Girard (Stephen), American philanthropist, b. near Bordeaux France, 24 May, 1750. He sailed as cabin boy to the West Indies about 1760; rose to be master of a coasting vessel and earned enough to settle in business in Philadelphia in 1769. He became one of the richest merchants in America, and during the war of 1812 he took the whole of a Government loan of five million dollars. He called his vessels after the names of the philosophers Helvetius, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, etc. He contributed liberally to all public improvements and radical movements. On his death he left large bequests to Philadelphia, the principal being a munificent endowment of a college for orphans. By a provision of his will, no ecclesiastic or minister of any sect whatever is to hold any connection with the college, or even be admitted to the premises as a visitor; but the officers of the institution are required to instruct the pupils in secular morality and leave them to adopt their own religious opinions. This will has been most shamefully perverted. Died Philadelphia, 26 Dec. 1831.
Glain (D. de Saint). See [Saint Glain].
Glennie (John Stuart Stuart), living English barrister and writer, author of In the Morningland, or the law of the origin and transformation of Christianity, 1873, the most important chapter of which was reprinted by Thomas Scott, under the title, Christ and Osiris. He has also written Pilgrim Memories, or travel and discussion in the birth-countries of Christianity with the late H. T. Buckle, 1875.
Glisson (Francis), English anatomist and physician, b. Rampisham, Dorsetshire, 1597. He took his degree at Cambridge, and was there appointed Regius Professor of Physic, an office he held forty years. He discovered Glisson’s capsule in the liver, and was the first to attribute irritability to muscular fibre. In his Tractatus de natura substantiæ energetica, 1672, he anticipates the natural school in considering matter endowed with native energy sufficient to account for the operations of nature. Dr. Glisson was eulogised by Harvey, and Boerhaave called him “the most accurate of all anatomists that ever lived.” Died in 1677.
Godwin (Mary). See [Wollstonecraft].
Godwin (William), English historian, political writer and novelist, b. Wisbeach, Cambridgeshire, 3 March, 1756. The son of a Dissenting minister, he was designed for the same calling. He studied at Hoxton College, and came out, as he entered, a Tory and Calvinist; but making the acquaintance of Holcroft, Paine, and the English Jacobins, his views developed from the Unitarianism of Priestley to the rejection of the supernatural. In ’93 he published his republican work on Political Justice. In the following year he issued his powerful novel of Caleb Williams. He married Mary Wollstonecraft, ’96; wrote, in addition to several novels and educational works, On Population, in answer to Malthus, 1820; a History of the Commonwealth, ’24–28; Thoughts on Man, ’31; Lives of the Necromancers, ’34. Some Freethought essays, which he had intended to form into a book entitled The Genius of Christianity Unveiled, were first published in ’73. They comprise papers on such subjects as future retribution, the atonement, miracles, and character of Jesus, and the history and effects of the Christian religion. Died 7 April, 1836.
Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von), Germany’s greatest poet, b. Frankfort-on-Main, 28 Aug. 1749. He records that early in his seventh year (1 Nov. 1758) the great Lisbon earthquake filled his mind with religious doubt. Before he was nine he could write several languages. Educated at home until sixteen, he then went to Leipsic University. At Strasburg he became acquainted with Herder, who directed his attention to Shakespeare. He took the degree of doctor in 1771, and in the same year composed his drama “Goetz von Berlichingen.” He went to Wetzlar, where he wrote Sorrows of Werther, 1774, which at once made him famous. He was invited to the court of the Duke of Saxe-Weimar and loaded with honors, becoming the centre of a galaxy of distinguished men. Here he brought out the works of Schiller and his own dramas, of which Faust is the greatest. His chief prose work is Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. His works are voluminous. He declared himself “decidedly non-Christian,” and said his objects of hate were “the cross and bugs.” He was averse to abstractions and refused to recognise a Deity distinct from the world. In philosophy he followed Spinoza, and he disliked and discountenanced the popular creed. Writing to Lavater in 1772 he said: “You look upon the gospel as it stands as the divinest truth: but even a voice from heaven would not convince me that water burns and fire quenches, that a woman conceives without a man, and that a dead man can rise again. To you, nothing is more beautiful than the Gospel; to me, a thousand written pages of ancient and modern inspired men are equally beautiful.” Goethe was opposed to asceticism, and Pfleiderer admits “stood in opposition to Christianity not merely on points of theological form, but to a certain extent on points of substance too.” Goethe devoted much attention to science, and he attempted to explain the metamorphosis of plants on evolutionary principles in 1790. Died 22 March, 1832.
Goldstuecker (Theodor), Sanskrit scholar, of Jewish birth, but a Freethinker by conviction, b. Konigsberg 18 Jan. 1821; studied at Bonn under Schlegel and Lassen, and at Paris under Burnouf. Establishing himself at Berlin, he was engaged as tutor in the University and assisted Humboldt in the matter of Hindu philosophy in the Cosmos. A democrat in politics, he left Berlin at the reaction of ’49 and came to England, where he assisted Professor Wilson in preparing his Sanskrit-English Dictionary. He contributed important articles on Indian literature to the Westminster Review, the Reader, the Athenæum and Chambers’ Encyclopædia. Died in London, 6 March, 1872.
Goldziher (Ignacz), Hungarian Orientalist, b. Stuhlweissenburg, 1850. Is since 1876 Doctor of Semitic Philology in Buda-pesth; is author of Mythology Among the Hebrews, which has been translated by Russell Martineau, ’77, and has written many studies on Semitic theology and literature.
Gordon (Thomas), Scotch Deist and political reformer, was b. Kells, Kirkcudbright, about 1684, but settled early in London, where he supported himself as a teacher and writer. He first distinguished himself by two pamphlets in the Bangorian controversy, which recommended him to Trenchard, to whom he became amanuensis, and with whom he published Cato’s Letters and a periodical entitled The Independent Whig, which he continued some years after Trenchard’s death, marrying that writer’s widow. He wrote many pamphlets, and translated from Barbeyrac The Spirit of the Ecclesiastics of All Ages. He also translated the histories of Tacitus and Sallust. He died 28 July, 1750, leaving behind him posthumous works entitled A Cordial for Low Spirits and The Pillars of Priestcraft and Orthodoxy Shaken.