MOESELLI
MOSS
MORSELLI, Professor Enrico Agos-
tino, M.D., Italian alienist. B. 1852.
Morselli has been professor at Florence,
Macerata, and Turin ; and since 1889 he
has been professor of the clinics of mental
and nervous diseases at Genoa University
and Director of the Villa Maria Sanatorium.
He is one of the leading Positivists (in the
Italian sense) and Monists of Italy, and
has issued more than two hundred volumes
and scientific papers of importance. He
translated some of Spencer s works into
Italian, and wrote the preface to the
Italian version of Haeckel s Eiddle of
the Universe (1904). Spiritualists quite
wrongly claim him as a co-religionist (see
his Animismo e Spiritismo) . He despises
Spiritualism, but believes that mediums
like Eusapia Palladino have abnormal
natural powers.
MORTILLET, Adrien de, French anthropologist. B. Sep. 5, 1853. He was born in Switzerland while his father (next paragraph) suffered exile there for his advanced opinions. He sustains his father s views in every respect, and became professor at the School of Anthropology founded by him (largely for the correction of theology) at Paris. He also edits the review L Homme Pr6historique, and has published various works on prehistoric man.
MORTILLET, Louis Laurent Gabriel
de, French anthropologist, father of pre ceding. B. Aug. 29, 1821. Ed. Jesuit College Chambery and Paris Museum of Natural History. Mortillet, a revolu tionary of 1848, was driven out of France in the following year, and took up museum work in Switzerland. During a trip to Italy in 1858 he became interested in prehistoric man, and, partly because of the value of the science for Eationalistic purposes, he made himself one of the leading authorities on the subject. He was, on his return to France, Curator of the Museum at Saint-Germain. In 1864 he founded the review Materiaux pour
537
I histoire positive et philosophique de
I homme, and in 1876 he co-operated with
Broca in establishing the School of Anthro
pology. In 1885 he entered the Chambre,
cordially supporting the anti-clericals.
Besides his technical works (chiefly Le
Pre-historique, 1882) he wrote Le signe de
la croix avant le Christianisme (1866) and
many other Rationalist works and articles.
He was one of the founders of prehistoric
archaeology in France, and was created
Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. D.
1898.
MOSCHELES, Felix, portrait-painter, son of the pianist Ignaz Moscheles. B. (London) 1883. Ed. King s College, Hamburg, and Carlsruhe. After the close of his scholastic career Moscheles turned to art, and studied at Paris and Antwerp. He was a great friend of Whistler, Du Maurier, and other eminent artists, and he exhibited regularly at the Academy and the galleries. To him we ow r e a very fine portrait of Mazzini, and he painted many of the Victorian celebrities. He edited Mendelssohn s letters to his parents, and he has some genial shots at " the exponents of the Christian dogma " in his Fragments of an Autobiography (1899). Moscheles was an ardent humanitarian as well as a thorough Eationalist and fine artist. He was President of the International Arbitra tion and Peace Association and of the London Esperanto Club. He was so earnest and informed a student of con temporary life that in conversation one hardly realized that he was an artist. D. Dec. 23, 1917.
MOSS, Arthur B., lecturer and writer. B. May 8, 1855. Mr. Moss is one of the veterans of the Secularist movement, having lectured in all parts of England, and written in the successive Secularist periodicals, for more than forty years. Various early pamphlets of his are collected in his Waves of Freethought (1885), and further essays and lectures are given in his Lectures and Essays (1889). He was 538
