The Nuttall Encyclopaedia Part 361

PROSELYTES, converts from heathenism to Judaism, of which there were two cla.s.ses: Proselytes of the Temple, those who accepted the ceremonial law and were admitted into the inner court of The temple; and Proselytes of the Gate, who accepted only the moral law, and were admitted only into the outer court. They were a numerous cla.s.s after the Dispersion, and were reckoned at hundreds of thousands.

PROSERPINA, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, who was carried off while gathering flowers by PLUTO (q. v.), became Queen of Hades, and is represented as sitting on an ebony throne beside him wearing a crown. According to later tradition Pluto had to allow her to revisit the upper world for two-thirds of the year to compromise matters with her mother, her arrival being coincident with the beginning of spring and her return to Hades coincident with the beginning of winter. She became by Pluto the mother of the Furies.

PROSPERO, one of the chief characters in Shakespeare's "Tempest," an exiled king of Milan, who, during his exile, practises magic, and breaks his wand when he has accomplished his purpose.

PROTAGORAS, one of the earliest of the Greek Sophists, born at Abdera, and who flourished in 440 B.C., and taught at Athens, from which he was banished as a blasphemer, as having called in question the existence of the G.o.ds; he taught that man was the measure of all things, of those that exist, that they are; and of those things that do not exist, that they are not; and that there is nothing absolute, that all is an affair of subjective conception.

PROTECTION, name given to the encouragement of certain home products of a country by imposing duties on foreign products of the cla.s.s, opposed to free-trade.

PROTESTANTISM, the name given to a movement headed by Luther in the 16th century, in protestation of the supremacy in spiritual things claimed by the Church of Rome, and made on the ground of the authority of conscience enlightened by the Word of G.o.d, conceived of as the ultimate revelation of G.o.d to man.

PROTESTANTS, a name given to the adherents of Luther, who, at the second Diet of Spires in 1529, protested against the revocation of certain privileges granted at the first Diet in 1526.

PROTEUS, in the Greek mythology a divinity of the sea endowed with the gift of prophecy, but from whom it was difficult to extort the secrets of fate, as he immediately changed his shape when any one attempted to force him, for it was only in his proper form he could enunciate these secrets.

PROTOGENES, a Greek painter of the time of Alexander the Great, born in Caria; lived chiefly at Rhodes; was discovered by Apelles, who brought him into note; his masterpiece is a picture of Ialysus, the tutelary hero of Rhodes, on which he spent seven years, and which he painted four times over.

PROTOPLASM, a name given to presumed living matter forming the physical bases of all forms of animal and vegetable life; the term is now superseded by the term bioplasm. See DR. STIRLING, "AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM."

PROUDHON, PIERRE JOSEPH, French Socialist, born at Besancon, the son of a cooper; worked in a printing establishment, spent his spare hours in study, specially of the social problem, and in 1840 published a work ent.i.tled "What is Property?" and in which he boldly enunciated the startling proposition, "Property is theft"; for the publication of this thesis he was at first unmolested, and only with its application was he called to account, and for which at last, in 1849, he was committed to prison, where, however, he kept himself busy with his pen, and whence he from time to time emitted socialistic publications till his release in 1852, after which he was in 1858 compelled to flee the country, to return again under an act of amnesty in 1860 and die; he was not only the a.s.sailant of property, but of government itself, and preached anarchy as the goal of all social progress and not the starting-point, as so many unfortunately fancy; but by anarchy, it would seem, he meant the right of government spiritually free, and, in the Christian sense of that expression, to exemption from all external control (see I Tim. i. 9) (1809-1865).

