Copy of `Infidels - Ditcionary of Freethinkers`

The wordlist doesn't exist anymore, or, the website doesn't exist anymore. On this page you can find a copy of the original information. The information may have been taken offline because it is outdated.

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

Tchekov, Anton Pavlovich
(1860-1904), Russian novelist and dramatist. Son of one of the liberated serfs, he managed to get education and became one of Russia's great writers of fiction and drama, and had an immense circulation, but he was consumptive and died prematurely. His ideas on religion are not clear but he stood well outside the Church.

Tennyson, Baron Alfred
(1809-1892), leading English poet. As he was severely condemned by British freethinkers for his Promise of May and he uses theistic language, preachers quote him as an orthodox Christian. But there is ample evidence that he was a pantheist and skeptical about a future life. Allingham who knew him well so testifies in his diary (p. 149), and his son reluctantly confirms this in his biography of his father. Dr. Jowett says the same, and the cautious trimmer Masterman, who wrote a book on his relig…

Thackeray, William Makepeace
(1811-1863), notable British novelist. He was considered next to Dickens about the middle of the last century and was well known in America. He was a theist but skeptical about a future life. 'About my future state I don't know,' he said (Melville's Life of Thackeray, II, p. 105). In The Letters of Dr. J. Brown, there is one from Thackeray in which he says that he has listened to a preacher 'on the evangelical dodge' and he adds 'Ah, what rubbish.' Melville says that he 'formed no very definite …

Thiers, Adolphe
(1797-1877), French statesmen and historian. A lawyer who became leader of the French Liberals (and anti-clericals) under Charles X and Napoleon III, and rose to the highest political honors. Asz the radical movement developed he became more Conservative and abandoned politics in 1871, when he was summoned to be President of the Third Republic. Meantime he had written standard histories of the Revolution, the Consulate, and the Empire. He was harsh, often truculent, to political radicals but he …

Thompson, Daniel Greenleaf
(1850-1897), psychologist. A lawyer who took up the views of Herbert Spencer and published several works on the lines of the synthetic Philosophy. His psychology, in particular, had a very good influence in America. He was an agnostic.

Thompson, James
(183401882), British poet. He was left an orphan at the age of eight and was trained as a teacher. Bradlaugh attracted him to help in his atheistic campaign and published in his Natural Reformer the long poem, The City of Dreadful Night, which earned the high praise of D. G. Rossetti and other poets.

Thompson, William
(1785-1833), Irish economist. A wealthy Irish landlord who adopted the atheistic and humanitarian views of Bentham and Robert Owen and worked hard to help the poor peasants by introducing cooperation. In 1824 he published a work on the distribution of wealth that almost anticipated Marx. All wealth ought to go to the producer, he said. He worked and wrote also for rights of women and other causes. He was very strict and ascetic in his personal life.

Thoreau, Henry David
(1817-1862), writer. He was greatly interested in natural history from boyhood and, as he joined the Transcendental or Emersonian school after leaving Harvard, the two elements united in his attractive literary style. While his colleagues in the creed sought the cities and drawing rooms he stuck to the country and led a life of extreme simplicity. Woodbury discusses his religion in Talks with Emerson. He was, curiously, one of the least mystic of the Transcendentalists. He used to quote the word…

Thorvaldsen, Bertel
(1770-1844), famous Danish sculpter. Son of an Iceland wood-carver who studied at the Copenhagen Academy and became one of the finest sculptors of his time and received the highest international honors. As he did a good deal of religious work, including the statue of Pope Pius VII, he is very interesting in connection with the question of the inspiration of religious art. His pious biographer Thiele admits, almost with tears, that he rejected Christianity, and in fact he had from youth a passion…

Tindal, Matthew, B.A., D.C.L.,
(1657 - 1733), British Deist. A distinguished lawyer who became a Catholic, reverted to Protestantism, then became what he called 'a Christian Deist.' He wrote a book which was burned by the hangman and then another with the title Christianity As Old As Creation, some of which even Voltaire made some use.

