J. M. Wheeler

“ He studied at Berlin and Bonn for the Church, but left it to follow science, ’37. Has become famous as a physiologist, especially by his Researches in Animal Electricity, ’48–60. With Helmholtz he has done much to establish the new era of positive science, wrongly called by opponents Materialism. Du Bois-Reymond holds that thought is a function of the brain and nervous system, and that “soul” has arisen as the gradual results of natural combinations, but in his Limits of the Knowledge of Nature, ’72, he contends that we must always come to an ultimate incomprehensible. ”

“ But my justification, if any, must be found in my purpose, which is to record the names of those who have contributed in their generation to the advance of Freethought. No one can be more conscious of the imperfections of my work than myself, but I console myself with the reflection of Plato, that “though it be the merit of a good huntsman to find game in a wide wood, it is no discredit if he do not find it all” ”

“ At the crisis of the struggle with Robespierre, Danton declined to strike the first blow and disdained to fly. Arrested March, 1794, he said when interrogated by the judge, “My name is Danton, my dwelling will soon be in annihilation; but my name will live in the Pantheon of history.” He maintained his lofty bearing on the scaffold, where he perished 5 April, 1794. For his known scepticism Danton was called fils de Diderot. Carlyle calls him “a very Man.”
Dapper (Olfert) , Dutch physician, who occupied himself with history and geography, on which he produced important works. ”

“ His work on the Destruction of the Jesuits is a caustic and far-reaching production. In a letter to Frederick the Great, he says: “As for the existence of a supreme intelligence, I think that those who deny it advance more than they can prove, and scepticism is the only reasonable course.” He goes on to say, however, that experience invincibly proves the materiality of the “soul.” Died 29 Oct. 1783. In 1799 two volumes of his posthumous essays were printed in Paris. His works prove d’Alembert to have been of broad spirit and of most extensive knowledge. ”

“ In Paris he studied both law and medicine, and after being Professor in the Faculty of Science at Bordeaux, he in 1869 obtained the chair of physiology in the Faculty of Science at Paris, and distinguished himself by his scientific experiments. In ’70 he offered his services to the Government of National Defence, and in ’72 was elected to the National Assembly, where he signalised himself by his Radical opinions. Gambetta recognised his worth and made him Minister of Public Instruction, in which capacity he organised French education on a Secular basis. ”

“ He said, “If a man for a hundred years worship Agni in the forest, and if he but for one moment pay homage to a man whose soul is grounded in true knowledge, better is that homage than sacrifice for a hundred years.” According to Ceylonese writers Gautama Buddha died at Kusinagara, B.C. 543.
Gautier (Théophile) , exquisite French poet and prose writer, b. Tarbes, 31 Aug. 1811. He wrote no definite work against priestcraft or superstition, but the whole tendency of his writings is Pagan. His romanticism is not Christian, and he made merry with “sacred themes” as well as conventional morality. ”

“ German writer and doctor of philosophy b. Hamburg, 10 Oct. 1829. Educated at Frankfurt and Giessen, is a clever journalist, and has translated the History of the English Press. Has written an Atheistic work, Das Leben Ohne Gott (Life without God) , with the motto from Feuerbach “No religion is my religion, no philosophy my philosophy,” 1875. He has also written on the Psychology of Love, and other important works. ”

“ Bovio (Giovanni) , Professor of Political Economy in the University of Naples and deputy to the Italian parliament; is an ardent Freethinker. Both in his writings and in parliament Prof. Bovio opposes the power of the Vatican and the reconciliation between Church and State. He has constantly advocated liberty of conscience and has promoted the institution of a Dante chair in the University of Rome. He has written a work on The History of Law, a copy of which he presented to the International Congress of Freethinkers, 1887. ”

“ Guyau (Marie Jean) , French philosopher, b. 1854, was crowned at the age of 19 by the Institute of France for a monograph on Utilitarian morality. In the following year he had charge of a course of philosophy at the Condorcet lycée at Paris. Ill health, brought on by excess of work, obliged him to retire to Mentone, where he occupied himself with literature. His principal works are La Morale d’Epicure (the morality of Epicurus) , in relation to present day doctrines, 1878, La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine (Contemporary English Ethics) , ’79, crowned by the Academy of Moral Sciences. ”

“ Atheism furnishes no man with arguments to be vicious; but superstition, or what the world made by religion, is the greatest possible encouragement to vice, by setting up something as religion, which shall atone and commute for the want of virtue. This remarkable letter ends with the words “Remember that the only true divinity is humanity.”
Place (Francis) , English Radical reformer and tailor; b. 1779 at Charing Cross. He early became a member of the London, [259] Corresponding Society. He wrote to Carlile’s Republican and Lion. ”

