Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With The Freethinkers."

The same writer says, "His father was Sir Henry Blount, the Socrates of the age, for his aversions to the reigning sophisms and hypocrisies, eminent in all capacities: the best...

"Had God, from time to time, spoken to all mankind in their several languages, and his words had miraculously conveyed the same ideas to all persons; yet he could not speak more...

"Our senses and our faculties as developed in and by the exercise of our senses, are the only guides with which I am acquainted. And I do not see why, even admitting a belief in...

"I was very much struck in reading some portions of the work [Carlile's], and agitated and shaken by its arguments on some points. The object of many of its articles was to prov...

In his physical speculations, Des Cartes has allowed his imagination to run very wild. His famous theory of vortices is an example of this. Assuming extension to be the essence...

"A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fa...

On the 10th of January, 1776, "Common Sense" was published, its circulation soon reaching 100,000 copies. The effect this remarkable pamphlet produced upon the minds of the Amer...

"These ideas, analogous to the condition of their inventors, were for a long time confused and cross. Wandering in woods, beset with wants, destitute of resources, men in their...

Spinoza appears in his boyhood to have been an apt scholar, and to have rapidly mastered the tasks set him by his teachers. Full of rabbinical lore he won the admiration of the...

This is equivalent to saying that we can only reason concerning man as a finite part of an infinite existence, and we can only predicate respecting what comes under the _categor...

And from the burning plains Where Lybian monsters yell, From the most gloomy glens Of Greenland's sunless clime, To where the golden fields Of fertile England spread Their harve...

"I am going to examine in this discourse what the mind receives from nature and education; for which purpose it is necessary first, to determine what is here meant by the word N...

In these pages, appearing under the title of "Half-Hours with the Freethinkers," are collected in a readable form an abstract of the lives and doctrines of some of those who hav...

Wearied with his rambling and unsettled mode of living, Voltaire bought an estate at Ferney, in the Pays des Gex, where he spent the last twenty years of his life. He rebuilt th...

"That table is a snare, that cup is deadly poison that bread shall send thy soul to Hell. Well, then! try again, believer: perhaps you had better join the Missionary Society, an...

"Nothing can ever spring from nothing, nor can anything ever return to nothing. The universe always existed, and will always remain; for there is nothing into which it can be ch...

There is also great difficulty in deciding as to the manner of Toland's life; of this, however, we are certain, that he caused great opposition in his own day, and he was patron...

Lord Brougham has rendered service not only to "Letters," but also to Freethought, by his admirable "Lives," incomparably the best we have, of Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Gibbon,...

Frances Wright, afterwards Madame D'Arusmont, was a native of Dundee. She was born on the 6th of September, 1795. She came of a wealthy family, who had been extensive holders of...

"For my part, I do not pretend to decide this dispute, but what more perplexes me is, how, out of one rib, the whole mass of a woman's body could be built? For a rib does not, p...

The first work of importance which Toland published, was a "Life of John Milton, containing besides the History of his Works, several extraordinary Characters of Men and Books,...

Concerning philosophy in general, the doctrine of the Stoics was, that wisdom consists in the knowledge of things divine and human; that philosophy is such an exercise of the mi...

Paul Thyry, Baron D'Holbach, was born at Heidesheim, in the Palatinate, in the month of January, 1723. His father appears to have been a very wealthy man, and brought his son to...

Perhaps no Freethinker, with the single exception of Hobbes, was so attacked during his life as Collins. Toland and Woolston were persecuted and driven into prison and poverty;...

"As for the miserable abode of souls, the imagination of fanatics, who were desirous of governing the people, strove to assemble the most frightful images to render it still mor...

Such is the commencement of this celebrated book, it is based upon materialism; every argument must stand this test upon Hobbes's principles, and characteristically are they ela...

When the divergence took place between the Jacobins and Girondists, Condorcet strove to unite them; but every day brought fresh troubles, and the position of the Seneca of the R...

Spinoza is scarcely likely to become a great favorite with the "Woman's Rights Convention." In his ninth chapter of the same Treatise, he says, "If by nature women were equal to...

"When I sent the Sunday Institute a programme of my lectures, I authorised the Secretary to announce, through the papers, that I was willing to meet any clergyman, of good stand...