A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists

Rationalism has, like every other idea or institution, evolved; and the earlier phases of its evolution still live, in some measure, side by side with more advanced stages of rebellion. Both from the pressure of environment, the nature of the human mind, and the comparative poverty of positive knowledge in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was natural that Rationalism should first take the form of a simple protest against the supernatural and sacerdotal elements of the prevailing faith. The Socinians or early Unitarians were the first Rationalists, in the period which this dictionary covers. I am not concerned with what we may call the Rationalists of earlier civilizations, and do not propose to include a list of all the thinkers of ancient Greece and Rome, Persia and Arabia. For the same reason I omit entirely the long list of Chinese and Japanese scholars, all of whom are Rationalists, and nearly all of whom' are Agnostics. Nor do I propose to include the names of early Rationalizing Christians like Abelard and Arnold of Brescia, the Epicureans and Materialists and Cathari of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, or even the Humanists and nee-pagans of the Renaissance. In order to stress the full significance of the modern development, these earlier outbreaks or phases of rebellion are omitted. The period which this dictionary covers begins at the death of Giordano Bruno in the year 1600.

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