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Infidels - Ditcionary of Freethinkers Category: People and society > Freethinkers Date & country: 13/09/2007, USA Words: 470

Moleschott, Professor Jakob, M.D.
(1822-1893), German physiologist, 'the Father of the Modern Materialistic Movement' (Lange). His best known work, Force and Matter

Moliere, Jean Baptiste Poquelin
(1622-1673), famous French dramatist. It surprises most folk to learn that the author of some of the greatest comedies that were ever written was a serious thinker and a freethinker. His father had been valet to the King and this and his skill in writing comedies got him royal protection. When he produced Don Juan a religious writer described it as a 'school of atheism in which, after making a clever atheist say the most horrible impieties he entrusts the cause of God to a valet who says ridicul…

Molteno, Sir John Charles K.C.M.G.
(1814-1886), Premier of Cape Colony. A poor boy of Italian extraction but born in England, who made a fortune in South Africa and rose in politics until he became Premier. His son and biographer says that he shed at an early age the Catholic belief in which he was reared, and that although his life was 'in the highest sense religious'-the usual orthodox description of a freethinker who was a good man-he was 'above the narrow formulates of any sect.'

Mommsen, Professor Theodor
(1817-1903), German historian, one of the most accomplished scholars in Europe. His chief biographer, L. M. Hartmann (Theodor Mommsen, 1908) says that he 'left Christianity for Deism and Deism for Atheism.' He hated Kaplanokratie (the rule of priests), and Hartmann says that one of the reasons why he left his History of Rome unfinished was because 'he found no pleasure in describing the substitution of the Nazarene for the ancient spirit' (p. 81). He was Perpetual Secretary of the Berlin Academy…

Monge, Gaspard, Count of Peluse
(1746-1818), French physicist. He was so precocious that the priests who educated him set him to teach physics and mathematics at the age of 16. Later he became so distinguished in both sciences that Napoleon made him a count. At the restoration of King and Church he was irreconcilable and stripped of his dignities. He is included in Marechal's Dictionary of Atheists, which was compiled in France in his time.

Monroe, J. R., M.D.
(1825-1891), physician. An Abolitionist and later a zealous fighter for freethought in America. He edited The Ironclad Age, a very outspoken paper, and wrote some caustic works.

Montagu, Edward Earl of Sandwich
(1625-1672), British admiral. A friend and supporter of Cromwell, he accepted the restoration of Charles II and became Admiral of the Fleet, Knight of the Garter and Master of the Trinity House. The famous diarist Pepys, who was himself orthodox, was his secretary and often mentions his master's heresies. 'I found him to be a perfect skeptic.' he says at the date October 7, 1660. On another page he describes the earl composing an anthem during service in the royal chapel and muttering heavy curs…

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortly
(1689-1762), one of the most brilliant ladies of English society in the 18th century. Her father, the Earl of Kingston, had her elected to the most exclusive club in London, the Kit-Kat, when she was 7 years old and she fully redeemed her early promise. She translated Epictetus when she was 19 and married the skeptical grandson of the skeptical Earl of Sandwich (above). Pope, Lord Hervey, and other famous Deists met in her brilliant salon. Her letters are very free about her opinions. 'Priests c…

Montaigne, Mitchel Eyquem De
(1533-1592), French moralist, pioneer of modern freethought. He spoke Latin fluently and had a fairly good knowledge of Greek at the age of six, and he had a distinguished career in law. It was after his retirement that he wrote the famous Essays , which opened the era of freethinking in France. He professed-they were dangerous days-to be a Catholic, but few Catholics are anxious to claim him; and his Essays were put on the Index in 1676. 'What do I know?' is a very common phrase in his work, bu…

Montgolfier, Joseph Michel
(1740-1810), inventor of the passenger carrying balloon. He was a French chemist and paper-manufacturer who in 1783 made the first ascent in a balloon (inflated with warm air). He served the Revolution with great zeal and was much honored. Lelande (see) who knew him well, says that he was an atheist.

Moore, George
(1853-1933), Irish novelist. He never wrote on religion except that in his literary play The Apostle and his chief novel The Brooke Kerith he clearly rejected the Christian view of Jesus. They are based on my theory, which I often discussed with him, that Jesus was probably an Essenian monk to about the age of 30. He was an agnostic but he told me that he preferred to be regarded as a Protestant-Protestants shuddered at his blasphemies about Jesus-for reasons of Irish politics and to express his…

Morris William
(1834-1896), leading British poet and artist. Deeply religious and mystic in his youth he lost all interest in it and devoted himself to raising the artistic taste of his generation. He had great skill as a painter and was one of the best poets of the time but he chiefly worked at the reform of house decoration and in his later years, when he joined the Socialists, for social reform. The poet Allingham says that he never cared to discuss religion because it was 'so unimportant,' but Belfort Bax,…

Moscheles, Felix
(1883-1917), British painter, son of the famous pianist. He was greatly esteemed as a portrait-painter and intimate with the great artists of his age. In his autobiography he speaks very disdainfully of 'the exponents of the Christian dogma.' I met him at the house of a well-known atheist, of whom he was a close friend, in his later years and found that he was an atheist (or would say, agnostic).

