Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/808

784 or two over her novels, not much excited by the triumphs, or vexed by the sufferings of her characters. Sometimes her novels weary the reader; but this does not arise from any failing in her style, which is always clear, animated, and full of point, nor from lack of inventiveness. but from the endless repetitions involved in writing so many books on a subject of such eompai‘atively limited range as fashionable life. Mrs Gore’s novels haVe not only achieved an immense temporary popularity, but possess genuine historic value as eminently readable, and on the whole faithful, pictures of the life and pursuits of the English upper classes.  GOREE (in French Gorée, and in the native tongue L’i—r or Berr, that is, a belly, in allusion to its shape), a small island off the west coast of Africa, belonging to the French colony of the Senegal. It lies immediately to the south of Cape Verd, and, according to the Ammaire du Sénéqal for 1878, in 14° 39' 55" N. lat. and 12° 16’ 40" W. long. The distance from the mainland in one direction is about 8 miles, and in another from 3 to 4. Though little more than a barren rock, Goree is of importance as a commercial and military post, and all the more as it has the advantage of a milder climate than the neighbouring mainland. The greater part of its area is occupied by the town, which was constituted a commune in 1872, and placed under the government of a municipal council of 14 members. The streets are narrow, and the houses, built for the most part of dark red stone, are ﬂat-roofed. Among the principal buildings are the castle of St Michael, which occupies the rocky eminence in the south of the island, the governor’s residence, the hospital, and the barracks. The summit of the rock within the citadel is levelled to an esplanade, and in the centre is a deep Artesian well, the only source in the otherwise arid island, which is dependent on its rain-water tanks for its ordinary supplies. Goree is a free port, and forms a convenient centre for the distribution of European goods. It is regularly visited by the vessels of the British and African Ste-1m Navigation Company. The harbour is formed in a small sandy bay on the north-east side of the island. Telegraphic communication with St Louis dates from 1862. A chamber of commerce was established in 1870, and a sanitary commission in 1874. The town was reported in 1878 to have a population of 3243, and the arrondissement of Gorée-Dakar, of which it is the adminis- trative centre, had a total population of 61,394. Dakar is a new settlement on the mainland, with a port constructed since 1857 for the vessels of the Messageries Maritimes ; but with the exception of the public buildings the town has still to be built. Goree owes its name to the Dutch, who took possession of it in the, and called it Goeree or Goedereede, in memory of the island on their own coast now united with Overﬂakkee. It was taken from them in 1663 by the English under Commodore Holmes, but recovered in the following year by De Buyter. They were ﬁnally expelled, in 1677, by the French under Admiral D’Estrées, whose conquest was conﬁrmed in 1678 by the peace of N ymwegen. In 1758 the island was captured for the English by Commodore Keppel, but a few years afterwards it was restored to France. With the exception of a few months in 1804, when the island was held by the French, the English were again in possession from 1800, when it was seized by Sir Charles Hamilton, till the peace of 1814.  {{ti|1em|{{larger|GORGIAS}} of Leontini, in Sicily, a rhetorieian and sophist of whose personal history nothing is known beyond the facts that in {{9link|427 B.C.|427}}, when already a comparatively old man, he was sent by his fellow-citizens at the head of an embassy to ask Athenian protection against the aggression of the Syracusans ; that he then settled in Athens, and supported himself by the practice of oratory and by teaching rhetoric; and that he ended his days at Larissa, in Thessaly. His birth and death may be approximately dated respectively at {{9link|483 B.C.|483}} and {{9link|375 B.C.|375{{nbsp}}{{abbr|{{sc|b.c.}}|Before Christ}}}} He was the author of a lost work On A'aturc or the [Von-existent (mzpi mi} [1;] 51/709 '7) 1r£pi gbtioews), the substance of which may be gathered from the writings of Sextus Empiricus, and also from the treatise (ascribed to Theophrastus) De .lle'lisso, Kemp/Lune, Gorgia. His philosophical opinions may be summed up in three propositions, which stand in direct relation to the teachings of the Eleatic school. He held (1) that there is nothing which has any real existence ; (2) that, even if any— thing did really exist, it could not be known ; and (3) that, supposing real existence to be knowable, the knowledge would be incommunicable. On the ﬁrst point his argument was that a real existence must either have come into being or have been eternal. But the ﬁrst alternative would re- quire it to have been produced, either from the existent or from the non-existent; the second alternative would require us to identify it with the inﬁnite, but the infinite exists nowhere (for that would involve the absurdity of its exist- ing either within itself or within something else), but what exists nowhere is nothing. In support of the second pro- position he argued that, if existence could be known, then thought would be existence, and the non-existent would be unthinkable and error would be impossible. The third point for which he argued was the inadequacy of language to convey ideas, and the impossibility of the idea being the same in different minds. In natural philosophy, his opinions, so far as these are known, appear to have been similar to those of Empedocles. See the monograph, Dc G'orgia Lcoulino Commentatio, by Foss, 18:28.}}  GORGON, yopyo'), according to Hesychius, is a word akin to yopyés, which means terrible, lively, rapid. Sophocles (fr. 167) calls the sea-nymphs yopyL’Bc; and yopydBes is quoted as a title of the daughters of Oceanus. l\' ow it is a well-established fact that the sea was at one time the sea of air and its nymphs the clouds. Hence we may infer that words from this stem are employed in the sense of quick-moving as epithets of the clouds. The various forms in which the Gorgon appears in Greek mythology originate probably from the rapidly gathering terrible thunder-cloud. When the cloud covered the heaven and hid the sun, a primitive race, whose thoughts and words were few and simple, said that the sun was united in marriage to the cloud. From this union sprang the light ning and the thunder. Now the sun, in its different aspects and relations, was conceived in different ways, which developed, as thought unfolded itself, into distinct deities ; and, as connected with clouds, rain, and the fertility that springs therefrom, he is the original of the Vedic Savitar and Tvashtar and 0f the Greek Poseidon. Accordingly ( H es., Theog., 273 ff.) Poseidon on a meadow (i.€., the heaven, thus often in mythology) begat from the Gorgon Medusa Chrysaor and Pegasus. Chrysaor, Gold-sword, is obviously the lightning; and Pegasus, who bears the thunder and lightning for Zeus (ibid. 286), was probably at ﬁrst simply the thunder. Gorgo and Erinys are merely tribal or local varieties of the same conception; Gorgo is specially Attic, Erinys Minyan. A similar legend occurs about children of Erinys and Poseidon (Pans, viii. 37). Hence jEschylus (01m, 1048) compares the Erinyes to Gorgons. Gorgo is always the impersonation of the atmospheric terrors, and is conceived in connexion with the deities that are armed with thunder and lightning—Zeus and Athene. \Vith Athene in particular is the connexion very close, and Some facts of ritual and nomenclature almost suggest an original identity of the two. Palaaphatus says that Athene was worshipped in the island of Cerne under the name Gorge; Sophocles (A 1., 450) calls her yopysm; and Plutarch (Amt, 32) says that her wooden statue at Pallene, if