whatever the motive for such an act may be. Such proper authority is (1) a faculty from the ordinary, where it is to be removed from one consecrated place of burial to another, and this is often done on sanitary grounds or to meet the wishes of relatives, and has been done for secular purposes, e.g. widening a thoroughfare, by allowing part of the burial ground (disused) to be thrown into it; but it has been refused where the object was to cremate the remains, or to transfer them from a churchyard to a Roman Catholic burial ground; (2) a licence from the home secretary, where it is desired to transfer remains from one unconsecrated place of burial to another; (3) by order of the coroner, in cases of suspected crime. There has been considerable discussion as to the boundary line of jurisdiction between (1) and (2), and whether the disinterment of a body from consecrated ground for purposes of identification falls within, (1) only or within both (1) and (2); and an attempt by the ecclesiastical court to enforce a penalty for that purpose without a licence has been prohibited by the temporal court.
See also Churchyard; and, for methods of disposal of the dead, Cemetery; Cremation, and Funeral Rites.
Authorities.—Baker, Law of Burials (6th ed. by Thomas, London, 1898); Phillimore, Ecclestastical Law (2nd ed., London, 1895); Cripps, Law of Church and Clergy (6th ed., London, 1886). (G. G. P.*)
BURIAL SOCIETIES, a form of friendly societies, existing mainly in England, and constituted for the purpose of providing by voluntary subscriptions, for insuring money to be paid on the death of a member, or for the funeral expenses of the husband, wife or child of a member, or of the widow of a deceased member. (See Friendly Societies.)
BURIATS, a Mongolian race, who dwell in the vicinity of the Baikal Lake, for the most part in the government of Irkutsk and the Trans-Baikal Territory. They are divided into various tribes or clans, which generally take their names from the locality they frequent. These tribes are subdivided according to kinship. The Buriats are a broad-shouldered race inclined to stoutness, with small slanting eyes, thick lips, high cheekbones, broad and flat noses and scanty beards. The men shave their heads and wear a pigtail like the Chinese. In summer they dress in silk and cotton gowns, in winter in furs and sheepskins. Their principal occupation is the rearing of cattle and horses. The Buriat horse is famous for its power of endurance, and the attachment between master and animal is very great. At death the horse should, according to their religion, be sacrificed at its owner’s grave; but the frugal Buriat heir usually substitutes an old hack, or if he has to tie up the valuable steed to the grave to starve he does so only with the thinnest of cords so that the animal soon breaks his tether and gallops off to join the other horses. In some districts the Buriats have learned agriculture from the Russians, and in Irkutsk are really better farmers than the latter. They are extraordinarily industrious at manuring and irrigation. They are also clever at trapping and fishing. In religion the Buriats are mainly Buddhists; and their head lama (Khambo Lama) lives at the Goose Lake (Guisinoe Ozero). Others are Shamanists, and their most sacred spot is the Shamanic stone at the mouth of the river Angar. Some thousands of them around Lake Baikal are Christians. A knowledge of reading and writing is common, especially among the Trans-Baikal Buriats, who possess books of their own, chiefly translated from the Tibetan. Their own language is Mongolian, and of three distinct dialects. It was in the 16th century that the Russians first came in touch with the Buriats, who were long known by the name of Bratskiye, “Brotherly,” given them by the Siberian colonists. In the town of Bratskiyostrog, which grew up around the block-house built in 1631 at the confluence of the Angara and Oka to bring them into subjection, this title is perpetuated. The Buriats made a vigorous resistance to Russian aggression, but were finally subdued towards the end of the 17th century, and are now among the most peaceful of Russian peoples.
See J. G. Gruelin, Siberia; Pierre Simon Pallas, Sammlungen historischer Nachrichten über die mongolischen Volkerschaften (St Petersburg, 1776–1802); M. A. Castrén, Versuch einer buriatischen Sprachlehre (1857); Sir H. H. Howorth, History of the Mongols (1876–1888).
BURIDAN, JEAN [Joannes Buridanus] (c. 1297–c. 1358), French philosopher, was born at Béthune in Artois. He studied in Paris under William of Occam. He was professor of philosophy in the university of Paris, was rector in 1327, and in 1345 was deputed to defend its interests before Philip of Valois and at Rome. He was more than sixty years old in 1358, but the year of his death is not recorded. The tradition that he was forced to flee from France along with other nominalists, and founded the university of Vienna in 1356, is unsupported and in contradiction to the fact that the university was founded by Frederick II. in 1237. An ordinance of Louis XI., in 1473, directed against the nominalists, prohibited the reading of his works. In philosophy Buridan was a rationalist, and followed Occam in denying all objective reality to universals, which he regarded as mere words. The aim of his logic is represented as having been the devising of rules for the discovery of syllogistic middle terms; this system for aiding slow-witted persons became known as the pons asinorum. The parts of logic which he treated with most minuteness are modal propositions and modal syllogisms. In commenting on Aristotle’s Ethics he dealt in a very independent manner with the question of free will, his conclusions being remarkably similar to those of John Locke. The only liberty which he admits is a certain power of suspending the deliberative process and determining the direction of the intellect. Otherwise the will is entirely dependent on the view of the mind, the last result of examination. The comparison of the will unable to act between two equally balanced motives to an ass dying of hunger between two equal and equidistant bundles of hay is not found in his works, and may have been invented by his opponents to ridicule his determinism. That he was not the originator of the theory known as “liberty of indifference” (liberum arbitrium indifferentiae) is shown in G. Fonsegrive’s Essai sur le libre arbitre, pp. 119, 199 (1887).
His works are:—Summula de dialectica (Paris, 1487); Compendium logicae (Venice, 1489); Quaestiones in viii. libros physicorum (Paris, 1516); In Aristotelis Metaphysica (1518); Quaestiones in x. libros ethicorum Aristotelis (Paris, 1489; Oxford, 1637); Quaestiones in viii. libros politicorum Aristotelis (1500). See K. Prantl’s Geschichte der Logik, bk. iv. 14-38; Stöckl’s Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, ii. 1023–1028; Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie, s.v. (1897).
BURKE, EDMUND (1729–1797), British statesman and political writer. His is one of the greatest names in the history of political literature. There have been many more important statesmen, for he was never tried in a position of supreme responsibility. There have been many more effective orators, for lack of imaginative suppleness prevented him from penetrating to the inner mind of his hearers; defects in delivery weakened the intrinsic persuasiveness of his reasoning; and he had not that commanding authority of character and personality which has so often been the secret of triumphant eloquence. There have been many subtler, more original and more systematic thinkers about the conditions of the social union. But no one that ever lived used the general ideas of the thinker more successfully to judge the particular problems of the statesman. No one has ever come so close to the details of practical politics, and at the same time remembered that these can only be understood and only dealt with by the aid of the broad conceptions of political philosophy. And what is more than all for perpetuity of fame, he was one of the great masters of the high and difficult art of elaborate composition.
A certain doubtfulness hangs over the circumstances of Burke’s life previous to the opening of his public career. The very date of his birth is variously stated. The most probable opinion is that he was born at Dublin on the 12th of January 1729, new style. Of his family we know little more than his father was a Protestant attorney, practising in Dublin, and that his mother was a Catholic, a member of the family of Nagle. He had at least one sister, from whom descended the only existing representatives of Burke’s family; and he had at least two brothers, Garret Burke and Richard Burke, the one older and the other younger than Edmund. The sister, afterwards Mrs French, was brought up and remained throughout life in the religious faith of her
