Voltaire

EARLY LIFE 

He was born François-Marie Arouet in Paris on November 21, 1694 to François Arouet and Marie-Marguerite Daumart or D'Aumard.

Voltaire was a nom de plume an anagram of Arovet L(e) I(eune), the Latinized spelling of his surname, François adopted the name Voltaire after his first spell in prison in 1718.

Portrait by Nicolas de Largillière, c. 1724

As an infant François had a feeble constitution and the baptismal rites were not performed for months after his birth as it was felt he wouldn't survive.

His father Francis Arouet was the treasurer of local revenues and a Jansenist, (a movement aimed at reforming the French Roman Catholic Church from within). He appears to have been strict, but neither inhospitable nor tyrannical.

François' mother Margaret belonged to a noble family. She died when he was seven-years-old.  Not much is known about her.

He was the fifth child of his parents, preceded by twin boys (one of whom survived), a girl, Marguerite-Catherine, and another boy who died young.

Marguerite-Catherine Arouet, of whom her younger brother was very fond, married early; the elder brother, Armand, was a strong Jansenist and had a poor relationship with François.

François was nicknamed "Zozo" by his family,

The Abbé de Châteauneuf, a friend of François' mother, instructed him in belles lettres and deism, and young François showed a faculty for facile verse-making.

In his earliest school years the Abbé presented François to the famous atheist author Ninon de Lenclos. When she died, tragically, in 1705, she left him money so he could buy books.

At the age of ten François was sent to the Jesuit Collège Louis-le-Grand, and remained there till 1711. There, he was taught latin, theology, and rhetoric. Though he deprecated the education he had received, it formed the basis of Voltaire's considerable knowledge, and probably kindled his lifelong devotion to the stage.

CAREER 

In August 1711, at the age of seventeen, François left school and returned home. The usual battle followed between a son who desired no profession but literature and a father who refused to consider literature a profession at all. So Voltaire studied law, at least nominally.

Voltaire pretended to work in Paris as an assistant to a notary, while secretly composing poetry. When his father found out, he sent Voltaire to study law in Caen, Normandy. But the young man continued to write, producing essays and historical studies.

Voltaire's wit made him popular among some of the aristocratic families with whom he mixed. In 1713, his father obtained a job for him as a secretary to the new French ambassador in the Netherlands, the marquis de Châteauneuf, who was the abbé's brother. However Voltaire embarked on a scandalous romance, so his father ordered him  home.

In December 1721 Voltaire's father died leaving him property, rather more than four thousand livres a year, which was soon increased by a pension of half the amount from the regent. From then on he had private means and was not dependent on rich benefactors meaning Voltaire could write what he liked.

Voltaire lived in a France which was oppressively mis-governed and overtaxed and the writer was not shy in lampooning the ruling class. In 1716 Voltaire wrote a satirical poem about the Duke of Orleans that resulted in a nearly year-long imprisonment at the Bastille. He was imprisoned from May 16, 1717 to April 15, 1718 in a windowless cell with ten-foot-thick walls.

The end of 1725 brought a disastrous close to this period of his life. When Voltaire was insulted by the chevalier de Rohan, he replied with his usual sharpness of tongue, and shortly afterwards, when dining with the Duke of Sully, Voltaire was called out and beaten by the chevalier's hirelings, while Rohan watched. Seeking redress, Voltaire challenged de Rohan to a duel.

On the morning appointed for the duel Voltaire was arrested and sent for the second time to the Bastille. He was kept in confinement a fortnight, and was then packed off to England in accordance with his own request. He spent three years in exile there and said on his return to France from England in 1729 he said of his temporary home . "Imagine a country with 350 religions and only one sauce."

Voltaire was a canny businessman. One day in 1729 he had supper with the Mathematician, Lacondamine, who told him that the new Paris lottery had been miscalculated. If all the tickets were bought, there would be a clear profit to the buyers of a million francs. The pair bought all the tickets they could — and kept winning. The French government cottoned on and took Voltaire to court, but he was found to have done nothing illegal.

Voltaire became a wealthy man from both the Paris lottery and crafty investing in the slave trade. For the rest of his life he kept a pension list from which he financed struggling writers and victims of injustice.

By the 1750s, Voltaire was a celebrity renowned throughout Europe. Famous visitors came from everywhere to see the renowned free-thinker and discuss his work with him.

Elémens de la philosophie de Neuton, 1738

Though Voltaire made fun of royalty, he lived at the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia between 1750 and 1753 and accepted a pension from him.

Once when Frederick the Great sent Voltaire some verses asking him to correct and criticise them, the French philosopher replied "See, what a quantity of his dirty linen, the King has sent me to wash".

French Huguenot merchant Jean Calas, who was wrongly convicted of killing his son, died on March 10, 1763 after being tortured by authorities. The event inspired Voltaire to begin campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform.

In January 1754 Louis XV banned Voltaire from Paris, so he moved to Geneva. In 1759 Voltaire purchased the estate of Ferney in France, near the Swiss border where he lived until 1778.

Voltaire's château at Ferney, France. By Brücke-Osteuropa

WORKS 

Voltaire wrote all kinds of literature. He was known as the Great Mocker as he railed against the things he hated. Priests, kings, tyrants and oppressors and especially the Regent Phillipe d’Orléans all felt the power of his poisoned pen.

Voltaire first came to fame with his 1718 anti-clerical work Oedipe.

In 1747 Voltaire wrote Zadig, an anti-clerical novel about a virtuous youth who can't understand why he is so unlucky. An angel explains that some good comes out of evil and that nothing happens by chance. Everything is predestined.

Voltaire 's most famous work was Candide, ou l'Optimisme, a short satirical book, in which all manner of adversities were heaped upon Candide and his cheerful tutor Dr Pangloss, who stood up to them philosophically. Candide was completed in 1759, four years after the Lisbon earthquake and the work was intended to satirize philosophical optimism and to question the goodness of God. The character of the incurable optimist Dr Pangloss, who declared "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds" was intended to poke fun at Rousseau's theories.

a frontispiece of Voltaire's Candide, or Optimism. 

Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary was his major philosophical work, It consisted of articles he had written for the rationalist Diderot's Encyclopédie. The latter appeared in 35 volumes between 1751 and 1780 voicing free thought, Enlightenment ideas and revolutionary change. The last volume of Voltaire's major free-thinking work was published posthumously in 1780.

L'Ingénu, published in 1767, was about a Canadian youth, who having spent 20 years amongst the Huron Indians, came to France and was astonished at the ways of Roman Catholicism and Louis XV's bureaucracy.

He wrote between fifty and sixty plays (including a few unfinished ones). Ironically, despite Voltaire's comic talent, he wrote only one good comedy, Nanine, but many good tragedies -- two of them, Zaire and Mérope, are ranked among the ten or twelve best plays of the whole French classical school.

At the time of his death. Voltaire left behind him over fourteen thousand known letters and over two thousand books and pamphlets. He was read by Frederick the Great, Napoleon and Catherine the Great.

Upon his death Catherine the Great purchased Voltaire's entire collection of works and moved it to The Hermitage in Russia.

Voltaire summed up his satirical career thus: "My one and only prayer to God is a very short one. 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' " God has granted it.

BELIEFS

Voltaire was raised in Jansenism and later became a deist and a critic of the intolerance and petty squabbles in both Protestant and Catholic Churches.

He was the high priest of the Enlightenment, which can be summed up by "judge a man by his questions, rather than by his answers". Unfortunately this led to Voltaire questioning basic biblical principles. He referred to Christianity as the "infamous thing"  and claimed "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." His views provoked seismic waves of shock and disgust in the churches. Voltaire had erred in believing the falseness and hypocrisy of most of the mid-eighteenth century religion as representing true Christianity.

In Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary he wrote regarding the hymns of the day: "The most High has a decided taste for vocal music, provided it be lugubrious and gloomy enough."

Voltaire; A Philosophical Dictionary. 2nd ed., London: 1824

Voltaire once prophesied that in "another century and there will not be a Bible on Earth." Ironically a century after his death his home was occupied by the Geneva Bible Society.

Though a meat eater himself, Voltaire was sympathetic to the philosophy of vegetarianism.  That viewpoint had come increasingly into vogue in 18th century France due to the publication by Antonio Cocchi of the teachings of the ancient Greek vegetarian Pythagoras.

The French philosophical writer was scornful of the medical profession in his day. Voltaire quipped that doctors pour "drugs of which they knew little about, to cure diseases of which they knew less, into human beings of which they knew nothing." Also he jested that "the art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while Nature cures the disease."

PERSONAL LIFE 

Voltaire was single all his life.

When Voltaire started working for the Marquis de Châteauneuf in The Hague he fell in love with Olympe Dunoyer (known as 'Pimpette') a Protestant girl from a poor family, Their relationship, considered scandalous, was discovered by de Châteauneuf and Voltaire's father stopped the affair by procuring a lettre de cachet, though he never used it.

At the age of thirty-nine, Voltaire started a sixteen-year liaison with the philosopher Émilie Du Châtelet (December 17, 1706  – September 10, 1749) , the Divine Emilie. She was twenty-seven, married, and the mother of three children. "I found, in 1733, a young woman who thought as I did," Voltaire wrote in his memoirs, "and who decided to spend several years in the country, cultivating her mind."

Voltaire lived with Emilie Du Châtelet for many years. She was the co-author with Voltaire of a commentary on Isaac Newton and a kindred spirit.

Portrait by Maurice Quentin de La Tour of Émilie du Châtelet

It was Voltaire who originated the story of Isaac Newton and his apple. Apparently he was told the story by Mrs Conduit, Newton’s niece.

Arrogant and greedy, Voltaire was generous to his friends but a merciless satirist and mocker to his enemies. So sharp was his tongue that no one is on record as having beaten him in an argument.

Voltaire was said to have drowned 40-50 cups of coffee daily. On his death bed he quipped "I am dying of 250,000 cups of coffee".

DEATH 

Visiting Paris for the opening of his latest tragic play, Irene in February 1778, the 83-year-old Voltaire attended a boisterous party to celebrate and exhausted himself meeting all the people who had turned out to acclaim him. He believed he was about to die but then recovered for a time. However, Voltaire soon became ill again and he died on May 30, 1778. His last words were "Do let me die in peace."

House in Paris where Voltaire died. By Edal Anton Lefterov - Own work,

Because of his criticism of the church Voltaire was denied burial in church ground. He was finally buried at an abbey in Champagne. In 1791 his remains were moved to a resting place at The Panthéon in Paris.

His final resting place, unfortunately, became a garbage heap. In 1814 an unknown group robbed Voltaire's grave and disposed of him in a nearby garbage heap, no one the wiser (for more than 50 years) until his sarcophagus was inspected and discovered... empty. All that remains of Voltaire is his heart - at the Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale.

Edmund Bentley later wrote:

It was a weakness of Voltaire's
To forget to say his prayers
And one which to his shame
He never overcame.

Leo Tolstoy

EARLY LIFE 

Leo Tolstoy was born Lyov Nikolayevich Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, a family estate in Russia on September 9, 1828.

Tolstoy in 1897

Leo was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, and Countess Mariya Tolstaya (née Volkonskaya). 

In 1836 a tutor predicted literary fame for the young Leo.

Leo's mother died when he was 6, after the birth of daughter Mary, and his father when he was 9. He was bought up by relatives (he finally went to live with his aunt in 1841) but Leo mainly had a happy childhood.

In 1844, Leo began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University. However, he spent his time there playing cards, womanizing, drinking and playing sport.

CAREER 

Tolstoy left Kazan University in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much of his time in Moscow, Tula and Saint Petersburg, leading a lax and leisurely lifestyle.

