OWEN 



671 



pastor of a large congregation in Leadenhall Street. 

 His last publications of importance were a Dis- 

 course Concerning the Holy Spirit (1674) ; Doctrine 

 of Justification by Faith (1677), a treatise still 

 much admired by many ; and Christologia, or 

 Glorious Mi/uteri/ of the Person of Christ. 



Already in 1663 lie had declined a call to Boston 

 in New England, as he did an invitation in 1670 

 to become president of Harvard. In his later years 

 he was held in the highest esteem by many of the 

 most influential personages in the land, and lie had 

 repeatedly long conversations with both Charles II. 

 and the Duke of York on the subject of Noncon- 

 formity. In his controversies with Sherlock and 

 StillingHeet he came off triumphant, and to the 

 end of life he preached and wrote incessantly, not- 

 withstanding the torments of the stone and asthma. 

 He died at Baling, 24th August 1683, and was 

 buried in Bunhill Fields, being followed to the 

 grave we are told by as many as sixty noblemen. 

 Owen was learned, considerate, and generous. 



For his life, see the Rev. W. Orme's Memoirs ( 1820 ), 

 and the Life, by the Rev. A. Thomson, prefixed to the 

 moat complete edition of Owen's more than eighty works, 

 that edited by Dr Goold (24 vols. Edin. 1850-55). 



Owen, Joiix, born at Pembroke in 1833, was 

 educated at Lampeter, and in 1870 was appointed 

 rector of East Anstey in Devonshire, where nedied, 

 6th February 1896. A profound student, he wrote 

 much for the Edinburgh Review and the Academy, 

 but is best known for Evenings with the Skeptics 

 (1881), Skeptics of the f/alian Renaissance ( 1892 ), 

 and Skeptics of the French Renaissance ( 1893). He 

 edited Glanville's Scepsis Scientifica (1885), and 

 published a volume of Verse Musings. 



Owen, SIR RICHARD, one of the most eminent 

 of zoologists, was born at Lancaster, July 20, 1804. 

 From the grammar-school of that town he passed 

 (1824) to Edinburgh University and extra-mural 

 School of Medicine, and thence (1826) to St Bar- 

 tholomew's Hospital in London, where \\s completed 

 his course. He had barely started medical practice 

 when he was called (1830) to help in cataloguing 

 the Hunterian collections in the museum of the 

 Royal College of Surgeons, to the curatorship of 

 which he afterwards succeeded. In 1835 he married 

 the only daughter of Clift, his colleague in the 

 museum. Till 1856 he continued to produce a 

 marvellous series of descriptive catalogues, while 

 for more than twenty years ( 1834-55) he lectured 

 as professor of Comparative Anatomy, for two 

 years at Bartholomew's, and afterwards as Sir 

 Charles Bell's successor at the College of Surgeons. 

 Some of the results of his research and teaching 

 are embodied in several well-known volumes on 

 comparative anatomy and physiology. Meanwhile 

 he had helped to give new life to the Zoological 

 Society of London, of which he was for a time the 

 unpaid prosector, while he had also worked wil- 

 lingly in various public interests -e.g. as a com- 

 miviioner of health (1843-46), and for the Great 

 Exhibition of 1851. In 1856 he became superin- 

 tendent of the natural history department of the 

 British Museum, where he continued his investiga- 

 tions on living and fossil animals, energetic more- 

 over in snch practical matters as the fit housing of 

 this magnificent collection. He also continued to 

 teach periodically at the Royal Institution and 

 elsewhere, until his resignation of official duties in 

 1883. But even thereafter the veteran of fourscore 

 vars and more )>ersisted at his work. Elected a 

 Fellow of the Royal Society in 1834, president of 

 the British Association in 1857, Associate of the 

 French Institute in 1859, a Companion of the 

 Bath in 1873, a K.C.B. in 1883, recipient of many 

 scientific medals, degrees, and honorary titles from 

 many nations, he gained above all the immortality 

 of a irue worker. 