PROUT, SAMUEL, eminent English water-colour artist, born at Plymouth; had from a child an irrepressible penchant for drawing, which, though discouraged at first by his father, was fostered by his schoolmaster; was patronised by Britton the antiquary, and employed by him to a.s.sist him in collecting materials for his "Beauties of England and Wales," but it was not till his visit to Rouen in 1818 that he was first fascinated with the subject that henceforth occupied him; from this time excursions were continually made to the Continent, and every corner of France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy ransacked for its fragments of carved stone; the old architecture that then fascinated him henceforth became a conspicuous feature in all his after-works; "the works of Prout," says Ruskin, "will one day become memorials of the most precious of things that have been ... A time will come when that zeal will be understood, and his works will be cherished with a melancholy grat.i.tude, when the pillars of Venice shall be mouldering in the salt shallows of her sea, and the stones of the goodly towers of Rouen have become ballast for the barges of the Seine" (1789-1852).

PROUT, FATHER. See MAHONY, FRANCIS.

PROVENcAL LANGUAGE, one of the Romance dialects of France, spoken in the South of France, and different from that spoken in the N. as in closer connection with the original Latin than that of the N., which was modified by Teutonic influence.

PROVENCE, a maritime province in the South of France, originally called Provincia by the Romans, and which included the departments of Bouches-du-Rhone, Ba.s.ses-Alpes, Var, and part of Vaucluse.

PROVERBS, BOOK OF, a book of the Hebrew Scriptures, full of the teachings of wisdom bearing on the conduct of life, and though ascribed to Solomon, obviously not all of his composition, or even collection, and probably ascribed to him because of his fondness for wisdom in that form, and from his having procured the first collection. The principles inculcated are purely ethical, resting, however, on a religious basis, and concern the individual not as a member of any particular community, but as a member of the human race; the lessons of life and death are the same as in the covenant with Moses, and the condition in both cases is the observance or non-observance of G.o.d's commandments. There is no change in the principle, but in the expansion of it, and that amounts to the foundation of a kingdom of G.o.d which shall include all nations. In them the bonds of Jewish exclusiveness are burst, and a catholic religion virtually established.

PROVIDENCE (175), a seaport and semi-capital of Rhode Island, U.S., on a river of the name, 44 m. SW. of Boston; it is a centre of a large manufacturing district, and has a large trade in woollens, jewellery, and hardware; has a number of public buildings, and inst.i.tutions, churches, schools, libraries, and hospitals, as well as beautiful villas and gardens.

PRUDENTIUS, MARCUS AURELIUS CLEMENS. Christian poet of the 4th century, born in Spain; after spending the greater part of his life in secular affairs, gave himself up to religious meditation, and wrote hymns, lyrics, and polemics in verse.

PRUSSIA (24,690), the leading State of the German Empire, occupies about two-thirds of the imperial territory, and contributes three-fifths of the population; it stretches from Holland and Belgium in the W. to Russia in the E., has Jutland and the sea on the N., and Lorraine, Bavaria, Hesse-Darmstadt, Saxony, and Austria on the S.; the SW. portion is hilly and the soil often poor, but containing valuable mineral deposits; the N. and E. belongs to the great European plain, devoted to agriculture and grazing; Hesse-Ca.s.sel is extremely fertile, and Na.s.sau produces excellent wine; in the E. and in Hanover are extensive forests; Silesia, Westphalia, and Rhenish Prussia contain the chief coal-fields, and are consequently the chief industrial provinces; half the zinc of the world is mined in Prussia; lead, iron, copper, antimony, &c., are also wrought; the Hartz Mountains are noted for their mines; Salt, amber, and precious stones are found on the Baltic sh.o.r.es; textiles, metal wares, and beer are the main industries; Berlin and Elberfeld are the two chief manufacturing centres on the Continent; the great navigable rivers, Niemen, Vistula, Oder, Elbe, Weser, Rhine, and their tributaries and ca.n.a.ls, excellent railways, and her central European position all favour Prussia's commerce, while her coast-line, harbours, and growing mercantile fleet put her in communication with the markets of the world; seven-eighths of the people are Germans; Slavonic races are represented by Poles, Wends, Lithuanians, and Czechs, while the Danes appear in Schleswig-Holstein; the prevailing religion is Protestant; education is compulsory and good; there are ten universities, and many great libraries and educational inst.i.tutions; the Prussian is the largest contingent in the German army; the king of Prussia is emperor of Germany. The basis of the Prussian people was laid by German colonists placed amid the pagan Slavs whom they had conquered by the Teutonic knights of the 13th century; in 1511 their descendants chose a Hohenzollern prince; a century later the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg succeeded; despite the Thirty Years' War Prussia became a European State, and was recognised as a kingdom in 1703; Frederick the Great (1740-1786) enlarged its bounds and developed its resources; the successive part.i.tions of Poland added to her territory; humiliated by the peace of Tilsit 1807, and ruined by the French occupation, she recovered after Waterloo; William I. and Bismarck still further increased her territory and prestige; by the Austrian War of 1866 and the French War of 1870-71 her position as premier State in the German Confederation was a.s.sured.

