Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/439

This page needs to be proofread.

TOOKE


TEACY


Wesen der Soziologie, 1907 ; etc.). He supports the German Monist League, and writes in Das Monistische Jahrhundert.

TOOKE, John Horne, M.A., writer and politician. B. June 25, 1736. Ed. Soho Square Academy, Westminster, Eton, and Cambridge (St. John s College). His original name was Horne, and he adopted that of Tooke in 1782. In 1756 he was admitted to the Inner Temple, but his father, a London poulterer, insisted on his taking orders, and he was ordained priest of the Church of England in 1760. His father bought the living of Brentford for him ; but he was already a Eationalist, and he left his clerical duties to a curate. In 1765 he discarded his clerical dress and threw himself into the political reform movement. He visited Voltaire at Ferney in 1766, and in a letter to Wilkes shortly afterwards he regretted that he had had " the infectious hand of a bishop waved over him." He added that it had not had the usual effect of turning him into a hypocrite. Eesigning his living in 1773, he took up the study of law and of philology, and continued his courageous struggle for reform. For many years " the Eev. Horne Tooke" was one of the most conspicuous and respected figures in the London fight against corruption. He was several times prosecuted always defending his own cases with great ability and was in 1777 condemned to a year in prison and a fine of 200 for defending the American insur gents. He would have been a powerful barrister, but the legal authorities refused to admit him to the Bar on the ground that he was a clergyman. In 1794 he was charged with high treason, on account of his sympathy with the French Eevolution, but at once acquitted. In 1801 he secured the parliamentary seat of Old Sarum, but Parliament passed a Bill excluding clergy men from the house. In those days, of course, an ordained clergyman remained a priest until death in the eye of the law. Tooke consoled himself with letters and philology, and his Diversions of PurUy 805


(2 vols., 1786 and 1805) was one of the most successful books of the time. Before death he burned all his papers, and there is little heresy in his Diversions of Purley, in which, however, he gives the famous definition of truth as " what each troweth." His biographer, Stephens, even emphasizes that he was " a great stickler for the Church of England." His zeal for it was purely moral and social. He made his Deistic faith plain by leaving instructions that he was to be buried in his garden which was not done and his Eationalist friend, Sir F. Burdett, was to speak over the grave. D. Mar. 18, 1812.

TOPINARD, Professor Paul, M.D.,

French anthropologist. B. Nov. 4, 1830. Topinard spent his youth in the United States. He returned to study medicine at Paris, and in 1870 and 1871 practised in that city. He then entered Broca s Anthro pological Laboratory, and from 1872 to 1880 he was Conservator of the Collections of the Anthropological Society and Asso ciate Director of the Anthropological Laboratory at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes. In 1876 he was appointed pro fessor at the School of Anthropology, and in 1880 he succeeded Broca as editor of the Revue d Anthropologie. Besides his many and weighty works on anthropology he published a thoroughly Eationalistic book entitled Science and Faith (Eng. trans., 1899). He did not, he said, want " a grain of mysticism " in life (p. 355). D. Dec. 20, 1911.


TRACY, the Marquis Alexandre Cesar Victor Charles Destutt de, French writer and statesman. B. Sep. 9, 1781. Ed. Ecole Polytechnique. His father [next paragraph] carefully supervised his educa tion in liberal ideals. He became a military engineer, and served in all Napoleon s campaigns. In 1814 he received the rank of colonel, and six years later he retired, to devote himself to science. In 1822 he was sent to Parliament, where he sat on the anti-clerical left with Lafayette s son, 80G