Every country has had its mock Messiahs: they rise periodically in England, not less at the present day than in the darker ages (hysteria being more powerful than light); yet the history of none of these spiritual monarchs can compare with that of the tailor's son of Leyden.
The story is told in many places, but nowhere with such dramatic picturesqueness as by Professor Karl Pearson in his _Ethic of Freethought_.

"As the illegitimate son of a tailor in Leyden," says Professor Pearson--Jan's mother was the maid of his father's wife--"his early life was probably a harsh and bitter one.

Very young he wandered from home, impressed with the miseries of his class and with a general feeling of much injustice in the world.

Four years he spent in England seeing the poor driven off the land by the sheep; then we find him in Flanders, married, but still in vague search of the Eldorado; again roaming, he visits Lisbon and Luebeck as a sailor, ever seeking and inquiring.

Suddenly a new light bursts upon him in the teaching of Melchior Hofmann [the Anabaptist]; he fills himself with dreams of a glorious kingdom on earth, the rule of justice and of love.