EMILE, the hero of a philosophic romance by Rousseau of the same name, in which the author expounds his views on education, and presents his reasons, with his ideal of what, according to him, a good education is, a theory practically adopted by many would-be educationists with indifferent fruit.

EMIR, a title bestowed on the descendants of Mahomet’s daughter Fatima, the word denoting a “prince” or “ruler”; has lost this its primary meaning; the emirs, of whom there are large numbers in Turkey, enjoying no privileges save the sole right to wear a green turban, the supposed favourite colour of Mahomet, though they hold a high social position; the title is also given to chieftains of N. Africa.

EMMET, ROBERT, a patriotic Irishman, born in Dublin; bred for the bar; took part in the Irish rebellion; was hanged for his share in attempting to seize Dublin Castle (1778-1803).

EMPE`DOCLES, a philosopher of Agrigentum, in Sicily; “extolled in antiquity as a statesman and orator, as physicist, physician, and poet, and even as prophet and worker of miracles,” who flourished about the year 440 B.C.; he conceived the universe as made up of “four eternal, self-subsistent, mutually underivative, but divisible, primal material bodies, mingled and moulded by two moving forces, the uniting one of friendship and the disuniting one of strife”; of him it is fabled that, to persuade his fellow-citizens, with whom he had been in high favour as their deliverer from the tyranny of the aristocracy, of his bodily translation from earth to heaven, he threw himself unseen into the crater of Etna, but that at the next eruption of the mountain his slipper was cast up and revealed the fraud.

EMPIRES:  the ROMAN, capital Rome, dates from the reign of Augustus, 25 B.C., to that of Theodosius, A.D. 395; OF THE EAST, or Low Empire, capital Constantinople, being part of the Roman empire, dates from 295 to 1453; OF THE WEST, capital Rome, dates from 295 to 476; the HOLY, or Second Empire of the West, founded by Charlemagne, dates from 800 to 911; the LATIN, capital Constantinople, founded by the Crusaders, dates from 1204 to 1261; the GERMAN, founded by Otho the Great in 962, ended by abdication of Francis II. of Austria in 1806, and restored under William I. in 1870; the FRENCH, founded by Napoleon I., dates from 1804 to 1815, and as established by Napoleon III. dates from 1852 to 1870; OF THE INDIES, founded in 1876 under the crown of England.

EMPIRIC, the name given to any who practises an art from the mere experience of results, apart from all reference to or knowledge of the scientific explanation.

EMPIRICISM, a philosophical term applied to the theory that all knowledge is derived from the senses and experience alone, to the rejection of the theory of innate ideas; Locke, in modern times, is the great representative of the school that advocates this doctrine supported by Aristotle.

EMPSON, SIR RICHARD, a lawyer in the reign of Henry VII.; was Speaker of the House of Commons; incurred the hatred of the populace by acting as the king’s agent in forcing payment of taxes and penalties; was convicted of tyranny and treason, and beheaded in 1510.