Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/270

 MACDONALD

MACKAY

and continued his work in Turin. Macchi was a strong Rationalist, and a contributor to the Libero Pensiero. He was expelled from Turin, and later from Genoa ; and he joined the revolutionaries in 1848. In 1861 he was elected, as republican and anti-clerical, to the Italian Parliament, and in 1879 he passed to the Senate. He wrote a number of economic and political works, and con tributed constantly to Rationalist perio dicals. D. Dec. 24, 1880.

MACDONALD, Eugene Montague,

American journalist. B. Feb. 4, 1855. Ed. private school. He worked on a farm in Maine from his thirteenth to his fifteenth year, and he was then put in a printing- house in New York. D. M. Bennett [SEE] , founder of the TruthseeJcer, took him as foreman, and when Bennett died in 1883 Macdonald and two others bought the paper and established the Truthseeker Company. He edited the American organ of Rationalism for twenty-six years, relin quishing it to his brother when his health failed, a year or two before his death. D. Feb. 26, 1909.

MACDONALD, George Everett, editor of the Truthseeker, brother of the preceding. B. Apr. 11, 1857. As a boy he worked on his uncle s farm and got a little schooling. At the age of seventeen he went to New York, and joined his brother in printing. He contributed to the Truthseeker, and educated himself while learning printing. In 1877 he went to California and founded the San Francisco Rationalist paper, Free- thought. It failed in 1881, and after twelve years as a provincial journalist he returned to New York. In 1907 he took over the New York Truthseeker from his brother, and still edits it.

MACH, Professor Ernst von, Austrian physicist. B. Feb. 18, 1838. Ed. Vienna University. In 1864 he became professor of mathematics at Gratz University, and in 1867 professor of physics at Prague University. He was Rector of Prague

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University 1879-80, and professor at Vienna University from 1895 to 1901. He was ennobled and admitted to the Austrian House of Peers on his retirement in the latter year. Mach s works are of great importance in his science. He was especially occupied with the relation of physics to psychology, and the develop ment of his views brought him to an advanced Rationalist position. He main tained that there was no essential difference between the physical and the psychic that both consisted of elements thus cutting the root of the Christian doctrine. Several of his works were translated into- English (The Analysis of Sensations, 1886 ; The Science of Mechanics, 1893, etc.). D. Feb. 19, 1916.

MACHADO, Bernardino, third President of the Republic of Portugal. B. 1851. For many years before the Revolution Machado was a professor at Coimbra Uni versity. He was an outspoken Republican and Rationalist, and has taken part in the annual Freethought Congresses. He joined the Revolutionaries in 1910, and became Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Government. In 1915 he was elected President by 134 votes against 45, but the Revolution of 1917 unseated him.

MACKAY, Charles, L.L.D., poet and journalist. B. Mar. 27, 1814. Ed. private schools London and Brussels. In 1830 he became a private secretary in Belgium. Two years later he returned to London and engaged in journalism. He was sub editor of the Morning Chronicle from 1835 to 1844, editor of the Glasgow Argus from 1844 to 1847, and editor of the Illustrated- London News from 1852 to 1858. Mackay was best known to his generation as a, song writer. In 1834 he issued Songs and Poems, and from 1846 onward he regularly wrote songs which were set to music, and were in some cases (&quot; There s a Good Time Coming, Boys, &quot;etc.) extraordinarily popular. He was a more serious artist than was generally imagined, and was very sym- 468