Motley, John Lothrop
(1814-1877), historian and diplomat. He was so precocious that he was admitted to Harvard at the age of 13. After post graduate studies at Gottingen and Berlin and a brief trial at law he devoted himself to history and wrote 7 standard volumes of the history of Holland. He was later American minister at Vienna and London. He is considered America's greatest historical writers. The Rev. L.P. Jacks says in his Life and Letters of Stopford Brooke, of whom Motley was a disciple, that he was a broad …

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
(1756-1791). He began to compose at the age of five and conducted a Mass of his own composition at the age of 12. In the following year the Pope made him a Knight of the Golden Spur and for 10 years he was concert master to the Archbishop of Salzbury. At this time he began to lose his Catholic faith and get into trouble with the authorities. He joined the Freemasons, who were under the sternest ban of the Church, and turned to opera. Although he wrote a good deal of church music and is claimed i…

Muavia
(510-585), first Syrian Caliph. His name will hardly be found in any encyclopedia of general history because religious influence has always restrained historiand from doing justice to the brilliance of the Arab civilization of the Middle Ages while Christiandom was semi-barbarous. Muavia, in particular, is ignored because, while theologiand plead that it necessarily took the church many centuries to raise the Teutonic barbariand to civilization Muavia thus raised the equally barbaric Arand in a …

Musset, Louis Charles Alfred De
(1810-1857), distinguished French poet, sometimes called 'the Byron of France.' His early poems are full of skepticism but after his rupture with George Sand, he fell into a morbid state and wrote a religious book. In his later work he returned to his first position-a non Christian theist with no belief in immortality. His art was exquisite but his character weak, and he vacillated as poets so often do.

Napoleon
(1769-1821). Owing to his set policy of making the Church a prop of his throne he behaved always as an orthodox Catholic-he was not the only Catholic monarch to treat the Pope with contempt-but, after his deposition he spoke plainly enough. Lord Rosebery has made an impartial study of his position as regards religion in The Last Phase, a study of him in exile (pp. 168-173). He shows that Napoleon, especially in his later years, did not believe in the divinity of Christ or a future life. Catholic…

Negri, Gaetano
(1838-1902), eminent Italian historian. As a youth he fought against the Papal troops but he then became leader of the Conservatives at Milan and in the Senate and was so lenient to the Church in his later works that he is claimed as orthodox. But his best known work, Julian the Apostate (English translation 1905), is clear enough. He speaks of Christianity as 'an irrational illusion,' and in the preface Villari describes him as 'a confirmed Rationalist.'

Newcomb, Professor Simon
(1835-1909), astronomer. A Canadian who became professor of mathematics at John Hopkins University, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and holder of many gold medals for his services in mathematics and astronomy. The British astronomer Proctor quotes him rejecting the idea of immortality (Knowledge, Oct. 1, 1888), and he never made any secret in America of his freethought views.

Niebuhr, Professor Barthold Georg
(1776-1831), the second greatest German historian. Diplomatic service in Rome led him to take up the study of its ancient history and after 20 years of research he produced his famous Roman history

Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
(1844-1900). There is no need to show either the literary greatness or the atheism of Nietzsche. Scorn of Christianity and glorification of the ideal man run through all his works. His mind gave way under the strain of his fierce indignation against stupidity and hypocrisy but the clerical charge that this mental unbalance may be traced in his works is ludicrous. They are masterly indictments of the developing faults of the new age which have so fatally revealed themselves since death. His chief…

Nightengale, Florence, O.M.
(1829-1910), famous British hospital reformer. A rich English young woman who took up hospital work, especially during the Crimean War, and made such an impression that at the close of the war $250,000 was subscribed to found a Nightengale School for Nurses. She revolutionized hospital life and was loaded with British and international honors. She was a theist but very definitely anti-Christian, as is shown in the standard life of her by Sir Edward Cook

Oersted, Professor Hans Christian
(1777-1851), famous Dutch physicist. His name is still a classic in the literature of his science and he was in his time a man of high international repute. In regard to religion he was, like Goeth, a Pantheist, as he shows particularly in his Aanden i Naturen

Owen, Robert
(1771-1858), Welsh reformer. He made a fortune in the early days of Cotton spinning and spent the whole of it on the workers. His industrial settlement at New Lanark in Scotland drew social students from all parts of the world, and his schools gave a fine stimulus to the reform of education. He then became the Social Father-hence the first use of the word Socialists (for his followers)-of a movement to found model colonies of the workers (manual and middle-class) of Britain and America. At one t…

