Ernest Belfort Bax was an English barrister, journalist, philosopher, men's rights activist, socialist, and historian. Ernest Belfort Bax was born on July 23, 1854, in Leamington Spa, the son of Daniel Bax, a wealthy Mackintosh raincoat manufacturer and traditionalist nonconformist. Bax's elder brother, barrister Alfred Ridley Bax, was the father of composer and writer Arnold Bax, as well as playwright and essayist Clifford Bax. In his Reminiscences and Reflexions of a Mid and Late Victorian (1918), he laments the restricted Evangelicanism and Sabbatarianism in which he was raised as having left "an enduringly unpleasant reminiscence behind it". Between the years 1864 and 1875, he was privately taught by tutors and influenced by George Lewes, William Lecky, Alexander Bain, Herbert Spencer, and John Stuart Mill, all of whom contributed to his commitment to rationality. The Franco-German War and its aftermath, the Commune, sparked his interest in public affairs when he was sixteen years old. During this time, his political ideals were a mix of common radicalism and dreams for economic equality.