Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/118

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CHILTON


a leading champion also of the cause of women, and is very severe on Christianity in her History of the Condition of Women in All Ages (1845). Generally, as in her Letters (1883) and her Progress of Religious Ideas Through Successive Ages (3 vols., 1855), she is tender to Christianity and very religious, but a non-Christian Theist. D. Oct. 20, 1880.

CHILTON, William, Owenite. B. 1815. In his early life he was a bricklayer, but he studied and took a very active part in the early Eationalist movement in England. In 1841 he took over, as editor and printer, The Oracle of Reason from Southwell. He wrote also in The Movement and The Reasoner, and he contributed to the Library of Reason some remarkable early Darwin- istic articles on " The Theory of Develop ment " (1842). D. May 28, 1855.

CHUBB, Percival, American educator. B. (England) June 17, 1860. Ed. Sta tioners School, London. For ten years he was in the service of the Local Govern ment Board, and he then emigrated to America. He became lecturer to the Brooklyn Institute, then instructor on pedagogy to the Pratt Institute, and later principal of the High School Department of the Ethical Culture Society. He was appointed lecturer on English to the University of New York School of Paeda- gogy, and since 1911 he has been leader of the St. Louis Ethical Society. He has edited Emerson, Montaigne, Lincoln, Browning, etc., and published many works. Mr. Chubb is one of the leading Ethical Eationalists of America.

CHUBB, Thomas, Deist. B. Sep. 29, 1679. Chubb was a self-educated tallow- chandler who obtained some repute in London by a series of Unitarian tracts. Pope calls him "a wonderful phenomenon"; his work is unscholarly and inelegant, but clear and strong. He developed into Deism, and published a Discourse concern ing Reason (1731), in which he rejects all 163


revelation and inspiration. D. Feb. 8, 1747.

CLARETIE, Jules Arsene Arnaud,

French writer. B. Dec. 3, 1840. Ed. Lycee Bonaparte, Paris. He won great distinction as a journalist and dramatic critic, and in 1863 published his first novel. In 1868 the Minister of Public Instruction refused him permission to lecture, and he published an eloquent and thoroughly Eationalist defence of free speech (La Libre Parole). In 1885 he became Director of the Theatre Frangais. Claretie is one of the most prolific and brilliant of recent French writers. He is a Commander of the Legion of Honour and a member of the Academy.

CLARKE, Marcus Andrew Hislop,

Australian writer. B. Apr. 24, 1846. He went to Australia in 1863 and joined the staff of the Argus (1867), after a few years on a station. In 1876 he became assistant librarian at the Public Library, Melbourne. His chief work, out of numerous poems, dramas, and novels, is the powerful story His Natural Life (1874). In 1879 he pub lished a Eationalist essay, " Civilization without Delusion," in the Victoria Review. He rejected Christianity, and admitted only an unknown and unknowable God. D. Aug. 2, 1881.

CLEMENCEAU, Georges Eugene Benjamin, M.D., French statesman. B. Sep. 28, 1841. Ed. Nantes and Paris. His father was a Vendean medical man and Materialist, and in his doctorate-thesis (1865) Clemenceau showed that he had early embraced the same philosophy. After completing his medical studies he went to the United States, returning to France in 1869. He was Mayor of Mont- martre during the Siege, and was in 1871 returned to the National Assembly. After a few years on the Paris Municipal Council he was elected to the Chambre in 1876, and from that year until 1893 (when the Clericals and Boulangists defeated him) he 164