Owen, Robert Dale
(1801-1877), reformer, son of Robert Owen but left in charge of his father's work in America he became an American citizen. He had not the rather obscure power of his father-who was a very quiet and modest man with no skill in either writing or speaking yet had influence over millions-yet he made a great name in every reform-field in America and was at one time American Minister at Naples. He was an atheist like his father and was duped by a Spiritualist medium for a time but discovered the impo…

Paganini, Niccolo
(1782-1840), great Italian violinist and composer. Like so many other distinguished freethinkers he was very precocious, composed a sonata when he was eight years old, and made his first public appearance at the age of 11. He became the greatest violinist of his age. His chief biographer, Count Conestabilli, was orthodox but admits 'religious indifferentism' (p. 168) in his hero and records that he neither received the last sacrament nor had any religious service at his funeral. It was well know…

Paine, Thomas
(1737-1809). Thomas Paine was born on January 29th, in the small town of Thetford, England. He was the only son of a master stay-maker. He was forced to leave school early and enter his father's trade, of which he found little interest. Everybody knows that Paine was a Deist not an atheist. Skepticism had not generally advanced beyond criticism of the scriptures and Christianity in his time, and of this his Age of Reason is a powerful exposition that has had incalculable influence; and he was no…

Palmer, Elihw
(1764-1806) author. He was studying for the ministry at Dartmouth College when he became a Deist. Two years later he lost his sight, and the Deist works which he later published, and which considerably helped freethought in America, were dictated by him in his blindness.

Palmerston, Viscount Henry John
(1784-1865), one of the most famous of British statesmen in the 19th Century. As Foreigh Secretary he gave quiet but important help to the European rebels, allowing the Garibaldiand to recruit troops in the heart of London and protecting all foreign radical refugees. He worked also for the suppression of the slave trade and the improvement of the condition of the workers, and he was one of the ablest foreign secretaries in Europe. Tallyrand said that he was the only statesman in England. He was …

Parton, James
(1822-1891), biographer. British by origin but naturalized in America, he earned a high reputation by his biographies of Horace Greeley, Voltaire, Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, and other Deists. He was a friend of W.D. Howells, who says of him: 'In the days when to be an agnostic was to be almost an outcast he had the heart to say of the Mysteries that he did not know' (Literary Friends, p. 113).

Pasteur, Louis
(1822-1895), famous French chemist. His distinction in European science was such that Catholics strain the evidence to the point of fraud to claim him. In the Encyclopedia Britannica an article on him in which he is wantonly described as 'this simple and devout Catholic' is substituted for the truthful article in earlier editions. The anonymous Catholic author quotes as his authority the standard biography by Vallery-Radot, yet this describes Pasteur as a freethinker; and this is confirmed in th…

Pater, Walter Horatio, M.A.
(1839-1894), British writer. His study of the Epicurean ideal (Marius the Epicurean) and his Imaginary Portraits and other works put him in the front rank of English literary men. The notice in the Dictionary of National Biography says mildly that he had 'lost all belief in the Christian religion.' He was an agnostic.

Pavlov, Professor Ivan Petrovich
(1849-1936), famous Russian physiologist, Nobel Prize winner. Son of a village priest, he worked his way to a position of one of the most distinguished physiologists in Europe. His studies of conditioned reflexes were epoch-making and have had an immense influence on psychology. He was an atheist and materialist.

Pericles (B.C. 490-429),
one of the greatest and most idealistic statesmen in history. He was leader of the democratic party in Athens but privately he gathered round him a brilliant circle of atheists and scholars and he was responsible above all for the superb adornment of the city. The Encyclopedia Britannica says that he was 'unpopular on account of his rationalism in religious matters.' In other words, it is quite clear that he shared the atheism that had then become common in Greece. His most famous public oration…

Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich
(1746-1827), famous Swiss educator. Under the influence of Rosseau's work on education he devoted his life to reform in that field, and his name is one of the greatest in the history of education. He was a Deist like Rousseau and, in spite of the heavy pressure of the clergy, he kept theological instruction out of his schools. 'We seek the foundations of dogma and of all religious opinions in human nature,' he said in a Report to Parents. E. Langner in the chief study of his views says that he '…

Peter the Great
(1672-1725), Russian Tzar. That Peter rejected and mercilessly mocked the Orthodox Catholic religion is well known. As French Deism had not at that time reached Russia it is clear that he and his leading companions at court were atheists. His favorite type of orgy was to travesty and insult the only religion he knew. In considering these orgies and the intemperance of his character we have to remember that Peter did not introduce them into Russian life. It had in moral respects remained barbaric…

Phillpotts, Eden
(1862- ), British novelist. He has written a large number of novels, poems and classical stories. He had a very high standard of art and declined to express his own opinions in his novels, but he freely expressed his agnosticism in articles and poems on religion. I have often been his guest and found no man nearer to me in his opinions (on religion) but though he remains an agnostic, in recent years he has become milder and more conservative.

