OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Abbott, Leonard Dalton

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​Abbott, Leonard Dalton, American journalist. B. (Liverpool) May 20, 1878. He went to America in 1897 and joined the staff of the Commonwealth. Two years later he passed to the Literary Digest, and since 1905 he has been associate-editor of Current Literature (now Current Opinion}. Mr. Abbott was President of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association in 1910, and he is one of the founders of the Rand School of Social Science and the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. He is President of the Free Speech League and the Francisco Ferrer Association. For many years he has worked devotedly for the poor of New York in the Ferrer School, and he edited the American memorial volume, Francisco Ferrer (1910).
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Acosta, Uriel

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​Acosta, Uriel, Jewish writer. B. 1591. Ed. Oporto. Acosta s family had, under pressure, embraced Christianity, and Uriel became Treasurer of an ecclesiastical college. Familiarity with the life and teaching of the Church drove him back to Jewish monotheism, and he fled to Holland. The continuance of his studies led him on to Deism, and he was so bitterly persecuted by both Jews and Christians that he took his life. His experience of orthodox charity is pathetically recorded in his autobiography, Exemplar Humana Vitæ D. Apr., 1647.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Adams, Charles Francis

* related authors: Charles Francis Adams (1835-1915).
* sister projects: Wikipedia article, Wikidata item.
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​Adams, Charles Francis, American historian, great-grandson of President J. Adams. B. May 27, 1835. Ed. Harvard University. He was admitted to the American bar in 1858, but the Civil War drew him into the army. In 1865 he became brigadier-general and retired from the service. From 1884 to 1890 he was President of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and for two years (1893-95) Chairman of the Massachusetts Park Commission. After 1894 Mr. Adams devoted himself particularly to American history. He was President of the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1895, and of the American Historical Association in 1901. In 1913 he lectured on American history at Oxford University. In a warm tribute to Sir Leslie Stephen, with whose ideal of character and culture he was in the closest sympathy, he says that, after reading An Agnostic's Apology in 1892, he chose Stephen as his "philosopher and ​guide" (Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc., series 2, vol. xviii, pp. 254-56). His lucid and independent writings and high character gave him an eminent position in his State. D. Mar. 20, 1915.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Adams, John

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​Adams, John, second President of the United States. B. (of Devonshire ancestry) Oct. 30, 1735. Ed. Harvard. Admitted to the colonial bar in 1758, Adams soon became one of the leading politicians of Massachusetts, and took an active part in the movement for independence. He seconded the original motion for the Declaration of Independence, and he was one of the most effective workers in various departments of the new Government. For some years he represented the United States in France, Holland, and England (1785-88); and his Defence of the Constitution of the United States (3 vols., 1787) rendered most valuable service to his country. He was Vice-President of the Republic from 1788 to 1796, and President from 1796 to 1800. The attempt that has been made to represent President Adams as other than an advanced Deist is frivolous. His grandson and biographer was a devout Unitarian, yet he cannot quite claim even the liberal tenets of Boston Unitarianism for the President. "In later years," he says, "he made a study of all religions and fixed his own theological convictions very much in the mould adopted by the Unitarians of New England" (Life of J. Adams, ii, 384). Professor Fiske more justly says: "Later in life he was sometimes called a Unitarian, but of dogmatic Christianity he seems to have had as little as Franklin or Jefferson (article "Adams" in Appleton's Encyclopedia). Adams's letters plainly indicate that he was a Deist to the close of his life. Jefferson, who was himself a Materialistic Deist, says of a letter about matter and spirit which he received from Adams (May 12, 1820): "Its crowd of scepticisms kept me from sleep" (Memoir and Correspondence of T. Jefferson, 1829, iv, 331). This letter seems to have been excluded from the official Works of J. Adams (edited by his grandson in ten volumes, 1856), but there are numerous other letters of his last years which show his scepticism. He defines God as "an essence that we know nothing of" (Jan. 17, 1820), and calls the efforts of religious philosophers to get beyond this vague Theism "games of push-pin." Of the Incarnation he writes (Jan 22, 1825): "Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will any liberal science in the world." In this mood, far removed from Unitarianism, he died, a year later, on July 4, 1826.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/About, Edmond François Valentin

