Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/107

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CAENEGIE


CAENEKI


by writing. For a few years he was the tutor of Charles and Arthur Buller. He was still religious, though not a Christian, and he began to take a deep interest in Goethe and German philosophy. In 1822 his Life of Schiller brought him some success in letters, and he ceased to teach. In 1826 he married Miss Welsh. He settled in London in 1834, and his French Eevolution (1836-37) established his genius. Sartor Besartus, the finest exposition of his vague Pantheistic philosophy, had been published in 1834, but for a long time it awakened little more than distrust and dislike. In 1865 he was elected Kector of Edinburgh University, and his fame rose so high that in 1874 he was offered, and he refused, the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. Carlyle glorified Voltaire (in an essay on him) for giving " the death- stab to modern superstition," and his Frederick the Great always eulogizes that monarch as a pupil of Voltaire. His scorn of Christianity also finds expression in his Life of Sterling. He said to the poet Allingham : " I have for many years strictly avoided going to church or having anything to do with Mumbo-Jumbo " (Diary, p. 217). When Allingham spoke to him about a future life, he said : " We know nothing. All is, and must be, utterly incomprehen sible " (p. 269). There is the same testi mony in the Life of Tennyson (ii, 410). In spite of his strictures on Darwinism and Positivism, Carlyle was one of the greatest Rationalist forces of his time, and one of the finest moral influences in Rationalism. D. Feb. 5, 1881.

CARNEGIE, Andrew, LL.D., philan thropist. B. Nov. 25, 1837. He was taken to the United States in 1848, and became a weaver s assistant in a cotton factory. Three years later he entered the telegraphic service at Pittsburg, and he rose to the position of superintendent. His prosperity began with his interest in the Woodruff Sleeping Car Company and certain oil- mines ; and after the Civil War, in which he rendered great service, he turned to

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iron. He established at Pittsburg the Keystone Bridge Works and the Union Iron Works. By 1888 he was the chief owner of the Homestead Steel Works. In 1899 his various interests were united in the Carnegie Steel Company, which in 1901 was merged in the United States Steel Corporation. The benefactions of Mr. Carnegie, which amounted in all to about 70,000,000, far surpass every his torical record, and have founded and munificently endowed a number of institu tions of the greatest value to humanity. He was Lord Rector of St. Andrew s University (1903-7) and Aberdeen Univer sity (1912-14), and he received his degree from thirteen different universities. Mr. Carnegie wrote a few books (especially The Gospel of Wealth, 1900, and Life of James Watt, 1905), but he was generally reticent about religion. A few sceptical observations occur in his life of Watt. He refers to " the mysterious realm which envelops man " (p. 33) and says, apropos of philosophic discussion : " We are but young in all this mystery business " (p. 54). He once said (as the Catholic Citizen wrote at the time of his death) that he gave money for church organs " in the hope that the organ music will distract the con gregation s attention from the rest of the service." The New York Truthseeker (Aug. 23, 1919) quotes a confession of faith he made in 1912, rejecting " all creeds " and declaring himself " a disciple of Confucius and Franklin." To Dr. Moncure D. Conway, w ? ith whom he was on terms of intimacy, he made it clear that he was to all intents and purposes an Agnostic. D. Aug. 10, 1919.

GARNERI, Baron Bartolomaus von,

Austrian philosophical writer. B. Nov. 3, 1821. Ed. Vienna University. Carneri was a prominent Liberal representative in the Austrian Parliament from 1870 to 1890, and a devoted student of science and aesthetics. Adopting the philosophy of Feuerbach and the doctrine of evolution, he issued a number of Rationalist works on 142