Picasso, Pablo (artist)
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Pillsbury, Parker
(1809-1898), reformer. A working youth who became a Congregationalist minister but was stimulated by the support of slavery by the churches to inquire and quit the job. He was prominent in the abolitionist and the feminist movement, and he puts his non-Christian theism in The Church as It Is

Pirandello, Luigi
(1887-1936), Italian playwright, Nobel Prize winner. He won considerable esteem as a poet but became known throughout Italy and to a great extent abroad by his brilliant comedies. The leading Italian philosopher, Croce, has a book on his poetry and remarks that 'his conception of reality is the exact opposite to the religious'; in other words, it is antitheistic. Dr. W. S. Starkie, an orthodox biographer, laments that 'God is too andent from his work and there is no trace of the wonderful balm o…

Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham
(1708-1778), famous British statesman, 'the great Commoner.' Although not sprung from the aristocracy and a strictly honest office holder in a corrupt age he rose to be Leader of the House of Commons. He ardently opposed the American War and particularly the use of Indiand against the colonists. It is disputed whether he (in 1833) wrote a certain (Letter on Superstition, in which it is said that 'the only true divinity is humanity.' The evidence seems to me in favor of his authorship. His biogra…

Place, Francis
(1771-1854) British reformer. A London master-tailor who held a unique influence in his progressive movements of his time and was intimate with Bentham, Mill, Owen and the leading reformers. Like them he was an atheist. The obituary notice of him in The Reasoner said that he always called himself such. His biographer Graham Wallis prefers to call him an agnostic but the word was unknown in his time. Lord Morley says in his Recollections (I, p. 150) that he was 'regarded as an atheist by his frie…

Plato (B.C. 426-347).
Generally described as the greatest of the Greek thinkers but hardly any of the Greeks ever followed him until, centuries later, his ideas of spirituality were mixed with popular superstition and called Neo Platonism. It is said that at the close of one of his lectures the only hearer left was Aristotle, who completely rejected his idea of spirit (as nearly all the Greek philosophers did). He was a freethinker in the sense that he openly rejected the prevailing religion and worked out a quite or…

Poe, Edgar Allan
(1809-1849), poet. The year before he died Poe published the prose-poem Eureka with his profession of faith. It is Pantheistic but rather on the agnostic side. The idea of God, he says, 'stands for the possible attempt at an impossible conception'

Pope, Alexander
(1688-1744), British poet. He was one of the large and brilliant circle of Deists in London in the early 18th century. Everybody knows the line from his Essay on Man: 'The proper study of mankind is man,' but few know that the preceding line is 'Presume not God to scan.' This work, and the 'Universal Prayer' that he later added to it, are purely deistic. Lord Chesterfield describes him in one ofd his letters as 'a Deist believing in a future life.' He was brought up a Catholic, and the Catholic …

Proctor, Richard Anthony
(1837-1888), British Astronomer. He was for many years the most brilliant lecturer of astronomy in the English-speaking world. He became a Catholic but soon recanted, and in the scientific periodical he edited, Knowledge, he was very outspoken in regards to religion. He was, as Edward Clodd (who knew him) says in his Memories, an agnostic to the end.

Pushkin, Alexander Sergeyevich
(1799-1837), famous Russian poet. A youth of aristocratic birth who joined the rebels and was sent into exile for satirizing religion in his poetry. In spite of his premature death (in a duel fought for the honor of his wife) he is considered 'the Byron of Russia' and his works, published by the Russian Imperial Academy of Science

Quental, Anthero De
(1842-1891), one of the greatest of Portuguese poets. He wrote historical and philosophical works as well as poems but his religious position is best found in his sonnets (Os Sonetos Completos, 1886). From an early mysticism he passed into a rather pessimistic atheism and then to a tranquil agnosticism. His great lyrics contributed considerably to the emancipation of Portugal that was proceeding satisfactorily when its middle class politiciand fell into quarrels and let in the clerics and the pr…

Quesnay, Francois M.D.
(1694-1774), famous French economist. A peasant bot who was not taught to read until he was 12 years old, yet he learned Latin and Greek, studied medicine, surgery, philosophy, and mathematics, won a high repute as a surgeon, and founded the Physiocratic School of political economy. He wrote nothing on religion but he showed his freethinking by associating with the atheist Diderot and writing articles for the Encyclopedia .

Reade, William Winwood
(1838-1875) author of The Martydom of Man which has made innumerable freethinkers. In the Dic. of Nat. Biog. which is not rash, he is described as an atheist but he was rather an agnostic of the Spencerian school.

