918), historian. The distinguished authority on Western America-he wrote 39 volumes on its history and had a library of 60,000 volumes-expresses an uncompromising Deism and scorn of the Churches in his last work Retrospect (1913), "There is but little religion in the Churches, and that little graft is strangling," he says (p.278).
Barlow, Joel (1754-1812), poet.
He was a Congregationalist minister and chaplain in the War of Independence and compiled a hymn-book for that body but shed his beliefs and took to law and letters. For years he was famous for his epic The Vision of Columbus and he was American-ambassador to France. His epic was vigorously denounced by the clergy as anti-Christian (Deistic) and he contributed to the spread of freethought in America by translating Volney's Ruins.
Barnard, Henry (1811-1900), the reformer who in conjunction with Horace Mann (See) created the American school-system.
As his wife was a strict Catholic he andtained from discussing religion but his views were well known. He was challenged to make a declaration of Christian faith and refused. (Dict. of Amer. Biog.)
Barre, Chevalier de La, (1747 - 1766) Freethinking martyr.
Chevalier was accused of not bowing to a religious procession, singing an "ungodly" song, and possessing book contrary to religion, including the Dictionary of Philosophy by Voltaire. He was tortured, then beheaded at age 19 by request of the Catholic Church. A monument to him was erected in Abbeville France on July 7, 1907 and is inscribed: "In commemoration of Martyr Chevalier de la Barre murdered in Abbyville the first of July, 1766 at the age of 19 years, for failure to salute a (religious) procession." Fifteen thousand supporters of church/state separation gathered for the unveiling. Every year since 1907, the annual La Barre Demnonstration brings together freethinkers and friends of public schools, and all who oppose church/state entanglement.
Barton, Clara (1822-1912), the American Florence Nightingale.
She was a farmer's daughter, a shy sensitive, slight little woman (5 feet in height) who worked so heroically amongst the wounded in the Civil War that she was called "the Angel of the Battlefield." General Miles said that she was "the greatest humanitarian the world had ever known." The rest of her life was devoted to work for the Red Cross, which she introduced into America, and other reforms. The Dictionary of American Biography admits that "she was brought in the Universalist Church but was never a Church member."
Baudelaire, Charles Pierre (1821-1867), leading French poet.
He came of a Catholic aristocratic family but became an atheist and revolutionary and fought at the barricades in 1848. He is best known for his Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil), a collection of 151 poems of great beauty and such freedom that he was prosecuted.
Bayle, Pierre (1647-1706), a French writer whose famous Dictionaire Historique et Critique spread over Europe-there is an English translation and contributed powerfully to the progress of freethought. There are no articles on God and immortality but he seems to have been an atheist. Writing in an age of despotic bigotry he conveys his immense anti-Christian erudition with a delightful irony and diplomacy.
Bebel, Ferdinand August (1840-1913), German Socialist leader and one of the founders of the Social Democratic Party.
He was, like all the Socialist leaders of the time, an atheist and freely expressed it in his work on Woman and Christianity .
Becearia-Bonesana, Marquis Cesare (1735-1794) the great Italian law reformer.
He adopted the views of the French Encyclopaedists and specialized on the reform of the treatment of crime. His Treatise on Crime and Punishment was a classic all over Europe for half a century. Whether he was an atheist or Theist is not clear. Italy was not a safe place for heretics-he had to publish his famous Treatise abroad and anonymously-and he, as he said, "heard the noise of the chains rattled by superstition and fanaticism."
Beethoven, Ludwig Von (1770-1827).
The great musician was reared a Catholic but quit the Church and adopted Goethe's Pantheism. Although he composed a Catholic mass (Missa solemnis) which an authority described as "perhaps the grandest piece of musical expression which art possesses" he remained a Pantheist to the end. It is piquant that the musical expert who thus appreciates his mass, Sir G. Macfarren, describes him as a 'freethinker' (in the Imper. Dict. of Univ. Biog.) Beethoven's most authoritative biographers are clear about his views on religion. When he was dying he yielded to the pressure of Catholic friends and let a priest administer his sacraments, but it is admitted that when the priest left the room he said, in the Latin words of the ancient Roman theater "Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over." One biographer very implausibly argues that he meant the comedy of his life. During the years of his full inspiration he had little religious feeling. When Felix Moscheles once scribbled on a manuscript "With God's help," Beethoven wrote "Man help thyself."
Benavente Y Martinez, Jacinto (1888-_____) Nobel Prize Winner and "creator of the modern Spanish theater."
One of the first poets and dramatists of Spain in his time. In 1932, after the anti-clerical revolution, which he applauded, he produced a play with the title Santa Russia (Holy Russia) and in the preface to the published work praised the materialism and atheism of the Russians.
Bennet, Enoch Arnold (1867-1931), leading British novelist.
In the first two decades of the century Bennet was counted the first English novelist. He expresses his Agnosticism in his volume of reflections, The Human Machine, and was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association.
Bentham, Jeremy (1748-1832), famous British jurist and social reformer.
A wealthy father (who began to teach him Latin at the age of four) having left him a large fortune he devoted his life to prison and legal reform, education, and other social ideas and was known throughout Europe. He was a declared atheist and in unpublished manuscripts he contemptuously called Christianity "Juggernaut". In collaboration with the historian Grote (See) he, under the pseudonym Phillip Beauchamp, wrote an Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind (1822) in which all religion, natural or supernatural, is attacked.
Bergson, Professor Henri Louis (1859-1933), French philosopher.
The way in which Bergonson's unfortunate book Creative Evolution has been used by obscurantists has given many a false impression. He rejected Christianity and admitted belief in God only as the vital force-not eternal and not personal in the theological sense-that energizes the universe.
Berlioz, Hector (1803-1869) French Composer.
Although he composed Catholic Church-music (TeDeum, Mass of the Dead, etc.) and is claimed in the Catholic Encyclopaedia , Berlioz often admits in his letters that he was an atheist. In G.K. Boult's Life of Berloiz (1903 p. 298) there is a letter written shortly before he died, in which he says: "I believe nothing."
Bernard Claude M.S., D.Sc., (1813-1878) famous French physiologist.
As he was educated by the Jesuits and the Church was allowed some share in his funeral ceremonies Catholics always claim the great scientist as "one of us." It is ridiculous because in his published works he makes no secret of his agnosticism. He does this repeatedly in his chief work Introduction a `L etude de la medicine experimentale (1865). He says that "the best philosophical system is to have none at all" (51), that philosophy represents "the eternal aspiration of human reason toward knowledge of the unknown" (351), and that it deals with "questions that torment humanity and have never yet been solved." In private his language was less stately. Sir Michael Foster quotes him as saying that the Vespers (or the Sunday evening service in Catholic Churches) is "the servant girls' opera".
Bernhardt, Sarah (1845-1923), the greatest French actress of recent times.
A. Carel says in his Histoire anecdotique des contemporains (1885), p. 46) that Gounod once asked her in her studio if she ever prayed. "I," she said, "Never. I am an atheist." To her disgust Gounod went down on his knees and then prayed for her. Gounod, the favorite composers of modern Catholics, was neurotic and inconsistent. He "vacillated between mysticism and voluptuousness," says one of his biographers.
Barthelot, Professor Pierre Eugene Marcellim (1827-1907) the founder of Organic Chemistry.
In spite of his international distinction in science and the very many honors he bore Berthelot almost made a parade of his scorn of creeds and his atheism. He wrote several books on his views, and he sent for public reading at the International Congress of Freethinkers at Rome in 1904, which I attended, a letter in which he denounced the "poisonous vapors of superstition" and hailed the coming of a "reign of reason." The message is published in Dr. L.B. Wilson's Trip to Rome (1904).
Bethell, Richard, Baron Westbury (1800-1873), Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.
After a brilliant career at the bar he became Attorney General and in 1861 Lord Chancellor (and Head of the House of Lords). He presided at one of the heresy trials got up by the authorities and, in the words of a legal humorist, "took away from orthodox members of the Church of England their last hope of eternal damnation." His verdict relieved clergymen of the need to believe in hell. We are told by Jowett that he once said about the Reformation: "You cut off the head of one beast, the Church of Rome, and immediately the head of another beast, the Church of England makes its appearance." All admit that he was a freethinker, but no public declaration was possible to a man in his position, and it is not clear whether Lord Bethell was a non-Christian theist or an atheist.
Beyle, Marie Henri (1783-1842) better known by his pseudonym, M. de Stendhal.
His works are greatly appreciated by the finest writers in France (Flaubert, etc.), and Prosper Merimee wrote a memoir of him (H.B.), after his death in which he quotes Beyle saying: "The only excuse for God is that there is no such person."
Bickersteth Henry, Baron Langdale (1783-1851) , one of the many freethinking distinguished British jurists of the first half of the nineteenth century.
He refused the position both of Attorney General and Lord Chancellor but was Master of the Rolls. Lord Langdale agreed with his friend Bentham (See) except that he was not so definitely atheistic. His biographer Hardy admits that his friends regarded him as "destitute of religious feeling," but he seems to have held some shade of intellectual theism.
Bierce, Ambrose (1842-1914), the humorist "Dod Grile."
His works were at one time very popular in America and many of the definitions in his Cynic's Word Book (1906) expressed a very advanced freethought. He defines faith as "belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel." A clergyman is "a man who undertakes the management of your spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones." A Christian is "one who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin."
Bizet, Alexandre Cesar Leopold (though generally known as Georges Bizet, 1838-1875), composer of Carmen etc.
His early death cur short a career of great promise. His letters, which were published after his death by L. Ganderax (1908) are full of skepticism. In one (p. 238) he says, "I have always read the ancient pagand with infinite pleasure while in Christian writers I find only system, egoism, intolerance, and a complete lack of artistic taste."