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​About, Edmond François Valentin, French novelist and dramatist. B. Feb. 14, 1828. Ed. Ècole Normals, Paris, and Ècole Française d Athènes. About carried off the literary prize in his college against Victor Hugo, H. Taine, and F. Sarcey; and his first published work, La grèce contemporaine (1855), led reviewers to compare him with Voltaire. He had had a thorough training in philosophy, but in 1854 he deserted abstract thought for fiction, and his Germaine (1857) and other brilliant novels soon put him in the front rank of his art. Many of his novels have appeared in English. He wrote also in the Figaro, under the name of Valentin de Quevilly, and produced several plays. He was an intimate friend of Prince Jerome Bonaparte, who was as anti-clerical as himself; but he cordially accepted the Republic in 1871. "Il n'y a que les morts et les sots qui ne changent jamais," he said. About was admitted to the Legion of Honour in 1867, and to the Academy in 1884. His drastic rejection of all religious beliefs is best seen in his Question romaine (1859; English translation same year), which he wrote after spending some months in Rome. It is the most powerful exposure in any literature of the foul condition of the Papal States before 1870, and its style moved Scherer to describe the author as "the grandson of Voltaire." About says that an act of faith is "to close one's eyes in order to see better." D. Jan. 16, 1885.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Achelis, Thomas

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​Achelis, Thomas, German ethnologist. B. June 17, 1850. Ed. Gottingen University. Achelis taught ethnology in a college at Bremen from 1874 until he died, devoting his attention particularly to the evolution of religion. He was associate-editor of the Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte and editor of the Archiv für Religionswissenschaft. His numerous and weighty works include biographies of several distinguished German Rationalists. As he held a very high position in his science in Germany, he is often described as a Protestant; but in his Adolf Bastian (1892) he entirely agrees with that eminent and thorough Rationalist. He quotes several pages of the most advanced heresy from Bastian's Mensch in der Geschichte [see Bastian], and adds that, while this may seem to some poetical and extravagant, it is "from the scientific point of view an entirely sound conception" (p. 26) D. 1909.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Acollas, Professor Émile Pierre Antoine René Paul

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​Acollas, Professor Émile Pierre Antoine René Paul, French jurist. B. June 25, 1826. At Paris, in his youth, he formed a society for the discussion of politics and religion, and was expelled for his advanced views by the reactionary authorities. He was appointed professor of law at Berne. In 1871 the Communal Government at Paris made him Dean of the Faculty of Law; but he declined. Returning to France some years later, he was appointed Inspector-General of Prisons and admitted to the Legion of Honour. Professor Acollas edited La Science Politique and wrote La loi générale de l'évolution humaine and various legal works. D. Oct. 17, 1891.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Adam, Professor Charles

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​Adam, Professor Charles, D. es L., French philosopher. B. Dec. 14, 1857. Ed. Sedan, St. Omer, Douai, and Paris. He occupied the chair of philosophy at, in succession, Toulon (1880-81), Bar-le-Duc (1881-82), Clermont-Ferrand (1882-83), Nancy (1883-85), and Dijon (1885-97)! Since 1902 Professor Adam has been Rector of the Nancy Academy and a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He has edited the works of Descartes, and has written several notable volumes on philosophy. In his valuable history of French philosophy (La philosophie en France, 1894) he says: "Philosophy and politics leave theses to theology, which digs them up from a remote past, and are modestly content with hypotheses " (p. 437).
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Adams, Francis William Lauderdale