Toland, John, M.A.,
(1670-1722) British Diest. Probably the bastard of an Irish Priest, reared as a Catholic but early became a Deist. He was a brilliant and accomplished man but clerical hostility condemned him to a life of penury. The Irish government ordered that his books should be burned and be arrested but he was received with honor at the royal courts of Prussia, Austria, and Holland. He wrote, while calling himself a Christian, a number of Deistic works and seems to have been skeptical about a future life.

Tolstoi, Count Lew Nikolaivich
(1828 - 1910), famous Russian reformer. How the Crimean War disgusted him with his position of aristocratic officer and he became an educationist and moralist of simple life is well known. As a pacifist and moralist he had a world reputation. He professed to be a Christian in the ethical sense but flogged the Churches and was a mystic theist.

Tone, Theobald Wolfe, B.A., LL. D.
(1763 - 1798), another of the brilliant young Irish Deists of the latter part of the 18th century. He was a lawyer but absorbed in politics, fought in the French revolutionary army, and joined in the Irish rebellion. He died in prison of self-inflicted wounds. His diaries (published in 1893) as The Autobiography of Wolfe Tone) confirm that he was a Deist until he died but the fact is carefully suppressed in Eire, where he is still a popular idol.

Tooke, John Horne, M.A.,
(1736-1812), British reformer. His father put him in the ministry of the Church of England but he was a freethinker and soon threw off his cassock and regretted, as he said, that he had had 'the infectious hands of a bishop waved over him.' He was a great figure in the fight for freedom and democracy, often prosecuted, and in 1777 sentenced to a fine of $1,000 and a year in prison for defending the American Colonists. In 1794 he was charged with high treason for defending the French Revolution. …

Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm
(1853-1917), famous British actor. Son of a German, Julius Beerbohm, but born in England and became the second (after Irwin) leading actor and theatrical manager. In his Thought and After Thoughts he often expresses his freethought. All sects will die and there will be only 'a religion of humanity' left. Of Shakespeare he says (p. 205): 'His wide spirit will outlive the mere letter of narrow doctrines, and his winged words, vibrant with the music of the larger religion of humanity, will go wilti…

Trelawny, Edward John
(1792-1881) Shelly's friend. He was a naval officer and adventurer in many lands until 1821 he joined Shelly in Italy. It was he who saved the poet's heart from the flames. Later he joined Byron in the Greek war of independence. He was an atheist with a passion to rid the world of tyranny. Swinburne calls him 'World-wide liberty's life-long lover.' He said to Carpenter (My Days and Dreams, p.121) that Shelley 'couldn't have been the poet that he was if he had not been an atheist.'

Trench, Herbert
(1865-1923), British poet. His work had a high reputation among literary and cultivated folk and occasionally betrays his pantheistic creed and definitely anti-Christian sentiment. In 'Stanzas to Tolstoi' he says: The man upraised on the Judacan crag Captains for us the war with death no more; His kingdom hands as hangs the tattered flag Over the tomb of a great knight of yore. Unfortunately Tolstoi (see) professed to be a Christian.

Turgeniey, Ivan Sergievich
(1818 - 1883) famous Russian novelist. Of a nobel family he showed such democratic sympathy, especially in a Letter on Gogol, that he was imprisoned and then banished from the capital. He then wrote the series of powerful realistic novels that made him famous throughout the world. Pavlovsky says of him in his Souvenirs than he 'was a freethinker and detested the apparatus of religion very heartily' (p. 242). But all his humanitarian creed is seen in all his work.