Bjornson, Bjornstjerne (1832-1910), Norway's greatest writer and most active freethinker.
Son of a pastor, he remained a Christian until 1875 when he became an agnostic and a republican. In spite of his commanding position as poet, novelist, and dramatist he did all he could to promote freethought in Norway for the rest of his life. In 1903 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Georg Brandes says that "to mention his name in Norway was like running up the national flag," and at his death the leading British literary weekly, the Athenaeum, said that "European literature had sustained no such loss since Victor Hugo."
Blanc Jean Joseph Charles Louis (1811-1882), famous French labor leader.
He took part in the Revolution of 1848 and was in the Provisional Government, though he was not the creator of the National Workshops, as critics say, In 1870 he took part in the fight for the Commune. His atheism is repeatedly expressed in his historical works.
Blind, Mathilde (1841-1896), poet step-daughter of the French rebel and atheist Karl Blind, whose name she took and whose exile she shared.
She explains in her autobiography that she shared also his atheism. Her "character," says Dr. R. Garnett, "was even more noble than her poetry." She was one of the founders of Newnham College for women and gave a large sum of money to it.
Bloch, Ivan (1872-1912), German sexologist and social reformer.
In a symposium in honor of Haeckel's 80th birthday he describes Haeckel as "the St. George who has slain the dragon of the ills of modern man and has ruthlessly branded all the dualistic survivals of prescientific culture as obstacles to the mental and moral progress of humanity." He was a Monist (atheist).
Boileau-Despreaux, Nicolas (1636-1711) famous French writer.
Of the four great writers of the golden age of French letters two-Boileau and Moliere (See) ,- were freethinkers in spite of the religious oppression. The King, against the fierce opposition of the clergy, made Boileau Royal Historiographer and compelled the Academy to admit him. He wrote a treatise to disarm the priests, On the Love of God-presumably he was a Deist-but he was persecuted all his life and the chief historian of French Literature, Lanson, shows by many quotations from his work that he was a freethinker.
Bonheur, Rosa (painter)
Bossier, Marie Louis Gaston (1823-1908), one of the finest French Historiand of modern times. He wrote chiefly on ancient Rome and, although he rarely reveals his own sentiments, was rightly denounced by the clergy as much more in sympathy with paganism than Christianity.
Boito, Arrigo (1842-1918), Italian poet and composer. Fought with Garibaldi against the Papal troops and later infuriated the Italian clergy by the frivolity with which he treated religion in his opera Mefistofele. In later years he was considered one of Italy's leading composers and rose to high honors.
Bolingbrokem Viscount, See St. John, Henry.
Bolivar, Simon (1783-1830), President of Bolivia. In youth Bolivar traveled in the United States and Britain and became an atheist. He was the chief leader in the rebellion against the Spanish throne and church and he was the first President of Bolivia. The clericals intrigued with his personal critics and he was driven abroad and took his own life.
Bonaparte, Prince Jerome (1784-1860), younger brother of Napoleon.
Few of the Bonaparte family were orthodox, but Jerome "cherished a systematic hostility to every religious creed in general and the and the Catholic religion in particular" (P. de la Garce, Histoire du Second Empire, I. 119). He was in America in 1803 and married an American lady but Napoleon declared the marriage invalid. He was made King of Westphalia and was a sound and enlightened ruler. In later years he was the mentor of his uncle, Napoleon III, though he failed to break his political alliance with the Church, and President of the Senate.
Bonaparte, Prince Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul (1822-1891), son of Jerome.
He took to politics and fought with the anti-clericals after 1848 and under the Second Empire received the title of prince. At its fall he lived for sometime in England where he was very friendly with Charles Bradlaugh, whose atheism he shared. The clergy smeared him with their holy oils when he was dying but he was unconscious and had never changed his views. French historiand think him the cleverest of the family after Napoleon. For the emperors see Napoleon. Bonheur,
Marie Rosalie (1822-1899), internationally distinguished French painter (especially of animals) in the last century and honored with ,any gold medals, etc.
Her views on religion are discussed at length in T Stanton's Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur (78-82). Her friends said that she was an Agnostic, though she seems at times to have used Pantheistic language. In order to be buried near a friend she agreed to have a religious funeral but she said: "Though I make this concession as regards my body there is no change in my philosophical creed."
Borrow, George (1803-1881), British writer.
It is piquant to learn that the famous peddler of the bible in Spain, whose book The Bible in Spain, almost became a missionary classic, was, broadly an atheist, though he may have had a religious mood at one time. He became a serious Pantheist from a study of philosophy in his youth, and in later years when Lavengro and Romany Rye had given him a high position as a writer he completely rejected Christianity and, while admitting a "great spirit," refused to call it God. See Knapp's Life, writings, and Correspondence of Borrow (1899).
Bougainville, Count Louis Antoine De (1729-1811) one of the most famous of French travelers.
He fought with distinction in the French-British war in Canada and later spent two and a half years in a voyage round the world that greatly enriched geography. He was an admiral for the Republic, and Napoleon made him a Count and Senator. He was a Deist.
Bowen, Baron Charles Synge Christopher, M.A. D.C.L. (1835-1894) eminent British judge.
After a brilliant career at Oxford and at the bar he became a Lord of Appeal. He rarely spoke about religion but the poems and letters published by his biographer Sir H.G. Cunningham (Lord Bowen, 1897) show that he was a complete Agnostic and urged his friends to keep away from "all moods and phases of theological discussion." In a poem he speaks of ..."the illimitable sigh, breathed upward to the throne of the dead skies."
Bradlaugh, Charles (1833-1891) reformer.
For many years one of the most powerful speakers (though a very poor writer) in England, especially on the subject of atheism. His lectures had nothing like the charm and sentiment of Ingersoll's lectures, but were a triumph of platform personality. He gave his followers the name of secularists (which he borrowed from Holyoake) but called himself an Atheist. He was also well known as a Radical Member of Parliament and advocate of Birth Control and Reform in India.
Bradley, Francis Herbert (1846-1924), British philosopher
whose chief work Appearance and Reality is still well known and esteemed in the world of philosophy. In virtue of his own principles he was an Agnostic. "There is but one reality," he says, and it is "not the God of the Churches." It is "inscrutable." In Essays on Truth and Reality he defines God as "the Supreme Will for good which is experienced within finite minds" and rejects the belief in immorality (459).
Braga, Theophilo (1843-1924), second President of the Republic of Portugal.
A lawyer and very prolific and important writer-he published more than 100 works on literature, science and philosophy-who joined the Positivists but, as an atheist, took an active part in the International Freethought movement. He took an active share also in the Revolution of 19190 and was for a time President of the Republic. Braga was a man of immense erudition and very high humanitarian ideals.
Brahms, Johannes, (1833-1897), the famous German composer.
As he composed a superb German Requiem for Protestant churches most folks imagine that he was a Christian but he was even less religious than Beethoven (See). He reveals in letters to Herzogenberg (Letters of J. Brahms: the Herzogenberg Correspondence, English translation 10\909) that he was a complete Agnostic. The Four Serious Songs which he published before he died are described by one critic as his "supreme achievement in dignified utterance of noble thoughts." The words to the first, as a matter of fact, reject and almost ridicule the idea of personal immortality.
Bramwell, Baron George William Wilshire (1808-1892), another eminent British judge and Lord Justice of Appeal.
[After his death, he] ... was found to have been an Agnostic all along. The notice of him in the British Dictionary of National Biography describes him as "one of the strongest judges that ever sat on the bench". Speaking of his views on religion his biographer C. Fairfield (Some Account of G.W. Wilshire , 1895) says that he belonged to "that band of enlightened and advanced Liberals who used to make joyous demonstrations of kid-gloved agnosticism at the annual British Association Meetings." The letters included in the volume confirm this.
Brandes, Georg, LL.D. (1842-1927), Danish critic.
Although born and educated in Denmark he lived in so many countries and had so remarkable a knowledge of the literature of each that he was the nearest approach to a "good European". He was a member also of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the British Royal Society of Literature. His position did not deter him in the least from professing freethought and helping the cause. Both he and his brother Carl were outspoken Agnostics.
Braun, Lily (1865-1916), German writer and reformer.
She was a member of a German aristocratic family who defied her relatives and became an active freethinker, feminist, and Socialist. Her aunt, Countess Clotilde von Hermann disinherited her for her advanced ideas. Her contemptuous rejection of Christianity is often shown in her Memoiren einer Sozialisten (2 vols., 1900).
Brieux, Eugene (1858-1938), French dramatist.
Often called "the French Bernard Shaw," though he was a member of the French Academy and an officer of the Legion of Honor. His play La foi (literally the Faith), though the English translator calls it False Gods, expresses his disdain of religion in the form of a study of priestcraft in ancient Egypt.
Brinton, Daniel Garrison (1837-1899), ethnologist.
An army surgeon who became professor of ethnology, of which he was one of the chief pioneers in America, and President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In his book The Religious Sentiment (1875) he rejects the belief in immortality and "crumbling theologies" but remains a theist.
Brooke, Rupert (1887-1915), British poet of great promise who was a victim of the First European War.
Many of his poems in 1914 and Other Poems shows his freethinking. In "Heaven" he satirizes the Christian myth and in others is very doubtful about a future life. "The laugh dies with the lips," he says. Occasionally he refers to God but was clearly moving toward Agnosticism.
Brosses, President Charles de (1709-1777), French historian and statesman, president of the Dijon Parliament.
