[Proctor, Richard Antony], astronomer and lecturer on Astronomy; determined the rotation of the planet Mars, and propounded the theory of the solar corona (1837-1888).
[Procurator-Fiscal], is a Scottish law officer appointed by the sheriff, and irremovable on efficient and good behaviour, whose duties are to initiate the prosecution of crimes and inquire into deaths under suspicious circumstances.
[Progne], the sister of Philomela and wife of Tereus, changed into a swallow by the gods. See [Tereus].
[Progress of the Species Magazines], Carlyle's name for the literature of the day which does nothing to help the progress in question, but keeps idly boasting of the fact, taking all the credit to itself, like Æsop's fly on the axle of the careering chariot soliloquising, "What a dust I raise!"
[Prohibitionist], one who would prohibit the sale of all intoxicating liquors.
[Proletariat], the name given to the lowest and poorest class in the State, and which still retains the original Roman meaning, as denoting, from proles, offspring, one who enriches the State not by his prosperity, but by his progeny.
[Prometheus] (i. e. Forethought), a Titan, the son of lapetus and Klymene, and the brother of [Epimetheus] (q. v.), who, when the gods, just installed on Olympus, met with men at Mekone to arrange with them as to their dues in sacrifice, came boldly forth as the representative and protector of the human race and slew a bullock in sacrifice, putting the flesh of it in one pile and the entrails with the bones in another, veiled temptingly with fat, and invited Zeus to make his choice, whereupon, knowing well what he was about, Zeus chose the latter, but in revenge took away with him the fire which had been bestowed by the gods upon mortals. It was a strife of wit versus wit, and Prometheus, as the defender of the rights of man, was not to be outwitted even by the gods, so he reached up a hollow fennel stalk to the sun and brought the fire back again, whereupon the strife was transformed into one of force versus force, and Zeus caught the audacious Titan and chained him to a rock on Mount Caucasus, where an eagle gnawed all day at his liver which grew again by night, though, in inflicting this punishment, Zeus was soon visited with a relenting heart, for it was by express commission from him that Hercules, as a son of his, scaled the rock and slew the eagle. The myth is one of the deepest significance, reflecting an old belief, and one which has on it the seal of Christ, as sanctioned of Heaven, that the world was made for man and not man for the world, only there is included within it an expression of the jealousy with which Heaven watches the use mankind make of the gifts that, out of her own special store, she bestows upon them. Prometheus is properly the incarnation of the divine fire latent from the beginning in the soul of man.
[Propaganda], a congregation, as it is called, at Rome, originated by Gregory XIII., and organised in 1622 by Gregory XV., the object of which is to propagate the faith of the Church among heathen nations and in countries where there is no established hierarchy, connected with which there is a college at Rome called the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, where pupils are instructed for different fields of missionary enterprise.
[Propertius, Sextus], a Latin elegaic poet, born in Umbria; went to Rome and became a protégé of Mæcenas; devoted himself to the cultivation of the poetic art; came under the spell of a gifted lady, to whom, under the name of Cynthia, he dedicated the first products of his muse, and whom he has immortalised in his poems; in his elegies he follows Greek models; his poetry, and the poetic quality it displays, have been much admired by Goethe (51-14 B.C.).
[Prophecy], properly not a forecasting of particular events and the succession of them, but so far as it refers to the future at all is an insight into the course of things in the time to come from insight into the course of them in days gone by or now, and that is believed to be the character of Hebrew prophecy, founded on faith in the immutability of the divine order of things.