EOBEETSON
ROBERTSON
went to Australia, and worked on the
railways and on farms. After a few years
at sea, and some time as clerk in the War
Office and the India Office, Roberts migrated
to America, and again took to railroad and
farming work (1884-86). In later years
he has travelled in nearly every part of
the world, gathering experiences for his
adventurous stories. His first novel, The
Western Avernus, appeared in 1887. It
has been followed by about fifty novels,
a volume of verse, a volume of plays, and
a collection of essays. In the latter (The
Wingless Psyche, 1904), especially in the
sections "The Church" and "Restoration,"
Mr. Roberts expresses his Agnosticism and
his disdain of theology very freely. He
thinks, looking round the world, that " God
must be very young, and that is his only
excuse." " When I say God," he adds,
" I mean the common conception of Him.
It certainly is not mine, if I have any "
(p. 42).
ROBERTSON, George Groom, M.A., philosopher. B. Mar. 10, 1842. .Ed. Aberdeen Grammar School, Marischal College, and London, Heidelberg, Berlin, Gottingen, and ParisUniversities. Robertson was a brilliant scholar, and made his way from college to college by winning prizes and scholarships. He was the son of an Aberdeen tradesman. In 1864 he was appointed assistant to Professor Geddes, and in 1866 professor of mental philosophy and logic at London University College. He was examiner in philosophy at London University from 1868 to 1873, and from 1883 to 1888. In 1876 Bain, who was a warm friend and admirer, got him appointed editor of Mind (a title suggested by Robertson for the new philosophical review). He was a member of the Metaphysical Society, and he took an interest in women suffrage, the education of women, and other reforms. Robertson wrote only a small work on Hobbes (1886) ; but his articles were posthumously collected in a volume (Philosophical Remains, 1894, with a memoir by Professor Bain), and his lectures were edited in two volumes
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(Elements of General Philosophy and Ele
ments of Psychology) by Mrs. Rhys Davids
in 1896. He never wrote on religion, but
he agreed with his friends Sir L. Stephen
(Life, p. 414) and Professor Bain, and was
one of the heretical " Sunday Tramps."
D. Sep. 20, 1892.
ROBERTSON, The Right Honourable John Mackinnon, writer and politician. B. Nov. 14, 1856. Ed. Stirling. Mr. Robertson, who was born in the Isle of Arran, left school at the age of thirteen. In 1878 he became a leader-writer on the staff of the Edinburgh Evening News. Six years later he migrated to London, to work on the National Reformer, and he edited that paper from Bradlaugh s death in 1891 until it ceased in 1893. In 1893 he started and edited the Free Review, which lasted two years. In 1897-98 he made a lecturing tour in the United States, and in 1900 he went to South Africa to explore the working of martial law, sending his reports to the Morning Leader. He represented Tyneside in Parliament from 1906 to 1918, and he was Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade from 1911 to 1915, and called to the Privy Council in 1915. Mr. Robertson has been the most considerable force in English Rationalism since the death of Bradlaugh, to whom he was greatly attached. His works on comparative mythology, as bearing on the problem of Christ (whose historicity he denies see his Christianity and Mythology, 1900, and Pagan Christs, 1903), are works of impres sive learning ; and his Short History of Christianity (1902) and Short History of Freethought (2 vols., 1915) are equally valuable on the historical side. He dras tically rejects religion in every shape, and has been for decades a powerful Rationalist and Ethical lecturer. He is at the same time a very able and critical economist, a weighty writer on certain fields of English literature, a good linguist, and an out standing figure in the political world. No man has rendered higher service to British Rationalism in the last four decades, and
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