Tolstoy at age 20, circa 1848

He began writing during this period, and Tolstoy's first published work, Childhood, appeared under a pseudonym in the Russian literary and political magazine Sovremennik ("The Contemporary") in 1852.

In 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, Tolstoy went with his older brother Nichola to the Caucasus and joined the army. At helping subdue the rebellious Tattar tribes, Tolstoy served as a young artillery officer during the Crimean War, and was in Sevastopol during the 11-month-long siege of Sevastopol in 1854–55.

During the war Tolstoy was recognized for his bravery and courage and he was promoted to lieutenant in 1854. 

Tolstoy's experiences in battle, recounted in his Sevastapol Sketches, helped develop his pacifism, and gave him material for his realistic depiction of the horrors of war in his later works. 

Tolstoy during the Crimean War, c. 1854.

Tolstoy didn't enjoy the army and he resigned his commission after the Crimean War ended in 1856.

In the early 1860s Tolstoy spent some time abroad studying educational methods. He set up a school at Yasnaya Polyana, where he introduced a new method of teaching. No compulsory lessons, no rules, no punishment and no rewards. It only lasted a year and only his growing fame as an author prevented the  authorities from prosecuting him for such activities.

After the failure of his school, Tolstoy typcally wrote in the mornings and devoted the afternoons to managing his vast estates in the Volga Steppes.

After reading Schopenhauer's philosophical book The World as Will and Representation, and a gradual conversion to mystical Christianity, Tolstoy gradually became converted to an ascetic morality as the proper spiritual path for the upper classes. From around 1880 he threw in his lot with the peasants and proceeded to work in the woods and fields alongside them. Tolstoy also wrote ethical pieces on educational, religious and social themes.

After attacking the Orthodox Church in his book Resurrection, Leo Tolstoy was excommunicated in 1901. His works were banned in Russia and instead they had to be published in England or Germany.

WORKS 

As well as novels, Tolstoy also wrote short stories, autobiographical experiences, plays and numerous philosophical essays. He doodled as he wrote, sitting at a large desk at home.

Tolstoy in his study in 1908

Tolstoy's first published novel, Childhood, was released under the initials L. N. in the November 1852 issue of the popular Russian literary journal The Contemporary. Published when Tolstoy was just 23-years old, Childhood was an immediate success.

Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace was published in 1869. Set during Napoleon's invasion of Russia, it tells of the interwoven histories of the poor Rostov family and the rich Bolkonskys. It is regarded as a milestone in the development of the western novel.

Anna Karenina was initially released in serial installments from 1873 to 1877 in the periodical The Russian Messenger and was first published in book form in 1878. The story is based on an account Tolstoy read in a newspaper about a woman who, believing her lover had betrayed her, threw herself under a train. 

Title page of first edition of Anna Karenina

The character of Levin is based on Tolstoy himself. Anna's lover, Vronsky mirrored the younger Tolstoy with his debonair style and gambling debts. 

During the period when he wrote Anna Karenina, Tolstoy's pious Aunt Tatiana, who had been an important influence on him, died. He also lost two children and his wife was ill. The suffering helped him with his understanding of human nature. 

In 1900 Leo Tolstoy wrote Resurrection, his first novel for twenty years. It was written in support of the Dukhobors, an Anabaptist group of 12,000 undergoing persecution by Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. He donated all proceeds to finance their emigration to Canada. 

Tolstoy left 45 volumes of diaries and correspondence. More would have been left but in 1910 manuscripts were destroyed in a fire at his family mansion.

BELIEFS 

After leaving university Tolstoy lost his faith in religion and prayer.

By 1880 the 52-year-old Tolstoy had experienced a spiritual transformation in which he rejected authority and private ownership and returned to a basic mystical Christianity. He started living by a code of non-violence, universal love and simplicity. 

Tolstoy became a strict vegetarian. He believed that meat was not a suitable diet for humans as it excited the mortal lusts and involved pain and death for animals. Instead, Tolstoy existed mainly on oatmeal porridge, bread and vegetable soup.

The great Russian novelist's code attracted many followers who called themselves "Tolstoians". He started to distribute his land amongst his wife and children, and disclaimed his title, his wealth and the copyrights to his books.

In 1892 there was a terrible famine in Russia and Leo Tolstoy set up 370 kitchens feeding 16,000 daily. He personally raised 141,000 roubles (including half a million dollars from the USA). 

Tolstoy organizing famine relief in Samara, 1891

Tolstoy's 1900 novel Resurrection advocated his ascetic Christianity and "resist not evil" was his message to mankind. Chapter 40 outlines some of his theology which shows Tolstoy being against the "blasphemous incantation over the bread and wine" (e.g. transubstantiation). He also claimed Jesus had forbidden men to call other men their master or to pray in temples and instead had commanded each to pray in Spirit and Truth. 

Tolstoy retranslated the Gospels into Russian, throwing out the Old Testament and much of the New and instead using the Sermon on the Mount as his basic creed. He rejected the idea of Jesus as part of a Holy Trinity, instead he referred to him as an inspired sage who happened to have divined truths about life.

RELATIONSHIPS 

As a young army officer Tolstoy collected a string of mistresses and frequented whorehouses. He participated in drunken orgies and several times contacted venereal disease. 

On September 23, 1862, Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, daughter of a German physician, who was 16 years his junior. 

Four days before their wedding Tolstoy insisted that his fiancee read his diaries in which he'd dutifully recorded his sexual relations with his serfs. The diary included the fact that he had fathered a child by a woman, Axinya, who still was serving on the Yasnaya Polyana estate. 

Sophia Tolstaya and daughter Alexandra Tolstaya

Sophia was pregnant 16 times and she gave birth to 13 children (The other 3 were still born.). She still found the energy to work as her husband's unpaid assistant deciphering and copying his drafts. Tolstoy described his wife as "good, loving and beloved".

Tolstoy's relationship with his wife deteriorated as his beliefs became increasingly radical. By the 1880s, his family life was disrupted, his intentions to give his land away split his household. By this stage Tolstoy was preaching Christian love to the world but was inclined to be spiteful to his loyal wife. 

