Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/377

 ROSNY

EOSS

His real name is Boex, and in fact most of the novels which bear the name &quot;J. H. Eosny &quot; have been written by the two brothers Boex in collaboration, but the above pen-name has become his usual name. From Belgium Boex migrated to Paris, and began to write novels of the naturalistic school. His first story dealt with an English Salvation Army girl (Nell Horn, 1885). He was more or less influenced by Tolstoi, and was repelled by Zola s conception of naturalist art ; and about 1890 he turned to social idealism and entered into collaboration (under a single name) with his brother Justin. Both are Agnostics, and the French com plain that their high artistic power is hampered by their introduction of so much erudition and moral philosophy. In the words of the Grande Encyclopedic : &quot; They constantly mingle a fine, vague, and very noble anthropological mythology with their Agnostic cosmogony.&quot; Joseph Eosny con tributed to the Mercure de France (Decem ber, 1916) a criticism of Balfour s Theism and Humanism, in which he rejects all Theistic belief. He is an Officer of the Legion of Honour, and a member of the Academie des Goncourts, the Societe Astro- nomique de la France, and the Societe des Gens de Lettres.

ROSNY, Professor Louis Leon Lucien Prunol de, French orientalist. B. Aug. 5, 1837. Ed. Ecole des Langues Orientales. He was appointed professor of Japanese at the Imperial Library, and was in 1863 attached as interpreter to the Japanese ambassadors who visited France. Since 1868 he has been professor of Japanese at the Ecole des Langues Orientales, professor of oriental religions at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, and Associate-Director of the latter. Professor de Eosny is one of the greatest of French orientalists, and his works have done much for the appreciation of Con fucianism and Buddhism in Europe. He has encouraged the cult of Buddhist morality at Paris, though he is a Theist (see his small work, Le pocme de Job, 1860). 681

He has translated many works from the Chinese, written a long series of important works on Chinese and Japanese literature (see, especially, his Morale de Confucius, 1893), and edited La Bibliotheque Ethno- graphique. He started Orientalist Con gresses in France, and founded the Ethno graphical Society, the American Society of France, the Oriental Athenasum, and the Society for Japanese Studies. He is a member of the Council of Administration of the Colonial School, President of the Alliance Scientifique Universelle, and mem ber of the Eoyal Academy of Madrid, the Geographical Society of Geneva, the Byzan tine Academy of Constantinople, the Eoyal Academy of Bucharest, the American Philosophical Society, the Berlin Geogra phical Society, and the Japan Society of London.

ROSS, Professor Edward Alsworth,

Ph.D., LL.D., American sociologist. B. Dec. 12, 1866. Ed. Berlin and Johns Hopkins Universities. He was professor of economics at Indiana University in 1891-92, associate professor of political economy and finance at Cornell in 1892-93, professor of sociology at Leland Stanford Junior University from 1893 to 1900, at Nebraska University from 1901 to 1906, and since 1906 at Wisconsin. In addition he was lecturer on sociology at Harvard in 1902, and at Chicago in 1896 and 1905. He has been on the Advisory Board of the American Journal of Sociology since 1895, was President of the American Sociological Society in 1914-15, and is a member of the Institut International de Sociologie. In many of his sociological-ethical studies Professor Eoss handles the creeds and Churches severely for their pretence of moral usefulness. In Changing America (1912) he says that &quot; the religion a hierarchy ladles out to its dupes is chloro form,&quot; and that &quot; the end of clericalism is in sight &quot; (p. 9). Sin and Society (1907) is of much the same character. He pleads for a human and up-to-date ethical idealism.

682