Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/477

 WELLS

WESTLAKE

which he then combined in his Einleitung in die drei ersten Evangelien (1905). The great critic eliminated the supernatural from the Bible and from the evolution of religion. D. 1918.

WELLS, Herbert George, B.Sc.,

novelist. B. Sep. 21, 1866. Ed. private school, Bromley (Kent), Midhurst Grammar School, and the London Eoyal College of Science (where he took first-class honours in zoology). Mr. Wells gave early evidence of his literary and imaginative faculty in The Time-Machine (1895) and The Stolen Bacillus, and Other Stories (1895). For a few years he was chiefly known for the construction of scientific romances (The War of the Worlds, 1898, etc.), tinged with Socialist sentiment ; but the social interest grew, and he won much esteem by forecasts of the future and constructive idealism (When the Sleeper Wakes, 1899; Anticipa tions, 1902 ; Mankind in the Making, 1903 ; etc.). In 1902 he was invited to lecture to the Eoyal Institution in that sense (The Discovery of the Future). New Worlds for Old (1908) is the culmination of his socio logical work. With the novel Ann Veronica (1909) he began a series of social-ethical studies in the form of fiction which have raised him to the first rank of British novel ists. The circulation of his works became very high, in spite of the large admixture of philosophizing with his attractive stories. Of late years he has attracted some atten tion by propagating a new form of liberal Theism. Scorning the God of the Churches and his &quot;inordinate lust for propitiation and praise &quot; (Anticipations), and the cosmic Deity of the ordinary Theist, he pleads for the recognition of a &quot; great captain &quot; or 41 elder brother,&quot; a being of very finite power (God the Invisible King, 1917 ; The Soul of a Bishop, 1917 ; First and Last Things, second edition, 1917). He nowhere makes it clear that he ascribes a personal and objective existence to this being. It seems to be an ideal which Mr. Wells thinks it advisable for men to recognize as a guiding star. At times he calls it &quot;the 881

soul of mankind.&quot; Since he also rejects the idea of personal immortality and dissents from the Christian ethic, he stands far apart from any of the Churches, and may be described as a thinly and vaguely Theistic nationalist.

WESTBROOK, Richard Brodhead,

American writer. B. Feb. 8, 1820. In 1840 Westbrook became a Methodist preacher. He seceded from the Methodists, and was for some years with the Presbyterians ; but in 1860 he withdrew entirely from Chris tianity. His Kationalism is expounded in his pamphlets, The Bible : Whence and What ? and Man : Whence and Whither. He was awarded a prize for the best essay on a system of morals apart from religion. In 1888 he was elected President of the American Secular Union. D. Aug. 21, 1899.

WESTBURY, Lord. See BETHELL, ElCHARD (in Supplementary List).

WESTERMARCK, Professor Edward Alexander, Ph.D., LL.D., sociologist. B. (Helsingfors) Nov. 20, 1862. Ed. Normal Lyceum, Helsingfors, and University of Finland. He was appointed to teach sociology at Helsingfors University in 1890, and from 1894 to 1897 he acted as vicar to the professor of philosophy. Since 1907 he has been professor of sociology at London University. Professor Wester- marck s History of Human Marriage (1891) has been translated into German, Swedish, Italian, French, Spanish, Eussian, and Japanese ; and his Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (2 vols., 1906) is the standard treatise on the subject. He is an Agnostic, and dissociates ethics entirely from religion. All his work is characterized by thoroughness and bewildering erudition. He has been for some years an Honorary Associate of the E. P. A.

WESTLAKE, Professor John, B.A.,

LL.D., D.C.L., K.C., jurist. B. Feb. 4,

1828. Ed. Cambridge (Trinity College).

From 1851 to 1860 he was a Fellow of

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