MENDES
MERCIEE
works he contends for personal immortality
and a personal God ; but, as Baur observes,
" he lived entirely in the sphere of Deism
and of natural religion " (quoted in Robert
son s Short History of Freethought, ii, 323).
D. Jan. 4, 1786.
MENDES, Catulle, Jewish-French novelist and dramatist. B. May 22, 1841. At the age of eighteen he founded the Revue fantaisiste at Paris. Two years later (1861) he was prosecuted for his Roman d une nuit, which he published in his review. His Poesies (1872) opened a long series of poems, novels, dramas, and literary works, which have placed him among the most brilliant of recent French writers. He was an ardent Wagnerite (Richard Wagner, 1886) and a powerful dramatic critic (L art au theatre, 3 vols., 1896-1900). His disdainful Rationalism is best seen in his poems and his Pour dire devant le monde (1891). D. Feb. 9, 1909.
MENDIZABAL, Juan Alvarez, Spanish politician. B. 1790. He was the son of a Jew named Mender, which he changed to Mendizabal, and he prospered in business until he adopted advanced ideas and was involved in the conspiracy of 1819. He fled to England, and founded a flourishing bank there. In 1835 he was recalled to Spain by the Liberals to be Minister of Finance. In the brief spell of power of the Voltairean Liberals he severely checked the monastic bodies of Spain, and enriched the national treasury from their swollen coffers. D. Nov. 3, 1853.
MENDUM, Ernest, American journalist. B. Aug. 1, 1853. Ed. Melrose High School and Harvard University. He left Harvard to join his father in the office of the Investigator at Boston, and he rendered great service to Rationalists in connection with the Paine Memorial Hall, at which he often lectured. Mendum was one of the organizers of the Ingersoll Secular Society, and after his father s death he undertook the business management of the Investi-
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gator. Putnam records his services with
much honour in his Four Hundred Years
of Freethought (pp. 775-77).
MENDUM, Josiah P., American journalist, father of preceding. B. July 7, 1811. Mendum in 1844 succeeded Abner Kneeland as proprietor and editor of the Boston Investigator, the first Rationalist organ in the United States, and succeeded in winning for it a position of some influence. He conducted also a publish ing business, and spread the works of Paine, Voltaire, Volney, and other Ration alists. In 1870 he began an agitation for the erection of a hall in memory of Thomas Paine, and the Paine Memorial Hall was opened in 1874. For more than forty years he was one of the chief popular propagandists of Rationalism in the United States. D. Jan 11, 1891.
MENTELLE, Professor Edme, French geographer. B. Oct. 11, 1730. Ed. College de Beauvais. After spending a few years in the Ministry of Finance at Paris, he devoted himself to history and geo graphy. In 1760 he was appointed pro fessor of geography and history at the Military School, and from 1794 to 1810 he was professor at the Ecole Norm ale. During that time he wrote his drastically Rationalist Precis de I histoire des Hebreux (1798) and Precis de I histoire universelle, in which he questioned the historicity of Jesus. D. Dec. 28, 1815.
MERCIER, Charles Arthur, M.D.,
F.R.C.P., F.R.C.S., alienist. B. 1852. Ed. Merchant Taylors School and London Hospital. He began life as a cabin boy, passed to a warehouse and then an office, and somewhat late became a medical student. After acting as physician to various asylums for the insane, he was appointed physician for mental diseases to Charing Cross Hospital, and Examiner in Mental Diseases to London University. Mercier wrote a number of works on mental disease and mental physiology
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