BUCHEZ, PHILIPPE BENJAMIN JOSEPH (1796 1865), French author and politician, was born at Matagne-la Petite, now in Belgium, then in the French department of the Ardennes. In 1825 he graduated in medicine, and about the same time he became a member of the Saint-Simonian Society pre sided over by Bazard, Barthelemy Prosper Enfantin, and Olinde Rodrigues, and contributed to its organ, the Producteur. He left it in consequence of aversion to the strange religious ideas de veloped by its "Supreme Father," Enfantin, and founded a peri odical called L'Europeen for the advocacy of his theory of Christian socialism. In 1833 he published an Introduction a la science de l'histoire (2nd ed., improved and enlarged, Next he edited, with M. Roux-Lavergne (18o2-74), the parlementaire de la Revolution f rancaise (1833-38; 40 vols.) . It was reviewed by Carlyle (Miscellanies), parts of whose own history of the French Revolution are mainly drawn from it. The editors saw in the French Revolution an attempt to realize Christianity. In the Essai d'un traite complet de philosophie au point de vue du Catliolicisme et du progres (1839-4o) Buchez endeavoured to co-ordinate in a single system the political, moral, religious and natural phenomena of existence. Denying the possibility of innate ideas, he asserted that morality comes by revelation, and is therefore not only certain, but the only real certainty. In 1848 he became president of the Constituent Assembly, but only retained the position for a very short time. A Traite de politique (published 1866), which may be considered as the completion of his Traite de philosophic, was the most im portant of the productions of the last period of his life.