Count Joseph Arthur Gobineau, Professor Clement Imbault-Huart

compiled by Joseph McCabe
published in A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists
London: Watts and Co., 1920

1. Text

GOBINEAU, Count Joseph Arthur de, French orientalist. B. 1816. He entered the diplomatic service in 1849, was assigned to the Persian Embassy in 1855, became Imperial Commissary to North America in 1859, and was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to Persia in 1861. His Histoire des Perses (2 vols., 1869) is weighty; and there is a valuable early account of Behaism in his Les religions et les philosophies dans l'Asie centrale (1865). Count Gobineau was very Conservative, and his famous Essai sur L'inegalite des races humaines (4 vols., 1853-55) greatly flattered the Germans (who have a Gobineau Society). But L. Schemann, his biographer (Gobineau, 2 vols., 1916, ii, 489-90), shows that he resisted to the last the unceasing efforts of his friends to bring him back from Theism to the Catholic Church. They had to be content to give him the sacrament when he was unconscious, and bury him with Catholic rites. D. Oct 13, 1882.

IMBAULT-HUART, Professor Clement, French Orientalist. B. Feb. 15, 1854. Ed. Ecole des langues orientales vivantes, Ecole pratique des hautes études, and College de France. As he had acquired a thorough knowledge of Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and modern Greek, he was appointed to the French embassies at Damascus and Constantinople. In 1898 he was recalled to France and nominated professor at the Special School of Oriental Languages and First Secretary for foreign languages to the Government. Writing in the name of Clement Huart, he has issued a large number of works on oriental literature and history, including a very useful study of Behaism (La Religion du Bab, 1889).

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