DIDE
DILKE
Christian can adequately represent the
attitude of an intelligent and candid
modern man." He holds a shadowy
Theism, but is sceptical about personal
immortality (Religion and Immortality,
1911).
DIDE, Auguste, French writer and politician. B. Apr. 4, 1839. Ed. Nimes and Ecole de Droit, Paris. Expelled from France for his advanced views, he went to Strassburg to prepare for the Protestant ministry, and graduated in theology. His thesis was much criticized, and, after editing the Protestant Liberal for six years, he joined the Independent Church and ended as a pure humanist. " Wo must believe," he said, " not in metaphysical divinities, but in ourselves " (last paragraph of his Jean- Jacques Bousseau, 1910). He was a Senator, a member of the Legion of Honour, and one of the founders of the Societe d Histoire de la Kevolution.
DIDEROT, Denis, philosopher. B. Oct. 5, 1713. Ed. Jesuit College, Langres, and College d Harcourt, Paris. His father, a smith, transferred him to Paris because the Jesuits wished to capture their brilliant pupil. He lived in great poverty after leaving the college, teaching and writing, but reading voraciously. His first work, Essai sur le merite et la vertu (1745), was orthodox, but the influence of Bayle is seen in his Pensees philosophiques (1746) and Promenades d un sceptique (1747). The Pensees was burned, and he got a year in prison for the alleged Atheism of his Lettres sur les aveugles (1749). In that year he began the famous Dictionnaire Encyclopedique. It was at first intended to be a translation of Chambers s Encyclo pedia, but all the Eationalist writers of France rallied to him and he worked at it for thirty years, in spite of clerical threats. He declined an invitation of Catherine the Great to seek refuge in Eussia. In 1766 Catherine bought his library, leaving it to him for life, and in 1773 he visited her. He was a generous and high-minded man,
215
a passionate lover of truth, a scholar of
marvellous range and power. His complete
works were published by Naigeon (15 vols.,
1798). D. July 30, 1784.
DIERCKS, Gustav, D.Philol., German author. B. Jan. 13, 1852. Ed. Berlin, Cairo, Naples, and Paris. He completed his education by travel in Spain, Portugal, North Africa, and the East, and is the leading German authority on these, and on the medieval Arabs. He is editor of the Bundesblatt and President of the Inter national Literary and Artistic Association. In Die Jesuiten (1903), and especially in his Entivickehtngsgescliichte des Geistes der Menschheit (1881), he expresses his rejec tion of creeds and rejoices in the coming of " a religion of pure humanity " (p. 438).
DIETZGEN, Joseph, German philo sophical writer. Dietzgen was a working man who studied philosophy, and is generally accepted in the Socialist world as the best exponent of Materialism, especially in its application to Marxism. He advocated what he called a dialectical Monism," which is really Materialism. The universe is one eternally evolving material reality. Thought is a function of the brain, and there is no basis for religion (Das Wesen der menschlichen Kopfarbeit, 1869 ; Die Eeligion der Sozial Demokratie, 1891, etc.). His collected works were pub lished in 1911 in three volumes, but none have been translated into English.
DILKE, Ashton Wentworth, journalist, brother of Sir C. W. Dilke. B. Aug. 11, 1850. Ed. Cambridge (Trinity Hall). In 1873 he bought the Weekly Dispatch, which he edited until his death. He trans lated Turgeniev s Virgin Soil (1878). From 1880 to 1883 he represented Newcastle in Parliament, where he courageously sup ported Mr. Bradlaugh and avowed his own heterodoxy (Charles Bradlaugh, ii, 347). D. Mar. 12, 1883.
DILKE, Sir Charles Wentworth,
216
