GOUEMONT
GRANT
Instruction Movement. He has given series
of model lessons to children in the United
States (1911 and 1913-14) and, under
Government auspices, in India (1913).
He has written a Concise History of Reli
gion (3 vols., 1893-97) and many other
works. Of no man could it be more truly
said that his life is an embodiment of his
high ideals.
GOURMONT, Remy de, French novelist. B. Apr. 4, 1858. Ed. Lycee de Coutances and Caen University. From 1883 to 1891 (when he lost his position by writing a critical article) lie was at the Paris National Library. He had already opened his literary career by his novel Sixtine (1890), and the long and brilliant series of novels, poems, and literary works which he has since published have put him in the front rank of French writers. He was also editor of the Mercure de France and the Depeche de Toulouse. He belonged rather to the Symbolist school, but was a drastic Eationalist. There is a collection of short essays on religion in his Promenades Philo- sophiques (5 vols., 1905-1908), serie iii, livre iii. He considers that, "while religion was always a paganism to the crowd, paganism was almost always, in Europe, the religion of superior minds" (p. 89). God, he says, " is not all that exists ; he is all that does not exist" (p. 253). D. Sep. 27, 1915.
GRAHAM, Professor William, M.A.,
Litt.D., economist. B. 1839. Ed. Dun- dalk Educational Institute and Trinity College, Dublin. Graham earned his living by teaching while he was at Trinity, and he afterwards became a tutor in mathe matics and philosophy. In 1875 he was appointed lecturer on mathematics at St. Bartholomew s Hospital (London), and in 1882 professor of jurisprudence and political economy at Queen s College, Belfast. He was called to the Bar in 1892, but never practised. His Creed of Science (1881), a Spencerian work, which admits an unknown Power, but rejects immortality 301
as "a doctrine begot of men s presump
tion " (p. 165), caused him to lose an
important Government appointment which
had been offered to him. D. Nov. 19,
1911.
GRANT, Professor Kerr, Australian physicist. B. 1878. Ed. Melbourne Uni versity. He was lecturer on physics at the Ballarat School of Mines, then at Melbourne University. Since 1911 he has occupied the chair of physics at Adelaide University. Professor Grant is joint inventor of a fine method of weighing. He is a warm supporter of the spread of Rationalism.
GRANT, Ulysses Simpson, eighteenth President of the United States. B. Apr. 27, 1822. Ed. West Point. He obtained a commission in the U.S. army and fought in the Mexican War. He returned to civil life in 1854, but volunteered for the Civil War and was made Brigadier-General. In 1862 he became General in command of the Department of the Tennessee, in 1863 Lieutenant-General, and in 1865 General of the Army. The Union owed its victory to his energy and ability. He was temporary Secretary of War in 1867-68, and Presi dent of the United States from 1868 to 1877. Hamlin Garland, in the best study of his life (U. S. Grant : His Life and Character, 1898), says that he "subscribed to no creed" (p. 522), and the statement is effectively supported even by his Chris tian biographers. The Rev. M. J. Cramer, who seems to have pestered him for a profession of faith, ventures only to say that he " believed the fundamental doc trines of the Christian religion" (U. S. Grant, 1897, p. 28). In a chapter on " His Views on Religion " Dr. Cramer does not even sustain this, and shows that Grant was merely a Theist. He " often prayed to God mentally, but briefly " (p. 43). Dr. Cramer quotes (p. 203) a letter in which General Halleck clears Grant of the charges of swearing and drunkenness, and says that his sobriety 302
