Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/328

 PAEE

PAEMELEE

thology. His views are given in his Lorgnette philosophique (1872) and Essai sur la Mettrie (1873).

PARE, William, Owenite reformer. B. 1805. Pare was the son of a Birmingham cabinet-maker, and he was a shopkeeper in the Midland town when the reform move ment began. He joined the Political Union in 1830, and in 1835 he was appointed the first Eegistrar for civil marriages at Birmingham. He ardently embraced the gospel of Eobert Owen, and became one of his most powerful supporters. He helped to establish the first Birmingham Co-opera tive Society and Labour Exchange, was Vice-President of Owen s &quot; Association of All Classes of All Nations,&quot; and he often lectured for the movement. In 1842 he was deprived of his position on account of his opinions, and Owen made him Governor of the colony at Queenwood. When it failed he became a railway statistician in London, and later (1846-55) head of a large ironworks in Ireland. He was Owen s literary executor, and compiled the first volume of the Biography of Robert Owen. There were few men so high-minded and unselfish as Pare in the early Eationalist movement. D. June 18, 1873.

PARIS, Bruno Paulin Gaston, D. es L.,

French philologist. B. Aug. 9, 1859. Ed. College Eollin, and Bonn and Gottingen Universities. Afterhis return from Germany he was appointed teacher at, then Director of, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes at Paris. In 1869 he became associate professor (with his father) of the French language and literature of the Middle Ages at the College de France, and he succeeded his father in 1872. He was admitted to the Academy of Inscriptions in 1876, and to the French Academy in 1896. In 1895 he succeeded Gaston Boissier as administrator of the College de France, where he used to deliver Sunday lectures. Paris was one of the finest students of early French litera ture, and himself one of the first literary men of France in his time (La poesie du

583

moyen age, 1885 ; Poemes et legendes du moyen age, 1900 ; Franqois Villon, 1901 ; etc.). He was, says the Athencsum (Mar. 14, 1903), &quot;one of the most distinguished and learned Frenchmen of modern times.&quot; H& was not an aggressive Eationalist, but in his beautiful Penseurs et Poetes (1896) he- expresses his agreement with Eenan (espe cially in his funeral discourse on Eenan,. Oct. 7, 1892) and Sully-Prudhomme. See, also, E. Teza s Gaston Paris. D. Mar. 6, 1903.

PARKER, Professor Edward Harper,

M.A., orientalist. B. Jan. 3, 1849. Ed.. private school and Eoyal Institution School, Liverpool. From 1864 to 1866 he was engaged in the silk and tea trade with China. He studied Chinese, and from 1869 to 1871 he was student-interpreter at. Pekin. He served in various Chinese Consulates until 1881, when he returned to London to study law. He was called to the bar in 1882, but he again went out to China in the consular service. He was Consul at Kuingchow in 1892, Adviser on Chinese Affairs in Burma in 1892-93, and at Hoikow in 1893-94. From 1896 to 1901 he was reader in Chinese at Liverpool University College, and since the latter date he has been professor of Chinese at the Manchester Victoria University. His works on Chinese religion are of particular value, as they are written from a Eationalist point of view. &quot; The Chinese intellect,&quot; he says, &quot; is quite robust enough to take care of itself, and it is not likely that it will ever surrender itself to the dogmatic teaching of any Christian sect, Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox &quot; (Studies in Chinese Religion, 1910, p. 23). Professor Parker is a serious and richly informed student of Chinese matters.

PARMELEE, Professor Maurice, A.M., Ph.D., American sociologist. B. Oct. 20, 1882. Ed. Yale and Columbia Universities. He was the Chief Statistician of the New York Board of Water Supply in 1905-1906, and he then spent a year at research in

584