The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Court de Gébelin, Antoine

COURT DE GÉBELIN, Antoine, a French author, born in Nîmes in 1725, died in Paris, May 10, 1784. He was the son of Antoine Court, and early in life officiated for a short time as a Protestant preacher. Subsequently he devoted himself to the study of ancient mythology, in which, as in many other branches of knowledge, he was deeply learned. He established himself in Paris in 1763, and between 1775 and 1784 published his great work entitled Le monde primitif (9 vols.), in which he traces the history of the moral and intellectual world. The work was the fruit of 20 years' severe labor, and was to have embraced several additional volumes, the preparation of which was prevented by the author's death. The most valuable part of it, L'histoire naturelle de la parole, was republished separately in 1816. He sympathized deeply with the American struggle for independence, and in 1776 coöpeerated with Franklin and others in the publication of a work advocating the American cause, entitled Affaires de l'Angleterre et de l'Amérique. He early established in Paris a bureau for the collection and dissemination of facts and arguments in favor of Protestantism and liberty of conscience; and in later life he became president of a literary business association which involved him in financial ruin. He was the author of a defence of animal magnetism, and of a variety of works, historical, philosophical, and political.