Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/276

This page needs to be proofread.

MARCHESINI


MAEIETTE


He returned later, and was secretary of General Moreau, and afterwards of Murat. He went to Spain with Murat, and was arrested by the Inquisition, but released by the French. D. Jan. 10, 1821.

MARCHESINI, Professor Giovanni,

Italian philosopher. B. Sep. 18, 1868. Marchesini is an enthusiastic Positivist of the school of Ardig6 [SEE] . He is pro fessor of philosophy and pedagogy at the University of Padua. His works on philo sophy and ethics are numerous, and are as rigorously opposed to theology or theism as those of Ardigo. See especially his Morale Positiva (1892), Probkma Monistico della Filosofia (1892), Crisi del Positivismo (1898), and Simbolismo nella Conoscenza e nella Morale (1901).

MARECHAL, Pierre Sylvain, French writer. B. Aug. 15, 1750. He was trained in the law, and was admitted to the Paris Parlement ; but a defect in his speech caused him to turn to letters. For some time he was sub-librarian at the College Mazarin, but in 1784 he lost his position by publishing his caustic Livre echappd au deluge, a brilliant satire in the ancient Hebrew style on the Old Testament. It is signed " S. Ar. Lamech " (an anagram of his name). His Almanack des honnetes gens (1788) was burned by order of the Parlement, and Marechal was imprisoned for four months. The Eevolutionists liberated him and restored his position at the Mazarin Library. He accepted the Revolution, and was one of the most zealous in urging the cult of reason ; but he was equally zealous against the cruelties and atrocities of some of the Revolution aries. His chief work is nominally on the travels of Pythagoras (6 vols., 1799), and he composed also a (rather exaggerated) Dictionnaire des athees (1798). He was an emphatic Atheist. D. Jan. 18, 1803.

MARETT, Robert Ranulph, M.A.,D.Sc., anthropologist. B. June 13, 1866. Ed. Victoria College, Jersey, and Oxford 479


(Balliol). After a brilliant academic career he took up the study of law and was called to the Jersey bar. In 1891 he became a Fellow and lecturer in philosophy of Exeter College, Oxford, and he was sub- rector from 1893 to 1898. He is now university reader in Social Anthropology and Dean of Exeter College. From 1913 to 1918 he was President of the Folklore Society. Mr. Marett accepts an impersonal Theism, but rejects all supernatural reli gion. See his essay, " The Origin and Validity of Ethics," in Personal Idealism (1902), and his Threshold of Eelig ion (1909).

MARGUERITE, Victor, French novelist. B. Dec. 1, 1866. Ed. Lycee Henri IV. He was for a time an officer in the French cavalry, and he passed from the army to the Ministry of War. He soon discovered a high capacity for fiction, and has pub lished a long series of distinguished novels. There are English translations of his Disaster (1898), The Commune (1904), Vanity (1907), and Frontiers of the Heart (1913). Marguerite is a member of the Academy, Officer of the Legion of Honour, President of the Societe des Gens de Lettres and of the Ligue R6publicaine d Action Nationale, and Vice-President of the Commission of the National Fund for Literary Travel.

MARIETTE, Francois Auguste Ferdi nand, French Egyptologist. B. Feb. 11, 1821. Ed. Boulogne Municipal College and Douai. He was appointed professor at Boulogne College, but he turned to the study of Egyptology, and was put on the staff at the Louvre in 1849. In the follow ing year he went on a Government mission to Egypt, and he remained there until the end of his life. Mariette was one of the greatest of Egyptian explorers. He received the rank of "pasha," was admitted to the Legion of Honour, and had the decorations of the Medjidieh, the Red Eagle of Prussia, SS. Maurice and Lazarus, Francis Joseph of Austria, etc. From 1858 onward he was Conservator of Egyptian Monuments. 480