Turner, Joseph Mallard William.
(1775 - 1851), famous British painter. Son of a London barber, almost totally uneducated, who discovered a genius for painting. The circumstances of his early life explain the eccentricities of his later life. He began to take lessons in drawing at the age of 13, exhibited in the Academy three years later, and became an Academician at 28. He was the greatest painter of his time and very generous. He left pictures to the nation and left his fortune of $700,000 to found a home for needy artists. R…

Twain, Mark. .
See Clemens

Ulrici, Professor Hermann
(1806 - 1884), German philosopher. He was professor at Halle from 1834 until he died and had high authority. He was such a very free thinker that his ideas on religion were unique. The soul, he said, was an 'etheris fluid' but immortal. He called himself a Pantheist but his view of the unity or identity of God and the world hardly differed from that of other Pantheists.

Unna, Professor Paul Gerson, M.D.
(1850 - ) German anatomist. A Hamburg surgeon, specialist on skin diseases, whose pathological works gave him a high position in Germany. He joined Haeckel in the work of the Monist (atheist) Association and frequently wrote in his monthly. In the Memorial Volume to commemorate Haeckel's 80th birthday he thanks Haeckel for his 'spiritual emancipation' and talks contemptuously about 'the men of darkness round the throne and the alter.

Vacherot, Professor Etienne, Ph. D.
(1809-1897), French philosopher and statesman. He succeeded Cousin as professor of philosophy at Paris University. A large and fine work he wrote on the development of religion in Alexandria was so heterodox that the clergy flamed against him and got him deposed. A few years later he was sentenced to a year in prison for writing a republican work. For a philosopher he was a rare fighter and a considerable aid to the radicals. In spite of this he was admitted to the Academy of Moral and Political…

Vale, Gilbert
(1788 - 1866), writer. He began to study for the Church of England but abandoned the faith and went to settle in America. He made a number of discoveries in navigation, which he taught in New York, but he took a very prominent part in the Freethought movement. He founded and edited the Beacon and wrote a number of works, one of them a life of Paine which included letters of Paine to Washington, which earlier biographers had suppressed. Even Appleton's Encyclopedia of American Biography says: 'Mr…

Valla, Lorenzo
(1406-1457), Italian Humanist. A priest, son of a Roman lawyer, who became a skeptic and one of the most learned and brilliant critical writers of the Renaissance. The King of Napels appointed him secretary and in that shelter he exposed the fraud of the Donation of Constantine on which the Papacy based its claim of secular sovereignty, and other forged documents. From a work he wrote, On Pleasure (in Latin), he appears to have been an atheist and a follower of Epicurus. The Papacy did not mind …

Vambery, Professor Armin
(1832-1913), Hungarian-Jewish philologist. He knew a dozen languages before he was out of his teens and was tutor to the sons of a Turkish prince. He then learned a score of oriental languages and nearly got to Mecca in disguise of a pilgrim. After further travel he was appointed professor of oriental languages at Buda-Pesth University. He was one of the best linguists in Europe and his Turkish-German Dictionary is still used. He tells us in his autobiography (The Story of My Struggles, in Engli…

Vanini, Lucilio
(1585-1619), Italian martyr of freethought. He became a priest after university courses in philosophy, theology, science, and law, but was compelled to abandon the faith. He traveled in many countries urging men to the study of science. He was expelled from France, and in England he served a term of imprisonment in the Tower of London. In a weak hour- if one can call it weakness at a time when both Catholics and Protestants thirst for the blood of atheists- he published a work professing Christi…

Vaughan, Professor Henry Halford
(1811-1885), British historian. He was for some years professor of modern history at Oxford University and had a very high reputation but had to be careful about expressing his freethought views. Dr. Jowett (a divine who was practically an agnostic), the Oxford leader, says in one of his letters that Vaughn's opinions go far beyond his own and have to be concealed at Oxford. (Letters, p. 159). It is known that Vaughan wrote a work, Man's Moral Nature, which would have given his views, but he was…

Verdi, Guiseppe
(1813 - 1901), 'the greatest Italian composer of the 19th century (Internat. Enc.), author of Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, etc. The Catholic Encyclopedia claims him but he not only figured prominently amongst the anti-clericals in the Italian Camera (and later the Senate) but notoriously died defying the Church. F. T. Garibaldi shows in his biography of him (p. 255) that he expressly ordered in his will that he should be buried 'without any part of the customary formulae.' He was a man of very gener…