Renan, Joseph Ernest
(1823-1892), author of The Life of Jesus. He was trained for the clergy but quit after receiving minor orders and became one of the finer oriental scholars in Europe. Of his many learned and temperately anti-christian, works his Life of Jesus was the most popular. It sold 300,000 copies and was translated in to all the European languages. It was of great value in destroying the supernatural idea of Jesus but has the weakness of taking the gospels as material, though Renan did not insist that th…

Ricardo, David
(1772-1823), famous British economist and philanthropist. Son of a Dutch Jew who had settled in London he made a large fortune in finance and was extremely generous and a friend to radical movements. He was the highest British authority on political economy after Adam Smith. He abjured Judaism in youth, and never returned to it or adopted any other creed. (Dict. Nat. Biog.)

Richet, Professor Charles M.D.
(1850-1935), distinguished French physiologist, Nobel Prize winner. The Catholic Revue des Deux Mondes described him after his death as 'the greatest physiologist that France has had since Pasteur' but he was an atheist not a Catholic. He contributed to Haeckel's Monist (an atheist magazine) and acknowledged that he 'believes more progress without 'childish dogmas.' The Spiritualists also claim him on the ground that he admitted their phenomena but he attributed them to material causes not spiri…

Richter, Johann Paul Frederich
(1763-1825), German writer. A brilliant satirical writer, though he also wrote works on aesthetics and education, who was discussed throughout Europe as 'Jean Paul.' DeQuencey wrote a biography of him. His complete works run to 60 volumes and often satirize Christianity. His biographer describes his position as 'a sentimental Deism' like that of Rousseau.

Rodin, Francios, Auguste, D. C. L.,
(1840-1917), French sculptor. The famous sculptor, generally considered the greatest sculptor of modern times, was born of poor Parisian parents and worked his way up by many years of struggle. He then won world-fame and the highest honors. His biographer Mauclair says that, as his work suggests, he was 'independent of all religious doctrine' and that his favorite authors were Rousseau and Baudelaire.

Roland De La Platiere, Jean Marie
(1734-1793), French revolutionary statesman of very high character. He was Minister of the Interior when the Terror began and he resigned in protest. His arrest was ordered and he fled but, hearing that the extremists had executed his wife, ended his own. Mme Roland, one of the most beautiful, virtuous and accomplished women of the Revolution, was a Deist and one of the great figures of the time. Carlyle says that her 'clear perennial womanhood' was nourished on 'logics, the Encyclopedia, and th…

Rolland, Romain, D. Es L.
(1866-1944), one of the greatest writers of modern France, Nobel Prize winner. He was for many years professor of the history of art at Paris University. His great work, the 10 volume novel Jean Christophe (a survey of modern life), occasionally used the word God but he explains that what he meand by God is 'vague and indefinite.'

Romilly, Sir Samuel
(1757-1818), eminent British jurist and reformer. An attorney's clerk who rose to a high position both at the bar and in the English Parliament, where he stood for every reform. He was particularly interested in the reform of law, the abolition of slavery, and opposition to the feudal monarchs of Europe. 'He lost all faith in Christianity but embraced with ardour the gospel of Rousseau,' says the Dictionary of National Biography . The writer of the notice adds that 'his principles were austere t…

Rosseau, Jean Jacques
(1712-1778). The man who with Voltaire did the most to prepare France for the more advanced freethought of the Encyclopedists and the Revolution. He was too serious in his Deism and too romantic about Christianity for Voltaire, who disliked him. He had also a less firm character than Voltaire. But socially he was much broader than the aristocratic Voltaire, and he might be considered the parent, through Robert Owen, of modern Socialism.

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel
(1828-1882), eminent British poet and painter. Son of a refugee from Papal Italy he wrote drama at the age of six and was at a university college from nine 13. Some of his best poems were written before he was 20. All his life he alternated between producing exquisite poetry and fine Pre-Raphaelite paintings. He was 'a decided skeptic...professed no religious faith and practiced no regular religious observances' (Memoir prefixed to his Works, I, p. 114).

Rostand, Edmond
(1868-1918), chief modern French dramatist. Author of Cyrano de Bergerac, L'aiglon, and Chanticler. These works, and poems boldly give his freethought views. His biographer (a Catholic) Jules Harasazti blushes to tell that he believed that the time for churches is over and 'it is now only in the theater that souls can feel their wings.'

