A Biographical Dictionary of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Freethinkers.pdf

A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, AND MODERN FREETHINKERS

A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY

OF ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, AND

MODERN FREETHINKERS

By Joseph McCabe

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A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, AND MODERN FREETHINKERS

Abbe, Professor Ernst (1840-1905)

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,

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A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, AND MODERN FREETHINKERS

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.

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A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, AND MODERN FREETHINKERS

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).

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A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL, AND MODERN FREETHINKERS

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

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