PETZOLDT
PHELIPS
Colne and Calstone, Earl Wycombe, and
Marquis of Lansdowne. For the re
mainder of his life he abstained from office,
but he supported Fox and the reform party
and courageously opposed war with France
and repression at home. His habitual
opposition to the corrupt Court and
Government has brought a good deal of
calumny on Shelburne ; but, in spite of a
few weaknesses, he sustained all his life
a brave fight for reform. He agreed
entirely with Jeremy Bentham, of whom
he was a warm friend in his later years.
Sir John Bowring tells us in his Memoir of
Bentham that " Lord Shelburne avoided
talking on religious subjects for fear, he
hinted, of getting into a scrape, but he
avowed to Bentham that his opinions were
what is called sceptical" (Bentham s
Works, 1843 ed., x, 88). D. May 7, 1805.
PETZOLDT, Professor Joseph, Ph.D.,
German philosopher. B. Nov. 4, 1862. Ed. Jena, Munich, Geneva, Leipzig, and Gottingen Universities. In 1889 he was appointed to teach at the Humboldt Gymnasium at Berlin, and in 1891 at the Royal Spandau Gymnasium. Since 1904 he has taught at the Berlin Technical High School. He is President of the Society of Positive Philosophers, and is strongly opposed to pure speculation. Like Mach, and more or less following Avenarius, he pleads for a psycho-physical parallelism, holding that the psychic and the physical, or what are commonly called spirit and matter, are two aspects of a Monistic reality. He describes himself as an Empirio-critical Positivist. His chief presentments of his system are Einfilhrung in die Philosophie der reinen Erfahrung (2 vols., 1900-1902) and Das Weltproblcm (1906).
PEYRARD, Francois, French mathe matician. B. 1760. Peyrard was an able French mathematician, who translated Euclid and Archimedes into French. He is said, also, to have been the first to propose a Suez Canal. During the Revolu- 597
tion, which he cordially supported, he
worked for the extinction of religion, and
was instrumental in inducing the Bishop
of Paris, Gobel, to acknowledge " no
religion but liberty " (see Carlyle, bk. v,
ch. iv). He was a great friend of " Atheist
Marechal," and helped him to compile his
Dictionnaire des Athees. Lalande was
intimately associated with them. D.
Oct. 3, 1822.
PEYRAT, Alphonse, French writer and politician. B. June 21, 1812. Ed. Toulouse Seminary and Ecole de Droit. In 1833 Peyrat abandoned the study of law, and went to Paris to engage in journalism. He joined the Tribune, which sank under a burden of fines amounting to 150,000 francs, and then continued the fight against reaction in the Presse. In 1857 he became editor of the Presse, and in 1862 he founded L Avcnir. In 1871 he was returned to the National Assembly. He passed to the Senate in 1876, and was elected Vice-President in 1882 and 1885. Peyrat was one of the brilliant and devoted journalists who laid the foundations of French secularism. His detestation of religion is seen in Un nouveau dogme (1855), Etudes historiques et religieuses (1863), and especially his Histoire ele- mentaire et critique de Jesus (1864). D. 1891.
PHELIPS, Vivian, writer ("Philip Vivian"). B. Mar. 31, 1860. Ed. Wel lington College, King s School, Canterbury, and R. I. E. C., Cooper s Hill. He entered the Indian P. W. D. in 1881, and retired, after a full term of service, in 1903. Like so many other Anglo-Indians, Mr. Phelips buried his Church of England beliefs in India, and after his retirement took up the serious study of religion. He became a militant Rationalist, and published his conclusions, under the pen - name of " Philip Vivian," in his well-known Churches and Modern Thought (1906), which has had a very considerable influ ence in the spread of Rationalism. The 598