Verestchagin, Vassili Vassilievich
(1842 - 1904), greatest of Russian painters. A nobel who took up art and taking part in his country's war against Turkey, devoted his great skill to impressing the horrors of war upon the public. The horrible realism of his pictures restricted his popularity. He painted also religious pictures but when he sent a 'Holy Family' and 'Resurrection' to the Vienna Exhibition in 1885 the archbishop compelled the authorities to withdraw them. He tells us in his autobiography that he was zen atheist. He …

Verhaeren, Emile
(1855 - 1916), 'Belbium's most famous poet' and 'the greatest exponent in European poetry of universal ideas' (Annual Register in obituary). Son of a devout and wealthy Catholic he became a pupil of Maeterlinck (see) and shed his faith for agnosticism. His freethought is very frequently expressed in his poems of which he published 40 volumes. In one, The monks, he tells them 'you alone survive of the Christian world that is dead.' In the troubles of his later years he became rather mystic but he…

Vernes, Professor Maurice, D.D.
(1845 - 2908) French biblical critic. A Protestant minister who for many years led the Liberal Christians in France and edited their magazine. The orthodox angrily protested when he was appointed professor of Protestant theology at Paris University. He issued volumes of great learning on the lines of the Higher Criticism, collaborated in translating the Bible into French, and translated a number of works of foreign freethinkers. At last, he passed on to atheism and was Vice-President of the Fren…

Vernet, Emile Jean Horace
(1789 - 1863), French painter. Son of an atheistic painter of distinction in republican days, he sustained the anti-clerical tradition and had to fight his way to fame under the restored royalty against strong prejudice. He won and became Director of the French Academy at Rome, Commander of the Legion of Honor, Grand Medallist, etc. His pictures of Napoleon's battles are particularly esteemed.

Vesalius, Andraeas
(1514 - 1564), famous Flemish anatomist, one of the chief founders of the science on Europe. There are no recorded statements of his about religion but he incurred the bitter hostility of the clergy all his life and he died carrying out a sentence of the Spanish Inquisition, which sought to burn him at the stake. He insisted on practicing human dissection (often stealing the bodies of criminals from the gallows) in defiance of the Church and was hounded from the country and, though acknowledged …

Vigny, Alfred De
(1797 - 1863), famous French Poet. He wrote also greatly esteemed novels and dramas but his European fame was based chiefly upon his exquisite poetry. In the earlier of these he professes a sort of sentimental Christianity. In the later he is completely atheistic.

Villari, Professor Pasquale
(1827 - 1917), Italian historian and statesman. He fought against the Papal troops in the 1848 revolution and in the reaction devoted himself to teaching and writing his famous Life and Times of Savonarola. After the liberation of Italy from the Popes he attained the highest honors in the state (Minister of Education, etc.) and the academic world. He does not conceal his freethinking in his preface to Negri's Julian the Apostate.

Vogt, Professor Karl
(1817 - 1895), eminent Swiss geologist and physiologist. A brilliant all-round scientist, after university courses in medicine, anatomy, and zoology, he was deprived of his chair at Giessen for taking part in the radical revolution of 1848. He was naturalized as a Swiss, had the chair of geology at Geneva and became a member of the Swiss Grand Council. With all his scholastic and political distinction he was an outspoken atheist and materialist (chiefly in his Superstition and Science). He was o…

Voltaire, Francois Arouet De
(1694 - 1778), the greatest of all freethinkers. Son of the Paris notary Atouet - Voltaire as a later penname - he was educated in a clerical college but as a youth learned from his clerical teacher to smile at religion. He was banished from the capital for insulting the Prince Regent (an unspeakable blackguard) in his 22nd year and in the following year was sent to the Bastille for further free speech. He loved brilliance, in fact the disipation, of Parice but after the age of 20 was twice in t…

