1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Marion, Henri François

MARION, HENRI FRANÇOIS (1846–1896), French philosopher and educationalist, was born at Saint-Parize-en-Viry (Nièvre) on the 9th of September 1846. He studied at Nevers, and at the École Normale, where he graduated in 1868. After occupying several minor positions, he returned to Paris in 1875 as professor of the Lycée Henri IV., and in 1880 he became docteur-ès-lettres. In the same year he was elected a member of the Council of Public Instruction, and devoted himself to improving the scheme of French education, especially in girls’ schools. He was largely instrumental in the foundation of écoles normales in provincial towns, and himself gave courses of lectures on psychology and practical ethics in their early days. He died in Paris on the 5th of April 1896.

His chief philosophical works were an edition of the Théodicée of Leibnitz (1874), a monograph on Locke (1878), Devoirs et droits de l’homme (1880), Glissonius utrum Leibnitio de natura substantiae cogitanti quidquam tribuerit (1880); De La solidarité morale (4th ed., 1893). His lectures at Fontenoy have been published in two volumes entitled Leçons de psychologie appliquée à l’éducation, and Leçons de morale; those delivered at the Sorbonne are collected in L’Éducation dans l’université (1892).