PRYNNE, WILLIAM, a Puritan _censor morum_, born near Bath, bred to the bar; wrote a book or pamphlet called "Histrio-Mastix, or the Player's Scourge," against the stage, for which and a reflection in it against the virtue of the queen he was brought before the Star Chamber in 1634, sentenced to the pillory, and had his ears cropped off, and for an offence against Laud, whether by order of the Star Chamber or not is uncertain, was in 1637 sentenced anew, and "lost his ears a second and final time, having had them 'sewed on again' before; this time a heroine on the scaffold," adds Carlyle, "received them on her lap and kissed him"; after this the zeal of Prynne appears to have waxed cold, for he was as a recalcitrant imprisoned by Cromwell, after whose death he espoused the Royalist cause, and was appointed Keeper of the Records of the Tower (1600-1669).

PRYTANE'UM, name given to the public hall in Greek cities, and the head-quarters of the Executive.

PSALMANAZAR, GEORGE, an impostor, born in the South of France, who, being brought to London, imposed on Compton, bishop of London, by fabricating a history of Formosa, of which he professed to be a native, but was convicted of the error of his ways by Law's "Serious Call," and led afterwards what seemed a sober life, and one to commend the regard of Johnson (1679-1763).

PSALMS, THE BOOK OF, the name given in the Septuagint to a collection of sacred songs in the Hebrew Bible, which are all of a lyrical character, and appear to have been at first collected for liturgical purposes. Their range is co-extensive with nearly all divine truth, and there are tones in them in accord with the experience and feelings of devout men in all ages. Nay, "the Psalter alone," says Ruskin, "which practically was the service-book of the Church for many ages, contains, merely in the first half of it, the sum of personal and social wisdom,... while the 48th, 72nd, and 75th have in them the law and the prophecy of all righteous government, and every real triumph of natural science is antic.i.p.ated in the 104th." The collection bears the name of David, but it is clear the great body of them are of later date as well as of divers authorship, although it is often difficult to determine by whom some of them were written, and when. The determination of this, however, is of the less consequence, as the question is more a speculative one than a spiritual one, and whatever may be the result of inquiry in this matter now going on, the spiritual value of the Psalms, which is their real value, is nowise affected thereby. It matters nothing who wrote them or when they were written; they are _there_, are conceived from situations such as are obvious enough and common to the lot of all good men, and they bear on spiritual interests, which are our primary ones, and these, still, as in every other time, the alone really pressing ones. They express the real experiences of living men, who lay under an inner necessity to utter such a song, relieving themselves by the effort and ministering a means of relief to others in a like situation of soul.