Wagner, Wilhelm Richard
(1813 - 1883), greatest of German dramatists and composers. All admit that he was an atheist and radical - he took part in the revolution of 1848 - in the first part of his life but when he produced Parsifal in 1882 Nietzsche and others charged him with having lapsed in to mysticism. It is clear that he was then in a romantic and more or less mystic mood, but all experts admit that he never returned to the Christian faith. The chief writer on his religious ideas Otto Hartwich says: 'Wagner was a…

Waite, Charles Burlinghame, A.M .
(1824 - 1895), jurist. Practices in the Chicago courts for 15 years with distinction and was appointed Associate Justice of the Utah Supreme Court and later District Attorney for Idaho. He was a zealous abolitionist and champion of women's rights, and he frankly gave his freethought views in A History of the Christian Religion to the Year 900).

Wakeman, Thaddeus Burr
(1834 - 1913), lawyer and writer. Practiced in New York with great success and was prominent in many progressive movements. He was at one time President of the National Liberal League and of the New York State Freethinkers Association. He edited the anthropological journal Man and wrote a number of small Rationalist works. He called himself a Positivist, but broadly, he was an agnostic, a great admirer of Haeckel (who loathed Positivism), and an aggressive freethinker.

Walpole, Sir Robert, Earl of Oxford
(1676 - 1745), famous British statesman. He dominated the House of Commons for 20 years and held the highest offices in the kingdom, and he is regarded by historians as one of the greatest statesmen in English history. He was cynical and not over-scrupulous in promoting his own affairs - political life was at the time thoroughly corrupt - and promoted his bastards to bishoprics, but folk must have smiled when he described himself in the House of Commons as 'a sincere member of the Church of Eng…

Ward, Lester Frank
(1841 - 1913), sociologist. Studied law, entered the civil service, then took up geology and had office in the Geological Survey. Herbert Spencer's great achievement stimulated him, though he emphatically rejected Spencer's individualism, and he went on to write the similar comprehensive works (Dynamic Sociology, Pure Sociology, Glimpses of the Cosmos, etc.), which made him famous in America or 'America's most distinguished Sociologist' (International Encyclopedia). He was a thorough agnostic.

Washington, George
(1732 - 1799), First President. Clerical writers are naturally unwilling to admit that he was a freethinker - a non-Christian theist - but, while the evidence of faith which they allege is of the flimsiest description there is ample and solid proof of his heresy. Jefferson says that Morris, who was intimate with Washington, 'often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than he himself did.' (Memoir and Correspondence of T. Jefferson , IV, p. 512). He quote…

Watson, Sir William, LL. D.
(1858 - 1935), British poet. One of the most distinguished English poets of his best period

Wellhausen, Julius
(1844 - 1918), famous German biblical critic and orientalist. Originally a professor of theology he abandoned the clerical career and took up oriental languages. He remained a theist but he did great work in the naturalistic criticism of the Bible at the end of the last century and the beginning of this. He wrote also a number of works on Arabic religion and literature.

Wells, Herbert George, D. Sc.
(1866 - ), novelist and sociologist. His distinction as a writer of fiction obscured the fact that he had had in youth a thorough training in science (zoology) at the London Royal College of Science; and in 1944 he obtained his doctorate in science of London University. This scientific training as well as the remarkable range of his mental qualities explains how a writer of such capacity for imaginative work came to write the first well-balanced universal history and has such a planetary outlook…

Whistler, James M'Neill
(1833 - 1903), eminent painter. He was an American by origin and education who studied art in France, where he shed all religious belief. Armstrong describes in his Reminiscences with what gusto Whistler used to sing blasphemous songs and ridicule the Bible. He settled in London where his 'modernist' art conquered all opposition. Few painters of the time were so rich in international honors.