Ruskin, John, M.A., LL. D.,
(1819-1900) notable British writer, and reformer. Few other writers of the 19th Century reached the very high standard of his prose, and he had a passion for social justice and progress. In the best productive period of his life he held a thin theism that was not far removed from agnosticism. He told Augustus Hare in 1816 that 'he believed nothing.' In later years he called himself 'a Christian Catholic' (as distinct from the pagan Roman Catholics) though he never went to church, and said that h…

Sainte-Beuve Charles Francois De
(1804-1869), famous French writer. One of the leaders of French literature in the first half of the last century and professor at Paris University. He at first followed Victor Hugo and, as he said, 'accepted God and all the consequences.' He is almost eccentric in the fact that the more famous he became the more advanced and outspoken in skepticism he was. In his Pensees d'aout he abandons all beliefs. The Grande Encyclopedie says that as he grew older he became more and more hostile to religion…

Santa Maria, Domingo
(1825-1885), President of the Republic of Chili. A lawyer, professor and provincial governor who was driven from the country by the clericals. When the Liberals overthrew them he became President and did a good deal for the country besides checking the clericals.

Santayana, George
(1863- ), philosopher. Spanish by birth but taken to America in boyhood. He was professor of philosophy at Harvard 1889-1912 but is much more important as an educator of the general public. He rejects all theology and professes materialism. In Reason in Science (p. 90), he says: 'A thorough materialist, one born to the faith and not plunged into it by an unexpected christening in cold water, will be, like the superb Democritus, a laughing philosopher.

Sardou, Victorien
(1831-1908) chief modern French dramatist. Compelled by the misfortunes of his family to abandon the study of medicine he struggled in penury to earn a living by his pen until mid-life, when his plays were successful. His famous Robespierre and Danton were written for Sir Henry Irving. He was an atheist from youth and though he dabbled in Spiritualism for a time, rejected it.

Savile, Sir George, Earl of Halifax
(1633-1695), British statesman, Lord Privy Seal of his country, a man of recognized integrity in an age of general corruption. Bishop Burnet (History of His Own Time, I. p. 267) says that he 'passed for a bold and determined atheist,' but that he told Burnet he was not an atheist. 'He believed as much as he could and hoped that God would not lay it to his charge if he could not digest as an ostrich did nor take into his belief things that must burst him.' To him is attributed the saying 'The man…

Schopenhauer, Arthur
(1788-1860), German philosopher. He had a thorough academic education in philosophy but contended that all the accepted systems (Kant, Hegel, etc.) were too intellectual and that the secret of life was that an impersonal force which he called Will was striving, through the material universe, to reach a high level. As it is doomed to failure, owing to the stupidity of men, to reach a high level he was forced to a sort of pessimism that suited his dry and caustic style. The Churches felt his lash.…

Schreiner, Olive
(1862-1920), British novelist. Daughter of a missionary who worked amongst the natives of South Africa she, before she was 20, wrote A Story of an African Farm which won her a large public. It was substantially an autobiography telling how she reacted to her father's work by becoming an atheist. Other novels and works on social questions raised her reputation considerably. Edward Carpenter says in his Days and Dreams (p. 229): 'I have seen her shake her little fist at the Lord in heaven and curs…

Schubert, Franz Peter
(1797-1828), Austrian composer. He wrote two Masses and a large amount of other Catholic music yet, like Beethoven and Mozart, he was a skeptic. In his Dictionary of Music Sir George Grove says that 'of formal or dogmatic religion we can find no trace,' (IV, p. 634) in his life. He quotes Schubert saying of creeds and churches: 'Not a word of it is true.' So also Elly Ziese in Schubert's Tod. His Catholic biographer says that the man who wrote his beautiful Ave Maria must have been a Catholic, b…

Schumann, Robert
(1810-1856), German composer. He tells us in his letters that he rejected Christianity in his early years and followed Goethe's pantheism. One great advantage of Goethe's system in this difficult period, when skepticism itself was in evolution, was that you could talk freely about God and not mean much. In any case Goethe naturally appealed to artists.

Seeley, Sir John Robert, K.C.M.G.
(1834-1895), distinguished British historian. His Ecce Homo, theistic but one of the first widely-read works to strip Christ of his divinity, had an enormous circulation, yet he was appointed to a chair of history at Cambridge University and held it until he died. In his later works he was still theistic but thought that questions of ethics were much more important than the fuss about God and immortality.

Seneca, Lucius Aenaeus
(1 - 65), philosopher. A wealthy Spanish Roman, high civic official and tutore of Nero, who in the end compelled him to take his own life. He is usually quoted as a Stoic but was guided in his well-known ethical treatises by the Roman blend of Stoicism and Epicureanism. He has the greatest veneration for Epicurus, whom the Stoics detested, and constantly quotes him.

Sergi, Professor Giuseppe
(1841-1936), Italian anthropologist, the 'Grand Old Man' both of science and freethought in Italy. Although he was professor at Rome University and a scholar of European fame he took an active part in the International Freethought Congress at Rome in 1904 at which I met him and (for the first time) Haeckel, 'The conceptions of a soul, of a future life, of a God, are,' he said, in a fiery speech, 'superstitious errors which have clouded the human mind and given a false direction to human conduct.…

Servetus, Michael
(1511-1553) martyr of freethought. A Spaniard (properly named Miguel Servede) who settled in Switzerland. He rejected the Trinity and was driven out. He took up medicine in France but when he was passing through Switzerland Calvin had him arrested and burned at the stake.