As a student Owen had also visited Paris and 

 seen Cuvier, of whose school he became a prominent 

 disciple, yet in his theoretical conclusions he 

 rather supported Geoft'roy St-Hilaire, against whose 

 principle of the unity of organic structure he had 

 heard Cuvier argue in 1831 before the French 

 Academy. Marvellous industry and width of 

 knowledge, anatomical insight and enthusiasm 

 for palaeontology, were as characteristic of Owen 

 as of Cuvier, and their names will be linked 

 while zoology lasts. Owen's anatomical and 

 palii'ontological researches number towards four 

 hundred, and concern almost every class of animals 

 from sponge to man ; he helped to elucidate 

 the structure of many rare and interesting types, 

 such as the Venus-flower-basket ( Enplectella), the 

 Brachiopod Lingula, the King-crab (Limiting), the 

 Pearly Nautilus and the Argonaut, the Mud-fish 

 Protopterus, many extinct reptiles and birds, the 

 recently-lost Moa and the persistent Apteryx, the 

 Aye-Aye and the Gorilla; he greatly advanced 

 morphological enquiry by his clear distinction 

 between analogy and homoli/yy, as well as by his 

 concrete studies on the nature of limbs, on the 

 composition of the skull, and on other problems 

 of vertebrate morphology ; while his essay on Par- 

 thenogenesis was a pioneer work of much historical 

 importance in connection with theories of sex and 

 reproduction. As a Pre-Darwinian, much influ- 

 enced by the conception of 'archetypes,' Owen 

 maintained a cautious, though by no means hostile, 

 attitude to the more detailed evolutionist theories; 

 his convictions, in short, were those of a Platonic 

 anatomist. He died 18th December 1892. See the 

 Life by his grandson (18!I4). 



Owen, ROHERT, social reformer, was born a 

 saddler and ironmonger's son, at Newtown, in Mont- 

 gomeryshire, 14th May 1771. He had a poor edu- 

 cation, and was put at ten into a draper ' shop at 

 Stamford, but a few years later shifted to Man- 

 chester, and by nineteen had risen to be the enter- 

 prising manager of a cotton-mill with five hundred 

 hands. In 1799 he married the daughter of David 

 Dale (q.v.), the philanthropic owner of the cele- 

 brated cotton-mills at New Lanark, on the Clyde, 

 ami, having induced his firm to purchase the con- 

 cern, settled there next year as manager and part- 

 owner. Here he laboured with constant zeal to 

 teach his workpeople the advantages of thrift, clean- 

 liness, and good order, and organised with a wisdom 

 far l>efore his time a system of infant education. 

 In 1813 the business was reorganised, so as to give 

 Owen a freer hand for his philanthropic schemes, 

 under a firm content with a profit of 5 per cent., of 

 which Jeremy Bentham and the Quaker William 

 Allen were inemlwrs. By this time Owen had 

 thought out a religious creed for himself, and he 

 now began his social propagandism in A New View 

 of Society, or Essays on the Principle of the Forma- 

 tion of the Human Character ( 1813). His works at 

 New Lanark quickly became famous, and attracted 

 visitors from all parts of the world, while his advice 

 on social questions was sought, if not always 

 followed, by statesmen. Owen's thoughts on the 



Eressing social questions of the day finally drove 

 im to socialism rather than co-operation as a 

 solution, but he lost much of his influence on the 

 wider community by utterances on religion that 

 were at least honest, if not discreet. His socialistic 

 theories were put to the test of practice in experi- 

 mental communities at Orbiston near Bothwell, 

 and later at New Harmony in Indiana, at Rala- 

 hine in County Clare, and at Tytherly in Hamp- 

 shire, but all were completely unsuccessful. In 

 1828 his connection with NW Lanark finally 

 ceased ; and, his means having been exhausted in 

 the American experiment, the remainder of hjs 

 days were spent in restless secularist and socialistic 