His published letters (Lettres familieres) curiously illustrate the superficial religion and barely concealed irreligion of the eighteenth century. He was a Deist and a contributor to the famous Encyclopaedia of Diderot and D'Alembert but he was also friendly with Pope Benedict XIV and gives us a remarkable picture of that liberal Pope, who always begged him for the latest saucy stories about the dissolute French court and Cardinal and the Rome of that time.
Brown, Bishop William Montgomery (1855-1937), Ex-bishop of Arkansas, Communist, and in his last years bishop in the Old Catholic Church.
Brown Called for my help when his brother-bishops of the Episcopal church threatened to disrobe him in 1924 as, he explained, it was chiefly reading my works in his retirement that made him a skeptic. From that date I wrote all the learned works which he put out to the great embarrassment of the bishops. He was a man of mediocre intelligence and very high but simple character, and his wealth (inherited) attracted cranks who, he later admitted, fatally complicated my defence of him. He was deposed but a few years later was ordained-he did not tell me what it cost-bishop of the Old Catholic Church. He explained that he thought the Church could be made a great social power if its formulae were taken symbolically but I suspect it was rather from a sort of loyalty to the memory of the pious rich lady who had him educated for the Church and left him her fortune. He was, in fact, a dogmatic materialist, did not believe in the historicity of Christ, and admitted God only as a label for whatever goodness there is in the universe.
Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682), author of the Religio Medici , a classic of English literature.
"The Religion of a Physician " to translate the Latin title, through the work itself is in English, was translated into most European languages and has run through innumerable editions. It purports to be Christian but in other works (Urn Burial and Pseudodoxia epidemica) Browne clearly shows that he was a Deist and very skeptical about a future life. In Urn Burial (p. 158) he says that "a dialogue between two infants in the womb concerning the state of this world might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the next" and "I perceive the wisest heads prove, at last, almost all skeptics."
Browning, Robert (1812-1889), the famous poet.
He began to have doubts about his creed in mid-career, as we discern in his Christmas Eve and Easter Day, and he gradually shed all beliefs except God and immorality, as we see plainly in La Saisiaz (1875). "Soul and God stand sure," he says, with the customary dogmatism of the incomplete skeptic.
Bruno, Giordano (1547-1600), Italian philosopher and martyr.
A Dominican Friar whose eyes were opened by a study of the Arab philosophy which still lingered in southern Italy and went on to a study of the Epicurean philosophy. He had to fly for his life and wandered over Europe, but in 1592, when he returned to Italy, the Venetiand as part of a political deal handed him over to the Pope. He was seven years in the dungeons of the Inquisition, refusing to recant, and then burned alive. Bruno was a thinker of very superior intellect, a Pantheist, dazed by a world in which he found Protestants as intolerant as Catholics and hampered in his speculations by the poverty of science in his day.
Buchner, Professor Friedrich Karl Christian Ludwig (1824-1899), author of Force and Matter.
Although he did not call himself a materialist but Monist (meaning, like Haeckel, that matter and energy are two different aspects of one reality) his book was called "the Bible of Materialism" and had an enormous circulation in Europe. He was deprived of his chair (of medicine) for writing it. Like Haeckel he was a man of fine emotions and very high ideals. It is amusing to reflect that their theory that matter and energy are two aspects of the same thing, at which the philosophers scoffed everywhere, is the modern scientific doctrine. They were wrong in saying that this is not materialism since both are essentially measurable, and therefore material (as opposed to spiritual).
Buckle, Thomas (1821-1862, distinguished British historian.
He read 19 languages and, although he was not a professor but a man of wealth and leisure, his History of Civilization (2 vols., 1856 and 1861) gradually won a high place in historical literature and greatly helped the progress of freethought. He remained a theist yet one great service of his work was that it proceeded in what we now call the materialistic conception of history.
Buddha (about B.C. 560-480) The Hindu Moralist Gautama, who came to be known as Buddha (the enlightened one).
[He] is chiefly interesting to us from the fact that, though the religion which now goes by the name Buddhism is a crass and to a great extent corrupt mass of superstitions, he was an atheist. It is admitted that he was educated in the Sankhya philosophy, which was atheistic. Brahmanism had become so andtract a religion while the mass of the people clung to the grossest myths, that there was a wide spread of atheism at that time. Gautama decided to devote his life to a purely humanist and very simple preaching of ideals of conduct among the people. The few writers of any weight who doubt his position are content to argue, very feebly, that he may have believed in God but never mentioned him. That is not the way of moralists. But the chief authorities are positive. The highest is Professor T. Rhys Davids who both in his lectures at Cornell (published as Buddhism) and his Life of Buddha says that Buddha "denied the existence of any soul" (cosmic or human). Professor N.W. Hopkins (Religions of India, 1895) says that he cast off not only gods but soul (p. 298), and the same in his Ethics of India. Professor Vincent Smith says that "without denying the existence of a Supreme Being he ignored it." In the Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics Professor Macdonell (professor of Sanskrit at Oxford University) says in his article "Indian Buddhism" that he denied the existence of a world soul and individual soul"; yet the same encyclopaedia, which always keeps an eye on the churches (as all encyclopedias do), entrusts its article on Buddhism to one of the clerical writers who hold that Buddha must have believed in God. These sophists first argue that atheism is inconsistent with high ideals and then that any man whose ideals they cannot deny must have been a theist. The real authorities agree that Buddha was an atheist.
Buffon, Count-Georges Louis Leclerc De (1707-1788), one of the greatest French scientists of the eighteenth century.
He wrote a Natural History in 24 volumes which was an encyclopaedia of the science of his time, including a "theory of the earth" which inspired Laplace's theory of evolution. The Catholic authorities compelled him to alter certain passages which they declared anti-scriptural. Herault de Seychelles tells us (Voyage a Montgar) that Buffron said to him: "I have everywhere mentioned the Creator but you have only to omit the word and put naturally in its place the power of nature" (p. 36). He adds that Buffron equally rejects the belief in immortality.
Burbank, Luther (1849-1926) horticulturist.
His magnificent work, which added an incalculable sum to the wealth of America and left him a comparatively poor man, is well known. His own simple account of his discoveries runs to 12 volumes and is incomplete. I was one of the few men whom he admitted to his house in Santa Rosa in the few months before he died and I found him advanced even beyond the vague Emersonian theism of his earlier years. He agreed top see me, he said, though he was tired and ill, because of his admiration of my work as a rationalist. He had just raised a storm by a public declaration that he did not believe in a future life, and his biographer Wilbur Hall repeats this.
Burckhardt, Professor Jacob (1818-1897) Swiss historian.
His works on the Italian Renaissance are standard authorities in many languages. In his posthumously published Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen (1905) he tells that he rejected all creeds and churches.
Burdett, Sir Francis (1770-1844), British banker and reformer.
[A] wealthy man who worked so devotedly for social and radical reforms that he was imprisoned in the Tower of London and the workers threatened to attack it and deliver him. It is now the fashion to praise narrow-minded bigots like Shaftesbury, who had to barricade his windows against the workers, and ignore such an unselfish and effective worker as Burdett. He worked with Bentham and Place and was like them an atheist. Mrs. de Morgan says in her Reminiscences that he was "what in those days would be called an Agnostic." (p. 12).
Burgers, Thomas Francis (1834-1881) President of the Transvaal (South Africa) Republic.
He was educated for the Church at Ultrecht University but he was suspended for heresy when he began to practice in the Transvaal. He entered politics and won such high regard for his ability and integrity that, as the historian of South Africa, Theal, says, the Boers, who are as a body, bigoted, decided to overlook his heresies and made him their president. They were uncomfortable when it appeared from a volume of stories he had written which was published after his death (Toneelen uit ons Dorp)- "Tales from our Village" that he was an Agnostic.
Burns, Robert (1759-1796) Scottish poet.
In many of his poems the "national poet of Scotland" shows his contempt of the narrow religious views held by most of his compatriots ("Holy Willie's Prayer", "Holy Fair," etc.), It is claimed that he became more reverent and read the bible much in his sober later years but such lines as O Thou Great Being! what thou art Surpasses me to know how he advanced (or retreated) little beyond Agnosticism.
Burroughs, John, Litt. D. (1851-1921), naturalist, member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
His works on natural history gave him a high reputation, and in later works, especially The Light of Day (1900) and Time and Change he gives his mature views on religion. He was an atheist. He expressly rejects the belief in God and in the latter refers to "the God we have made for ourselves out of our dreams and fears and aspirations." (p. 179).
Burton, Sir Richard Francis (1821-1890) translator of The Thousand and One Nights.
Military service in India and then long journeys in Newarer Asia and Africa gave Burton an exceptional familiarity with Arabia and the Arand. His famous translation of the Arabian Nights appeared in 10 volumes in 1885-1886). He left behind him the translation of other Arab works which would have been greatly esteemed but Lady Burton, a bigoted Catholic-I met her in my clerical days-burned them. Burton's views on religion and his scorn of his wife's Church are explained by his niece Georgiana Stisted, (True Life of Sir R.F. Burton, 1896). She calls him a "Sturdy Deist" but says that he believed only in "an unknowable and Impersonal God," so that he was a Spencerian Agnostic.
Bury, Professor John Bagnall M. A., L. I. D., Litt. D. (1861-1927), one of the leading British historiand of the last generation.
He was Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge but his writings were mainly on the Byzantine Empire, on which he was the highest authority. His edition of Gibbon has superseded all others and he was honored by most of the learned academics of Europe and America. Yet Bury never concealed his Agnostic opinions, was openly associated with the Rationalist Press Association, and did much service to freethinkers by his History of Freedom of Thought (1913). When I published my large Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists he was generous enough to write to me that I was the only man who could have done it.
Butler, Samuel (1835-1902) British philosopher writer.
