VOLNEY, CONSTANTIN Frutiscors CHASSEBCEIT, Comte de, was h. at Craon, in Anjou, on Feb. 3, 1757. He was the son of an advocate of good reputation. His family name was Chassebeeuf, but on arriving at manhood he assumed the additional surname of Volney. He got his preliminary education at the colleges of Aneenis and Angers, and afterward. went through a protracted course of study at the university of Paris. His father wish ing him to join his own profession, he spent some time in preparing for the bar; but he renounced law for medicine, which, however, he never practiced. He had inherited a competency from his mother, and soon after completing his studies, in the year 1783, lie set out for Egypt, with the intention of traveling in Egypt and Syria. This expedition occupied him about 4 years. On his return to France in 1787 he published his celebrated Travels in Syria and Egypt, which still contain the most trustworthy as well as one of the liveliest and most interesting accounts whieh have been published of the tribes with which he came in contact. This work at once procured him a great reputation. At first there was a disposition to question the veracity of some of his descriptions, but their truthfulness was fully confirmed when the French became more familiar with the Egyptians and the Arabs through the expeditition of 1700. The sagacity of the chief political conclusions to which his residence among these peoples had brought him, which in 1788 he embodied in a pamphlet—Considerations on the War between the Turks and the Russians—has also been shown by subsequent events. In 1790 he was elected to the eats gen6raux as a member for his native district, and took a somewhat prominent part in the political discussions of the years which followed, showing himself as he has done In his works a fast friend of the public liberties, a mocker at all systems of religion, and at the same time a fearless opponent of popular excesses. He was imprisoned for his outspokenness in 1793, and was not liberated till after the downfall of Robespierre in July of the following year.
In Sept., 1'794, Volney published his Ruins; Reflections upon the Revolutions of Empires, upon which and upon his Travels his reputation chiefly rests. Volney believed that political, like all other organizations, are subject to decay and destruction. The discussions contained in the Ruins cover almost all the radical questions in politics. Its principles are those of 1789. It vindicates the doctrine of the rights of man, establishes the duty of toleration in matters of opinion, and maintains, with perhaps too much cif sarcasm and mockery, fliellirnan origin and the essential falsity of all religious systems.
In the previous year Volney had published his Natural Law, a catechism for a French " in which he treats morality as a physical and material science, to be studied upon the same methods as the other natural sciences, and having no object but the con servation and improvement of society. This work was afterward republished under the title of the Physical Principles of Morality.
Toward the close of 1794 he was appointed professor of history in the short-lived ecole normale; and the brilliant discourses, not untinged with paradox, which he deliv ered in this capacity made a sensation in Paris even at that unsettled time. On the sup pression of the ecole normale in 1795 lie went to the United States, intending to spend the remainder of his days there; but circumstances made his residence there extremly disagreeable to him, and he returned to France in the spring of 1798. In his absence he had been elected a member of the institute; he was soon after his return admitted to the academy; and henceforth his life, though not inactive, was prosperous and untroubled... He had early been acquainted with Bonaparte, and had been of service to him at the time when political circumstances had deprived him of employment; and Bonaparte, on becoming first consul, desired to associate him with himself in the government as,. consul or as minister of the interior. Volney refused both offices, but accepted a seat. in the senate. He protested against the establishment of the empire and resigned his seat in the senate; but his resignation was declined, and during the existence of the, empire he formed one of the little band, sneered at by Napoleon as ideologues, who in the senate attempte,dby their criticisms to restrain the arbitrary conduct of the emperor.. Henceforth, however, his occupations were mostly literary. He published into Ancient History, several of the papers contained in which were written in the earlier part of his career; and also several linguistic works, in which he attempted to popularize, and, by means of a universal alphabet, to simplify the study of the eastern languages. He had accepted from Napoleon the title of count and the commandership of the legion of honor, and upon Napoleon's downfall he was among those who were called to the house of peers by Louis XVIIL His latest work, published in 1819, was The History of Samuel, the Inventor of the Sacredness of Kings. Volney died April 25, 1820, shortly after completing his 63d year.