BUEIGNY
BUENS
in their search for an able leader, and j
appointed him President. D. Dec. 9, 1881.
BURIGNY, Jean Levesque de, French historian. B. 1692. It is not now generally admitted that Burigny wrote the Examen critique de la religion chretienne, which was i long attributed to him, but his learned Traite de Vautorite du Pape (1720) and : Histoire de la philosophic paienne (1724) ; are Deistic. In 1756 he was admitted to I the Academy of Inscriptions and Letters, j D. Oct. 8, 1785.
BURNET, Thomas, M.A., master of the Charterhouse. B. about 1635. Ed. North- allerton and Cambridge (Clare College). He was a Fellow of Christ s College and Proctor. In 1685 he became master of the Charterhouse, and after the Eevolution he was appointed chaplain and clerk of the closet to the king. In 1692 he published Archceologice Philosophic^, and the cry of heresy led to the loss of his position at court. In posthumous works he rejects Christian teaching so extensively that he was probably a Deist. D. Sep. 27, 1715.
BURNETT, James, Lord Monboddo, judge. B. 1714. Ed. Marischal College, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh and Groningen Universities. Burnett was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates at Edinburgh in 1737, and became Sheriff of Kincardine- shire in 1764. In 1767, on becoming a Lord of Session, he took the title Lord Monboddo (from his birthplace). A learned and highly respected judge, Lord Monboddo was an enthusiast for Greek culture, and his works are inspired by it. Hence the evolutionary ideas (in his Of the Origin and Progress of Language, 6vols., 1773-92) in which he, with inevitable extravagances, anticipated later thought. He suggested that man at first walked on all fours and gradually adopted the upright posture and developed speech. D. May 26, 1799.
BURNETT, John, philanthropist. B. Aberdeen 1729. Prospering in business,
127
John and his brother paid off their father s
debts (about 8,000), and John also spent
large sums in charities. " He gave up
attending public worship lest he should be
committed to the creed of a Church " (Diet.
Nat. Biog.). At his death he left a large
part of his estate for the welfare of the
poor of Aberdeen and to found a prize for
essays in proof of the existence of a Creator
(the Burnett Prize). He was a Deist. D.
Nov. 9, 1784.
BURNOUF, Emile Louis, French philo logist. B. Aug. 25, 1821. Ed. College de St. Louis and Ecole Normale, Paris. He became in 1854 professor of ancient litera ture at Nancy, in 1867 Director of the French School at Athens, and in 1875 professor at Bordeaux. Besides his philo logical works on Sanscrit and Greek, he wrote a number of Eationalist works (La Science des Religions, 1872 ; La Vie et la Pensee, 1886, etc.), in which he entirely rejects Christianity, hub advocates a thin shade of Pantheism. D. Jan. 15, 1907.
BURNOUF, Eugene, French orientalist, brother of preceding. B. Aug. 12, 1801. Ed. Paris. After teaching for three years at the Ecole Normale, Burnouf was in 1832 appointed professor of Sanscrit at the College de France, and he taught there until his death. He was in the same year admitted to the Academie des Inscriptions. He was one of the first philologists in Europe to master Pali, and his studies of the Hindu and Persian sacred books put him in the first rank of European orien talists. He seems from his letters to have been a Theist, but he carefully avoided pro nouncements on Christianity. D. May 28, 1852.
BURNS, The Right Honourable John,
statesman. B. Oct., 1858. Ed. Battersea elementary school and at night schools, " and still learning " (he says). At the age of ten he began to work in a candle factory. Paine s Age of Reason and the influence of Eobert Owen destroyed his 128