His chief works when he returned to settle in England after making a fortune raising sheep in New Zealand were so attractive in style and genially ironic in temper (The Fair Haven, Life and Habit, The Way of All Flesh, etc.) that he had a very wide popularity. His philosophy, however, pleased neither side as he was anti-Christian and bitterly anti-Darwinian, and G.B. Shaw is one disciple. He did not believe in a personal God yet maintained that there was mind and purpose in the universe.
Byron, Lord George Gordon (1788-1824) the famous poet.
He became a skeptic and a radical in his student -years, and although he changed politically- though he mortally hated tyranny all his life and died in an attempt to help the Greek rebels-he remained a Deist all his life. his poetry sufficiently suggests this, and his chief biographer Moore affirms it. He had not a firm belief in immorality and he scorned the Churches. When he arrived once at a Portuguese port and a large statue of the Virgin met his eye he wrote: "Well I wot the only Virgin there." He certainly did not respect the Christian code of morals but some of the stories told about him are malicious libels from the tongue of a pious wife from whom he separated. His age was, in any case, one of great sexual liberty.
Cabanis, Pierre Jean Georges (1757-1808), French physician.
He is commonly quoted in religious works as a superficial dabbler in science who said that a brain secretes thought just as the liver secretes bile. He was, on the contrary, a high authority on medical matters, and what he said (in his Rapport du physique et du moral de l'homme) was that "the brain is a special organ, specially designed to produce thought, just as the stomach and intestines are destined to effect digestion." When he later says that "the Brain digests impressions and organically secretes thought" it is clearly a figurative way of stating the same scientific fact. In any case he was not an atheist but a Deist.
Cambaceres, Prince Jean Jacques Regis De (1753-1824) French statesman.
A distinguished lawyer who during the Revolution was President of the Convention and one of the Council of Five Hundreds. Under Napoleon he was one of the chief authors of the famous Code Civil, then the finest Code of laws in the world and was made prince, Duke of Parma, and Arch-Chancellor of the Empire. He was a Deist and was banished when royalty and church were restored.
Campbell Thomas (1777-1844), Scottish poet and reformer.
He was educated for the ministry but became a skeptic and turned to poetry. He had an important part in the project to break the religious tyranny of Oxford and Cambridge Universities by founding the University of London as a purely secular institution (which, of course, now includes a theological college). Campbell resented "superstitions rod" (as he calls it in Hallowed Ground), rejected the idea of immortality (Mrs. de Morgan testifies in her Reminiscences), and wavered between a pale theism and agnosticism.
Carducci, Professor Giosue (1836-1907) Famous Italian poet, Nobel Prize Winner.
In 1865 he wrote a fiery "Hymn to Satan" and never abandoned his atheism in the days of his fame. Professor Carelle (in Naturalismo Italiano) quotes him as saying in his mature years, "I know neither truth of God nor peace with the Vatican or any priests. They are the real and unaltering enemies of Italy."
Carlile, Richard (1790-1843) grand fighter for freethought.
A British working man who took up printing and publishing skeptical books in defiance of the law. Altogether he spent nine years and four months or nearly a third of his life in jail. His wife, though she was not a freethinker, and his employees carried on the work while he was in jail. Once when his house was seized because he would not pay church rates he put life-size figures of a devil and a bishop arm in arm in his shop window in the center of London. He is commonly described as a Deist but, though it was the first works of Paine that first made him a heretic, he was an aggressive atheist from 1821 onward. He literally wore out his persecutors, who had to quit troubling him, and even in the respectable British Dictionary of National Biography it is said he "did more than any other man for freedom of the press."
Carlyle, Thomas (1797-1881) British historian.
Although he was anti-democratic and in several ways reactionary in his later years, Carlyle did splendid work, especially by his French Revolution and Sartor Resartus, which have had a colossal circulation, for freethought and the general progress of England. In the latter work he seems to follow the lines of Goethe's Pantheism, but he said to the poet Allingham (who tells us in his diary): "I have for many years strictly avoided going to church or having anything to do with Mumbo Jumbo." He meant the Christian God. He added: "We know nothing. All is, and must be, utterly incomprehensible."
Carnegie, Andrew (1837-1919) philanthropist.
In the course of his life he have away $350,000,000 generally for sound social objects such as public free libraries. Dr. Moncure Conway, who knew him says that he was an Agnostic, and a few references to his religion in his Life of James Watt confirm this. He refers to "the mysterious realm which envelopes man" and says in regard to discussion of religion that "we are but young in all this mystery business." The Truthseeker of August 23, 1919, quoted a confession of faith of his in which, a few years before his death, he rejects "all creeds" and says that he is "a disciple of Confucius and Franklin." His confusion as an atheist and a deist is due to the fact that he shed religion without any serious interest in it and avoided the subject as far as possible.
Carnot, Count Lazare Nicolus Marguerite (1753-1823) French military engineer and statesman.
He served the republic and then Napoleon, who raised him to the highest honors. Arago (see), who wrote a biography of him, says that he abandoned Catholicism and became an atheist. Of his grandsons Lazare Hippolyte (1801-1888) was a distinguished and very anti-clerical statesman, and Marie Francois Sadi, who was equally anti-clerical in politics, became President of the Republic. Laxare's son, Sadi Nicholas Leonard Carnot (1796-1832) turned to science and was one of the greatest figures in the history of physics in France. It was a brilliant family and all of atheists.
Caroline. Queen of England (1683-1737) A German noble married to the Prince of Hanover who became King George II of England.
She had studied philosophy and discarded Christianity under Leibnitz, and her house near London was frequented by the many brilliant English Deists of the time. She refused to take oath when she had to administer the Kingdom in her husband's andence, and she refused the ministrations of the Church of England though pressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury on her deathbed. The latter fact is attested by her close friend Lord Hervey in his Memoirs (II, p. 528). Lord Chesterfield describes her as "a Deist believing in a future life," and the Earl of Bristol and Horace Walpole confirm. It is ludicrous of British writers to pretend that she was not a freethinker.
Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia (1729-1796)
A German princess married out of policy to a boorish and drunken Russian prince and finding herself in a world in which the Church was supreme and life very coarse and unrestricted, she had little regard for the sex part of the Christian code. But from the French philosophers, with whom she was very friendly, she learned a humanitarianism which the Church ignored, and she began a great program of social reform in Russia (in education, sanitation, administration of justice, etc.) The French Revolution and execution of the King caused a reaction in her mind and character and all reform was suspended, but she remained a Deist.
Cavandish, The Honorable Henry (1731-1810) one of the great British pioneers of the science of chemistry.
He made important discoveries and was so high a position that his name is still perpetuated in the Cavandish Society and the great Cavandish Physical Laboratory at Cambridge. His biographer Dr. G. Wilson quotes his attitude pm religion from a contemporary scientist: "As to Cavendish's religion he was nothing at all"" (p. 180). He never went to church.
Ceddo D' Ascoli (1257-1327) martyr of freethought.
Francesco (shortened to Cecco) of Ascoli was for years a professor at Bologna University and was one of the ablest scientific men of his age. In the last but one edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica the notice of him said that he was "a man of immense erudition and great and varied abilities...but his freethinking and plain speaking got him many enemies." As the enemies were priests, who burned him at the stake, the Catholic revisers of the last edition of the Encyclopaedia have cut down the eulogy. As late as the second half of the fifteenth century his influence was so great that 20 editions of a long scientific poem of his were printed.
Celsus, Aurelius (2nd Century).
Only remembered now from a work written against him by the most learned of the Fathers, Origen, who evidently found him the most formidable opponent of the Church. The pious faithful burned all of Celsus's works. He appears to have been an Epicurean and to have made hilarious attacks on the gospel story of Jesus. Froude has a chapter on him in his Short Studies (1907, Vol. IV).
Chamberlain, Daniel Henry 1835-1907) Governor of South Carolina.
After taking part in the Civil War he settled in legal practice and became the leading attorney of the state. He was Attorney General (1865-1872) and Governor (1874-1877). He was assumed throughout to be orthodox but left it for publication after his death-it was published in the North American Review-a document stating that he was a "freethinker," that he rejected "the idea of a presiding or controlling Deity," and that he was skeptical about a future life.
Champollion Jean Francios (1790-1832), French Egyptologist.
He read Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit as well as ancient Egyptian and it was he who learned the secret of the hieroglyphic inscriptions (1822). His biographer Harteben reproduces a very skeptical discussion of religion which he had written and mildly concludes that he had quit the Church (which still claims him).
Chantrey Sir Francis Leggat M. A., D.C.L., F.R.S., (1781-1841), eminent British sculptor.
He was a Royal Academician and had many honors. His biographer Holland says that he abandoned "all Christian and religious feelings." His large fortune was left to the Royal Academy to found the trust that is still known as the Chantrey Bequest.
Chaptal, Jean Antoine Claude, Count De Chanteloup (1756-1832) eminent French chemist and statesman.
Trained in medicine and rendered great service to the Revolution and to Napoleon, who made him a Count. He retired at the royalist-clerical reaction but was, in spite of his freethinking, recalled and sent to the home of Peers by the King. His great-grandson, the Viscount Chaptol, says in his Souvenirs sur Napoleon (p. 124) that he "had no religion" but believed in "a sort of providence."
Chatelet, The Marchioness Gabrielle Emilie De (1706-1749), French writer.
Of high noble family she learned Latin, Italian, English and Spanish before she was 16 years old, and later nearly won the Academy Prize for a dissertation on the nature of heat. She was beautiful and one of the most accomplished women of her time. She wrote a Deistic work and lived with Voltaire for 13 years, so that in this case the godly do not claim the brilliant lady.