Tolstoy several times took a public vow of chastity and asked for separate bedrooms. 

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Tolstoy was short, thick set, with a broad nose and thick lipped. He grew a beard to cover his somewhat ugly features. In his older days it developed into a very long white beard.

Tolstoy in May 1908

After going through a spiritual change Tolstoy adopted the peasant's standard attire. To identify with the common people he put on peasant clothes and made his own shoes.

In his old age, Tolstoy had an immense aura of inward peace.

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS 

Whenever Tolstoy was confronted by a problem he attempted to resolve it whilst playing Solitaire. For instance he let a game of Solitaire decide whether Katyvisha should marry Nekhlyndov in Resurrection.

Tolstoy renounced his favourite sport of hunting after undergoing his spiritual change.

Even in his late seventies Tolstoy had not abandoned his habit of vigorous exercise, spending nearly every afternoon in riding, walking and in spare moments indoors playing battle-dore and shuttlecock with his daughter or amusing himself with cup and ball. 

HOMES 

Yasnaya Polyana the former home of Leo Tolstoy is 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) southwest of Tula, Russia, and 200 kilometres (120 mi) from Moscow.

House of Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana. By Celest.ru 

Tolstoy was born in the Yasnaya Polyana house, and wrote both War and Peace and Anna Karenina there. He called Yasnaya Polyana his "inaccessible literary stronghold". He is buried nearby. 

In June 1921, the estate was nationalized and formally became his memorial museum.

DEATH 

Tolstoy hated the concept of wills and in his last days he signed several to close every loophole. The last one he wrote on a forest stump to avoid family spying. His land and literary estates went "to the people" through his sole family ally, his daughter Shaha. 

Leo Tolstoy, after rowing with his wife stealthily left home one evening, caught pneumonia and lay dying in a waiting room siding at Astapovo Railway Station. He was urged to return to the fold of the Russian Orthodox Church before it is too late. Tolstoy mumbled "Even in the valley of the shadow of death, 2 and 2 do not make 6." 

Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910 at the station master's apartment. 

Thousands of peasants turned out to line the streets at Tolstoy's funeral.

Sources Philip Yancey Soul Survivor,  The Penguin Book of Interviews

John Toland

The religious philosopher John Toland was born in Ardagh on the Inishowen Peninsula in northwestern Ireland on November 30, 1670.

Having formally converted from Catholicism to Protestantism at the age of 16, Toland adopted a liberal point of view influenced by the philosophy of John Locke. He was the first person called a freethinker (by Bishop Berkeley) 

John Toland was one of the pioneers of the deist movement, the predominant philosophy of the Anglican Church in the late 17th and pre Wesley 18th century. 

Toland's first book Christianity not Mysterious published in 1696 was also his best known tome. In his controversial work, Toland argued that God is a rational being and that the Christian mysteries are the result of clerical manipulations. Such was the public outcry in Ireland that he is forced to flee to England. 

Wikipedia

He went on to write over a hundred books in various topics but mostly dedicated to criticizing ecclesiastical institutions.

Toland was interested in the ancient pagan religion of the Druids and was in particular fascinated by the four thousand-year-old stone circles and other monuments, which he believed was built by them. In September 1717 Toland held the first known Druid revival ceremony at Primrose Hill, in London, at the Autumnal Equinox, to found the Mother Grove, what is later to become the Ancient Order of Druids (AOD). He was elected as the first Chief of the Mother Grove. 

Toland died aged 51 in Putney, London on March 11, 1722. 

Socrates

EARLY LIFE 

Socrates was born in around 470BC and was bought up in comparative luxury in the Athens suburb of Alopeke.

His father, Sophroniscus was the last of a long line of stone cutters.

Socrates' mother was a midwife named Phaenarete.

A bust of Socrates in the Louvre. By Sting

CAREER 

Socrates trained as a stonecutter and took over the family stone cutter business. Socrates must have made no little progress, if the antiquity tradition is correct, that the statues of the Three Graces, which stood near the Acropolis until the 2nd century AD, are his work.

For a time, Socrates fulfilled the role of hoplite, participating in the Peloponnesian war—a conflict which stretched intermittently over a period spanning 432 to 404 B.C.

Strong and courageous in battle, at Potidea in 432 Socrates saved the life of a soldier named Alcibades, who later became a prominent Athenian statesman, orator, and general. Socrates refused any sort of official recognition and instead encouraged the decoration of Alcibiades.

When the Delphic Oracle called the then 40 year old Athenian soldier Socrates "The wisest man of Greece," Socrates replied "Tis because I alone of all Greeks know that I know nothing."

After the Delphic oracle proclaimed Socrates to be the wisest man alive, he decided to devote himself full time to pondering behavior, politics and religion.

Socrates' dialectic method of getting at the truth by repeated questioning gained him many followers amongst the youth but upset the established political elite whose ignorance showed up by contradicting themselves after repeated questioning.

Socrates encouraged his pupils to question the world around them and to live their lives according to their conscience even if this bought them into conflict with authorities.

Statue of Socrates in front of the Academy of Athens (modern)

He wondered around Athens stopping here and there to hold discussions on all sorts of subjects with the public. Socrates said: "I am citizen not of Athens of Greece, but of the world."

Plato became a pupil of Socrates in his youth, and — at least according to his personal account — he attended his master's trial, though not his execution.

In Plato's accounts, Socrates explicitly denies accepting money for teaching and does not seem to have any source of income, spending all his time engaged in conversation. However, in Xenophon's Symposium, Socrates explicitly states that he taught for a living, paid by his students, and that he thought this was the most important art or occupation.

The Debate Of Socrates And Aspasia

Plato has Socrates tell us that he once spent all of his time on scientific research, but gave up on it when he came to see that it was philosophy that was truly important for study.

