ENGELS
ESPINAS
tration on the way to the scaffold, saying
that he was " an infidel by conviction "
(Maxwell s History of the Irish Rebellion).
D. Sep. 20, 1803.
ENGELS, Friedrich, German Socialist leader. B. Nov. 28, 1820. He went into his father s business, and from 1842 to 1845 he managed a branch of it in Man chester. On his return to Germany he wrote his first Socialist work, Die Lage der arbeitenden Klassen in England. He then co-operated with Karl Marx, but he was in 1850 compelled to return to England on account of his share in the rebellion of 1849. He helped to found the Inter nationale. Engels lived in England again from 1869 to his death. Belfort Bax, who knew him, calls him " the devout Atheist " (Reminiscences, p. 51). He followed Feuer- bach [SEE] in his Eationalist ideas. D. Aug. 5, 1895.
ENGLISH, George Bethune, American writer. B. Mar. 7, 1787. Ed. Harvard. A member of the Boston Bar, he turned to the study of theology, with a view to entering the ministry, but he developed Deistic views. In 1813 he replied to Channing s sermons on infidelity, and published The Grounds of Christianity Examined. In later years he served in the army of Ismail Pacha, and afterwards as agent for the U.S. Government in the Levant. D. Sep. 20, 1828.
ENSOR, George, B.A., Irish Deist. B. 1769. Ed. Trinity College, Dublin. He indulged in political writing, in opposition to the English Government, but otherwise took no active part in politics. In 1806 he published The Independent Man (2 vols.), and in 1814 a Deistic Review of the Miracles, Prophecies, and Mysteries of the Old and New Testaments and of the Morality and Consolation of the Christian Religion. His other works are political. D. Dec. 3, 1843.
ERDMANN, Professor Johann Eduard,
239
German philosopher. B. June 13, 1805.
Ed. Dorpat and Berlin. In 1829 he entered
the Lutheran ministry, but he abandoned
it in 1832, and in 1836 was appointed
professor of philosophy at Halle University.
Erdmann s history of philosophy (2 vols.,
1865-67) is one of the most useful and
learned works on its subject. He was an
Hegelian "the last of the Mohicans,"
Germans say and thought that soul and
body are aspects of one reality. D. June 12,
1892.
ERICSSON, John, American inventor. B. (Sweden) July 31, 1803. Ericsson served for some years as an engineer in the Swedish army. In 1826 he emigrated to London, where he perfected the inven tion of the screw-propeller for steamships, which is mainly due to him. As the English builders were slow to accept his ideas, he went to America in 1839, and the new form of propulsion was at once adopted. He was a brilliant engineer, and an extraordinary number of valuable inven tions stand to his credit. It was he who designed the monitors that were so effec tively used in the Civil War. Ingersoll, who knew him well, tells us that he was one of the profoundest Agnostics I ever met " (Works, vii, 319). The State of New York erected a statue in honour of him, and his remains were conveyed to Sweden on a United States cruiser. D. Mar. 8, 1889.
ESCHERNY, Count Francois Louis d ,
Swiss writer. B. Nov. 24, 1733. Of a wealthy family, he spent his early years in travel and made the acquaintance of Rousseau and other great French Ration alists. In his Lacunes de la philosophie (1783) he chiefly follows Rousseau, and is Deistic. He accepted the better principles of the Revolution, but was driven from France by its excesses. D. July 15, 1815.
ESPINAS, Professor Victor Alfred,
French sociologist. B. May 23, 1844. Ed.
Lyc6e de Sens and Lycee Louis le Grand.
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