Averroes (Muhammad Ibn-Ahmad Ibn Rushd), Abu al Walid, Arabian philosopher, b. at Cordova in 1126, and died at Morocco 10 Dec. 1198. He translated and commented upon the works of Aristotle, and resolutely placed the claims of science above those of theology. He was prosecuted for his heretical opinions by the Muhammadan doctors, was spat upon by all who entered the mosque at the hour of prayer, and afterwards banished. His philosophical opinions, which incline towards materialism and pantheism, had the honor of being condemned by the University of Paris in 1240. They were opposed by St. Thomas Aquinas, and when profoundly influencing Europe at the Renaissance through the Paduan school were again condemned by Pope Leo X. in 1513.
Avicenna (Husain Ibn Abdallah, called Ibn Sina), Arabian physician and philosopher, b. Aug. 980 in the district of Bokhara. From his early youth he was a wonderful student, and at his death 15 June, 1037, he left behind him above a hundred treatises. He was the sovereign authority in medical science until the days of Harvey. His philosophy was pantheistic in tone, with an attempt at compromise with theology.
Aymon (Jean), French writer, b. Dauphiné 1661. Brought up in the Church, he abjured Catholicism at Geneva, and married at the Hague. He published Metamorphoses of the Romish Religion, and is said to have put forward a version of the Esprit de Spinoza under the famous title Treatise of Three Impostors. Died about 1734.
Bagehot (Walter), economist and journalist, b. of Unitarian parents, Langport, Somersetshire, 3 Feb. 1826; he died at the same place 24 March, 1877. He was educated at London University, of which he became a fellow. For the last seventeen years of his life he edited the Economist newspaper. His best-known works are The English Constitution, Lombard Street and Literary Studies. In Physics and Politics (1872), a series of essays on the Evolution of Society, he applies Darwinism to politics. Bagehot was a bold, clear, and very original thinker, who rejected historic Christianity.
Baggesen (Jens Immanuel), Danish poet, b. Kösor, Zealand. 15 Feb. 1764. In 1789 he visited Germany, France, and Switzerland; at Berne he married the grand-daughter of Haller. He wrote popular poems both in Danish and German, among others Adam and Eve, a humorous mock epic (1826). He was an admirer of Voltaire. Died Hamburg, 3 Oct. 1826.
Bahnsen (Julius Friedrich August), pessimist, b. Tondern, Schleswig-Holstein, 30 Mar. 1830. Studied philosophy at Keil, 1847. He fought against the Danes in ’49, and afterwards studied at Tübingen. Bahnsen is an independent follower of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, joining monism to the idealism of Hegel. He has written several works, among which we mention The Philosophy of History, Berlin, 1872, and The Contradiction between the Knowledge and the Nature of the World (2 vols), Berlin 1880–82.
Bahrdt (Karl Friedrich), German deist, b. in Saxony, 25 Aug. 1741. Educated for the Church, in 1766 he was made professor of biblical philology. He was condemned for heresy, and wandered from place to place. He published a kind of expurgated Bible, called New Revelations of God: A System of Moral Religion for Doubters and Thinkers, Berlin, 1787, and a Catechism of Natural Religion, Halle, 1790. Died near Halle, 23 April, 1792.
Bailey (James Napier), Socialist, edited the Model Republic, 1843, the Torch, and the Monthly Messenger. He published Gehenna: its Monarch and Inhabitants; Sophistry Unmasked, and several other tracts in the “Social Reformer’s Cabinet Library,” and some interesting Essays on Miscellaneous Subjects, at Leeds, 1842.
Bailey (Samuel), philosophical writer, of Sheffield, b. in 1791. His essay on the Formation and Publication of Opinions appeared in 1821. He vigorously contends that man is not responsible for his opinions because they are independent of his will, and that opinions should not be the subject of punishment. Another anonymous Freethought work was Letters from an Egyptian Kaffir on a Visit to England in Search of Religion. This was at first issued privately 1839, but afterwards printed as a Reasoner tract. He also wrote The Pursuit of Truth, 1829, and a Theory of Reasoning, 1851. He was acquainted with both James and John Stuart Mill, and shared in most of the views of the philosophical Radicals of the period. Died 18 Jan. 1870, leaving £90,000 to his native town.
Bailey (William S.), editor of the Liberal, published in Nashville, Tennessee, was an Atheist up till the day of death, March, 1886. In a slave-holding State, he was the earnest advocate of abolition.