EDWARDS
ELIOT
Edison had little schooling, but he had
read Gibbon s Decline and Hume s History
of England before he was ten years old,
and at the age of twelve he proposed to
read the whole contents of the Detroit
Public Library (so V. B. Denslow says in
his biography of Edison). The "fifteen
feet " of books he actually read included
Newton s Principia and Burton s Anatomy.
He took to newsvending, but he applied
himself to chemistry and mathematics,
and became a telegraph operator. In 1864
he began to make discoveries in connection
with telegraphy, and in 1876 he set up
a business of his own. The honours
which his innumerable inventions have
brought upon him must be read elsewhere.
Edison has been all his life an uncompro
mising Agnostic.
EDWARDS, Chilperic. See PILCHER, E. J.
EDWARDS, John Passmore, philan thropist. B. Mar. 24, 1823. Ed. Black- water village school. He was put to gardening in his youth, but he educated himself in the evenings and became a clerk {1843). In 1845 he took to journalism and reform-lecturing (especially on tem perance and peace). In 1850 he founded The Public Good, in 1862 purchased The Building News, and in 1876 he established the Echo, which he edited until 1896. It set the highest standard of public educa tion. He sat in Parliament 1880-85, but he always refused knighthood. No less than seventy public institutions bear his name and testify to his remarkable liber ality ; and innumerable other charitable establishments had his support. He says that he " owed more to Emerson than to any other writer or teacher " (A Few Footprints, 1906, p. 18), and he accepted Spencer s philosophy of an unknown " Infinite and Eternal Energy " (p. 67). Mr. Edwards, one of the highest-minded men of his day, took a warm interest in the work of the Rationalist Press Association. D. Apr. 22, 1911.
233
EFFEN, Justus van, Dutch writer.
B. Feb. 21, 1684. Ed. Utrecht and Leiden
Universities. While secretary of the Dutch
Embassy at London, Effen conceived the
idea of a weekly like the Spectator, and he
founded Le Misanthrope, later Le Journal
Litteraire, and finally (1731-35) De Hol-
landsche Spectator. In 1722 he translated
into Dutch Mandeville s Deistic Free
Thoughts on Religion. D. Sep. 18, 1735.
EICHHORN, Johann Gottfried, Ger man Biblical critic. B. Oct. 16, 1752. Ed. Gottingen University. In 1775 he became professor of Oriental languages at Jena, and in 1778 at Gottingen. In 1813 he was appointed Co-Director of the Royal Society of Sciences, and in 1819 he was made a Privy Councillor. The chief of his seventy volumes of critical and historical studies are his Einleitung in das Alte Testament (3 vols., 1780-83) and Einleitung in das Neue Testament (3 vols., 1804-14), which opened the great period of Biblical criticism in Germany and shattered the supernatural view. D. June 25, 1827.
EISLER, Rudolf, Ph.D., Austrian philosopher. B. Jan. 7, 1873. Ed. Paris, Prague, Vienna, and Leipzig Universities. In 1894 Eisler was appointed secretary of the Vienna Sociological Society and editor of the Philosophico-sociological Biicherei. He is a Monist, and rejects personal immortality (Lieb und Seele, 1906 ; Grund- lagen der Philosophic des Geistesleben, 1908, etc.). His dictionary of philosophers is of great value, and he has written a score of other philosophical works.
ELIOT, Professor Charles William,
A.M., M.D., LL.D., Ph.D., American edu cator. B. Mar. 20, 1834. Ed. Boston Latin School and Harvard. He was tutor of mathematics at Harvard 1854-58, assistant professor of mathematics and chemistry 1858-63, professor of analytical chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1865-69, and President of Harvard University 1869-1909. President 234
