Pouchkine (A.), see [Pushkin].
Pougens (Marie Charles Joseph de), French author, a natural son of the Prince de Conti, b. Paris, 15 Aug. 1755. About the age of 24 he was blinded by small pox. He became an intimate friend of the philosophers, and, sharing their views, embraced the revolution with ardor, though it ruined his fortunes. He wrote Philosophical Researches, 1786, edited the posthumous works of D’Alembert, 1799, and worked at a dictionary of the French language. His Jocko, a tale of a monkey, exhibits his keen sympathy with animal intelligence, and in his Philosophical Letters, 1826, he gives anecdotes of Voltaire, Rousseau, D’Alembert, Pechmeja, Franklin, etc. Died at Vauxbuin, near Soissons, 19 Dec. 1833.
Poulin (Paul), Belgian follower of Baron Colins and author of What is God? What is Man? a scientific solution of the religious problem (Brussels, 1865), and re-issued as God According to Science, ’75, in which he maintains that man and God exclude each other, and that the only divinity is moral harmony.
Poultier D’Elmolte (François Martin), b. Montreuil-sur-Mer, 31 Oct. 1753. Became a Benedictine monk, but cast aside his frock at the Revolution, married, and became chief of a battalion of volunteers. Elected to the Convention he voted for the death of the King. He conducted the journal, L’Ami des lois, and became one of the Council of Ancients. Exiled in 1816, he died at Tournay in Belgium, 16 Feb. 1827. He wrote Morceaux Philosophiques in the Journal Encyclopédique; Victoire, or the Confessions of a Benedictine; Discours Décadaires, for the use of Theophilantropists, and Conjectures on the Nature and Origin of Things, Tournay, 1821.
Powell (B. F.), compiler of the Bible of Reason, or Scriptures of Ancient Moralists; published by Hetherington in 1837.
Prades (Jean Martin de), French theologian b. Castel-Sarrasin, about 1720. Brought up for the church, he nevertheless became intimate with Diderot and contributed the article Certitude to the Encyclopédie. On the 18th Nov. 1751 he presented to the Sorbonne a thesis for the doctorate, remarkable as the first open attack on Christianity by a French theologian. He maintained many propositions on the soul, the origin of society, the laws of Moses, miracles, etc., contrary to the dogmas of the Church, and compared the cures recorded in the Gospels to those attributed to Esculapius. The thesis made a great scandal. His opinions were condemned by Pope Benedict XIV., and he fled to Holland for safety. Recommended to Frederick the Great by d’Alembert he was received with favor at Berlin, and became reader to that monarch, who wrote a very anti-Christian preface to de Prades’ work on ecclesiastical history, published as Abrége de l’Histoire ecclesiastique de Fleury, Berne (Berlin) 1766. He retired to a benefice at Glogau (Silesia), given him by Frederick, and died there in 1782.
Prater (Horatio), a gentleman of some fortune who devoted himself to the propagation of Freethought ideas. Born early in the century, he wrote on the Physiology of the Blood, 1832. He published Letters to the American People, and Literary Essays, ’56. Died 20 July, 1885. He left the bulk of his money to benevolent objects, and ordered a deep wound to be made in his arm to insure that he was dead.
Preda (Pietro), Italian writer of Milan, author of a work on Revelation and Reason, published at Geneva, 1865, under the pseudonym of “Padre Pietro.”
Premontval (Andre Pierre Le Guay de), French writer, b. Charenton, 16 Feb. 1716. At nineteen years of age, while in the college of Plessis Sorbonne, he composed a work against the dogma of the Eucharist. He studied mathematics and became member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin. He wrote Le Diogene de D’Alembert, or Freethoughts on Man, 1754, Panangiana Panurgica, or the false Evangelist, and Vues Philosophiques, Amst., 2 vols., 1757. He also wrote De la Théologie de L’Etre, in which he denies many of the ordinary proofs of the existence of a God. Died Berlin, 1767.
Priestley (Joseph), LL.D., English philosopher, b. Fieldhead, near Leeds, 18 March, 1733. Brought up as a Calvinist, he found his way to broad Unitarianism. Famous as a pneumatic chemist, he defended the doctrine of philosophical necessity, and in a dissertation annexed to his edition of Hartley expressed doubts of the immateriality of the sentient principal in man. This doctrine he forcibly supported in his Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit, 1777. Through the obloquy these works produced, he lost his position as librarian to Lord Shelburne. He then removed to Birmingham, and became minister of an independent Unitarian congregation, and occupied himself on his History of the Corruptions of Christianity and History of the Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ, which involved him in controversy with Bishop Horsley and others. In consequence of his sympathy with the French Revolution, his house was burnt and sacked in a riot, 14 July, 1791. After this he removed to Hackney, and was finally goaded to seek an asylum in the United States, which he reached in 1794. Even in America he endured some uneasiness on account of his opinions until Jefferson became president. Died 6 Feb. 1804.