PAUW (CORNELIUS DE, sometimes called NICOLAS), a moral philosopher and historian, born at Amsterdam in 1739, is better known as the uncle of the revolutionist Anacharsis Clootz, than by the ancestors from whom he was descended: they are, however, reported by his nephew to have distinguished themselves in the revolutions of Holland in the sixteenth century.
It appears, upon the same authority, that his name was Cornelius, and not Nicolas, but that he was not related to Cornelius de Pauw, the critic, and the rival of Dorville; and that it was upon the marriage of his sister to Clootz's father, that he obtained, through the interest of his brother in law, a Catholic canonicate at Xanten, in the territory of Cleves. He was afterwards appointed reader to Frederic King of Prussia, perhaps as an advocate of the new doctrines and principles which that sovereign was disposed to patronise; but he is said to have declined the offer of the place of an academician of Berlin, and a bishopric at Breslau. His attacks on the Jesuits, whom he accused of gross misrepresentation and exaggeration in their historical and geographical memoirs, made him unpopular with the Catholic clergy, though his learning and talents commanded a certain portion of their respect. He was simple in his manners, and somewhat negligent of his appearance; the close of his life was embittered by a tedious and painful disease, and he died the 7th of July 1799.
1. His principal publications are his Recherches sur les Américains, 2 v. 8. Berl. 1770; ed. 2, 1772; a work intended to show the "degraded state of the savage Americans," and forming a contrast to the speculations of some contemporary writers of celebrity. 2. Défense des Recherches, 8. Berl. 1771.
3. Recherches sur les Égyptiens et les Chinois, 2 v. 8. Berl. 1773. Philosophical Dissertations on the Egyptians and Chinese, translated by Captain J. Thomson, 2 v. 8. London, 1795. The investigation was undertaken, he observes, to show that "no two nations ever resembled each other less than the Egyptians and the Chinese;" and it must be admitted that he has sufficiently established his proposition. There is, indeed, one argument that he has employed, which appears to be founded on a mistake of the Greek historians of Egypt, who have asserted that the Egyptians had long been in the use of alphabetical characters; and the want of any alphabet among the Chinese, is stated by M. de
Pauw as affording a marked distinction from the Egyptians. There is, however, scarcely a shadow of resemblance in the particular hieroglyphical characters employed by the two nations, though the general system of beginning with a representation of a visible object, and departing, more and more, by degrees, from the fidelity of the delineation, must necessarily have been common to both. But it so happens, that out of about 70 Egyptian characters, which are compared by the Jesuits and Dr Morton with the Chinese in the Philosophical Transactions for 1769, there are about 20 of which the sense has been ascertained with tolerable accuracy in the Article EGYPT of this Supplement; and of these there is only one that happens to have been rightly determined by the comparison with the Chinese, excepting two or three which are obviously mere pictures, as the Moon and a Bow. There is also a figure of a chain, among the old Chinese characters, which agrees remarkably in its form with the Egyptian hieroglyphic employed as a copulative conjunction; and there is a still more striking coincidence, which M. Jomard has noticed, between the Egyptian and Chinese characters for a thousand, both of which he derives from the seed vessel of the lotus, as containing a multitude of seeds; and if the older Chinese characters be found to preserve this resemblance as perfectly as they ought to do, it must be confessed that the suspicion of a common origin will be much strengthened by the argument. Both the Egyptians and the Chinese were condemned, M. de Pauw observes, "to an eternal mediocrity;" and the weight of this observation is certainly not diminished by any thing that has lately been inferred from the study of the hieroglyphics of the stone of Rosetta.
4. There are several papers of M. de Pauw on antiquarian subjects in the Memoirs of the Society of Cassel, and one in particular On the Temple of Juno Lacinia, Vol. I. 1780.
5. Recherches sur les Grecs, 2 v. 8. Berl. 1787. Philosophical Dissertations on the Greeks, translated by Thomson, 2 v. 8. Lond. 1793. The work is principally devoted to the Athenians, among whom their boasted liberty is shown to have been confined to a very small number of citizens, who tyrannized over the rest of the inhabitants of their country. The Lacedæmonians, the Aetolians, the Thessalians, and the Arcadians, are separately discussed, but considered as comparatively contemptible; the Lacedæmonians in particular, and their successors, the Mædonians, are treated with great severity, as a worthless race of dishonourable vagabonds. The athletic education of the Athenians is, however, highly applauded, from a visionary theory of the importance of the physical perfection of the body to the operations of the mind. An edition of the author's three principal works appeared at Paris, in seven volumes octavo, 1795.
[Dorsch, Chardon-la-Rochette, and Clootz, Magaz. Encycl. 1799. An. V. Vol. II. Widdigen, Westph. Nationalk. 1801, p. 215. N. Allg. T. Bibl. LXXIV. p. 77. Denina, Prusse Littéraire, III. N. Dict. Hist. IX. 8. Par. 1804. Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary, XXIII. 8. Lond. 1815.]