328 



FEUEKBACH, LUDWIG M. 



of the Friends, in some of the metropolitan 

 districts, and proportionate numbers in the 

 country generally. The conference decided to 

 recommend to the Yearly Meeting that it 

 make arrangements for the holding during its 

 sessions, and in connection with them, of the 

 annual meetings of the Tract, the Temperance, 

 and the Foreign Missionary Associations, and 

 of an association in behalf of home mission 

 work; and that these associations make re- 

 ports to the Yearly Meeting, which reports are 

 to be entered in its records. 



According to the statistical report which 

 was submitted to the Yearly Meeting, that 

 body at the end of the year 1871 comprised 

 329 particular meetings, containing an aggre- 

 gate of 14,021 members. 



The Friends' First-Day School Association, 

 reported for 1872, in England, Ireland, and 

 Scotland, 101 schools, with 1,179 teachers, and 

 15,638 scholars. 



The Dublin Yearly Meeting was held in 

 May. Vistors were present from England and 

 from two Yearly Meetings in the United 

 States. The names of 15 men and 17 women 

 were returned as recorded ministers, and 

 those of 47 men and 49 women as having been 

 appointed elders. Mention was made of an 

 address which had been forwarded to the 

 Queen, expressing " sympathy respecting the 

 illness of her eldest son." Statistical reports 

 were read respecting the school at Brookfield, 

 and other schools, and respecting the fund for 

 clothing and putting out to apprenticeship the 

 children who leave Brookfield. A minute was 

 adopted respecting the bill which was before 

 Parliament, concerning the solemnization of 

 marriages in the meetings of the society of 

 persons not in its profession ; but the action 

 of the meeting on the subject was left con- 

 tingent upon that of the London Yearly 

 Meeting. 



The stationary condition of the Society of 

 Friends, and its decline in numbers in some coun- 

 tries, are much remarked upon by its writers. 

 The decline is most obvious in England, where 

 the number of members of the society at the 

 close of the seventeenth century was estimated 

 at 60,000, or about one in 130 of the popula- 

 tion. At present the number is about 14,000, 

 or one in 1,100 of the population. The num- 

 bers are nearly stationary in the United States. 

 A decline is shown in the returns of the year- 

 ly meetings east of the Alleghany Mountains, 

 while those of the Western States show an in- 

 crease sufficient to give a slight gain in the 

 aggregate of the whole country. By a state- 

 ment which was given in the ANNUAL CYCLO- 

 PAEDIA for 1871, it appeared that the whole 

 number of Friends in the United States in 

 that year was only 755 more than it was 

 twenty years before. 



FEUEKBACH, LUDWIG MARIE, a German 

 philosopher of the so-called younger Hegelian 

 school, born at Anspach, in Bavaria, July 28, 

 1804 ; died at Hanau in Hesse-Cassel, Septem- 



ber 17, 1872. He was the son of the late emi- 

 nent publicist and writer on criminal juris- 

 prudence, Paul Joseph Anselm Feuerbach. 

 After studying at the public school of his na- 

 tive town, he attended the university at Hei- 

 delberg in 1822, in order to study theology 

 under Paulus and Daub. Through the latter, 

 he became an ardent partisan of Hegel, and, 

 in order to hear this philosopher, he Avent in 

 1824 to Berlin, where, in the following year, 

 he renounced theology and devoted him 

 entirely to the study of philosophy. In hi 

 twenty-fourth year, a thesis which he published 

 at Erlangen, li De ratione una, universali, inji- 

 nita," secured for him the position of privat 

 docent at that place. He, however, withdrew 

 from the chair after a few years, as his hardi- 

 hood in advocating his opinions had gained 

 him many adversaries. He then devoted him- 

 self entirely to literary pursuits. In 1844 he 

 delivered a brief course of lectures at the Uni- 

 versity of Heidelberg, but soon after retired to 

 a small village in Franconia, where he directed 

 an industrial establishment, and devoted his 

 leisure hours to the study of philosophy and 

 the preparation of his works. Of late years 

 he had withdrawn from this labor, and his la 

 years were spent in frugal poverty though n 

 in neglect, as his disciples gathered aroui 

 him and were ready to give him any assistan 

 which he needed. Feuerbach, though ranki 

 with the most advanced advocates of fr 

 thought, and in some sense an atheist, was a 

 man of pure and irreproachable life, and was 

 much respected even by those who differed 

 from him most widely in their religious views. 

 "What his doctrines were, may best be learned 

 from his own statement: "My theory may be 

 condensed in two words, Nature and m 

 That being which, in my opinion, is the p 

 supposition, the cause of existence of man, 

 not God a mysterious, vague, indefinite ter 

 but Nature. On the other hand, that bein 

 in which Nature becomes conscious, is m 

 True, it follows from my theory that there 

 no God, that is to say, no abstract being, 

 tinct from Nature and man, which disposes 

 the destinies of the universe and mankind 

 its discretion ; but this negation is only a co: 

 sequence of the cognition of God's identi 

 with the essence of Nature and man. 

 denied the personal immortality of the sou 

 for the same reason that he denied the person 

 existence of God he wished to preserve th 

 integrity of existence, to make mortality i 

 mortal, to breathe the spirit of eternity ' 

 time, to compress all humanity within human 

 limits, and get the full benefit of this life while 

 it lasted. He was jealous of the future life, he 

 grudged every drop of feeling that was spilled 

 on the edge of the grave, and lost on the other 

 side. This world was rich enough for him, 

 and ought to be rich enough for anybody ; f.nd 

 to see it neglected, misused, flouted, made him 

 heart-sick. Feuerbach's first published work 

 (after his thesis above named) was " Thoughts 



into 