BELIEFS 

Socrates left no writings of his own. He was very worried that the increasing use of books in education would have the effect of ruining students' ability to memorize things. His teachings were preserved by Plato in his Dialogues.

Socrates taught that the use of science for practical purposes was degrading and should only be used to exercise the mind.

In the sphere of morality, Socrates put forward the view that a good person never knowingly does wrong.

According to Socrates, there is only one good — knowledge, and one evil — ignorance.

Socrates taught it's the soul that separates man from beasts.

Socrates' rebellious beliefs gave the impression that he didn't believe in the traditional Greek gods though he did maintain an affection for Apollo.

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Socrates was short, with a little snubby nose, blubbery lips, a squint and pot belly.

He was renowned for his ugliness and was described as a clumsy and slovenly figure.

Bust of Socrates in the Vatican Museum

Socrates would have generally worn the chiton, a draped garment that was sewn up one side and fastened at the shoulder by a clasp or buckle.

Iron willed with flexible courage, Socrates was known as the "Gad Fly of Athens."

During his time serving Athens as a hoplite, Socrates also showed his extraordinary hardiness, walking without shoes and a coat in winter.

Aristophanes compared Socrates' walk to the strut of a waterfowl.

Socrates had a habit of standing still and rolling his eyes.

RELATIONSHIPS 

Sometime after the Battle of Delium, Socrates married a young lady of independent means called Xanthippe.

Xanthippe bore her husband three children, Lamprocles, Sophroniscus and in his 69th year, Menexenus.

By the cultural standards of the time, Xanthippe was considered a shrew. Socrates himself attested that he, having learned to live with Xanthippe, would be able to cope with any other human being, just as a horse trainer accustomed to wilder horses might be more competent than one not.

Luca Penni Socrates and Xanthippe.

Socrates said: "By all means, get married. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy, if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."

Plato used the word "Platonic" in his Symposium to describe the pure love shown by Socrates towards young men.

PERSONAL LIFE

Socrates lived a very frugal lifestyle and ate as little as possible with no seasonings at all. "Other men live to eat, whilst I eat to live" he quipped.

He advocated a diet which didn't involve animal cruelty.

Socrates had a large capacity for alcoholic beverages, and at drink and conversation get-togethers called symposia he astounded all who knew him with his capacity for remaining sober, even after everyone else in the party has become thoroughly inebriated.

He preferred city life to the country. Socrates said: "I am a lover of knowledge and the men who dwell in the city are my teachers, not the trees or the countryside."

Socrates was keen on exercising, including jogging, which he saw as the best stimulant for the stomach.

The large bodied and strong Greek philosopher once walked 117 miles (188 kms) from Athens to Olympia to see the Olympics.

Socrates led a frugal life – when he was spotted in a market looking at some impressive wares he was asked why he came to the market as he never bought anything. Socrates replied "I am always amazed to see just how many things there are that I don't need."

By the end of his life, Socrates couldn't even afford shoes and was forced to go about barefoot. He wore a single rough woollen garment in all seasons.

He had good health. It is claimed that though Socrates never left Athens during the many visitations of the plague that have affected the city in his lifetime he was never the worse for any of them.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH

Socrates lived during the time of the transition from the height of the Athenian Empire to its decline after its defeat by Sparta and its allies in the Peloponnesian War. He was the first person to question everything and everyone, and apparently it offended the leaders of this time.

At a time when Athens was seeking to recover from humiliating defeat, the Athenian public court was induced by several leading public figures to try the 70-year-old Socrates on the trumped up charges that he had not recognized the gods and corrupted the youth of Athens by introducing new gods and for questioning acknowledged astronomy.

The Greek dramatist Aristophanes satirized Socrates' teaching in his play The Clouds. He portrayed him as an idle speculator and a perverter of right and wrong. It is thought this turned people against the Greek philosopher.

Socrates spoke on his own behalf but instead of refuting the charges he defended his position as a seeker of truth. He said at his trial his most dangerous enemies were not those in court – meaning people like Aristophanes who'd influenced public thinking .

He might have been let off with a fine but Socrates cheekily suggested he should be awarded a daily meal for life at the public table in the Prytaneum, (a privilege for Olympic winners) as a reward for helping Athenians find virtue and wisdom.

By a margin of 60 votes the 501 jurors and three accusers convicted Socrates and he was sentenced to death.

Socrates' friends, including an old man Crito, provided for his escape but the Greek philosopher preferred martyrdom.

Socrates was found guilty as charged on February 15, 399 BC, and sentenced to drink hemlock. He spent his last days in prison amongst fellow philosophers.

Socrates spent his last moments consoling friends then drank some hemlock potion. He laid down on the wooden plank which was his bed and drew his gown over his head. He suddenly wrenched the covering to say "Crifo, I owe a cock to Aesculapius". (Asclepius was the god of medicine and healing, to whom such a sacrifice might be made upon the curing of a disease.)

The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (1787)

Xenophon, Socrates friend and pupil, wrote a biography, "Memorabilia" of him in around 371 BC. It was one of the first biographies ever written. He also penned an Apology of Socrates to the Jury, which recounts the philosopher's trial in 399 BC.

Source Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

Adam Smith

EARLY LIFE 

Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy, in the County of Fife, Scotland on June 16, 1723.

His father, also Adam Smith, was a Scottish Writer to the Signet (senior solicitor), advocate and prosecutor (Judge Advocate) who also served as comptroller of the Customs in Kirkcaldy.

Adam's mother was Margaret Douglas, daughter of the landed Robert Douglas of Strathendry.

Adam's father died two months after he was born, leaving his mother a widow.

At around the age of 4, Adam was kidnapped by a band of gypsies, but he was quickly rescued by his uncle and returned to his mother. Smith's biographer, John Rae, commented wryly that he feared Smith would have made "a poor gypsy."

Adam attended the Burgh School of Kirkcaldy from 1729 to 1737, where he learned Latin, mathematics, history, and writing.

