Curtis (S. E.), English Freethinker, author of Theology Displayed, 1842. He has been credited with The Protestant’s Progress to Infidelity. See Griffith (Rees). Died 1847.
Croly (David Goodman), American Positivist, b. New York, 3 Nov. 1829. He graduated at New York University in ’54, and was subsequently a reporter on the New York Herald. He became editor of the New York World until ’72. From ’71 to ’73 he edited The Modern Thinker, an organ of the most advanced thought, and afterwards the New York Graphic. Mr. Croly has written a Primer of Positivism, ’76, and has contributed many articles to periodicals. His wife, Jane Cunningham, who calls herself “Jennie June,” b. 1831, also wrote in The Modern Thinker.
Cross (Mary Ann), see [Eliot (George)].
Crozier (John Beattie), English writer of Scottish border parentage, b. Galt, Ontario, Canada, 23 April, 1849. In youth he won a scholarship to the grammar school of the town, and thence won another scholarship to the Toronto University, where he graduated ’72, taking the University and Starr medals. He then came to London determined to study the great problems of religion and civilisation. He took his diploma from the London College of Physicians in ’73. In ’77 he wrote his first essay, “God or Force,” which, being rejected by all the magazines, he published as a pamphlet. Other essays on the Constitution of the World, Carlyle, Emerson, and Spencer being also rejected, he published them in a book entitled The Religion of the Future, ’80, which fell flat. He then started his work Civilisation and Progress, which appeared in ’85, and was also unsuccessful until republished with a few notices in ’87, when it received a chorus of applause, for its clear and original thoughts. Mr. Crozier is now engaged on his Autobiography, after which he proposes to deal with the Social question.
Cuffeler (Abraham Johann), a Dutch philosopher and doctor of law, who was one of the first partizans of Spinoza. He lived at Utrecht towards the end of the seventeenth century, and wrote a work on logic in three parts entitled Specimen Artis Ratiocinandi, etc., published ostensibly at Hamburg, but really at Amsterdam or Utrecht, 1684. It was without name but with the author’s portrait.
Cuper (Frans), Dutch writer, b. Rotterdam. Cuper is suspected to have been one of those followers of Spinoza, who under pretence of refuting him, set forth and sustained his arguments by feeble opposition. His work entitled Arcana Atheismi Revelata, Rotterdam 1676, was denounced as written in bad faith. Cuper maintained that the existence of God could not be proved by the light of reason.
Cyrano de Bergerac (Savinien), French comic writer, b. Paris 6 March, 1619. After finishing his studies and serving in the army in his youth he devoted himself to literature. His tragedy “Agrippine” is full of what a bookseller called “belles impiétés,” and La Monnoye relates that at its performance the pit shouted “Oh, the wretch! The Atheist! How he mocks at holy things!” Cyrano knew personally Campanella, Gassendi, Lamothe Le Vayer, Linière, Rohault, etc. His other works consist of a short fragment on Physic, a collection of Letters, and a Comic History of the States and Empires of the Moon and the Sun. Cyrano took the idea of this book from F. Godwin’s Man in the Moon, 1583, and it in turn gave rise to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and Voltaire’s Micromegas. Died Paris, 1655.
Czolbe (Heinrich), German Materialist, b. near Dantzic, 30 Dec. 1819, studied medicine at Berlin, writing an inaugural dissertation on the Principles of Physiology, ’44. In ’55 he published his New Exposition of Sensationalism, in which everything is resolved into matter and motion, and in ’65 a work on The Limits and Origin of Human Knowledge. He was an intimate friend of Ueberweg. Died at Königsberg, 19 Feb. 1873. Lange says “his life was marked by a deep and genuine morality.”
D’Ablaing. See [Giessenburg].
Dale (Antonius van), Dutch writer, b. Haarlem, 8 Nov. 1638. His work on oracles was erudite but lumbersome, and to it Fontenelle gave the charm of style. It was translated into English by Mrs. Aphra Behn, under the title of The History of Oracles and the Cheats of Pagan Priests, 1699. Van Dale, in another work on The Origin and Progress of Idolatry and Superstition, applied the historical method to his subject, and showed that the belief in demons was as old and as extensive as the human race. He died at Haarlem, 28 Nov. 1708.