Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/11

PREFACE pressure upon the foundations of the Papal system. When the Reformers substituted the Bible for the Papal authority, the next phase of Rationalism was naturally an application of literary and historical criticism to this new foundation of popular belief. The Deists rejected the idea of revelation, miracle, mystery, and priestly authority, yet acknowledged the existence of a Supreme Being, and generally admitted the personal immortality of the human mind. Their chief representatives are assuredly entitled to be included in this volume; and on the same principle of selection those who hold the same position to-day, and are now usually called Theists, must be included.

In the second half of the eighteenth century this movement reached its height. The rights of man, which that generation heatedly discussed, included the rights of reason; and the disintegration of political as well as of priestly authority stimulated criticism by enlarging its liberty. In the new free atmosphere of the United States, in the cultural revival which followed the long period of disturbance in England, in the lax and luxurious condition of French society and Church, and in the &quot;storm and stress&quot; phase which awoke the intellect of Germany, Rationalism spread rapidly and produced an abundant and very candid literature. It was inevitable that many should now pass to a further stage of rebellion, especially when the French Revolution and the Napoleonic disturbance shook the traditional frame of authority. Deism had regarded the Bible as the basis of the Churches and assailed it. Many now sought to concentrate reason upon the basis of Deism itself. Men began to describe themselves as Pantheists, Atheists, and Materialists. A new phase of philosophical development began with Kant in Germany, and, how ever much it wavered in its successive oracles between Theism, Pantheism, and Atheism, it in all cases shattered the foundation of philosophical reasoning on which the Deists had confidently reared their &quot; natural religion.&quot;

The French Revolution and the return of reactionary authorities checked or confined for a time these new developments of Rationalism. There was a general tendency to fear that an attack upon authority in religion led to an attack upon the bases of political authority or economic security. In nearly every country of Europe a generation passed without any considerable Rationalist activity. Once more it fell to men of little cultural distinction, of bold and uncompromising character, to articulate the rights of reason against authority and suffer the penalty. The names of these men also are gratefully included in this. If their work was at times defective in taste or culture, their courage lays us under a debt. They won freedom for a later generation, and they were almost the first educators of the mass of the people in a rational philosophy of life.

Before the middle of the nineteenth century the third and definitive stage vii