Phillippo (William Skinner), farmer, of Wood Norton, near Thetford, Norfolk. A deist who wrote an Essay on Political and Religious Meditations, 1868.
Pi-y Margall (Francisco), Spanish philosopher and Republican statesman, b. Barcelona, 1820. The first book he learnt to read was the Ruins of Volney. Studied law and became an advocate. He has written many political works, and translated Proudhon, for whom he has much admiration, into Spanish. He has also introduced the writings and philosophy of Comte into his own country. He was associated with Castelar and Figueras in the attempt to establish a Spanish Republic, being Minister of the Interior, and afterwards President in 1873.
Pichard (Prosper). French Positivist, author of Doctrine of Reality, “a catechism for the use of people who do not pay themselves with words,” to which Littré wrote a preface, 1873.
Pierson (Allard). Dutch rationalist critic, b. Amsterdam 8 April, 1831. Educated in theology, he was minister to the Evangelical congregation at Leuven, afterwards at Rotterdam and finally professor at Heidelberg. He resigned his connection with the Church in ’64. He has written many works of theological and literary value of which we mention his Poems ’82, New Studies on Calvin, ’83, and Verisimilia, written in conjunction with S. A. Naber, ’86.
Pigault-Lebrun (Guillaume Charles Antoine), witty French author, b. Calais, 8 April, 1753. He studied under the Oratorians of Boulogne. He wrote numerous comedies and romances, and Le Citateur, 1803, a collection of objections to Christianity, borrowed in part from Voltaire, whose spirit he largely shared. In 1811 Napoleon threatened the priests he would issue this work wholesale. It was suppressed under the Restoration, but has been frequently reprinted. Pigault-Lebrun became secretary to King Jerome Napoleon, and died at La Celle-Saint-Cloud, 24 July, 1835.
Pike (J. W.) American lecturer, b. Concord (Ohio), 27 June, 1826, wrote My Religious Experience and What I found in the Bible, 1867.
Pillsbury (Parker), American reformer, b. Hamilton, Mass., 22 Sep. 1809. Was employed in farm work till ’35, when he entered Gilmerton theological seminary. He graduated in ’38, studied a year at Andover, was congregational minister for one year, and then, perceiving the churches were the bulwark of slavery, abandoned the ministry. He became an abolitionist lecturer, edited the Herald of Freedom, National Anti-Slavery Standard, and the Revolution. He also preached for free religious societies, wrote Pious Frauds, and contributed to the Boston Investigator and Freethinkers’ Magazine. His principal work is Acts of the Anti-Slavery Apostles, 1883.
Piron (Alexis), French comic poet, b. Dijon, 9 July, 1689. His pieces were full of wit and gaiety, and many anecdotes are told of his profanity. Among his sallies was his reply to a reproof for being drunk on Good Friday, that failing must be excused on a day when even deity succumbed. Being blind in his old age he affected piety. Worried by his confessor about a Bible in the margin of which he had written parodies and epigrams as the best commentary, he threw the whole book in the fire. Asked on his death-bed if he believed in God he answered “Parbleu, I believe even in the Virgin.” Died at Paris, 21 Jan. 1773.
Pisarev (Dmitri Ivanovich) Russian critic, journalist, and materialist, b. 1840. He first became known by his criticism on the Scholastics of the nineteenth century. Died Baden, near Riga, July 1868. His works are published in ten vols. Petersburg, 1870.
Pitt (William). Earl of Chatham, an illustrious English statesman and orator, b. Boconnoc, Cornwall, 15 Nov. 1708. The services to his country of “the Great Commoner,” as he was called, are well known, but it is not so generally recognised that his Letter on Superstition, first printed in the London Journal in 1733, entitles him to be ranked with the Deists. He says that “the more superstitious people are, always the more vicious; and the more they believe, the less they practice.” Atheism furnishes no man with arguments to be vicious; but superstition, or what the world made by religion, is the greatest possible encouragement to vice, by setting up something as religion, which shall atone and commute for the want of virtue. This remarkable letter ends with the words “Remember that the only true divinity is humanity.”