Chaucer, Geoffrey (1328-1400) the greatest English poet.
The tone of the comments on priests, monks and nuns in his Canterbury Tales was not uncommon in his time but professor Lownsbury (Studies in Chaucer, 3 Vols. 1892) has made a severe analysis and shown that the poet was an advanced freethinker. Commenting on lines 2809-15 of "the Knight's Tale" he asks: "Can modern agnosticism point to a denial more emphatic than that made in the fourteenth century of the belief that there exists for us any assurance of the life beyond the grave?" (11:314). He says that Chaucer grew more opposed to the Church as time went on and was "hostile to it in such a way that implies an utter disbelief in certain of its tenets" (11:520). A Retractation is appended to some editions of the Tales but it is generally rejected as spurious.
Cherubini, Mario Luigi Carlo Zenobio-Salvadore (1760-1842) Italian composer.
He began to compose music at the age of 10 and wrote a mass at 13, and an opera at 19. Five years later he was King's composer in London, then in France. He hailed the Revolution and composed hymns and anthems for its feasts and the opera "Epicures". But he became Kings musician again after the Restoration and wrote the immense amount of religious music which has made him a favorite of the Catholic Church. Yet Cherubini was a freethinker all the time. His Catholic biographer Bellasis quotes the evidence of his daughters that he was "not mystical but broad-minded in religion" and admits that there is no evidence that he received the sacraments of the Church before death, which he did not.
Child, Lydia Francis (1802-1880) an important figure in both the abolitionist and the feminist movements in America.
She was a successful novelist when she fell under the influence of Garrison and began to work against slavery. She published the first anti-slavery book in America and edited The National Anti-Slavery Standard: and she was later just as active in the feminist movement. Mrs. Child wrote several works on religion. She was a non-Christian theist.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius (B.C. 106-43) Roman orator and philosopher.
He took up with enthusiasm the Greek philosophy that had been introduced into Italy and professed to follow the skeptical Neo-Academic school. In a treatise On the Nature of Gods he just states the arguments on both sides and endorses neither. In other works he sometimes seems to accept the idea of immortality but the chief authority on him, Professor G. Boissier, concludes that "the nobel hope of immortality with which he fills his works never comes to his mind in his misfortunes and perils; he seems to have expressed them only for the public." (Ciceron et ses amis, 1875, p. 59) Cicero works out a very high social code of ethics in other treatises.
Claretie, Jules Arsene Arnaud (1840-1910) French Writer.
One of the most brilliant of the great company of French Writers in the second half of the last century and member of the Academy. On one occasion the Minister of Public Instruction refused him permission to lecture and he issued a vigorous defense of freethought and speech (La libre parole).
Clemenceau, George Eugene Benjamin (1841-1929), famous French statesman.
His atheism and hostility to the Church were as well known as his political radicalism. He freely expresses his sentiments La melee sociale and Le Grand Pan, and he was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association until he died.
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne (1835-1910) "Mark Twain"
His Atheism is freely expressed in a number of works (Eve's diary. 1906, What is Man?, 1909, The Mysterious Stranger, 1918, etc.) but is seen in its most virulent form in his letters. In a letter of August 28, 1908 he replies to a young man who has asked if he would include Jesus among the 100 greatest men of history. Yes, he says, if you mean men with influence in history, but Satan also. "These two gentlemen," he says, "have had more influence than all others put together, and 99 percent of it was Satan's." The Devil was "worth very nearly a hundred times as much to the business as was the influence of the rest of the Holy Family put together."
Clough, Arthur Hugh (1819-1861) British poet.
Though now little read Clough's verse was very highly esteemed in his day. Carlyle, who knew him, says that he was "the most high-principled man I have ever known." Dr. Jowett, the liberal churchman, who also knew him says that he had "a kind of faith in knowing nothing" (Letters, p. 177). He wavered a little, as poets do, but in his final declaration on religion he is practically agnostic with a thin lingering shade of theism or pantheism.
Coleridge, Sir John Duke Baron Coleridge, F.R.S., D.C.L., M.A. (1820-1894), Lord Chief Justice of England.
Lord Coleridge showed his liberality in mid-career by working for the suppression of religious tests at universities but, as is usual in cases of men of his position, the full extent of his heresy was unknown until he died. In a letter to a brother-judge and fellow heretic, Lord Bramwell (see) he says: "Of ecclesiastical Christianity I believe probably as little as you do," but he thinks that the religion will last "longer than is good for the world." (Fairfield's Some Account of G. W. Wilshire, p. 105).
Collier The Honorable John (1850-1934) British painter.
A son of Lord Monkswell who married a daughter of Professor Huxley and when she died, defiantly married her sister and did much to get the law, which forbade marrying a deceased wife's sister, reformed. He was an Agnostic (as he states in an article in the Rationalist Annual, 1934) and contemptuous of all theology. A friend of Alma-Tedema and other leading Artists, he assures me, when I often discussed the question of art and religion with him, that few artists have any religious feeling at all.
Collins, Anthony (1676-1729) British Deist.
Collins, who figures prominently in the history of Deism, was a rich country gentleman of high character, a friend of John Locke, the philosopher, who published a number of anti-christian books (Discourse of Freethinking, etc.)
Collins, Professor John Churton (1848-1908) British writer.
He won a very high position as literary critic and published admirable studies of Voltaire and Bolingbroke. He had refused to take up a clerical career and had become a skeptic in early years and for this he had been disinherited, In a Memoir by his son prefixed to The Life and Memoiurs of J.C. Collins (1912) it is explained that he believed in God but not immortality or Christianity.
Comte, Isadore Marie Auguste Francois Xavier (1798-1857), Founder of Positivism.
He was an able sociologist and widely read in science but he retained a mystic vein from early years, when he has been a Saint-Simonian, and he tried to establish the Religion of Humanity which had a number of distinguished followers in the last century. It was a blend of religious forms and what are usually called irreligious ideas. He insisted on "positive" thought-hence the common name-Positivism- and refused to be called an atheist (which he was) or to attack the Churches. The natural result was that he and the British writers who followed him were far too lenient to the Churches and suppressed historical truth about Christian history. Huxley described his Church of Humanity as "Catholicism minus Christianity". To Huxley the only good Church was a dead Church.
Condillac, Etienne Bonnet De Mably De (1715-1780), French philosopher.
He became a priest but was too virtuous for the French clergy and was too able and honest to keep his faith. He joined the philosophers and, though he remained a Deist, he rendered great service by working out a theory that sensations (or, we now say, sense-presentations), are the basis of all knowledge.
Condorcet, The Marquis Marie Jean Antoine Nicholas De Caritat De (1743-1794) French mathematician.
As the length of his name suggests he belonged to a high noble family, rich in prelates of the Church. He was a brilliant mathematician in his teens and was admitted to the Academy and appointed its Perpetual Secretary. But he also joined the Encyclopedists and wrote so caustic and brilliant a criticism of religion that it was attributed to Voltaire. He accepted the Revolution and was President of the Legislative Assembly. But he was a man of nobel character, and his protests at the butcheries of the pious Robespierre led to his arrest and suicide. His wife, the Marchioness Sophie de Condorcet shared his sentiments and his fine character and was a very beautiful and accomplished woman.
Confucius (a Latinized form of Kung-fu-tse, B.C. 551-479), Chinese sage.
He had not the least idea of founding a religion, as is usually said, and the system called Confucianism is a unique case in history of the survival of an ethic without religion. He found China in great confusion and spent his life trying to persuade local princes to turn people away from religion and back to the older forms of Chinese life. There was not the least mysticism in his teaching. "Respect spiritual beings if there are any, but keep away from them" was his advice in regard to religions. There is here no dispute amongst the authorities. A few centuries later a dynasty of emperors adopted his system and it has been the general creed of educated Chinese for more than 2,000 years, though it is too conservative and out-dated for the Chinese students of today.
Conrad, Joseph (1857-1924), novelist.
A Polish seaman, his real name Theodore Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski, who so mastered English they he rose to the front rank of British novelists in the last century. In Some Reminiscences (1912) he practically avows himself an agnostic. "I have," he says, "come to suspect that the aim of creation cannot be ethical at all." (p. 163).
Conway, Moncure Daniel, D.D. (1832-1907), author.
Originally an American Methodist Minister, then Unitarian, he got into trouble for his abolitionist zeal and settled in London, where he shed all; beliefs and presided over an Ethical Society. He had considerable influence in public life and his scholarly works won for him a high position in cultured society.
Conway, Professor Sir William Martin M.A., F.S.A., F.R.G.S. (1856-1937) art expert and traveller of international fame as a climber.
In The Crowd in Peace and War (1915) he disdainfully defines religion as "man's description of his ideas about the great unknown, his projection upon the darkness of what he conceives that darkness to contain." (p 214).
Cooper, Anthony Ashley First Earl of Shaftesbury (1621-1683), English statesman and Lord Chancellor.
A fine reformer for his age and, although his character has been disputed, the British Dictionary of National Biography vindicates it. His biographer (Life 11. 95) says that he "was indifferent in matters of religion" and makes it clear that he was the first to use the phrase with which Disraeli is generally credited later, "Wise men are of but one religion" he said, and when he was pressed to say what that religion is he replied, "Madam, wise men never tell." It is his grandson, the third Earl, who was author of the Characteristics and a famous Deist. But he was more mystic than his grandfather.
Cooper, Peter (1771-1883) Founder of a Cooper's Institute (New York).