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​Adams, Francis William Lauderdale, Australian poet. B. Sep. 27, 1862. Ed. Shrewsbury School and Paris. After teaching for two years at Ventnor College (I. of W.) he went to Australia and joined the staff of the Sydney Bulletin. In 1885 he published an autobiographical novel, Leicester, which attracted much attention, and in 1887 a volume of verse, Songs of the Army of the Night, which gave high promise of his future—a promise unhappily extinguished by consumption. Several of his finest poems (especially "To the Christians" and "The Mass of Christ", are very severe against Christianity, while they breathe an ardent human idealism. Mr. H. S. Salt edited his poems in 1910, including the remarkable "Mass of Christ" with the other poems. Throughout them runs a hectic scorn of "the bastard God" of the Churches. D. Sep. 4, 1893.
# A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Ackermann, Louise Victorine

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​Ackermann, Louise Victorine, French writer. B. Nov. 30, 1813. During a visit to Berlin she married a German pastor, Paul Ackermann, who became a Rationalist. He died two years after wards, and Mme. Ackermann settled at Nice. Her stories and poems (Contes, 1855; Contes et Poesies, 1863) won for her a high position in French letters. In her later years she lived at Paris, and her house was the centre for a brilliant group of writers (Caro, Aulard, Coppée, Sully Prudhomme, etc.). She was the most decidedly Agnostic of them all. Religions, she said, "impose antiquated and narrow beliefs which are entirely unsuitable for a being who knows nothing and can affirm nothing" (Pensées d'une solitaire, 1903 ed., p. 11 a fine study of her life is prefixed to this edition). On her tomb was inscribed her Agnostic verse:
   J'ignore! Un mot le seul par lequel je réponds Aux questions sans fin de mon esprit déçu.
D. Aug. 2, 1890.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Secundus, Johannes

See also Johannes Secundus on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​SECUNDUS, JOHANNES, whose real name was Johann Everts (1511–1536), Latin poet, was born at The Hague on the 10th of November 1511. He was descended from an ancient family in the Netherlands; his father, Nicholas Everts, or Everard, seems to have been high in the favour of the emperor Charles V. On what account the son was called Secundus, is not known. His father intended him for the law; but though he took his degree at Bourges it does not appear that he devoted much time to legal pursuits. Poetry, painting and sculpture engaged his mind at a very early period. In 1533 he went to Spain, and soon afterwards became secretary to the cardinal archbishop of Toledo, in a department of business which required no other qualification than that of writing Latin with elegances. During this period he composed his most famous work, the Basia, a series of amatory poems, of which the fifth, seventh, and ninth Carmina of Catullus seem to have given the hint. In 1534 he accompanied Charles V. to the siege of Tunis. After quitting the service of the archbishop, Secundus was employed as secretary by the 'bishop of Utrecht; and so much did he distinguish himself by his compositions that he was called upon to fill the important post of private Latin secretary to the emperor, who was then in Italy. But, having arrived at St Arnand; near Tournay, he died of fever on the 8th of October 1536.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sedaine, Michel Jean

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​SEDAINE, MICHEL JEAN (1719–1797), French dramatist, was born at Paris on the 4th of July 1719. His father, who was an architect, died when Sedaine was quite young, leaving no fortune, and the boy began life as a mason’s labourer. He was at last taken as pupil by an architect whose kindness he eventually repaid by the help. he was able to give to his benefactor’s grandson, the painter David. Meanwhile he had done his best to repair his deficiencies of education, and in 1750 he published a Recueil de pièces fugitives, which included fables, songs and pastorals. His especial talent was, however, for light opera. He produced Le Diablo à quatre (1756), the music being by several composers; Blaise le Savetier (1759), for the music of Danican Philidor; On ne s’avise jamais de tout (1761) and others with Pierre Alexandre de Monsigny; Aucassin et Nicolette (1780), Richard Cœur de Lion (1784), and Amphitryon (1788) with André Grétry. Sedaine’s vaudevilles and operettas attracted the attention of Diderot, and two plays of his were accepted and performed at the Théâtre Français. The first and longest, the Philosophe sans le savoir, was acted in 1765; the second, a lively one-act piece, La Gageure imprévue in 1768. These two at once took their place as stock pieces and are still ranked among the best French plays, each of its class. Except these two pieces little or nothing of his has kept the stage or the shelves, but Sedaine may be regarded as the literary ancestor of Scribe and Dumas. He had the practical knowledge of the theatre, which enabled him to carry out the ideas of Diderot and give him claims to be regarded as the real founder of the domestic drama in France. Sedaine, who became a member of the Academy (1786), and secretary for architecture of the fine arts division, died at Paris on the 17th of May 1797. He wrote two historical dramas, Raymond V. comte de Toulouse, and Maillard, ou Paris sauvé.
His Œuvres (1826) contain a notice of his life by Ducis.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sedalia