Adam Smith. The Muir portrait

He entered the University of Glasgow at the age of fourteen and studied moral philosophy under "the never-to-be-forgotten" (as Smith called him) Francis Hutcheson. It was at Glasgow that Adam developed his passion for liberty, reason and free speech.

In 1740, Adam won an exhibition to Balliol College of the University of Oxford, where he took the opportunity to teach himself several subjects by reading many books from the shelves of the large Bodleian Library.  He also translated several famous French books.

His time at Oxford was not a happy one. Adam found the teaching there to be intellectually stifling and he left the University in 1746, before his scholarship ended.

CAREER

 In 1751 Smith was appointed professor on logic at the University of Glasgow, transferring in 1752 to the chair of moral philosophy. His lectures covered the fields of ethics, rhetoric, jurisprudence, political economy, and "police and revenue." His forceful argumentative style of lecturing made him popular with students.

At the end of 1763, Smith resigned from his professorship after he obtained an offer from Charles Townshend to tutor his stepson, Henry Scott, the young Duke of Buccleuch.

He was paid £300 per year (plus expenses) along with a £300 per year pension; roughly twice his former income as a teacher. The two and half years Smith spent as tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch set him up financially.

Smith's tutoring job entailed touring Europe with Scott, which gave him the opportunity to meet other intellectual leaders of his day. The highlight was the meeting with leading French thinkers in Paris.

In 1766, the duke's younger brother died in Paris, and Smith's tour as a tutor ended shortly thereafter.
Smith returned home in 1766 to Kirkcaldy, where he concentrated on writing including his magnum opus Wealth of Nations.

In 1778, Smith was appointed to the well paid post of commissioner of customs in Scotland.

From 1787 to 1789 Smith occupied the honorary position of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow.

WORKS

Smith published his first great work, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, in 1759. The book explains how human morality depends on empathy between agent and spectator, or the individual and other members of society. For Smith, empathy was like "putting yourself in someone else's shoes". The work was well received.

Smith's Wealth of Nations was first published on March 9, 1776. The work, which took him ten years to write, heralded the birth of modern economics with its avocation of free trade (or Laissez Faire) rather than duties on imports.

The Wealth of Nations was an instant success, selling out its first edition in only six months.

Smith's writing style were often satirized by Tory writers in the moralizing tradition of William Hogarth and Jonathan Swift.

BELIEFS 

Adam Smith advocated the necessity of individual enterprise rather than the old fashioned mercantile system. He theorized economies are built on individual self-interest and the state shouldn't interfere. Countries should concentrate on making goods they were best at and import those other countries could make more cheaply. He was the greatest exponent of free enterprise economics until Friedman.

Smith wrote in Wealth of Nations that slavery was uneconomical because the plantation system was a wasteful use of land and slaves cost more to maintain than free laborers.

Adam Smith was a liberal minded Protestant, suspicious of evangelical Christianity. He wrote in Wealth of Nations. "Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition."

Smith famously asked, “What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clean conscience?”

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Smith was not a looker. He was described as someone who "had a large nose, bulging eyes, a protruding lower lip, a nervous twitch, and a speech impediment". He is said to have acknowledged his unattractive looks at one point, saying, "I am a beau in nothing but my books."

Portrait of Smith by John Kay, 1790

Smith devoted a considerable part of his income to numerous secret acts of charity.

Adam Smith was notoriously absent-minded. On one occasion falling into discourse with a certain Mr Damer during breakfast, Smith took a piece of bread and butter, and after rolling it round and round put in into the teapot and poured the water to brew it. Shortly after he poured out a cup, and on tasting it declared it was the worst tea he had ever met with.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH 

Adam Smith never married. He spent his last years living with his mother and after she passed away his cousin Miss Jane Douglas at Panmure House, Cannongate, Edinburgh.

Portrait of Smith's mother, Margaret Douglas

Smith died in the northern wing of Panmure House on July 17, 1790 after a painful illness. On his death bed, Smith expressed disappointment that he had not achieved more. His last words were "I believe we must adjourn the meeting to some other place."

His body was buried in the Canongate Kirkyard.

The father of modern economics, Smith's thinking on mutual trading was influential on William Pitt and other prime ministers. By 1860 Great Britain was a free trade country.

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell was born on May 18, 1872, at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire.

He was the Third Earl Russell but he always liked being called Bertrand even after he inherited his title.

Bertrand Russell portrait.

FAMILY BACKGROUND 

The Russells had been prominent for several centuries in Britain, and were one of Britain's leading Whig / Liberal families.

Bertrand's paternal grandfather, Lord John Russell introduced the 1832 Reform Bill and started Britain on the road to democracy. He was twice asked by Queen Victoria to form a government, serving her as Prime Minister in the 1840s and 1860s.

His father, Viscount Amberley, was a freethinker who among other things, consented to his wife's affair with their children's tutor, the biologist Douglas Spalding. Amberley ruined his parliamentary career by advocating atheism and birth control for women.

Bertrand's mother, Viscountess Amberley was also from an aristocratic family, and was the sister of Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle.

His godfather was John Stuart Mill. The Utilitarian philosopher was Russell's greatest teenage influence .

CHILDHOOD

In June 1874 Bertrand's mother died of diphtheria. A year and a half later, his father died of bronchitis following a long period of depression.

After his parents' premature deaths, Russell and his older brother, Frank, the future 2nd Earl, were raised by their staunchly Victorian grandparents, Lord Russell, the former Prime Minister, and his second wife, the Countess Russell, nee Lady Frances Elliot.

Bertrand also had a sister Rachel who died when he was an infant.

The Countess Russell was from a Scottish Presbyterian family, and her influence on Bertrand's outlook on social justice and standing up for principle remained with him throughout his life.

Young Bertrand was raised as an aristocrat, he was a silent and shy boy.

Russell as a four-year-old

Russell's childhood was very lonely and he often contemplated suicide. He remarked in his autobiography that only his keen interest in mathematics seemed to keep him interested in living.