Whitman, Walt
(1819 - 1892). Although he was mainly engaged in manual labor until 1853, he published in 1855 the prose-poem Leaves of Grass, which made him known wherever English is read. In 1873 he had a paralytic stroke and lingered for 20 years in poverty. He shows his freethought in practically all his work.

Wieland, Christoph Martin
(1733 - 1813), famous German writer. At the age of 16 he had read the whole of the Latin poets and a good deal of Voltaire and other modern freethinkers. Some years later he returned for a short time to the Christian faith, and the religious work of his that is quoted belongs to this period. But he read the British Deists as well as the French Encyclopedists, and for the rest of his life was a Deist without any belief in a future life and author of novels and other works that offended the virtuo…

Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
(1855 - 1919), poet. Her popular sentimental poetry had no little influence in breaking the Christ of orthodoxy. Such lines as 'So many Gods, so many creeds,' etc. were repeated everywhere. Her rather confused beliefs, hovering between pantheism and theism, are given in her New Thought Common Sense. She at least emphatically rejects orthodox Christianity, saying: 'I am neither a Roman Catholic not a Protestant.'

Wilkes, John, F.R.S.
(1727 - 1797), famous British politician. One if the most curious radicals of 18th century life. He had a fine education and was a fellow-student of Baron d'Holbach at Leyden University. He translated the Greek poet Anacreon and won admission to the Royal Society at the age of 22. The king said that he was the best Lord Mayor that London ever had. Yet he was the idol of the workers, some of his writings were burned by the public hangman, and he was expelled from the house of commons and, after a…

Wollaston, William, M. A.
(1660 - 1724), British philosopher. As a teacher he was compelled to take orders in the Church of England but a fortunate legacy made him independent of the sacred body and he at once abandoned it. He devoted himself to writing and the study of philosophy and was locally known as 'the infidel.' For some reason be burned all his manuscripts before he died except The Religion of Nature Delineated , a Deistic treatise. It says something for the freedom of thought at the time that it sold 10,000 cop…

Wollstonecraft, Mary,
see Godwin.

Wood, Sir Henry Joseph
(1869 - 1945), the most popular concert conductor in England. He conducted a number of the annual Music Festivals in British Cathedrals but he was, I understand, an atheist. At all events he was openly a member of the Rationalist Press Association, whose members are practically all atheists or agnostics, until he died.

Woolner, Thomas, R.A.,
(1825 - 1892), British sculpter. He exhibited his first work when he was 17 years old and three years later had a work admitted by the Royal Academy. He joined the Pre-Raphaelites and moved in a circle of brilliant artists but made so little money that he went off to make a fortune in the Australian goldfields. He failed, but on his return to England soon won a position as one of the most distinguished sculptors in the country. Like so many other great artists he did church work but was churchma…

Woolston, Thomas, M.A., B.D.,
(1670 - 1733), famous British Deist. A parson who was deprived of his fellowship at Cambridge University for writing heresy and set out to found a new Christian sect. He published a work A Moderator Between an Infidel and an Apostate but it was so much on the side of the infidel that he was indicted for blasphemy. Later he was tried for blasphemy and sentenced to a year in prison and a fine of $500; and as he had no money he was relegated to the Debtor's Prison and remained there until he died. …

Wright, Chauncy
(1830 - 1875), mathematician. After publishing a series of brilliant papers he was appointed corresponding secretary of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and instructor at Harvard. He was better known as one of the ablest champions of Herbert Spencer and Darwin in America.

Wright, Elizur,
(1804 - 1885). reformer. Ingersoll describes him in one of his speeches as :one of the Titand who attacked the monsters, the gods, of his time.' He was one of the fine and broad-minded workers of the last century who devoted themselves to all progressive causes. He was secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society, editor of the Abolitionist, President of the National Liberal League, contributor to the Boston Investigator and the Freethinkers Magazine, and an aggressive atheist.

Wright, Frances.
See D'Arusmont.