Shakespeare, William
(1564-1616). The greatest of British writers is often claimed to have been a freethinker, and we are aware-see Marlowe-that there was a good deal of skepticism in London in his time. But his work is entirely objective, his pagan characters using pagan language, his Christian characters Christian, and we have no expression of personal opinion or evidence of contemporaries. It is therefore impossible to reach a definite conclusion. We may say with the historian Green that there is no depth in 'the…

Shelley, Percy Bysshe
(1792-1822). That the third greatest of British poets was an atheist during his great creative years is well known. He was known as 'Shelley the Atheist' at Eton and was expelled from Oxford for writing a pamphlet with the title The Necessity of Atheism. His first important poem, Queen Mab, had a number of skeptical notes, and he is equally skeptical in his greatest work, Prometheus Unbound. After 1820 he was much influenced by reading Plato and he adopted theism but not a definite belief in a f…

Sidney, Alrernon
(1622-1682), politician. Son of the Earl of Northumberland and one of the freethinking officers among Cromwell's Roundheads. He opposed the execution of the king but also opposed Cromwell as a tyrant, and he was not reconciled with the restored royalty. He remained a Republican and after a travesty of a trial was beheaded. He refused the services of a minister before execution and was, says Bishop Burnet, 'against all public worship and everything that looked like a church.' Although he called h…

Sieyes, Count Emmanuel Joseph
(1748-1836), leading French revolutionary. Although he figures as one of the very few priests who took a prominent part in the Revolution he tells is himself that he had 'evaded every occasion of clerical work' before that time and was a freethinker. He disavowed his orders and the creed early in the Revolution and was the real author of the Rights of Man. Napoleon made him a Count and Senator, and the restored king banished him. He never returned to the Church.

Sinclair, Upton, B.A.
(1878- ), author. Before he developed political aspirations he was anything but respectful to the Churches. 'There are a score of great religions in the world,' he said, 'and each is a mighty fortress of graft.' (Upton Sinclair's Magazine, April 1918). His Profits of Religion

Smith, Adam, F.R.S.
(1723-1790), famous Scottish economist. Before he published his Wealth of Nations, which was as epoch-making as the Origin of Species, he had written a non-Christian Theory of the Moral Sentiment and he was very friendly in Paris with Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopedists. Later he wrote a life of Hume, which Chalmer's Biographical Dictionary describes as 'a powerful blow against Christianity.' Occupying public positions as he did, however, he was cautious about expressing his Deism and sho…

Smith, Gerrit
(1797-1874), philanthropist. Although a rich man he practiced as a lawyer and at one time entered politics but the odor was too strong for his refined moral sense. He gave away about $8,000,000 in gifts of land to poor families, donations to progressive causes, and all sorts of benefactions. He was a Deist and said so in several works (The Religion of Reason, etc.)

Snyder, Carl
(1869- ), writer on science. He specialized in the popular presentation of science in the press and in books which had a wide circulation and were much esteemed, In New Conceptions of Science

Socinus, Laelius
(1528-1562), Italian reformer. Latinized form of the name Lelio Fausto Sozzini. An accomplished man-he knew Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic-who started freethinking discussion-circles, which were heavily persecuted, in Italy. It was his nephew Faustus Socinus who gave his name to Socinianism or Unitarianism. Socrates

Somerville, Mary
(1780-1872), British educationist. Daughter of Admiral Sir W.G. Fairfax, she married Dr. Somerville and his salon was one of the most brilliant in London for many years. She mastered astronomy-the discovery of the planet Neptune was ultimately based upon observations of hers- and had several gold medals for her work in geography. She was an anti-ecclesiastical theist, never went to church, and was once 'publicly censured by name from the pulpit of York Cathedral.' One of the chief women's univer…

Spencer, Herbert
(1820-1903), British philosopher, the English Aristotle. His organization of all higher knowledge, which inspired Lester Ward to do the same in America, in a Synthetic Philosophy was a repetition of the feat of Aristotle in ancient Greece. He was an Agnostic before Huxley invented the word in the sense that he held that the ultimate reality (on which he wrote two large volumes) in Unknown and Unknowable. He refused all honors and decorations but was much more human and sympathetic than the many …

Stalin, Josef Vissarionovich
(1879- ). Son of a Georgian shoemaker, expelled from the seminary in which he was being educated for the priesthood for advanced political opinions, and joined the Socialists. He is, like all communist leaders, an atheist but political expediency as well as personal inclination kept him off the subject of religion. When cooperation with the democracies became a necessity of Soviet policy he seems to have concluded that one of the chief obstacles was the supposed persecution of religion and the r…

Stanhope, Lady Hester Lucy
(1776-1839), traveler. Daughter of Earl Stanhope, grand-daughter of Lord Chatham, and niece of Pitt, she was reared in a freethinking atmosphere and she responded heartily. She kept house for Pitt in his later years and then, disgusted with the hypocrisy of English religious life, went to live in the Near East and professed a sort of Islam. She scorned Christianity and was a woman of great ability and character.

