Men of the Time, eleventh edition/Barthelemy-Saint-Hilaire, Jules
BARTHELEMY-SAINT-HILAIRE, Jules, member of the Institute, born in Paris, Aug. 19, 1805; was at first attached to the Ministry of Finance; but this did not prevent him from writing in the Globe, and he signed the protestation of the journalists, July 28, 1830. After the revolution he founded the Bon Sens, and, as a Liberal, took an active part in politics; but towards the close of 1833 he showed signs of a desire to renounce political life, and to apply himself to literature. In 1834 he was made tutor of French literature in the Polytechnic School, and undertook about the same time a complete translation of the works of Aristotle, which served as a pendant to the translation of Plato, published by Cousin. For this service he was in 1838 appointed to the chair of Greek and Latin Philosophy in the College of France, and was admitted into the Academy of the Moral and Political Sciences. The revolution of February again drew him into the political arena, and he entered the Constituent Assembly, and became one of the chiefs of the republican tiers-parti. He favoured the candidature of Louis Napoleon, and supported the administration of M. Odilon Barrot. After the coup d'état of Dec. 2, 1852, and the downfall of the parliamentary system, he refused to take the oath, and resigned his chair in the College of France, but was reappointed in 1862. At the general election of 1869 he waa returned to the Corps Législatif as deputy for the first circonscription of Seine-et-Oise. He voted with the extreme Left, and was one of those who signed the manifesto after the disturbances caused by the funeral of the Deputy Baudin. During the siege of Paris he remained in the capital, which he quitted after the armistice, in order to take his seat in the National Assembly, he having been elected a deputy for the department of Seine-et-Oise. He was a zealous supporter of his old friend M. Thiers. He was elected a Life Senator by the National Assembly, Dec. 10, 1875, and took his seat among the Republican minority. At the termination of the ministerial crisis, occasioned by the execution of the decrees against the unauthorized religious communities, he accepted the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, in succession to M. de Freycinet, in the Cabinet which was reconstituted under the presidency of M. Jules Ferry (Sept. 23, 1880). His principal works are:—"Politique d'Aristote" (Paris, 1837; 2nd ed. 1848); "De la Logique d'Aristote," a memoir which received the prize of the Institute, 1838; "La Logique d'Aristote," translated into French for the first time, 1839–44; "Psychologie d'Aristote: Traité de l'Âme," 1846; and "Opuscules," translated for the first time, 1847; "De l'École d'Alexandrie," report to the Institute, preceded by an "Essai sur la Méthode des Alexandrins et le Mysticisme," 1845; "Des Vedas," 1854; "Du Bouddhisme," 1855; and "Le Boudha et sa Religion," 1866.