Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/10

PREFACE claimed by men who linger in some branch of the Christian Church, that a more precise statement is needed.

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 covers. I am not concerned with what we may call the Nationalists 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 Neo-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 covers begins at the death of Giordano Bruno in the year 1600.

The Socinians open the modern development, but since they and their successors, the Unitarians, remain a branch of the Christian Church, and retain some measure of the sacerdotal and authoritative element, they do not properly fall into the category of Rationalists, and are not included in this work. Under shelter of their rebellion, or under the stimulation of their large use of reason against faith and authority, there soon appeared the isolated thinkers who herald that more advanced stage of development the Deistic movement. In the seventeenth century, and the early part of the eighteenth century, it was still dangerous to apply the corrosive acid of reason to the bases of the most fundamental of religious doctrines the belief in a Supreme Being. A few ventured already upon that dangerous experiment, and for their brave vindication of the full use of reason, and the horrible penalty they paid at the hands of Protestant or Catholic majorities, their names are honourably inscribed in this work. But, though we have just reason to suspect that some of the early Deists were checked, either in their expressions or their speculations, by the occasional martyrdom of some too candid sceptic and the habitual persecution of "unbelievers," the fact that they generally retained the fundamental religious beliefs is quite intelligible. The Rationalists of the Renaissance had exerted a literary and historical vi