A poor boy who attended school for 6 months yet made a large fortune, and by strictly honest methods, in business. He gave $660,000 for the building of Cooper's Union and spent a further $1,550,000 on it in the course of his life to provide other poor boys with an education. The first Curator, his intimate friend Professor Jaches, says (Political and Financial Opinions of Peter Cooper, 1877) he "was so broad, sincere, and catholic in his religious principles that I believe he would be recognized by any minister of the Christian religion as a truly religious man." It is the usual religious way of saying that a freethinker is a "true Christian" if he is a fine man. Cooper left nothing for any religious purpose.
Conybeare, Frederick, Cornwallis, M.A., D.D., L.L. D. (1856-1924).
Orientalist, a tutor of great erudition at Oxford University, Fellow of the British and French Academies, and a member of the Rationalist Press Association. In several learned works, he criticizes Christianity and even more severely the myth theory of Jesus.
Cope, Professor Edward Drinker, M.A., Ph.D. (1840-1897), paleontologist.
One of the most eminent paleontologists of the early Champions of Darwinism in America. He was a theist (Theology of Evolution , 1887), but did not believe in immortality.
Courtney, Baron Leonard Henry (1832-1918), British statesman.
A lawyer, then professor of political economy, who entered politics and rose to front rank positions. He published a Diary of a Church Goer in which he confesses that he was no religious beliefs beyond a liberal theism and that a large number of distinguished churchgoers like himself do not believe in Christianity.
Cousin, Victor (1792-1867), French philosopher.
One if the leading French thinkers of the early 19th century, member of the Academy and Minister of Public Instruction, and translator and editor of the works of Plato, Proclus, Descartes, and Abelard (27 vols.). In his own 18 works he is eclectic and a Pantheist as regards religion.
Cremer, Sir William Randal (1838-1908) reformer, Nobel Prize Winner.
A British working man who entered politics and worked so zealously for peace and other humanitarian ideals that he won an international reputation and many high honors. His biographer Howard Evand says that he rejected Christianity but remained "religious."
Croce, Professor Benedetto (1866- )
The most eminent philosopher of Italy in the present century with a considerable international reputation. He is almost equally distinguished in history and has a very sound influence on public affairs. His philosophy is Neo-Hegelian, but, as his chief English follower, Professor Wilson Carr says, "the religious activity has no place in it. To him religion is mythology."
Cross, Mary Ann. See George Eliot.
Curie, Manya or Marie (1867-1934) codiscoverer of radium.
Daughter of a Polish freethinker but reared by a Catholic mother. She abandoned the Church before she was 20 and her marriage with Pierre Curie was a purely civil ceremony because she says in her memoir of him, "Pierre belonged to no religion and I did not practice any" (p. 52). They isolated radium-after Becquerel had pointed out the radiant properties of uranium-in equal cooperation and received the Nobel Prize jointly. After his death she sustained their work with great ability and received 15 gold medals, 19 degrees, and other honors. Her funeral was purely secular. Her brilliant daughters Irene (Mme Joliet) and Eve assisted. The elder received the Nobel Prize jointly with her husband. The younger, Eve, wrote a biography of her mother in which she tells us that all members of the gifted family were freethinkers.
Curie, Professor Pierre (1859-1906) co discoverer of radium.
The feminist agitation that occurred after his death led to such glorification of his wife that the fact that he had an equal share in the research was generally pushed out of sight. He was professor at Paris University and, as explained above, an atheist.
Danton, Georges Jacques (1759-1794) French revolutionary leader.
He was a lawyer of middle-class family before he devoted himself to revolutionary politics. The excesses of the Terror disgusted him and Robespierre had him arrested and executed. Even the Catholic Belloc has to acknowledge the greatness of his character (Danton 1899) but with amazing audacity denies that he was an atheist. It was one of Robespiere's charges against him.
Darrow, Clarence (1857-1938) attorney.
A son of the people-which he never forgot-he became the greatest criminal lawyer in America, and he often defended labor organizations or individuals with little or no money. In explanation of his taking such a case as the Loeb-Leopold he explained to me that he never sought to enable such criminals to escape punishment but only the death sentence, to which he morally objected. He was an outspoken agnostic and fine humanitarian.
Darusmont, Francis (1795-1852) feminist.
Daughter of a Scottish freethinker, she adopted his views and wrote a defense of the Epicurean philosophy in her teens. She emigrated to America, married Darusmont, and won a high reputation as a lecturer on freethought, feminism, and other reforms. "Few have made greater sacrifices for conviction's sake or exhibited a more courageous independence" (Dict. of Nat. Biog. )
Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882), discoverer of Natural Selection.
After 14 years spent in collecting material he published the famous Origin of Species in 1858 and the Descent of Man in 1871. He was still a theist when he wrote the Origin , and clerical writers sometimes dishonestly quote his references to the creator to prove his views. His son, Sir. F. Darwin, who wrote the Life and Letters (3 Vol., 1887) very carefully traces his development (1, ch V) and shows that he thought little about religion before 1870 and then became and remained to the end an Agnostic. Of his sons, Sir Francis became a leading botanist Sir George Howard a distinguished astronomer (Plumerian Professor of that science in Cambridge) and two other successful engineers. All were agnostics.
Darwin, Erasmus, M.A., M.B. (1731-1802)
Grandfather of Charles, a physician, and one of the pioneers of evolution. He wrote in verse, though his theory was naturally crude in view of the poverty of science at the time. He was a Deist.
Daudet, Alphonso (1840-1897) French novelist.
For many years his name was coupled with that of Zola as the leading novelists of the last century.. He was less outspoken about religion, but hardly less hated by the clergy. He was an atheist.
David, Jacques Louis (1748-1825) the leading French painter of his time.
He ardently joined in the Revolution and organized the great national festivals when religion was practically abolished. He was later Napoleon's chief artist but the clerical-royalists banished him and would not even allow his family to bring his body back to France for burial.
Davids, Professor Thomas William Rhys, LL.D., Sc.D., Ph. D., (1843-1922) orientalist.
A professor of Pali and Buddhist literature at London University and President of various learned bodies, he was respected as one of the highest authorities on ancient Hindu religion and he rendered great service by insisting in his works that Buddha was an atheist. In a public lecture (Is Life Worth Living?) 1879 he rejects Christianity and the idea of immortality and was probably himself an atheist.
Debussy, Claude Achille (1862-1918), French composer.
He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11 and by 1902 his L'apres-midid'un faune and other compositions were known throughout the world and he was acclaimed as "one of the greatest musiciand of his generation." |He was one of the "Neo-Pagans" of that brilliant period and his funeral was purely spectacular.
Deffand, the Marchioness Marie Anne De Vichy-Chamrond Du (1697-1780), one of the mosr famous Frenchwomen ofd the 18th century.
She became skeptical at her convent school and it was a tradition that she routed the celebrated court preacher who was brought to reason with her. Her salon was the favorite meeting place of all the great freethinkers of France and England. Later he had for some years an apartment in a Paris convent, and she continued to receive them there. She was a materialist. It was the witty and beautiful machioness who, when a cardinal told her that it was disputed whether St. Denis carried off his head, after it had been cut off, 20 or 30 yards replied "Ah, my Lord, it is only the first yard that really matters." Some considered her the purest writer of French after her friend Voltaire.
De Gubernatis, Count Angelo (1840-1913), Italian orientalist.
He was professor of Sanscrit, a voluminous writer, and a member of more learned societies (including the American Philosophical Society)and recipient of more honors than any other Italian scholar. In the preface of his Dictionnaire Internatianal (2 vols. 1891) he says: "Our ideal temple is fdar vaster than enclosed by any church...and it does more for the luminous peace and happiness of the world."
Delacroix, Ferdinand Victor Eugene (1798-1863), French painter.
He threw himself into the Revolution of 1830, as his great predecessor David had taken up the First Revolution, and painted a famous picture of "Liberty leading the people to the Barricades." Many considered him the greatest painter of the first half of the century. Delacroix was an enthusiastic admirer of Diderot and shared his atheism. His funeral was purely secular.
Delambre, Jean Baptiste Joseph (1749-1822), famous French astronomer.
He made many important advances in his science and received the highest honors. He was a friend and pupil of Lelande (See) as is included in the Dictionary of Atheists which Lelande helped to compile.
DesMoulins, Benoit Camille (1760-1794), French revolutionary.
A young Partisan lawyer of good family who played an important part in the early stage of the Revolution. Arrested for his moderation during the Terror, when the court asked his age he said: "Thirty-three-same as the sans-culotte Jesus." Atheist.
Destutt De Tracy, Count Antoine Louis Claude (1754- 1836), French philosopher.
Described by Jefferson (to Adams) as "the greatest intellectual writer of the age." A moderate revolutionary, raised to the nobility by Napoleon and greatly respected even under the restored royalty. He was a friend of Condillac and like him a materialist in psychology. An enthusiastic reader of Voltaire until he died.
Dewey, Professor John, Ph. D., L.L.D., (1859-1952), the leading American thinker, educationist, and social idealist.
In The Influence of Darwinism in Philosophy (1910) he says that he is not interested ion "an intelligence that shaped things once and for all but the intelligence which things are even now shaping." (p. 15) In recent years he has advised a new sort of theistic formula: not that God is an objective reality but the relation of man to the ideal. He seems to have fallen into the common fallacy of most philosophic moralists that most men need a God, but most men will not even understand what he meand by God. He is the leader of the Humanist school, which denies the supremacy of reason, but an Honorary Associate of the British Rationalist Press Association which affirms that supremacy as its first principle.
Diaz, Porfirio (1830-1915), President of the Republic of Mexico.
Educated for the priesthood he quit the Church, took to law and politics, and became the most famous leader of the anti-clericals. "Don Porfirio" had his faults but he made Mexico safe for freethinkers and did a good deal for the Country.