EDUCATION 

Bertrand was educated at home by a series of governesses, and he spent countless hours in his grandfather's library.

His brother Frank introduced him to Euclid, which transformed Russell's life.

Bertrand was fascinated by figures but his grandmother did not allow the governesses to teach him maths so he had to study it secretly

Russell studied philosophy and logic at Cambridge University, starting in 1890, where he became acquainted with the younger G.E. Moore, and where he later came under the influence of Alfred North Whitehead. He quickly distinguished himself in mathematics and philosophy.

Russell took Mathematics honors in 1893 and graduated in 1894, surprisingly with only a third.

CAREER 

For two years after graduation, Russell lectured in the United States before returning home to a lectureship at the London School of Economics.

In 1907 Russell ran for Parliament as a candidate of the Union of Woman's Suffrage Societies. He lost by 7000 votes.

Russell in 1907

Three years later, Russell attempted to be adopted as a Liberal candidate but his constituency association refused him when they discovered he was an agnostic.

Russell took up a job as a Maths Lecturer at Trinity College Cambridge in 1910. Until the outbreak of World War 1, Russell was an academic who was revolutionizing the study of mathematics, but due to his vocal opposition to the war he became an outsider and he lost his job in 1914.

In 1920, Russell traveled to Russia and subsequently lectured in Peking (now Beijing) on philosophy for one year. The Chinese loved the British lecturer as he considered the Chinese problems from a Chinese point of view rather than the imperialistic English. His Peking University students even launched a special Russell magazine.

In 1922-23 Russell ran as Labour candidate for Chelsea. However, it was a safe Tory seat and was easily defeated by the Conservative candidate Sir Samuel Hoare.

Throughout the remainder of the 1920s, Russell supported himself during this time by writing popular books explaining matters of physics, ethics and education to the layman.

Russell set up the experimental Beacon Hill School, near Petersfield, Hampshire on 1927, which allowed children complete freedom in expressing and behaving themselves. In other words, rather than repress their feelings they could swear at their teachers etc. At Russell's school there was mixed naked bathing, no punishment and no religious instruction. The school was a failure as mainly unruly children who had been expelled from other schools were sent there.

Upon the death of his elder brother Frank, in 1931, Russell became 3rd Earl Russell. He once said that his title was primarily useful for securing hotel rooms and the like.

In 1938 Russell moved to the United States where he taught at many universities and wrote his History of Western Philosophy.

Russell in 1938

In the spring of 1939, Russell moved to Santa Barbara to lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was appointed professor at the City College of New York shortly thereafter, but after public outcries, the appointment was annulled by the courts. Russell returned to Britain in 1944 and he rejoined the faculty of Trinity College.

On December 26, 1948, Bertrand Russell delivered the very first BBC Reith Lecture, launching a tradition that continues to this day. His series of six talks, collectively titled "Authority and the Individual," explored the complex relationship between individual freedom and the various forms of authority present in society.

Russell was awarded the Order of Merit, in the King's Birthday Honours of June 9, 1949. George VI was affable but slightly embarrassed at decorating the controversial freethinker saying, "You have sometimes behaved in a manner that would not do if generally adopted".

In 1958 Russell was elected the First President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

WRITINGS 

Russell wrote over 40 books.

The three-volume Principia Mathematica, written with AN Whitehead, was published between 1910 and 1913. The work, which explored the relationship between pure maths and logic took them ten years to write. Russell had to pay part of the printing costs himself so convinced was Cambridge University that it had a commercial loser on its hand.

Principia Mathematica became one of the most influential volumes for 20th century intellectuals and along with the earlier The Principles of Mathematics, made Russell world-famous in his field.

Russell  included a 360 page proof to show that 1+1=2 in Principia Mathematica. Despite its acknowledged importance in the study of the foundations of math is so complex and obtuse that it is rarely used today.

The title page of the shortened Principia Mathematica 

A History of Western Philosophy was written during Russell's time in the States in the 1940s. A survey of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratic philosophers to the early 20th century, it was a popular and commercial success, and provided Russell with financial security for the last part of his life.

In 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought". When Russell was awarded the honor, A History of Western Philosophy was cited as one of the books that won him the award.

Front cover art for the book A History of Western Philosophy. Wikipedia

PACIFISM 

While never a complete pacifist, Russell called his stance "Relative Pacifism," he held that war was always a great evil, but in some particularly extreme circumstances (such as when Adolf Hitler threatened to take over Europe) it might be a lesser of multiple evils.

Russell opposed British participation in World War I. Bertrand Russell's pacifist refusal to fight in World War 1 made him an object of ridicule in the press. He spent six months in prison in 1917 for an article he wrote for the No Conscription Fellowship in a journal

Russell recommended in the 1930s that Britain gave up its army, navy, air force and empire as then Hitler would have no need to invade us!

In the years leading to World War II, Russell supported the policy of appeasement; but by 1941 he acknowledged that in order to preserve democracy, Hitler had to be defeated.

Russell advocated nuclear disarmament from 1949. Five years later, Russell made a much acclaimed broadcast "Man's Peril," in which he criticized the Bikini A Toll H bomb tests.

CND was launched in February 1958 with Russell as its first President.

Russell made several absurd pronouncements during campaign for nuclear disarmament that Harold Macmillan and John F Kennedy were murderers for supporting the bomb.

Russell (centre) alongside his wife Edith, leading a CND anti-nuclear march

At the height of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, it was in reply to a message from Russell that Nikita Khrushchev revealed the Russian climbdown.

Russell spent a week in Brixton jail in 1961, after persistently obstructing the highway by sitting on it as part of his Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

BELIEFS 

As a young man, Russell was a member of the Liberal Party and wrote in favor of free trade and women's suffrage.

In his 1910 pamphlet, Anti-Suffragist Anxieties, Russell wrote that some men opposed suffrage because they "fear that their liberty to act in ways that are injurious to women will be curtailed."

Later a Socialist, Russell coined the famous phrase "better red than dead."