“ Among his friends was Mary Ann Evans (“George Eliot”) , who accompanied Mr. and Mrs. Bray to Italy. His works on The Philosophy of Necessity (1841) and Cerebral Psychology (1875) give the key to all his thought. He wrote a number of Thomas Scott’s series of tracts: Illusion and Delusion, The Reign of Law in Mind as in Matter, Toleration with remarks on Professor Tyndall’s “Address,” and a little book, Christianity in the Light of our Present Knowledge and Moral Sense (1876) . He also wrote A Manual of Anthropology and similar works. ”

“ He became correspondent of Voltaire, Rousseau, d’Alembert, Helvetius, and other philosophers. “Ce prêtre athée,” as Ad. Franck calls him, was the author of a treatise entitled La Vérité, ou le Vrai Système, in which he appears to have anticipated all the leading ideas of Hegel. God, he says, as separated from existing things, is pure nothingness. An analysis of his remarkable work, which remained in manuscript for three-quarters of a century, has been published by Professor Beaussire (Paris, 1855) . ”

“ Heine was the greatest and most influential German writer since Goethe. He called himself a Soldier of Freedom, and his far-flashing sword played havoc with the forces of reaction.
Heinzen (Karl Peter) German-American poet, orator and politician, b. near Dusseldorf, 22 Feb. 1809. He studied medicine at Bonn, and travelled to Batavia, an account of which he published (Cologne 1842) . A staunch democrat, in 1845 he published at Darmstadt a work on the Prussian Bureaucracy, for which he was prosecuted and had to seek shelter in Switzerland. At Zurich he edited the German Tribune and the Democrat. ”

“ Feuerbach (Ludwig Andreas) , brother of the preceding, b. Landshut, Bavaria, 28 July 1804. He studied theology with a view to the Church, but under the influence of Hegel abandoned it for philosophy. In ’28 he was made professor at Erlangen, but was dismissed in consequence of his first published work, Thoughts upon Death and Immortality, ’30, in which he limited immortality to personal influence on the human race. After a wandering life he married in ’37, and settled near Anspach. He published there a history of modern philosophy from Bacon to Spinoza. ”

“ At Rome and Padua he studied Averroism, entered the Carmelite order, and travelled in Switzerland, Germany, Holland and France making himself admired and respected by his rationalistic opinions. He returned to Italy in 1611, but the Inquisition was on his track and he took refuge at Venice. In 1612 he visited England, and in 1614 got lodged in the Tower. When released he went to Paris and published a Pantheistic work in Latin On the Admirable Secrets of Nature, the Queen and Goddess of Mortals. It was condemned by the Sorbonne and burnt, and he fled to Toulouse in 1617 ”

“ Akbar showed toleration alike to Christians, Muhammadans, and to all forms of the Hindu faith. He had the Christian gospels and several Brahmanical treatises translated into Persian. The result of his many conferences on religion between learned men of all sects, are collected in the Dabistan. Akbar was brought up as a Muhammadan, but became a Theist, acknowledging one God, but rejecting all other dogmas. ”

“ A chief doctrine is the expansion of life. Died Mentone, 31 March, 1888.
Guyot (Yves) , French writer and statesman, b. Dinan, 1843. He wrote with Sigismond Lacroix a Study of the Social Doctrines of Christianity, ’73, and a work on morality in the Bibliothèque Matérialiste. Elected on the Municipal Council of Paris ’74–78, he has since been a deputy to the Chamber, and is now a member of the government. He has written the Principles of Social Economy, ’84, and many works on that topic; has edited Diderot’s La Religieuse and the journals Droits de l’homme and le Bien public. ”

“ The basis of your religion is injustice; the Son of God, the pure, the immaculate, the innocent, is sacrificed for the guilty,” etc.
Cabanis (Pierre Jean George) , called by Lange “the father of the materialistic physiology,” b. Conac, 5 June, 1757. Became pupil of Condillac and friend of Mirabeau, whom he attended in his last illness, of which he published an account [64] 1791. He was also intimate with Turgot, Condorcet, Holbach, Diderot, and other distinguished Freethinkers, and was elected member of the Institute and of the Council of Five Hundred in the Revolution. ”

“ In 1780 he published the The Certainty of the Proofs of Mohammedanism, under the pseudonym of Ali-gier-ber, an anagram of Bergier, whose Certainty of the Proofs of Christianity he parodies. He travelled widely, but became a resident of Paris and a warm partisan of the Revolution, to which he devoted his large fortune. He wrote a reply to Burke, and continually wrote and spoke in favor of a Universal Republic. On 19 June, 1790, he, at the head of men of all countries, asked a place at the feast of Federation, and henceforward was styled “orator of the human race.” ”

