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64:2 GASPS GASSENDI (1861), translated and published in New York under the title " The Uprising of a Great People: the United States in 1861;" and L 'Amerique devant V Europe (1862), translated under the title "America before Europe." During the Franco-German war he addressed an appeal to the French people urging them not to persevere in it. His death was hastened by his exertions in the care of refugees from Bourbaki's army, whom he received into his house. Besides the works already mentioned, and numerous articles in the Journal des De- bats and the Revue des Deux Mondes and other publications, he published De V amortissement (1834); Esclavage et traite (1838); Interets generaux du protestantisme francais (1843); Ghristianisme et paganisme (2 vols. 8vo, 1846); Des tables tournantes, du surnaturel en general et des esprits (2 vols. 12mo, 1854 ; translated into English) ; La question du Neufchdtel (1857) ; La famille, ses devoirs, ses joies et ses douleurs (2 vols. 12mo, 1865) ; and La liberte morale (1868). His Vie d> Innocent III. was published posthumously in 1873, and his Le Ion vieux temps in 1874. His wife, VALERIE Bois- BIEK, born about 1815, has been conspicuous as an opponent of religious and social innovations, and has published several volumes of travels and works on religious subjects. Two of these obtained the prize of the academy : Le mariage au point de vue chretien (1842 ; 3d ed., 1853), and II ya despauvres a Paris et ailleurs (1846). GASPJE, an E. county of Quebec, Canada, bordering on the river and gulf of St. Law- rence, indented by the bay of the same name, and including the Magdalen islands; area, 4,578 sq. m. ; pop. in 1871, 18,729, of whom 12,956 were of French, 2,384 of Irish, 2,221 of English, and 843 of Scotch origin or descent. It has a mountainous surface, diversified by many fertile valleys, and traversed by St. Anne, Dartmouth, and other rivers. The inhabitants are engaged chiefly in the lumber trade and fisheries. The settlements are confined almost wholly to the coasts, which are lined with ex- cellent harbors. The Gaspesians, a part of the Micmac tribe of Indians, reside in Gaspe, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence. They are treated as a distinct tribe by the missionary Le Clerq in his Gaspesie, but are almost always included among the Micmacs. The use of hieroglyphics among them can be traced back to the 17th century. (See MICMACS.) Capital, Perce. GASS, Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Joachim, a German theologian, born in Breslau, Nov. 28, 1813. After studying at the principal univer- sities, he became professor of theology succes- sively at Breslau, Greifswalde, Giessen, and Heidelberg, where he has been since 1868. His principal work is Geschichte der protestan- tischen Dogmatilc im Zusammenhange mit der Theologie uberhaupt (4 vols., Berlin, 1854-'67). GASSENDI, Pierre, a French philosopher, born at Champtercier, Provence, Jan. 22, 1592, died in Paris, Oct. 24, 1655. After having studied philosophy at Aix, he was appointed at the age of 16 professor of rhetoric at Digne. When 20 years of age he was simultaneously elected to the two chairs of philosophy and theology at Aix, of which he chose the latter. While in this office his leisure was employed in the study of anatomy, astronomy, and even astrology, a science which he afterward condemned as a delusion. He resigned his professorship in 1623. In 1624 he published at Grenoble the Exercitationes Paradoxicce adversus Aristote- Iceos, in which he was the first to point the dis- tinction between the church and the scholastic philosophy. He designed to complete the work in five books, but only two were ever written. About the same time he was appointed provost of the cathedral at Digne, but the appointment was contested, and was not confirmed until ten years later. Meanwhile he travelled for a time, and entered into correspondence with Galileo, to whom he expressed his concurrence with the Copernican system. Returning to Digne, he continued his ecclesiastical duties, and in 1630 wrote a treatise against the mysti- cal and alchemistic doctrines of Robert Fludd. He was a constant correspondent of Kepler, who before his death had publicly announced that Mercury and Venus would pass over the disk of the sun on Nov. 7, 1631. Gassendi was the first to observe the passage of Mercury, and wrote a minute account of the phenomenon. On the appearance of the Discours de la methode and the Meditations of Descartes, a controver- sy arose between the two philosophers. The daring and original genius of Descartes was in striking contrast with the erudition and criti- cal acumen of his opponent, who excelled him in caution and courtesy. In 1 645 Gassendi re- ceived from Cardinal Richelieu the appoint- ment of mathematical professor in the royal college of France ; and two years later he pub- lished at Lyons his biographical treatise, De Vita, Moribus et Placitis Epicuri, which was followed by his Syntagma Philosophies Epi- cures (Lyons, 1649). They form together a complete review of the life, eulogy of the char- acter, and reconstruction of the philosophical system of Epicurus. The Epicurean ethics and physical theory of atoms and a vacuum are elaborately vindicated, and conformed to the principles of Christianity and the discoveries of modern science. His feeble health obliged him to resign his professorship, and he retired to Toulon, where he was occupied for two years with the preparation of another great philosophical work. In 1653 he returned to Paris, and there completed the work, the Syntagma Philosophicum, an encyclopaedic view of the entire circle of science, and the most complete and learned statement of his opinions. It was not published until after his death, and forms the first two volumes of his complete works, edited by Montmor and Sor- biere (6 vols., Lyons, 1658). It is divided into three parts, logic, physics, and ethics, is elabo- rated with great learning and minuteness of criticism, and contains an eclectic philosophy I