Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/182

 GISBOENE

GOBINEAU

GISBORNE, Maria, friend of Shelley. B. 1770. Daughter of a merchant who had given her a careful education, she first married a friend of Godwin, W. Kevely, who died in 1799. Godwin himself pro posed to her, but she married J. Gisborne and lived with him in Italy. Through Godwin she became an intimate friend of Shelley, who describes her as &quot; an Atheist&quot; like himself (Dowden s Life, ii, 210). His poetical &quot; Letter to Maria Gisborne &quot; was written in 1820. She was a very beautiful and talented woman. D. Apr. 23, 1836.

GISSING, George Robert, novelist. B. Nov. 22, 1857. Ed. Quaker School, Alderley Edge, and Owen s College (Man chester). For some years he had an adventurous and unhappy life, partly in America. Eeturning to Europe in 1877, he went to study at Jena, and there developed Eationalist views. In 1878 he published Workers in the Daivn, but for some years he had little success. In 1882 he was tutor to Mr. F. Harrison s sons. After 1884 he published a novel nearly every year, but recognition came late. Gissing, a man of great literary power and wide learning, was an Agnostic. He thought there was &quot; some purpose &quot; in the universe, but could not accept &quot; any of the solutions ever proposed,&quot; and he dis believed in a future life (E. Clodd s Memories, pp. 179-82). D. Dec. 28, 1903.

GIZYCKI, Professor Georg von,

German Ethicist. B. 1851 (of Polish parents). He became professor of philo sophy at Berlin University and one of the leaders of the Berlin Ethical Society. He wrote studies of Hume and Shaftesbury, and various naturalist and evolutionary works on Ethics (A Student s Manual of Ethical Philosophy, Eng. trans., 1889 ; Introduction to the Study of Ethics, Eng. trans., 1891, etc.). He was also joint editor of The International Journal of Ethics, and he contributed a fine Eation alist chapter to Ethics and Eeligion (1900), 291

in which he rejects all theology. D. Mar. 3, 1895.

GLENN IE, John Stuart Stuart,

writer. He was a London barrister, who, in 1873, published a Eationalist study of the development of Christianity, In the Morningland. He travelled in the East with Buckle, and describes his experiences in Pilgrim Memories (1875). Mr. G. B. Shaw, who acknowledges a debt to him, knew him as a member of the Zetetical Society (London) in 1879, and a drastic critic of Christian ethics.

GLISSON, Professor Francis, M.D., M.A., F.E.S., physician. B. 1597. Ed. Cambridge (Caius). He graduated in medicine in 1634, and was admitted to the College of Physicians in 1635. He was Eegius Professor of Physic at Cambridge (1636-77), Gulstonian Lecturer at the College of Physicians (1640), and President of the College of Physicians (1667-69). Glisson was Lord Shaftesbury s physician, and dedicated to him his Tractatus de natura substantiae energetica (1672), which contains a naturalistic philosophy of the universe. D. Oct. 14, 1677.

GOBINEAU, Count Joseph Arthur

de, French orientalist. B. 1816. He entered the diplomatic service in 1849, was assigned to the Persian Embassy in 1855, became Imperial Commissary to North America in 1859, and was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to Persia in 1861. His Histoire des Perses (2 vols., 1869) is weighty ; and there is a valuable early account of Behaism in his Les religions ct les philosophies dans I Asie centrale (1865). Count Gobineau was very Conservative, and his famous Essai sur I inegalite des races humaines (4 vols., 1853-55) greatly flattered the Germans (who have a Gobineau Society). But L. Schemann, his biographer (Gobineau, 2 vols., 1916, ii, 489-90), shows that he resisted to the last the unceasing efforts of his friends to bring him back from Theism