OSWALD
OWEN
and, after serving as tutor for some time,
was appointed German Instructor at the
Eoyal Naval College, Greenwich. In later
years he was an Examiner under the
Admiralty and the Civil Service Commis
sion. Dr. Oswald took a very active
interest in all the progressive movements
of his time. He was President of the
Carlyle Society, Secretary of the Goethe
Society, member of the Council of the
Working Men s College, and a warm friend
of all the international refugees who found
shelter in England. His chief work is
Goethe in England and America (1899) ;
and he wrote a study of Positivism in
England (Der Positivismus in England,
1884). D. Oct. 16, 1912.
OSWALD, Felix Leopold, M.D., Ameri can writer. B. (Belgium) 1845. Educated for a medical career in Belgium, Dr. Oswald passed to the United States, and devoted himself to the study and populari zation of science. For many years he was Curator of Natural History in Brazil. He wrote frequently in the New York Truth- seeJcer, and gave " most valuable service to Freethought, philosophy, and science " (Putnam s Four Hundred Years of Free- thought, p. 782). In The Secrets of the East (1883) he sought to prove that Christianity is derived from Buddhism. His views are further expressed in his Bible of Nature, or the Principles of Secu larism (1888).
OSWALD, John, writer. B. about the middle of the eighteenth century. Oswald s early life is obscure. We know only that he came of poor Scottish parents, and, after years of manual work, bought a commission in the 42nd Highlanders. He served in America and India, and in his leisure he taught himself Greek, Latin, and Arabic. Having abandoned Chris tianity, he mixed much with the Brahmins in India. In 1783 he sold his commission and returned to England. A republican by conviction, he entered the French Eevolutionary Army, and was killed in the
571
Vendean War. Besides a few political
works and some poetry (published under
the pseudonym " Sylvester Otway ") he
wrote an anti-religious pamphlet (Banes
Cornices Evangelizantes, or the Comic Frogs
Turned Methodists (1786). " He was pro
fessedly an Atheist " (Diet. Nat. Biog.). D.
Sep., 1793.
"OUIDA." See EAMEE, LOUISE DE LA.
OYERSTREET, Professor Harry Allen, A.B., B.Sc., American philosopher. B. Oct. 25, 1875. Ed. California Univer sity and Oxford (Balliol). He was, succes sively, instructor, assistant professor, and associate professor of philosophy at Cali fornia University from 1901 to 1911. Since 1911 he has been professor of philo sophy and head of department at the City of New York University, and has written a number of works on his subject. In a couple of articles in the Hibbert Journal (January, 1913, and October, 1914) Pro fessor Overstreet professes an advanced Eationalism. He rejects the idea of God as a father, creator, person, or " ideally perfect being," and accepts only "a god that is ourselves and grows with the world."
OWEN, Robert, reformer. B. May 14, 1771. Ed. private school. He was ap pointed usher at his school in his native place, Newtown (Montgomeryshire), at the age of seven, and began to work in a haberdasher s shop at the age of nine. He served in shops at London, Stamford, and Manchester until 1789, when he set up a small spinning mill at Manchester. In 1799 he and his partners bought the New Lanark mills on the Clyde, and Owen went to manage them. Owen had been much influenced by reading Seneca in his fourteenth year, and had concluded that all religions were wrong. He already in some form conceived his famous Deter- minist principle that " man s character is made for him, and not by him." Associa tion with John Dalton and other advanced 572
