Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/135

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

DAVIDS


DEBIDOUE


adopted him as his chief artist, but the Bourbons banished him, and he went to Brussels. D. Dec. 29, 1825.

DAVIDS, Caroline Augusta Rhys,

orientalist. Daughter of the Kev. J. Foley, Vicar of Wadhurst, she married Professor Ehys Davids in 1894, and she worthily shares his distinction as a scholar and his Eationalist views. Mrs. Ehys Davids is herself a Pali scholar of world- wide repute, and has translated Pali poetry into beautiful English verse. She is a high authority on the philosophic aspect of Buddhism, and lectured on it at Manchester University. Her Buddhist Psychological Ethics (1900), Psalms of the Early Buddhists (1909-13), Compendium of Philosophy (1910), Budd hism (1912), etc., show her preference for the Asiatic humanitarian creed.

DAVIDS, Professor Thomas William Rhys, LL.D., Sc.D., Ph.D., orientalist. B. May 12, 1843. Ed. Brighton School and Breslau University. He entered the Ceylon Civil Service in 1866, but later studied law and was called to the Bar in 1877. He was Hibbert Lecturer 1881, professor of comparative religion at Man chester 1904-5, professor of Pali and Buddhist literature at London University 1882-1912. Professor Davids is a member of the British Academy ; president of the Pali Texts Society, the India Society, and the Manchester Oriental Society ; secretary of the Eoyal Asiatic Society. In a lecture to the London Sunday Lecture Society {published 1879), entitled 7s Life Worth Living ? he dissents from Christianity and rejects the belief in personal immortality. His many valuable works have done much to enforce the superiority of Buddhism.

DAVIDSON, John, poet. B. Apr. 11, 1857. Ed. Greenock Academy. At the age of thirteen he began to work in a chemical laboratory, and in 1871 he was appointed assistant to the town analyst. He taught in a school 1872-76, and then -spent a year at Edinburgh University. 197


After twelve^ years as a schoolmaster he went to London and devoted himself to letters and journalism. Davidson despised academic philosophy, but he wrote a number of philosophical works (especially The Testa ment of John Davidson, 1908) in which he expounds a Eationalist, and partly Nietz- schean, creed. In his God and Mammon (1907) he says : " I would have all men come out of Christendom into the universe." D. Mar. 23, 1909.

DAVIDSON, Thomas, M.A., philo sophical writer. B. 1840. Ed. Deer School and Aberdeen University. In 1866 he emigrated to America. He was a close student of Catholic philosophy, and was invited by the Pope to co-operate in pub lishing the works of Thomas Aquinas. He was, however, " agnostic as to the ultimate principle of things" (Memorials of Th. Davidson, 1907, p. 3) and rejected all creeds. He worked with the American Ethical Societies, and among the bodies which he founded was a New Fellowship at London out of which the Fabian Society evolved. He wrote much on art, education, and philosophy, and had great influence on philosophy. D. Sep. 14, 1900.

DAYIES, Charles Maurice, M.A., D.D., writer. B. 1828. Ed. Durham University. He was ordained priest of the Church of England in 1852. Originally a supporter of the Tractarian movement, he passed to the Broad Church, and attacked ritualism in a series of novels. He then joined the staff of the Daily Telegraph (1870-75), and published a series of articles on the religious life of London. In 1875 he accepted a mission under Colenso in Natal, but in 1882 he left the Church. Cecil Ehodes employed him to investigate the sources of Gibbon s Decline. D. Sep. 6, 1910.

DEBIDOUR, Professor Elie Louis

Marie Marc Antoine, D. es L., French

historian. B. Jan. 31, 1847. Ed. Lycee

Charlemagne and Ecole Normale Supe-

198