Russell had a genuine interest in religion, in which he grew increasingly skeptical. By 1910 he believed only in things that could be proved by experience.

Russell wrote a booklet, Why I'm not a Christian. When asked what he would say to God if he ever met him, Russell replied "I should tell him, that he had not provided me with the necessary evidence".

He was a member of a hard-core of progressive group of the 1920s intent on challenging the established order and influential in bringing in the permissive age.

Russell was in favour of eugenics, and together with other left-wing British intellectuals endorsed the fashionable idea with rare enthusiasm.

Russell wrote against Victorian notions of morality. His early writings expressed his opinion that sex between a man and woman who are not married to each other is not necessarily immoral if they truly love one another. This might not seem extreme by today's standards, but it was enough to raise vigorous protests and denunciations against him during his first visit to the United States.

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Russell had a slight, lean figure with bright eyes.

He was quiet and retiring but a frightful prig when young and an unprincipled philander when older.

Russell saw everything in black and white, he didn't believe in compromise.

He had a dry, reedy voice.

Russell had a mordant wit.

RELATIONSHIPS  

Russell first met the American Quaker, Alyssa Pearsall Smith, when he was seventeen years old. He fell in love with the puritanical, high-minded Alys, who was connected to several educationists and religious activists.

Alyssa Pearsall Smith in 1892

Russell's grandmother didn't like her so she whipped him off to Paris, and got him a job as Honorary Attaché' there. This didn't suit Russell so he only stayed for a brief time before fleeing home to Alys. They married at Friend's House in London on December 13. 1894.

Their marriage began to fall apart in 1901 when it occurred to Russell, while he was cycling, that he no longer loved Alys.

The couple separated a decade later. Alys pined for him for years and continued to love Russell for the rest of her life. During this period, Russell had passionate affairs with, among others, Lady Ottoline Morrell (half-sister of the 6th Duke of Portland) and the actress Lady Constance Malleson.

Russell first met British author, feminist and socialist campaigner Dora Black in 1916 when they both took part on a weekend walking tour. However, the pair did not embark on a relationship for another three years when Russell invited her to join him during his summer holidays.

Dora Black Wikipedia

Meanwhile his first wife Alys hovered outside to observe Russell's family life with Dora. In 1921, he divorced Alys so he could marry his fellow socialist campaigner.

Dora was a fierce left wing activist and a believer in free love. She reluctantly became Russell's second wife as she was pregnant and Russell wanted to legitimize her. They were married on September 25, 1921 at Battersea Town Hall with Eileen Power and Frank Russell acting as witnesses. Dora who was seven months pregnant with the couple's first child, John, wore black during the ceremony.

Their second child Kate was born in 1923 and Dora later had two more by a live in lover. Russell accepted them and gave his name to them for the sake of protecting his own children.

In 1931 Russell went on a bizarre holiday with Dora, his mistress, Dora's lover, his two children and his wife’s illegitimate baby.

John Conrad Russell later briefly succeeded his father as 4th Earl Russell and Lady Katherine Russell became Lady Katherine Tait.

Russell with his children, John and Kate

Russell's marriage to Dora grew increasingly tenuous, and it reached a breaking point over her adultery with an American journalist. They separated and later divorced.

On January 18, 1936, Russell married his third wife, a vivacious 25 year old redhead Oxford student named Patricia ("Peter") Spence, at the Midhurst register office. She had been his children's governess since 1930.

Russell and Peter had one son, Conrad.

Patricia acted as secretary to Russell. She left him in 1951 after years of Russell's womanizing. The final straw was during an unhappy holiday, when he declared during a picnic "I am as drunk as a Lord but then I am one." The bad tempered Patricia stormed off taking Conrad whom she forbade having any further contact with his father.

In 1952, Russell divorced Peter and later that year on December 15 he married his fourth wife, American writer and biographer Edith Finch. They had known each other since the 1930s after being introduced through her close friend and housemate Lucy Martin Donnelly, who was a friend of Russell's first wife, Alys. Finch moved to England in 1950 and remained with Russell until his death. By all accounts, their relationship was very close and loving throughout their marriage.

The four times married Russell lived out his belief in free love and became a hero to the sixties generation.

His eldest son John was driven into withdrawal, then open hatred followed by schizophrenia.

At Russell’s death he left behind two embittered ex-wives and a son and two granddaughters with schizophrenia.

PERSONAL LIFE 

Russell was bought up at his grandparents home at Pembroke Lodge, a Grade II listed Georgian mansion in Richmond Park in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.

Childhood home, Pembroke Lodge. By steve, Wikipedia

From 1955 Russell had a small house called Plas Penrhyn near Portmeirion in North Wales.

Russell liked to eat at a certain cheap cafe that served poor food. He explained the reason he ate there was "because I am never interrupted".

HEALTH 

At the age of 16 Russell strained his eyes (which was a blow as he was an avid reader). He was forbidden to read and write so he spent his time recovering learning poetry by heart.

In 1920 Russell had a serious illness in China due to lecturing in cold halls and as a result he refused to grant interviews. The resentful Japanese press (the Japanese were at the time occupying China) carried the news that he has died. On his way home Russell stopped in Japan and the press sought to interview him again. By way of reprisal he had his secretary hand out printed slips to each reporter "since Mr Russell is dead he cannot be interviewed."

Russell was one of 24 survivors of an airplane crash in Hommelvik in October 1948. Russell swam to safety clutching his briefcase whilst 19 people died. He said he owed his life to smoking since the people who drowned were in the non-smoking part of the plane.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH 

At age 89, Bertrand Russell was jailed for "breach of peace" for anti-nuclear demonstration.They offered to exempt him from jail if he pledged himself to "good behaviour", to which Russell replied: "No, I won't."

Russell was still active in international peace drives in his mid 90s.

Russell died of influenza on February 2, 1970 at his home in Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales.

He was cremated without ceremony at Colwyn Bay and his ashes were scattered over the Welsh mountains.