Diderot, Dennis (1713-1784) French philosopher of the 18th century.
Son of a working man, he made his way in poverty and great sobriety of life to the front rank of French scholarship. His early books were burned for impiety and he was put in jail but a group of brilliant writers, the so-called "philosophers," rallied to him and during 30 years he brought out the famous Encyclopedia (28 volumes) which, in spite of bitter clerical opposition, rendered magnificent service in France. No one has ever questioned the high character and disinterestedness of this great atheist.
Dio Chrysostom (50-117), famous Roman orator.
"Dio of the Golden Mouth," as the name given to him means, had such fame as an orator that the Emperor Trajan made a close friend of him. We still have a large number of his orations and there is a translation (1932), and we find that he roundly denounced slavery to his rich and middle-class audiences in Rome more than 1,000 years before any Christian leader did. He was not a Stoic as is often said, but an atheist, of the Epicurean-Stoic school which most Roman moralists followed.
Dolet, Etienne (1509-1546), French martyr.
A printer of critical books of religion who, after repeated imprisonments, was burned alive for his heresies. He was more Protestant than atheist (as he is sometimes called), but in the true sense a martyr for free thought and free speech.
Douglas, Stephen Arnold (1813-1861), statesman.
A lawyer, Secretary of State for Illinois and Judge of the Supreme Court, and an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency. His eloquence was renowned throughout America and more than once he used it in the Cause of religious freedom. Douglas "never identified himself with any Church," the Philadelphia Press said in its obituary notice; and see A. Johnson's S.A. Douglass (1908). He was a theist.
Dowden, Professor Edward, L.L.D., D.C.L., (1843-1913), writer.
An Irishman who rose to the first rank in the academic literary world in England. His Life of Shelly (2 vols. 1886) is the best and contains candid appreciations of great skeptics. He was an agnostic. In his Studies in Literature (1878, pp. 116-121), he rejects Christian doctrines, is skeptical about a future life and recognizes a God only as "an inscrutable Power."
Draper, Professor John William, M.A., L.L. D., (1811-1882) chemist and physicist.
He was the first to apply the camera to the microscope and made important discoveries in spectroscopy. Draper was a theist but anti-christian. His History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (1862) and History of the Conflict between Science and Religion are classics of freethought.
Dreiser, Theodore (1871- ), novelist.
His hostility to religion runs through all the grim, realistic novels that have made him famous. In one of them he says: "Assure a man that he has a soul and then frighten him with old wives tales as to what is to become of him afterwards, and you have hooked a fish, a mental slave."
Dresden, Edmond (died 1903), atheist.
British philanthropist. No details are available about him, but at his death he left his entire fortune, apart from bequests to servants, of about $1,700,000 to hospitals and the National Lifeboat Institution. And he directed that this inscription should be cut on his tombstone: "Here lie the remains of Edmond Dresdon, who believed in no religion but that of being charitable to his fellow man and woman, both in word and deed."
Dumas, Alexandre, the Younger (1824-1895) French Novelist and dramatist.
The elder and more famous Dumas died a Catholic. The younger, his bastard, became a Deist with severe ideals, as P. Bourget describes in his Nouveaux Essais (pp. 64-78). He earned a reputation by his novels and dramas which only suffers a little by the inevitable comparison with those of his father.
Dupont De Nemours, Pierre Samuel (1739-1817), one of the most eminent French economists of the 18th century.
He founded the Physiocratic School of economics and held high offices of state. He accepted the Revolution but was shocked by the Terror, as he was a man of high humanitarian ideals. In his Philosophie de l' univers (1796) he avows himself a Deist.
Dupuis, Professor Charles Francois (1742-1809), originator of the solar myth theory of religion.
He was for some time a priest but abandoned the church and took up astronomy, of which he made a thorough study under Lalande. In 1781 he began to trace all religious myths to astronomical truths, and in 1794 he published the large work Origines de tous le cultes (3 vols.) which attracted the myth-theorists of the last century.
Edison, Thomas Alva, D. Sc., L.L. D., P.H. D. (1847-1931).
The famous inventor was a thorough Agnostic, though partially duped by spiritualist mediums in his declining years. He read Gibbon's Decline and Fall and Hume's History of England before he was ten years old and had such a passion for reading that he "ate his way" steadily through 15 feet of books on the shelves of the Detroit Public Library in his early teens. "Religion is all bunk," he was an atheist.
Edwards, John Passmore (1823-1911), British philanthropist.
A poor boy who educated himself and made a large fortune by journalism. His papers set a standard of truth and idealism that is hardly known any longer, and his money was lavishly distributed amongst educational and philanthropic institutions (70 of which bear his name). He was much influenced by Emerson and was a Spencerian Agnostic, as he says in A Few Footprints (1906).
Einstein, Professor Albert (1879- )
The celebrated mathematician, a German Jew by origin, had discarded sectarian beliefs before he was driven from Germany. In a radio from Berlin on his beliefs he spoke only of some "sense of the mysterious" which is at the root of religion and beauty. The American Catholic hierarchy denounced him as an atheist when he was invited to America, but his anxious friends could get him to profess only a belief in "a Great Power." He classes as an Agnostic but like many great scientists he has made no special study of religious questions and is really very poetical.
Eliot, Professor Charles William A.M., M.D., L.L.D., Ph.D. (1834-1926), educationist, President of Harvard (1869-1909), and the most decorated of American scholars. Yet he made no profession of orthodoxy. At an early date he turned from the Unitarian Church to the vague Pantheism of Emerson. In The Happy Life (1896) he thinks some religion necessary but orthodox religion impossible.
Eliot, George (Mary Ann Cross, (1819-1880), most famous woman writer of the last century.
She was brilliant from girlhood and mastered Greek, Latin, Italian, and German. She translated Strauss's very Rationalistic Life of Jesus in 1844, and it was not until 10 years later when she went to live with Lewes, that she began to write novels. When Lewes died (1878) she married the banker Cross. She was an Agnostic and, on the word of a distinguished liberal divine Jowett, who knew her well, "the gentlest, kindest, and best of women." (in Life and Letters of Jowett, 11, 144).
Elizabeth, Queen of England (1533-1603).
Many think it a paradox or a strain of evidence to claim monarchs of Christian lands as freethinkers but the evidence is quite adequate as regards Elizabeth and Caroline of England and a number of others. She studied seriously in youth but she had to make her way cautiously in "an age that was so brave and beautiful and black-guardly" (as Lynd calls it) because the rival Christiand were religious cut-throats. She was, moreover, vigorous and masculine to a degree of coarseness. I am convinced that she belonged to what is now called "the third sex." Green in his standard Short History of the English People (ch. viii, 83), says that "no (other) woman who ever lived was so totally destitute of the sentiment of religion," and Professor Pollard says in his authoritative Political History of England (V1, p. 180) that "it can hardly be doubted that she was skeptical or indifferent." She was a humane ruler until Catholic plots forced her to change her policy.
Ellis, Henry Havelock (1859-1939), sexologist.
It is hardly necessary to show that the famous psychologist of sex was a freethinker. The clergy loathed him and I had private knowledge of attempts to trap and prosecute him. His agnostic views are explained in Affirmations (1897), and My Life (1940).
Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882), moralist.
The fact that Emerson, who was at first a Unitarian minister, severed his connection with that Church definitely puts him in the class of freethinkers. He believes in an Over-Soul or World-Soul (as others put it) and might be described as Pantheist. He did not like the label Transcendentalist or any other label and did not care to pin himself to any definite religious formulae. Although his dogmatic institutionalist ethic is not suitable for our time and it lead to a good deal of ethical narrowness, he was a fine force in American life in the last century.
Emmet, Robert (1778-1803), Irish patriot.
There was much more freethinking in Ireland and much more freedom to think 150 years ago than there is today, and the priests carefully concealed the opinions of patriots like Emmet, O'Brien, O'Connor, etc., whom they hold up to youth today. Emmet went to France and there imbibed republicanism and deism, and on his return he organized a revolution. Maxwell records in his History of the Irish Rebellion that when he was about to be executed he refused to see a priest and said that he was "an infidel by conviction."
Engels, Fredrich (1820-1895), German Socialist leader. Experience in his father's business in the north of England, where the life of the worker was still squalid, prepared Engles for radical views and he joined Marx in founding Socialism in Europe. Like Marx he later found refuge from persecution in England. Belfort Bax, a British atheist socialist, who knew him, calls him a "devout atheist" (Reminiscences p. 51).
Ensor, George, B.A. (1769-1843), Irish Deist.
Another of the many cultivated Irish freethinkers of that time. Ensor took little part in politics but published, amongst other works, a drastic criticism of the bible.
Epictetus (about 50-100), famous Greek moralist.
A Phrygian slave who became one of the most notable of the many moralists of the Greek Roman world. The Encheiridion (Manual) and Discourses that we have were very probably taken down by a pupil, as shorthand was then well known. His teaching was ascetic and impracticable and in many respects very like the more ascetic counsels ascribed to Jesus (the golden rule, voluntary poverty, passive resistance, etc.) He belonged to the small religious wing of the Stoic movement and his extravagances of virtue illustrate again the danger of introducing any mysticism into ethics. The andurd suggestion that he borrowed from Christ is refuted by the dates. His chief interest is to remind us that all the moral sentiment attributed to Jesus in the gospels were familiar in the first century.
Epicurus (B.C. 341-270), the sanest thinker of the Greek world.
