Joseph Marie De Gerando, baron, a French philosopher and statesman, born in Lyons, Feb. 29, 1772, died in Paris, Nov. 11, 1842. He was educated in the college of the Oratory at Lyons, and was preparing for the priesthood against the wishes of his family when the revolutionary persecutions of ecclesiastics led him to change his purpose. When in 1793 his native town was besieged by the troops of the convention, he took arms for its defence, was made prisoner, and narrowly escaped death. He entered the army, but his regiment having been sent to Lyons, he was there recognized, denounced, and obliged to seek safety in flight. He went to Switzerland and thence to Italy, and was employed two years in a commercial house in Naples. In 1797 he returned to France, afterward joined a regiment of cavalry, and was in garrison at Colmar when the institute proposed the question: "What is the influence of signs on the formation of ideas? " De Gerando sent in a dissertation on it, and learned that he had received the prize soon after the battle of Zurich, in which he had taken part.

Invited to Paris, he entered the ministry of the interior under Lucien Bonaparte in 1799, became secretary general of that department under Champagny in 1804, accompanied him to Italy in 1805, was appointed master of requests in 1808, was afterward engaged in the organization of Tuscany and of the Papal States when they were united to France, received the title of councillor of state in 1811, and was appointed governor of Catalonia in 1812. On the fall of the empire he retained his dignities; but for having been sent to organize the defence of the Moselle during the hundred days he was at first discarded after the second restoration, but soon resumed his place in the council of state, which he held during the rest of his life. In 1819 he began a course of lectures before the faculty of law in Paris on public and administrative law, which were suspended in 1822 and resumed in 1828. In 1837 he was raised to the peerage. His principal philosophical works are: Des signes et de Vart de penser considered dans leurs rapports mutueh (-4 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1800); De Ja generation des connaissances humaines (Berlin, 1802); and Histoire comparee des systemes de philosophic (3 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1803), of which a posthumous volume appeared in the third edition (1847-8). In 1825 he received the prize of the academy for his treatise Du perfectionne-ment moral et de Veducation de soi-meme (translated into English, Boston, 1830), the fundamental idea of which is that life is a discipline whose object is perfection.

The five leading motives which solicit the will are sensations, affections, thought, duty, and religion; and the two conditions of harmonious development are a love of the good {Vamour du Men) and a habit of self-control. His Visiteur du paurre also received the prize of the academy (1821). In 1827 he published De Vedu-cation des sourds-mvets de naissance; and in 1829 appeared his Institutes du droit administrate/ franpais, which was finished by Bou-latignier and Alfred Blanche (2d ed., 5 vols., 1842-'5). Shortly before his death he made a tour through Germany and Switzerland, in order to study the system of hospitals and other charitable institutions.