LAMBTTEIB
LANESSAN
LAMETTRIE, Julien Offray de, French
philosopher. B. Dec. 23, 1709. Ed. Jesuit
College, Caen, and Leyden University. At
first a military surgeon, having refused to
become a priest, he entered upon active
service, and was severely wounded. Ob
serving that his "soul" weakened with
his body, he developed a Materialistic and
Atheistic philosophy, which he embodied
in his Histoire naturelle de I dme (1745).
Ho was expelled from France, and went to
Holland ; but his L homme-machine (1748)
caused his expulsion from Holland, and
he found a congenial home at the court of
Frederick II. Lamettrie s works are of
great ability, and the occasional scorn of
them which one hears comes from people
who have never seen them. D. Nov. 11,
1751.
LA MOTHE LE YAYER, Francois de,
French philosopher. B. 1588. He studied law, and was appointed Substitute General- Procurator to the Parlement. An educa tional work which he published recom mended him to Richelieu, who made him tutor to the royal princes. He was a member of the State Council and of the Academy. His Cinq dialogues faits a limitation des anciens (1671, under the pseudonym "Horatius Tubero") is Deistic, and some of his other works (collected edition, 14 vols., 1756-59) are remarkably liberal. D. 1672.
LANDOR, Walter Savage, writer. B. Jan. 30, 1775. Ed. Rugby and Oxford (Trinity College). Landor followed no pro fession, and devoted himself to letters and learning. His early poems were esteemed, but had little circulation. In 1808 he assisted the Spaniards against the French. In 1814 his fortune was lost, and he went to live in France and Italy, writing his chief work, Imaginary Conversations (2 vols., 1824), in Florence. A morose and eccentric man he is largely the model of " Boy- thorne" in Bleak House he held advanced ideas from his youth. He was very friendly with Holyoake, and very anti-clerical, 419
though a Theist. In a letter to Mrs. Lynn
Linton (Mrs. L. Linton, p. 123) Landor
rejects the orthodox idea of a future life.
D. Sep. 17, 1864.
LANE, Ralph Norman Angell, econo mist ("Norman Angell"). B. Dec. 26, 1874. Ed. St. Omer. His youth was spent in ranching, prospecting, and jour nalism in the United States. He returned to England in 1898, edited Galignani s Messenger from 1899 to 1903, and was manager of the Paris Daily Mail from 1905 to 1914. Besides The Great Illusion (1910), which was translated into fifteen languages, he has written various works in the cause of arbitration. In 1913 he delivered the Conway Memorial Lecture (War and the Essential Realities], in which his Rationalism finds expression. He con cludes by endorsing Conway s words : " Entreat for peace not of deified thunder clouds, but of every man, woman, and child thou shalt meet."
LANE, William, journalist. Lane s early life is obscure, but we find him a compositor, then reporter and journalist, in the United States from the age of fifteen. He migrated to Queensland, and became one of the leaders of the Brisbane Socialists, editing the Boomerang and the Worker. In 1893 he led a large party of Australians to Paraguay to found "New Australia," a Socialist colony which failed. Stewart Graham shows in his account of the adventure (Where Socialism Failed, 1912, p. 168) that Lane was a Theist or Pantheist, and very hostile to Christianity.
LANESSAN, Jean Marie Antoine de,
M.D., French writer and statesman. B. July 13, 1843. He was a naval surgeon from 1863 to 1870, a Municipal Councillor at Paris from 1879 to 1881, and a member of the Chambro from 1881 to 1891 and from 1898 to 1906. In 1891 he was appointed Governor-General of Indo-China, and he was Minister of Marine from 1899 to 1902, cordially supporting the chastise- 420
