Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/487

 WISLICENUS

WOOD

dedicated to Darwin. He was correspondent for a London paper during the Franco- German War. Walter Crane, who was converted to nationalism by Wise, speaks gratefully of him in his Artists Reminis cences (p. 69). He says that Wise was intended for the Church, but ho left Oxford and quarrelled with his parents &quot;on account of his free opinions.&quot; He followed J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer. D Apr 1 1890.

WISLICENUS, Gustav Adolph,

German writer. B. Nov. 20, 1803. Ed. Halle University. Wislicenus took orders in the Lutheran Church, but he was sus pended for writing an heretical pamphlet, and he founded a Free Congregation. In 1853 he published Die Bibel im Lichte der Bildung unserer Zeit, for which he was prosecuted and sentenced to two years in prison. He went to America, and lectured in Boston and New York. Eeturning to Europe in 1856, he settled at Zurich. His chief Eationalist works are his Bibel fiir denkende Leser betrachtet (2 vols., 1863-64) and Gegenwart und Zukunft der Religion (1873). D. Oct. 14, 1885.

WIXON, Susan H., American reformer. Daughter of a sea-captain of broad views, though of Puritan- Welsh extraction, Miss Wixon rebelled against the creeds in her teens. She became a schoolmistress, and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. She was for a time a Universalist, but she became a thorough Eationalist, and was a very esteemed lecturer in the American movement. S. P. Putnam has several glowing pages on her in his Four Hundred Years of Freethought (pp. 824-28), and says that she was known in Fall Eiver as &quot;the working people s friend.&quot; She acted energetically and bravely in supporting all reforms, and was a prominent member of the Fall Eiver School Board and of various progressive associations. She contributed to the Boston Investigator, and conducted the &quot; Children s Corner &quot; in the New York 901

Truthseeker. Besides various stories and pamphlets on social questions, Miss Wixon wrote The Story Hour, which Putnam describes as the &quot;only illustrated Free thinkers children s story-book in the world.&quot;

WOLLASTON, William, M.A., philo sopher. B. Mar. 26, 1660. Ed. Lichfield and Cambridge (Sidney-Sussex College). In 1682 Wollaston was appointed assistant to the master of Birmingham School. He was later appointed second master, and was compelled to take orders. In 1688 he inherited money, and he retired from teach ing and abandoned clerical work. He made, in his retirement, a thorough study of philosophy and religion, and was currently regarded as &quot; an infidel.&quot; Unfor tunately, before he died he burned all the manuscript he had written except that of a work entitled The Religion of Nature Delineated, which was published after his death (1724). It is said to have sold ten thousand copies in a few years. Wollaston was often confounded with Thomas Wool- ston [SEE], who happened to be of the same college at Cambridge, and some writers think that the confusion is the sole reason for regarding him as a Eationalist. But it is quite plain from his book that he was a Deist. Christianity is ignored as only a discreet Deist would ignore it in those days, and the speculations about man s future &quot;state,&quot; which he regards as only probable, entirely exclude the Chris tian idea of hell. At the most he concludes that the wicked will be &quot;really unhappy &quot; after death (p. 215). D. Oct. 20, 1724.

WOLLSTONECRAFT, Mary. See

GODWIN, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT.

WOOD, Sir Henry Joseph, musician B. Mar. 3, 1869. As early as 1879 he was appointed assistant organist at St. Mary s, Aldermanbury. From 1883 to 1889 he gave public recitals, arid he was then for some years conductor of opera companies and concert tours. In 1895 he was 902