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​SEDALIA, a city and the county-seat of Pettis county, Missouri, U.S.A., a little W. of the centre of the state. Pop. (1900) 15,231; (1725 negroes; 972 foreign-born); (1910) 17,822. Sedalia is served by the Missouri Pacific and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railway systems, and is a transportation centre with good facilities. The city has a high and pleasant site (about 990 ft. above sea-level) on a rolling prairie, and is laid out as an exact square. Among the public buildings much the handsomest are the court house, built of Warrensburg blue sandstone (1884), and the Public Library (1900), given by Andrew Carnegie. Sedalia is the seat of the George R. Smith College (M. E., founded in 1894) for negroes. Liberty Park (60 acres), in the W. part of the city, is owned by the municipality. Broadway, the principal residence street, is 120 ft. wide, and is parked on either side. The State Board of Agriculture established fair grounds (now 210 acres) adjoining the city on the S.W. in 1900, and the annual state fair attracts many visitors. The water supply is derived from a storage lake on Flat Creek, 3 m. from the city, settling basins being used to clarify the water. There are a city hospital and the Maywood, a private hospital; and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, railway maintains here a hospital for all parts of its system. The surrounding country is a magnificent livestock and farming region, and in the immediate vicinity are valuable deposits of coal, of limestone, of shale suitable for sewer pipe and of fire clays. The city has important horse and mule yards. The Missouri Pacific, three of whose operating divisions end at Sedalia and thus make the city its central division point, in 1904 established large shops (129 acres) in a suburb E. of the city. These shops and those of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railway, of which Sedalia is the central division point on the N. end of its system, add greatly to the industrial importance of the city. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,691,727, showing an increase of 31·8% since 1900.
Sedalia was established as a station on the Missouri Pacific railroad in 1857. In 1864 it was chartered as a town and was made the county-seat, succeeding Georgetown (then a flourishing town, which speedily fell into decay), the transfer of the offices taking place in 1865. Sedalia was a Union military post throughout the Civil War; on the 15th of October 1864 a detachment from Sterling Price’s raiding column dislodged a small Union force that was occupying the town, but the Confederate occupation lasted only one day. Sedalia was chartered as a city in 1889. In 1896 a constitutional amendment to remove the state capital from Jefferson City to Sedalia was defeated by popular vote.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Secular

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​SECULAR (Lat. saecularis, of or belonging to an age or generation, saeculum), a word with two main branches of meaning (1) lasting or occurring for a long indefinite period of time, and (2) non-spiritual, having no concern with religious or spiritual matters. The first sense, which is directly taken from the classical ​Latin, is chiefly found in scientific applications, of processes or phenomena which are continued through the ages and are not regularly recurrent or periodical, e.g. the secular cooling of the earth, secular change of the mean annual change of the temperature. The word is thus used widely of that which is lasting or permanent. In medieval and Late Latin, saecularis was particularly used of that which belongs to this world, hence non-spiritual, lay. It is thus used, first to distinguish the “regular” or monastic clergy from those who were not bound by the rule (regula) of a religious order, the parish priests, the “seculars,” who were living in the world, and secondly in the wide sense of anything which is distinct, opposed to or not connected with religion or ecclesiastical things, temporal as opposed to spiritual or ecclesiastical. Thus property transferred or alienated from spiritual to temporal hands is said to be “secularized”; “secularism” (q.v.) is the term applied in general to the separation of state politics or administration from religious or church matters; “ secular education ” is a system of training in which definite religious teaching is excluded.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Secund