Stevenson, Robert Louis,
(1850-1894), distinguished British novelist. A brilliant and prolific writer whose works fill 27 volumes. His biographer A. Johnston, shows that he was an agnostic until he died, though he had prayers at his house daily on account of a pious mother. F. Watt, the next most important biographer, says the same.

Strauss, David Friedrich
(1808-1874), German writer. Professor of theology at Tubigen who startled Germany by publishing a humanist life of Jesus. George Eliot translated it, and in the forties it had a very large circulation in England and America. He called himself a Liberal Christian but in 1872 he rejected all Christian beliefs and the idea of a personal God and future life in his Old and New Faith. The fact is generally suppressed that he had a faithful disciple and friend in the German Empress. See Victoria.

Strindberg, Johan August
(1849-1912), Swedish novelist, poet, and dramatist, the chief writer after Isben. He was the leader of the Swedish freethinkers and so caustic that he preferred to live abroad. When a volume of stories which he published in 1884 was condemned he returned to Sweden and won his acquittal, though some passages were virulently anti-Christian. He was an atheist in these years but he had a mental breakdown, lost his virility, and drifted into mysticism.

Sudermann, Hermann
(1857-1928), leading German novelist and dramatist of the first quarter of the century. One of his novels Frau Sorge, ran to 125 editions in German. He was one of the founders, with Haeckel, of the Monist League and an outspoken agnostic. At a big public meeting in Berlin in 1900, he eloquently called upon Germany top make an end of 'obscurantism.' He was a man of high ideals and had a passion for social justice.

Sumner, Charles
(1811-1874), statesman. He was one of the leading orators of the Abolitionist movement and was in time regarded as one of the best speakers in America. For a time he was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and he was regarded at Washington as an idealist of very strict character. Sumner was a non-Christian theist. There is a letter in the Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner (I, pp. 117-119) in which he rejects the supernatural theory of Christ and says: 'I am without religiou…

Swinburne, Algernon Charles
(1837-1909), greatest English poet since Shelley. Like Shelley he became an atheist and a republican at Oxford and, although he somehow blended his hatred of tyrants-he openly rejoiced when Orsini tried to assassinate Napoleon III and wrote magnificent poems in praise of European rebels-with High Toryism in domestic politics, he never wavered. In some of his Poems and Ballads he is very contemptuous of Christianity and its ascetic rules.

Syme, David
(1827-1908) Australian philanthropist. A Scot by origin who studied at Heidekberg and shed his beliefs there. He emigrated to Australia, made a fortune, and bought the Melbourne Age , which then became a strong force on the side of the progressives. He refused a Knighthood and at his death left $200,000 to various charities. In several works on religion he rejects Christianity and calls himself a pantheist, though his biographer says that 'his religion was humanity.'

Symonds, John Addington
(1840-1893), notable British writer, author of a 2-volume standard work on the Italian Rennaissance. A very delicate consumptive man he, though a writer of exceptional art, produced a remarkable number of works on medieval Italy. He particularly scoffed at the idea that the Renaissance artists owed their excellence to religious inspiration. His biographer, H.D. Brown, shows that he rejected Christianity and the belief in a future life.

Tagore, Sir Rabindranath, D. Litt.
(1861-1941), 'the Poet Laureate of India,' Nobel Prize winner. He was the son of a prince but a most assiduous writer, in prose and verse, and deeply interested in the education of his country. He rejected both Christianity and all forms of Hindu religion and was, if anything,-his biographer says that he never professed any clearly defined beliefs-an atheist. In his Hibbert Lectures, The Religion of Man

Tai-Tsung
(600-650) Chinese emperor of the Tang Dynasty. His name was Shih-Min but he was named Tai-tsung (Great Ancestor) after his death and lives as such in Chinese history. The missionary expert on China, Dr. Giles says that his was 'a reign of unrivalled brilliance and glory,' and the historian of China. D. Boulger says, 'No ruler of any country has had sounder claims to be entitled Great.' He had in quarter of a century done more for China than any other emperor and raised it to a wonderful height w…

Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich
(1840-1893), famous Russian composer. He took up law but quit it for music and became the greatest of Russian composers (songs, cantatas, operas, piano-pieces, etc.). From his letters edited by his brother, it appeared that until late in life he was a theist but he seems in the end to have become an atheist after reading Flaubert's letters. I have ,' he said, 'found some astonishing answers to my questions about God and religion in this book.' Life and Letters , (p.688). He was unconscious when …