Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/482

 WIGAND

WILKES

and he checked the younger writers like Ooethe ; but Goethe afterwards, when he settled at Weimar, became a warm friend and admirer. Wieland was a marvel of industry and classical knowledge. He translated Horace s Epistles (1782-86) and Satires (1786), Cicero s Letters (1808-1812), Lucian s Dialogues (1788), and many other classical works. But his most important work was a series of exquisite studies of Greek life and thought (Die Geschichte der Abderiten, 1781 ; Agathodamon, 1799 ; and Aristipp und seine Zeitgenossen, 4 vols., 1800-1802), in which his preference for the pagan world is unmistakable. He was a thorough Epicurean, with a light and liberal Theism and no belief in immor tality. The new schools, Eomanticist and Kantist alike, he treated severely. In philosophy he clung to the English empiri cal school. D. Jan. 20, 1813.

WIGAND, Otto, German publisher. B. Aug. 10, 1795. Ed. Gottingen. Wigand was apprenticed to a bookseller, and was for some years a traveller in the trade. He established a business at Pesth, but was expelled for political reasons, and settled at Leipzig. His publishing business there became one of the most considerable in Germany. He published the Hallische Jahrbiicher and other important works, and had a high reputation for integrity. Wigand was very friendly with Arnold Euge and Feuerbach, and issued their Eationalist volumes. His sympathy with such work was well known, and many Eationalists had his assistance. He was also a powerful orator, and was for some years a member of the Prussian Diet. D. Sep. 1, 1870.

WILBRANDT, Adolph von, German

poet and dramatist. B. Aug. 24, 1837. Ed. Eostock, and Berlin and Munich Universities. He was educated chiefly in history and philology, but devoted himself to literature. In 1871 he settled in Vienna, and from 1881 to 1887 he was Artistic Director of the Hofburgertheater. Wil- brandt wrote an immense number of novels, 891

dramas, tragedies, and comedies. His tragedy Gracchus (1875) was awarded the Grillparzer Prize, and in 1896 he won the three Schiller Prizes offered by the Emperor by his tragedy Der Meister von Palmyra. His Eationalism is chiefly found in his novel Geister und Menschen (1864, on Goethe s principles), his tragedy Giordano Bruno (1874), and his Holderlin, derDichter des Pantheismus (1870). He was himself a Pantheist. D. June 10, 1911.

WILCOX, Ella Wheeler, American

poet. B. 1855. Ed. Wisconsin University. She married Eobert Wilcox in 1884, and settled in New York. She had begun more than ten years earlier to publish verse (Drops of Water, a volume of temper ance poems, 1872, and Shells, 1873), and her Poems of Passion (1883) had laid the foundation of the great popularity which she ultimately enjoyed in America and the British colonies. She wrote many other volumes of verse, a few novels, and various books on social subjects. Mrs. Wilcox s detachment from the Churches is well known from her constantly-quoted lines, &quot;So many Gods, so many creeds,&quot; etc.; but her views are most plainly given in her New Thought Common Sense (1908). &quot; I am neither a Eoman Catholic nor a Protestant,&quot; she says. &quot; I believe in a Euling Spirit of Intelligence and Love, and in a succession of lives. I believe in the immortality of all life &quot; (p. 136). From other passages it appears that she was rather a Pantheist than a Theist (&quot; We may all be Saviours of the world if we believe in the Divinity which dwells in us,&quot; p. 139, etc.). Her &quot; New Thought &quot; must not be confused with Christian Science. She detested sectarian propa ganda, and trusted to &quot; the power of silent thought.&quot; D. Oct. 28, 1919.

WILKES, John, F.E.S., politician. B. Oct. 17, 1727. Ed. private school, Hert ford, private tutor, and Leyden University. Baron d Holbach was a fellow pupil of Wilkes at Leyden, and this inaugurated a 892