We have only fragments of the 300 works he wrote, which were burned by the Christians, but his sentiments are well known from other writers, especially Lucretius (See). The lead which Augustine gave the Christian world, that his was "a philosophy of swine," is a grotesque libel. He was a man of the most sober tastes, and the indulgence of sense was opposed to his ideal of life, which was tranquillity and friendship. He was a master of what science was known in his time and regarded it as the best antidote to superstition. Religious writers when they know the truth about his ideals, protest that he was no atheist. He was, like nearly all the Greek thinkers, a dogmatic materialist, but he said there might be gods, or a small colony of what we should call (material) supermen, in some remote part of the universe, not interested in the earth. Cicero quotes a contemporary saying that this was "by way of a joke." If he meand that it was just a way of evading the deadly charge of atheism it is probably true. See my sketch of Epicurus in the Hundred Men Who Moved the World . It was mainly the philosophy of Epicurus that ruled the lives of thoughtful Greeks and Romand from 200 B.C. onward, and it led to the greatest development of social idealism until modern times.
Erasmus, Desiderius (1466-1536), the leading scholar and greatest freethinker of his time.
Probably the bastard of a Dutch priest and his niece, he became a priest and monk and so richly developed his gift for satire . His wit and learning won him the highest recognition all over Europe, and for a time he taught Greek at Oxford University. Erasmus was "not the stuff that martyrs are made of" - he tells us frankly that he had "o inclination to die for the truth"- so we do not know the full extent of his skepticism, but he did use his very wide influence to scourge the Roman Church and at times the whole Christian world. See again my Hundred Men .
Ericsson, John (1803-1889) Inventor.
A Swede who invented the screw propeller and took his invention to America where he followed it up with many other valuable inventions. Ingersoll knew him well and calls him "one of the profoundest Agnostics I ever met" (Works, V. 11 p. 319). New York State raised a statue to him and the government sent his remains back to Sweden in a cruiser.
Erigena, John Scotus (615-677), Irish philosopher.
The Irish were then known as "Scots" in Europe and "Erigena" meand born in Erin. He was the most brilliant of the Irish scholars who, in the short period when some culture still survived in Ireland-the Anglo-Saxon invasions had ruined it in England-migrated to France. He was several times condemned by the Church, and the work of his that survives (De Divisione Naturae ) is vaguely Pantheistic. He at least held against the boorish bishops that "reason preceded faith."
Espronceda, Jose De (1810-1842), Spanish poet.
He was put in jail for writing rebellious poetry at the age of 14 and spent most of his life in exile. At Paris he fought in the 1830 rebellion and was back in Spain for the 1840 rebellion. He then became on of the most popular poets in Spain, freely expressing his deistic opinions in some of his poems. (Cancion de pirata , etc.)
Euripides (B.C. 480-406), the third of the immortal trio of Greek tragedians.
He appeared at the time when the ancient religious fervor, which is so prominent in Aeschylus and Sophocles, was relaxing and there was much skepticism in Athens. No one doubts that he shared this skepticism, and there is no evidence to put against the assurance of Plutarch that he was an atheist but dare not to openly challenge the prevailing beliefs (On the Opinions of the Philosophers , VII, p.1).
Fabre, Jean Henri (1823-1915), French entomologist.
Son of a priest, his books (I would say greatly influenced by his fathers occupation as a priest) on insect life, though in some respects corrected by later scientific work, had a high international reputation. Religious writers quote him as one of their "great Catholic scientists" but his biographer, D.G. Legros, expressly says that he was "free from all superstition and quite indifferent to dogmas and miracles" ..La vie de G. H. Fabre, p. 192. He was theistic, a vitalist, and opposed to evolution but no more a Christian than Voltaire.
Faure, Framcios Felix (1841-1899), sixth President of the French Republic.
Son of a worker who made a fortune in business and rose to high positions in politics as an anti-clerical Liberal. He was President 1895 to 1899 and responsible for the drastic laws against the Church that were passed in those years.
Fawcett, Edgar (1847-1904), poet. A warm admirer of Ingersoll he called himself an Agnostic Christian, mixing skepticism on fundamentals with an ill-formed moral admiration of Christianity in his Songs of Doubt and Dreams, Agnosticism and Other Essays, etc.
Fawcett, the Right Honorable Henry, F.R.S., L.L. D., D. C. L., (1833-1884), British economist and statesman.
Although he became blind at the age of 35 he was professor of economics at Cambridge and held high political offices. A monument to him was erected in Westminster Abbey by public subscription. Leslie Stephen shows in his biography that he regarded theological controversy as "miserable squabbles" and shared the Agnosticism of J. S. Mill.
Fels, Joseph (1854-1914), philanthropist.
Beginning life as a poor boy he made a fortune in the soap business and used his money and energy freely to promote reform and in philanthropy. He was a non-Christian theist (Joseph Fels , by Mary Fels, 1920, pp. 177-184).
Ferrer Y Guardia, Francisco (1859-1909), Spanish educationalist.
Self educated son of a poor man who devoted himself to the reform of education, chiefly by ridding it of superstition, founded 50 Modern Schools in Spain, and incurred the mortal hatred of the clergy. As he was also a philosophic Anarchist of the gentle Tolstoi school, the government willingly obliged the bishops and, after a gross travesty of a trial, had him shot. He was a man of high character and ideals (see my Martyrdom of Ferrer, 1909).
Ferrero, Gugielmo (1872- ), eminent Italian sociologist.
He is also a notable criminologist and one of the leading European writers on ancient Rome. In 1908 he was Lowell lecturer in America and several of his books were translated. Ferrero is a Positivist. Being invited in America to contribute to a symposium on the future life he wrote that he did not believe in it.
Fermi. Professor Enrico (1856-1929), Italian criminologist and Socialist leader.
He taught penal law at seven different universities from 1879 to 1896 and is classed with Lombrosco. He was leader of the Italian Socialists and editor of Avanti. During the latter term I once wrote to ask him if I should be right in saying that all Italian Socialists had given up the Catholic faith. "Yes," he replied, warmly "and they reject every religion under the sun."
Ferry, Jules Francios Camille (1832-1893) French statesman.
From law and journalism he passed on to politics and became one of the leaders of the anti-clericals. He was Minister of Public Instruction (and responsible for secularizing the schools), Premier and President of the Senate. Ferry was a thorough Agnostic (see his Discours et Opinions, 2 vols, 1903).
Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas (1804-1872), German philosopher.
Lost his chair of philosophy for publishing a book in which he denied a future life. A brilliant and caustic writer he had an immense influence in Germany about the middle of the century. It was his work that converted Karl Marx from Hegelianism to Atheism and materialism. His brother Friedrich, an orientalist, was just as thorough a freethinker.
Fichte, Professor Johan Gottlieb (1762-1814), German philosopher.
Known to a few today but as well known as Kant at the beginning of the last century. He was dismissed form his chair on the charge of atheism but his system was rather an idealist Pantheism. He was also the leader of the youth of Germany in the struggle against Napoleon.
Fiske, Professor John (1842-1901), philosopher.
Professor of philosophy at Harvard and later of American history at Washington. Religious writers quote him as an orthodox Christian. J.S. Clark shows in his Life and Letters of J. Fiske (2 vols, 1917) that he accepted only an "unknowable" god and immortality (as an act of faith) and rejected Christianity.
Fitzgerald, Edward (1809-1883), poet and translator of Omar Khayyam.
Few would know anything of Omar if it were not for the British poet or of Fitzgerald but for his translation of the Persian. It is so free a translation that wee may call it a fine poem of his own, but he never falsifies the sentiments though in places he expresses his agnosticism a little more boldly than a Persian poet would have dared. There are studies of him by T. Wright and F.G. Groome.
Flammarion, Nicholas Camile (1842-1925), French astronomer of distinction.
Spiritualists deceive the public by alleging that he adopted their creed. He never did. He thought that many of the phenomena were genuine while exposing a great deal of fraud, but that they were due to "unknown forces"-which is the title of his book on the subject-not to spirits. He was a theist but anti-Christian. "The supernatural does not exist," he says.
Flaubert. Gustave (1821-1880), famous French novelist.
Trained in medicine but turned to fiction and he worked with such artistic conscientiousness that he produced only five novels. One is The Temptation of St. Anthony, which sufficiently shows what he thought of the church.
Foote, George William (1850-1915) Bradlaugh's successor as head of the British Secularists (atheists).
He was a fine writer and speaker but little known outside his circle. At one time he was in prison for a year for blasphemy.
Fourier, Baron Jean Bapiste Joseph (1768-1830), eminent French mathematician and physicist.
He took an active part in the Revolution and rose to great importance under Napoleon. For discovering the nature of heat and for other scientific triumphs the clergy, who hated and persecuted him under the restored royalty, could not prevent his admission to the Academy, the British Royal Society, and other learned bodies.
Fox, The Right Honorable Charles James (1749-1806), one of the most eminent of British statesmen.
He rose to the position of Lord of the Treasury and Foreign Secretary but was chiefly remarkable for the consistent use of his brilliant oratory on the side of reform in an evil age. He defiantly wore the colors of the Americand in the House of Commons during the War of Independence, and opposed the fighting, greeted the fall of the Bastille as "one of the greatest and best events in history." and denounced slavery. He was no ascetic but a man of much culture and, Gibbon says, "perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempt from the taint of malevolence, vanity, or falsehood." Lord Holland, his nephew, says that he was "no believer in religion" and, although he allowed his wife to have prayers when he was dying, he took no notice and said that he "did not like to pretend any sentiments he did not entertain" (Greville's Memoirs IV, p. 159).
Fox, Elizabeth Vassale, Lady Holand (1770-1845), wife of the third baron Holland.
"a social light which illuminates and adorned England, and even Europe for half a century." (Greville in Memoirs , V, 313). He ads that she was an atheist like her famous uncle and was "known to be wholly destitute of religious opinions."
Fox,