Henry David Thoreau (1817) It was on this date, July 12, 1817, the writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He graduated Harvard in 1837 and discovered a talent for writing about nature. Thoreau embraced the Transcendentalist belief in personal insight and experience, but he was neither a critical nor a […]

Although religious compositions made up a significant part of Schumann's works, he was a Pantheist like his countryman, Goethe.

Sir George A. Macferren calls Beethoven a "freethinker" in his article in the Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography; the Catholic Encyclopedia does not dare to claim him.

Carlyle abandoned his Christian beliefs in 1818 after reading Gibbon. After further study... Carlyle gave up the Holy Ghost and immortality, as well, adopting a Pantheism like Goethe's.