ACOSTA, Joseph d’, a celebrated Spanish author, was born at Medina del Campo about the year 1539. In 1571 he went to Peru as a provincial of the Jesuits; and, after remaining there for seventeen years, he returned to his native country, where he became in succession visitor for his order of Aragon and Andalusia, superior of Valladolid, and rector of the university of Salamanca, in which city he died in February 1600. About ten years before his death he published at Seville his valuable Historia Natural y Moral de las Indias, part of which had previously appeared in Latin, with the title De Natura Novi Orbis, libri duo. This work, which has been translated into all the principal languages of Europe, gives exceedingly valuable information regarding the condition of South America at the time. On the subject of climate Acosta was the first to propound the theory, afterwards advocated by Buffon, which attributed the different degrees of heat in the old and new continents to the agency of the winds. He also contradicted, from his own experience, the statement of Aristotle, that the middle zone of the earth was so scorched by the sun as to be destitute of moisture, and totally uninhabitable. Even after the discovery of America this Aristotelian dogma was an article of faith, and its denial was one ground of the charge of scepticism and atheism brought against Sir Walter Raleigh. Acosta, however, boldly declared that what he had seen was so different from what he had expected, that he could not but “laugh at Aristotle’s meteors and his philosophy.’' In speaking of the conduct of his countrymen, and the means they employed for the propagation of their faith, Acosta is in no respect superior to the other prejudiced writers of his country and age. Though he acknowledges that the career of Spanish conquest was marked by the most savage cruelty and oppression, he yet represents this people as chosen by God to spread the gospel among the nations of America, and recounts a variety of miracles as a proof of the constant interposition of Heaven in favour of the merciless and rapacious invaders. Besides his History, Acosta wrote the following works :—1. De Promulgatione Evangelii apud Barbaros ; 2. De Christo Revelato; 3. De Temporibus Novissimis, lib. vi.; 4. Concionum tomi iii.

ACOSTA, Uriel d', a Portuguese of noble family, was born at Oporto towards the close of the 16th century. His father being a Jewish convert to Christianity, he was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, and strictly observed the rites of the church till the course of his inquiries led him, after much painful doubt, to abandon the religion of his youth for Judaism. Passing over to Amsterdam, he was received into the synagogue, having his name changed from Gabriel to Uriel. He soon discovered, however, that those who sat in Moses’ seat were shameful perverters of the law; and his bold protests served only to exasperate the rabbis, who finally punished his contumacy with the greater excommunication. Persecution seemed only to stimulate his temerity, and he soon after published a defence, Examen das tradiζoens Phariseas, &c., in which he not merely exposed the departures of the Jewish teachers from the law, but combated the doctrine of a future life, holding himself supported in this position by the silence of the Mosaic Books. For this he was imprisoned and fined, besides incurring public odium as a blasphemer and atheist. Nothing deterred, he pursued his speculations, which ended in his repudiating the divine authority of the law of Moses. Wearied, however, by his melancholy isolation, and longing for the benefits of society, he was driven, in the inconsistency of despairing scepticism, to seek a return to the Jewish communion. Having recanted his heresies, he was readmitted after an excommunication of fifteen years, but was soon excommunicated a second time. After seven years of miserable exclusion, he once more sought admission, and, on passing through a humiliating penance, was again received. These notices of his singular and unhappy life are taken from his autobiography, Exemplar Humanae Vitae, published, with a “refutation,” by Limborch, and republished in 1847. It has been said that he died by his own hand, but this is, to say the least, doubtful. His eventful history forms the subject of a tale and of a tragedy by Gutzkow.