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​SECUND (Lat. seconds, following), a botanical term used of plants when similar parts are directed to one side only, as flowers on an axis.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Secularism

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SECULARISM, a term applied specially (see Secular) to the system of social ethics associated with the name of G. Holyoake (q.v.). As the word implies, secularism is based solely on considerations of practical morality with a view to the physical, social and moral improvement of society. It neither affirms nor denies the theistic premises of religion, and is thus a particular variety of utilitarianism. Holyoake founded a society in London which subsequently under the leadership of Charles Bradlaugh advocated the disestablishment of the Church, the abolition of the Second Chamber and other political and economic reforms.
See Holyoake's Principles of Secularism (1885).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Secunderabad

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​SECUNDERABAD, one of the chief British military stations in India, situated in the state of Hyderabad or the Nizam’s Dominions, 1830 ft. above sea-level, and 6 m. N.E. of Hyderabad city. Pop. (1901) 83,550. It is now the headquarters of the 9th division of the southern army. Secunderabad includes Bolaram, the former cantonment of the Hyderabad contingent (now merged in the Indian army), and also Trimulgherry, the artillery cantonment, covering a total area of 22 sq. m. These two places have an additional population of 12,888.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Secundus, Publius Pomponius

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​SECUNDUS, PUBLIUS POMPONIUS, Roman general and tragic poet, lived during the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius. He was on intimate terms with the elder Pliny, who wrote a biography of him (now lost). The chief authority for his life is Tacitus, according to whom Secundus was a man of refinement and brilliant intellect. His friendship with Sejanus and his brother made him politically suspect, and he only escaped death by remaining practically a prisoner in his own brother’s house until the accession of Caligula. During his enforced retirement he composed tragedies, which were put on the stage during the reign of Claudius. In A.D. 50 he distinguished himself against the Chatti and obtained the honour of the triumphal insignia. Quintilian asserts that he was far superior to any writer of tragedies he had known, and Tacitus expresses a high opinion of his literary abilities. Secundus devoted much attention to the niceties of grammar and style, on which he was recognized as an authority. Only a few lines of his work remain, some of which belong to the tragedy Aeneas.
See O. Ribbeck, Geschichte der römischen Dichtung, iii.(1892), ​and Tragicorum Romanorum fragmenta (1897); Tacitus, Annals, v. 8, xi. 13, xii. 28; Quintilian, Inst. Orat. x. 1. 98; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xiv. 5; M. Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Literatur, ii. 2 (1900); Teuffel, Hist. of Roman Literature (Eng. trans., 1900), 284, 7.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Security

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SECURITY (Lat. securus, free from care, safe), in general, the condition of being secure. In law, a security is a document evidencing the right to money, goods or other property, e.g. stocks, shares, bills of exchange, mortgages, &c. A security is termed collateral when it is given merely as a guarantee for the repayment of money; personal, when it gives a right of action against a person for the recovery of money. A convertible security is one which can be readily converted into money (e.g. consols), as contrasted with land or buildings, sometimes termed "dead" security. A person who holds himself responsible for the fulfilment of another's obligations or goes surety for him is called a security.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Troïlus

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​TROÏLUS, in Greek legend, son of Priam (or Apollo) and Hecuba. His father, when upbraiding his surviving sons for their cowardice, speaks in the Iliad (xxiv. 257) of Troïlus as already slain before the action of the poem commences. According to a tradition drawn from other sources and adopted by Virgil (Aen. i. 474), when a mere boy he fell by the hand of Achilles. In another account, he was dragged to death by his own horses. His death formed the subject of a lost tragedy by Sophocles. There is no trace in classical writers of the story of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, the materials for which were derived from Chaucer's poem of the same name, Lydgate's History, Sege, and Destruccion of Troy, Caxton's Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy (trans. from Norman French of Raoul le Fevre), Chapman's translation of Homer, and perhaps a play on the subject by Dekker and Chattle.