PSYCHE (i. e. the soul), in the later Greek mythology the youngest of three daughters of a king, and of such beauty as to eclipse the attractions and awake the jealousy of Venus, the G.o.ddess of beauty, who in consequence sent Cupid, her son, to inspire her with love for a hideous monster, and so compa.s.s her ruin. Cupid, fascinated with her himself, spirited her away to a palace furnished with every delight, but instead of delivering her over to the monster, visited her himself at night as her husband, and left her before daybreak in the morning, because she must on no account know who he was. Here her sisters came to see her, and in their jealousy persuaded her to a.s.sure herself that it was not a monster that she slept with, so that she lit a lamp the next night to discover, when a drop of oil from it fell on his shoulder as he lay asleep beside her, upon which he at a bound started up and vanished out of sight. She thereupon gave way to a long wail of lamentation and set off a-wandering over the wide world in search of her lost love, till she came to the palace of Venus, her arch-enemy, who seized on her person and made her her slave, subjecting her to a series of services, all of which she accomplished to the letter, so that Venus was obliged to relent and consent that, in the presence of all the G.o.ds of Olympus, Cupid and she should be united in immortal wedlock. It is the story of the trials of the soul to achieve immortality. See "Stories from the Greek Mythology," by the Editor.

PSYCHICAL RESEARCH, SOCIETY FOR, a society founded in 1882 to inquire into the phenomena of spiritualism and kindred subjects of a recondite kind, the subject of Telepathy having engaged recently a good deal of attention.

PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM, the highly complex system of astronomy ascribed to Claudius Ptolemy, which a.s.sumed that the earth was the centre of a sphere which carried the heavenly bodies along in its daily revolution, accounted for the revolutions of the sun and moon by supposing they moved in eccentric circles round the earth, and regarded the planets as moving in epicycles round a point which itself revolved in an eccentric circle round the earth like the sun and moon.

PTOLEMAS, the name of certain cities of antiquity, the most celebrated being Acre, in SYRIA (q. v.).

PTOLEMY, the name of the Macedonian kings of Egypt, of which there were 14 in succession, of whom Ptolemy I., SOTER, was a favourite general of Alexander the Great, and who ruled Egypt from 328 to 285 B.C.; Ptolemy II., PHILADELPHUS, who ruled from 285 to 247, a patron of letters and an able administrator; Ptolemy III., EUERGETES, who ruled from 247 to 222; Ptolemy IV., PHILOPATOR, who ruled from 222 to 205; Ptolemy V., EPIPHANES, who ruled from 205 to 181; Ptolemy VI., PHILOMETOR, who ruled from 181 to 146; Ptolemy VII., EUERGETES II., who ruled from 146 to 117; Ptolemy VIII., SOTER, who ruled from 117 to 107, was driven from Alexandria, returning to it in 88, and reigning till 81; Ptolemy X., ALEXANDER I., who ruled from 107 to 88; Ptolemy X. ALEXANDER II., who ruled from 81 to 80; Ptolemy XI., AULETES, who ruled from 80 to 51; Ptolemy XII., who ruled from 51 to 47; Ptolemy XIII., the INFANT KING, who ruled from 47 to 43; Ptolemy XIV., CESARION, the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, who ruled from 43 to 30.

PTOLEMY (CLAUDIUS PTOLEMaeUS), ancient astronomer and geographer, born in Egypt; lived in Alexandria in the 2nd century; was the author of the system of astronomy called after him; left behind him two writings bearing one on astronomy and one on geography, along with other works of inferior importance.

PUBLICANS or PUBLICANI, a name given by the Romans to persons who farmed the public revenues; specially a cla.s.s of the Jewish people, often mentioned in the New Testament, and specially odious to the rest of the community as the farmers of the taxes imposed upon them, mostly at the instance of their foreign oppressors the Romans, and in the collection of which they had recourse to the most unjust exactions. They were in their regard not merely the tools of a foreign oppression, but traitors to their country and apostates from the faith of their fathers, and were to be cla.s.sed, as they were, with heathens, sinners, and harlots.

PUCCINOTTI, FRANCESCO, eminent Italian pathologist, born in Urbino, and author of the "Storia delle Medicina" (History of Medicine), the fruit of the labour of twenty years (1794-1872).

PUCELLE LA (i. e. the Maid), Joan of Arc, the maid _par excellence_.

PUCK, a tricky, mischievous fairy, identified with Robin Goodfellow, and sometimes confounded with a house spirit, propitiated by kind words and the liberty of the cream-bowl.

PUEBLA (79), on an elevated plateau 7000 ft. above the sea, 68 m.