Wurtz, Professor Charles Adolph
(1817 - 1884), eminent French Chemist. He succeeded the great Dumas in the chair of chemistry at Paris University and later became professor of organic chemistry to the Faculty of sciences. As such he took a leading part in breaking down the hard reactionary line between the inorganic and the organic (which was of use to apologists who insisted that life must have been created) by the artificial production of organic substances. He was one of the chief leaders of the new science. The Third Repub…

Yeats, William Butler
(1865 - 1939), leading Irish poet. The common idea that Yeats, being one of the chief writers of Dublin in our time, was a Catholic is very far astray. In early life he lived for some years in London and was intimate with freethinkers like Morris, Huxley and Symons. On his return to Ireland he helped to found the Irish Theater and became chief literary figure in the Irish Renaissance. He never concealed his skepticism. In an early poem ('A Boat') he said that he would rather be naked than wear g…

Youmans, Edward Livingston, M.D.
(1821 -1887) chemist and educationist. Although blind for some years in his teens he pursued his studies and at the age of 30 won his medical degree at Vermont. He was more interested in scientific education and did a good deal of popular lecturing. He founded and edited Popular Science Monthly and planned an 'International Science Series' for the simultaneous publication of books in six countries. He was a Spencerian Agnostic, and it was largely owing to his ecertions that Spencer's works first…

Zanardelli, Guiseppe
(1826 - 1903) eminent Italian Jurist. He fought against the Papal troops in 1848 and was later derived of his chair of lae. After the unification of Italy he occupied the highest political offices, including the Ministry of Justice, completed the new Criminal Code, and purified the administration of justice, which had been foul under the Popes. In the end he became President of the Camerar then Premier, and was bitterly opposed and vilified by the clergy. He was an atheist.

Zangwill, Israel, B.A.,
(1864 - 1926), British-Jewish writer, author of Children of the Ghetto and other notable books. He was trained as a teacher but found that he had some brilliance as a writer. His play The Next Religion

Zeller, Professor Eduard
(1814 - 1908), German philosopher. He was a close friend of D.F. Strauss (See) whose views he shared so openly, although he was a professor of theology that he was expelled from his chair. After a time he abandoned theology for philosophy, though he still called himself a Liberal Christian. A profound study of Greek philosophy led him on to agnosticism, and the three-volume history (The Philosophy of the Greeks ) which he published became the standard work on the subject. It is valuable in makin…

Zimmern, Helen
(1846 - 1895), British writer. Of German origin she was naturalized in England and took up journalism. She settled in Italy and had a distinguished literary career as well as being a notable figure in international journalism. She wrote important lives of Schopenhauer and Lessing and translated several of Nietzsche's works and many Italian works into English.

O'Connor, General Arthur Condorcet
(1765-1852), Irish soldier. He was called to the bar in Ireland but joined the rebels against England and was imprisoned. He passed to France where he became general of a division in Napoleon's army. He enthusiastically adopted the views of the French skeptics and married the daughter of Condorcet whose name and views he took, and he edited Condorcet's works. Under the restoration he defiantly edited a freethinking magazine.

O'Higgins, General Bernardo
(1776+1842). Chilean soldier and statesman. A natural son of Marquis O'Higgins, an Irish Catholic who settled in South America and was Governor of Chili for the Spaniards. The son joined the anticlerical rebels and after the expulsion of the Spaniards was for a time benevolent dictator of the country. Like his friend General Miranda (See) he was an atheist.

O'Neill, Eugene Gladstone, Litt.D.,
(1888- ) playwright, Nobel Prize winner. He won also the Pulitzer Prize, the Gold Medal of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and other honors but his place in American art needs no definition. It is clear from his plays (especially The Dynamo), that he has rejected the Catholic faith in which he was reared. Like Aldous Huxley and a few other literary men he is uneasily poised between a dead creed and what he regards (having little knowledge of it) as the impotence of science. B.H. Clar…