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W. Winwood Reade in Angola, 1863

William Winwood Reade (1838 - 1875) was a British historian, explorer, and philosopher.

Biography

Born to a squire in Perthshire, Scotland, Reade took to writing at an early age, composing two novels by the age of 23. At this age he also decided to depart for Africa, arriving in Gabon by steamboat in 1862. After several months of observing gorillas and traveling down through Angola, Reade returned home and published his first travel account, Savage Africa. Despite what critics have called an often juvenile tone, the book is notable for its anthropological inquiries.

In 1868, Reade secured the patronage of London-based Gold Coast trader Andrew Swanzy to journey to West Africa. After failing to get permission to enter the Ashanti Confederacy, Reade set out north from Freetown to explore the areas past the Solimana capital of Falaba. Though Reade traveled over some unexplored territory, his findings excited little interest among geographers, due mostly to his failure to take accurate measurements of his journey; his sextant and other instruments had been left behind at Port Loko. On his return, Reade published his African Sketch-Book (1873), an account of his travels that also called for far greater British involvement in West Africa.

Reade returned to Africa in 1873 to serve as a correspondent in the Ashanti War, but died not long after. He was buried in Ipsden churchyard, Oxfordshire.

His books The Martyrdom of Man and The Outcast are included in the Thinker's Library.

The Martyrdom of Man

The Martyrdom of Man (1872), is a secular history of the Western world. In it, Reade attempts to trace the development of Western civilization in terms analogous to those used in the natural sciences. He uses it to advance his philosophy, which was secular humanism. He attacks traditional religion and morality.

Reade was an atheist and a social Darwinist who believed in survival of the fittest and wanted to create a new civilization. Cecil Rhodes, an English-born South Africa politician and businessman, said that the book "made me what I am". The title of the book is well known to many who have not read it: in Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four, Sherlock Holmes says to Dr. Watson: "Let me recommend this book, -- one of the most remarkable ever penned."

Bibliography

• Savage Africa
• The Martyrdom of Man
• African Sketch-Book
• The Outcast
• The Story of the Ashantee Campaign
• Religion in History
• The Druids
• Veil of Isis or Mysteries of the Druids
• Druidism in Rustic Folklore
• Druidism in the Emblems of Freemasonry
• Druidism in the Ceremonies of the Church Of Rome
• Rites And Ceremonies Of The Druids
• Vestiges Of Druidism
• The Destruction Of The Druids
• Priestesses Of The Druids - Pamphlet
• Nesting Birds, Eggs and Fledglings
• Out of Doors: By Arrangement with the B.B.C
• A Handbook for Naturalists

References

• Hargreaves, J.D. "Winwood Reade and the Discovery of Africa." African Affairs 56.225 (Oct 1957): 306-316.

External links

• The Martyrdom of Man description and downloads
• Winwood Reade's "The Martyrdom of Man": The Boys' Book of All Knowledge? Lincoln Allison, University of Warwick
• Winwood Reade: The Literary Explorer The active life: the explorer as biographical subject, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

From Wikiquote

William Winwood Reade (1838-12-26 – 1875-04-24) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, anthropologist and explorer born in Perthshire, Scotland. His best-known book, The Martyrdom of Man, was a controversial freethinking study of world history.

Sourced

The Martyrdom of Man (1872)

Quotations are cited from the Thinker's Library edition (1943)

• It is a sure criterion of the civilisation of ancient Egypt that the soldiers did not carry arms except on duty, and that the private citizens did not carry them at all.
  • "War", p. 13

• It may safely be asserted that the art of war will soon be reduced to a simple question of expenditure and credit, and that the largest purse will be the strongest arm.
  • "War", pp. 24-5

• The essence of religion is inertia; the essence of science is change. It is the function of the one to preserve, it is the function of the other to improve. If, as in Egypt, they are firmly chained together, either science will advance, in which case the religion will be altered, or the religion will preserve its purity, and science will congeal.
  • "War", p. 27

• Open the book of universal history at what period we may, it is always the India trade which is the cause of internal industry and foreign negotiation.
  • "War", p. 40

• All doctrines relating to the creation of the world, the government of man by superior beings, and his destiny after death, are conjectures which have been given out as facts, handed down with many adornments by tradition, and accepted by posterity as "revealed religion". They are theories more or less rational which uncivilised men have devised in order to explain the facts of life, and which civilised men believe that they believe.
  • "Religion", p. 138

• As a single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a mathematical problem. As an individual he is a free agent, as a species the offspring of necessity.
  • "Religion", pp. 143-4

• If Christianity were true religious persecution would become a pious and charitable duty: if God designs to punish men for their opinions it would be an act of mercy to mankind to extinguish such opinions. By burning the bodies of those who diffuse them many souls would be saved that would otherwise be lost, and so there would be an economy of torment in the long run. It is therefore not surprising that enthusiasts should be intolerant.
  • "Religion", p. 178

• Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all.
  • "Religion", p. 189

• If we look into ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower form; could our minds be made visible we should find them tailed.
  • "Liberty", p. 314

• The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food. Artistic genius is an expansion of monkey imitativeness.
  • "Liberty", p. 315

• There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies rather than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth, which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.
  • "Liberty", p. 315

• We live between two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We are passing from the animal into a higher form, and the drama of this planet is in its second act.
  • "Liberty", p. 316

• Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought nothing out but loads of dung. That was their return cargo. London turns dirt into gold. Rome turned gold into dirt.
  • "Intellect", pp. 383-4

• A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.
  • "Intellect", p. 385

• In Europe itself it is not probable that war will ever absolutely cease until science discovers some destroying force so simple in its administration, so horrible in its effects, that all art, all gallantry, will be at an end, and battles will be massacres which the feelings of mankind will be unable to endure.
  • "Intellect", pp. 405-6

• As for the system of the Commune, which makes it impossible for a man to rise or fall, it is merely the old caste system revived; if it could be put into force, all industry would be disheartened, emulation would cease, and mankind would go to sleep.
  • "Intellect", p. 408

• If indeed there were a judgment-day, it would be for man to appear at the bar not as a criminal but as accuser.
  • "Intellect", p. 417

Criticism of The Martyrdom of Man

• The one, the outstanding, dramatic, imaginative, historical picture of life, to be inspired by Victorian science.
  • V. S. Pritchett in The New Statesman and Nation vol. 25 (1943), p. 323.

• The first rational exposition of the relations of mankind to the mystery which shrouds the how and wherefore of man’s existence.
  • Sir Harry Johnston Liberia (1906), vol. 1, p. 257.

• One book that has influenced the writer very strongly is Winwood Reade's Martyrdom of Man…It is still an extraordinarily inspiring presentation of human history as one consistent process.
  • H. G. Wells The Outline of History (1920) p. vii.

• Reade was an emancipating writer because he seemed to speak as man to man to resolve history into an intelligible pattern in which there was no need for miracles. Even if he was wrong, he was grown-up.
  • George Orwell Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters (1970) vol. 4, p. 147.

• It made me what I am.
  • Cecil Rhodes, quoted in Robert I. Rotberg The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power (1988) p. 100.

• Let me recommend this book – one of the most remarkable ever penned.
  • Sherlock Holmes, in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Sign of the Four, ch. 2.

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

William Winwood Reade