Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/249

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LAEOUSSE


LATHAM


position of professor of philosophy at the Central School, and later at the Faculty of Letters. His chief work is Leqons dephilo- sophie sur les principes de V intelligence {2 vols., 1815-18), which is Theistic but empirical. Laromiguiere was " the father of university - philosophy in France " (Larousse). D. Aug. 12, 1837.

LAROUSSE, Pierre Athanase,

French writer. B. Oct. 23, 1817. Ed. "Versailles. After teaching for some years in the provinces and at Paris, he became, in 1851, a professor at the Institut Jouffret and joint-editor of the " Librairie Clas- sique," which includes many educational works from his pen. His chief work is the well-known Grand Dictionnaire Universel flu XIX siecle (15 vols., 1864-76), a thoroughly Eationalist work, inspired by Diderot s Dictionnaire Encyclopedique. Larousse edited several other dictionaries which are indispensable to the reader of French. D. Jan. 3, 1875.

LARRA, Mariano Jose, Spanish writer. B. Mar. 24, 1809. Ed. France. In 1828 he founded El Duende Satirico, and in 1831 El Pobrecito Hablador, two satirical and anti-clerical periodicals which caused much agitation. The latter was suppressed. Later he edited La Revista Espanola and El Mundo, and wrote a number of plays and novels. His works were published in four volumes in 1843. Larra, who gener ally wrote under the pseudonym of " Figaro," used to say that " all the truths in the world would go in a cigarette-paper " (Larousse). His caustic and brilliant pen served liberalism in religion as well as in politics. D. Feb. 13, 1837.

LARROQUE, Patrice, D. esL., French philosopher. B. Mar. 27, 1801. He taught the Humanities, and later philo sophy, at various schools until 1830, when he became Inspector at the Toulouse Academy. After 1836 he was rector of various provincial academies, but he was deposed in 1849 on account of his out- 425


spoken Deism. Besides several philo sophical works he wrote De I esclavage chez les nations chretiennes (1857), one of the first works to disprove the claims of the Church in regard to slavery, and Examen critique des doctrines de la religion chretienne (2 vols., 1859). D. June 15, 1879

LASSALLE, Ferdinand Johann Gott lieb, German Socialist leader. B. Apr. 11, 1825. Ed. Leipzig Trade School, and Breslau and Berlin Universities. Son of a rich Jewish merchant named Lassal (which Ferdinand changed to Lassalle), he refused to enter business, and devoted himself to the study of philosophy and social questions. He took part in the Eevolution of 1848, and later helped Marx to found Social Democracy. He was an assiduous student of science and philo sophy, as one sees in his Die Philosophic Herakleitos (2 vols., 1858) and other learned works ; but in the sixties he turned entirely to advanced politics, and was several times prosecuted. He disdained all creeds. E. Bernstein has edited his Eeden und Schriften (4 vols., 1891-94). D. Aug. 31, 1864.

LASTARRIA, Professor Jose Yic- torino, Chilean jurisconsult. B. 1812. His early life was devoted to journalism and letters, but in 1838 he was appointed professor of public law and letters at the Santiago National Institute. For some years he was one of the leading orators and most ardent reformers in the Chilean Parliament, having adopted the Positivist philosophy. His works on law and literature are important, and he contri buted to advanced Eationalist journals such as El Progreso. In 1863 he was appointed Plenipotentiary Minister to Peru, in 1864 to Brazil ; and he was Dean of the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Chile.

LATHAM, Robert Gordon, M.D., B.A., L.E.C.P., ethnologist and philologist. B. Mar. 24, 1812. Ed. Eton and Cambridge 426