“ In early life he had been a captain both in the Prussian and English service, and in 1765 took his M.D. degree at Leyden. He published many books on medical science, a synopsis of the natural history of Great Britain and Ireland, and several humorous pieces, anonymously. His principal work is entitled Biographia Literaria, a biographical history of English literature, 1777. Throughout the work he loses no opportunity of displaying his hostility to the theologians, and is loud in his praises of Voltaire. ”

“ Eve’merus or Euhemerus ( Εὐήμερος) , a Sicilian author of the time of Alexander the Great, who sought to rationalise religion, and treated the gods as dead heroes. He is usually represented as an Atheist.
Eudes (Emile François Désiré) , French Communist, b. Roncey, 1844. He became a chemist, and was condemned, with Régnard, to three months’ imprisonment for writing in La Libre Pensée, ’67, of which he was director. He joined the ranks of the Commune and became a general. When the Versailles troops entered Paris he escaped to Switzerland. On his return after the Amnesty, he wrote with Blanqui. ”

“ Was educated at Westminster and Oxford, where he graduated M.A. 1767. Bentham is justly regarded as the father of the school of philosophical Radicalism. In philosophy he is the great teacher of Utilitarianism; as a jurist he did much to disclose the defects of and improve our system of law. Macaulay says he “found jurisprudence a gibberish and left it a science.” His most pronounced Freethought work was that written in conjunction with Grote, published as An Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion, by Philip Beauchamp, 1822. ”

“ Long live the republic! Sprung into fame by his Hymn to Satan, ’69, by which he intended the spirit of resistance. He has written many poems and satires in which he exhibits himself an ardent Freethinker and Republican. At the end of ’57 he wrote his famous verse “Il secoletto vil che cristianeggia”—“This vile christianising century.” In ’60 he became professor of Greek in Bologna University, being suspended for a short while in ’67 for an address to Mazzini. In ’76 he was elected as republican [68] deputy to the Italian Parliament for Lugo di Romagna. ”

“ He embraced the doctrines of Comte, and in ’45 published a lucid analysis of the Positive Philosophy. He translated the Life of Jesus, by Strauss, and wrote the Literary History of France. His Dictionary of the French Language, in which he applied the historical method to philology, is one of the most colossal works ever performed by one man. He wrote on Comte and Positive Philosophy, Comte and Mill, etc., but refused to follow Comte in his later vagaries. From ’67 till his death he conducted La Philosophie Positive. Littré also wrote Science from the Standpoint of Philosophy, ’73 ”

“ An incessant worker. His Natural History in 36 volumes bears witness to the fertility of his mind and his capacity for making science attractive. Buffon lived much in seclusion, and attached himself to no sect or religion. Some of his sentences were attacked by the Sorbonne. Hérault de Sêchelles says that Buffon said: “I have named the Creator, but it is only necessary to take out the word and substitute the power of nature.” Died at Paris 16 April, 1788. ”

“ D. American Freethinker, the son of a Jewish rabbi, was b. in Alzey, Germany, 13 Aug. 1851. He graduated at Columbia College, 1870, was professor of Hebrew and Oriental literature at Cornell University from ’74 to May ’76, when he established in New York the Society of Ethical Culture, to which he discourses on Sundays. In 1877 he published a volume entitled Creed and Deed, in which he rejects supernatural religion. Dr. Adler has also contributed many papers to the Radical literature of America. ”

“ Moreover details concerning many worthy workers are now inaccessible. Freethought boasts its noble army of martyrs of whom the world was not worthy, and who paid the penalty of their freedom in prison or at the stake. Some of the names of these are only known by the vituperation of their adversaries. I have done my best to preserve some trustworthy record of as many as possible.
The only complete work with a similar design of which I have any knowledge, is the Dictionnaire des Athées anciens et modernes, by Sylvain Maréchal with its supplements by Jerome de Lalande the Astronomer, An. ”

“ A work on the Benefit of Christ’s Death has been attributed to him on insufficient grounds. It is attributed to Benedetto da Mantova.
Pallas (Peter Simon) , German naturalist and traveller, b. Berlin, 22 Sept. 1741. Educated as a physician at Gottingen and Leyden, he was invited by Catherine II. to become Professor of Natural History at St. Petersburg. He travelled through Siberia and settled in the Crimea. In 1810 he returned to Berlin, where he died 8 Sept. 1811. Lalande spoke highly of him, and Cuvier considered him the founder of modern geology. ”

“ Linton (William James) , poet, engraver, and author, b. at London, 1812. A Chartist in early life, he was intimately associated with the chief political refugees. He contributed to the democratic press, and also, we believe, to the Oracle of Reason. He wrote the Reasoner tract on “The Worth of Christianity.” He was one of the founders of the Leader, has edited the Truthseeker, the National and the English Republic, and has published Famine a Masque, a Life of Paine, and a memoir of [211] James Watson and some volumes of poems. In ’67 he went to America, but has recently returned. ”