Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/266

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LOUBET


LOWELL


how the world proceeded from him. D. July 1, 1881.

LOUBET, Emile, D. en D., seventh President of the French Eepublic. B. Dec. 31, 1838. Ed. Paris. Loubet was in his early years a barrister at Monte- limar, where he took an active part in Liberal politics. He was Mayor from 1870 to 1899. In 1876 he entered the Chambre, and sat with the Gambettist anti-clericals. He passed to the Senate in 1885, and was Minister of Public Works 1887-88, Premier in 1892, President of the Senate in 1896 and 1898, and President of the Eepublic from 1899 to 1906. It was under his Presidency and sympathetic guidance that the struggle with the Church was brought to its triumphant conclusion.

LOUYS, Pierre, French poet and novelist. B. Dec. 1, 1870. Ed. Lycee Janson - de - Sailly and Sorbonne, Paris. Louys has won a high position in France by his beautiful translations of the Greek poets (especially Poesies de Meleagre, 1893) and a series of finely-written and thoroughly pagan novels of ancient Greek life (Astarte, 1892 ; Aphrodite, 1896, etc.). Aphrodite has been presented on the stage. He is a member of the Societe des Anciens Textes and the Societ6 d Anthropologie, and a brilliant classical scholar.

LOYEJOY, Professor Arthur Oncken,

A.M., American philosopher. B. Oct. 10, 1873. Ed. California, Harvard, and Paris Universities. He was assistant professor of philosophy at Leland Stanford Univer sity 1899-1901, professor of philosophy at Washington University (St. Louis) 1901- 1908, at the University of Missouri 1908- 1910, and at John Hopkins University 1910-19. He has translated Bergson for the American public, and is a member of the American Philosophical Association. His dissent from the creeds may be read in an article in the Hibbert Journal (January, 1907). He thinks that Chris tianity would be " invaluable " if it were

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stripped of its " historical elements " (its characteristic doctrines).

LOWELL, James Russell, American poet and essayist. B. Feb. 22, 1819. Ed. Harvard University. Lowell was educated in law, but it was uncongenial, and he never seriously practised. In 1841 he published his first volume of poems, but it was in 1846, when he began to publish in serial form The Biglow Papers, that he won the attention of the American public. In 1854 he succeeded Longfellow as Smith professor at Harvard, and he taught there until 1877. From 1857 to 1862 he edited the Atlantic Monthly, and he was then for eight years associate editor of the North American Revieiv. Most of his lucid and genial essays were written in these magazines and collected later (Among My Books, 1870 ; My Study Windows, 1871, etc.). His poetry ranks very high in American literature, and he edited Keats, Shelley, Donne, and Wordsworth. From 1877 to 1880 he was American Minister at Madrid, and from 1880 to 1885 at London. His letters to Sir Leslie Stephen and many of his poems (which are sung as hymns in the Ethical Societies) show his Rationalist sentiments, but his position is most clearly stated by his friend and fellow Eationalist, W. D. Howells (Literary Friends and Acquain tance, 1901, p. 228). His father was a Unitarian minister, but Lowell " more and more liberated himself from all creeds, " and in his later years was sceptical about a future life. When Howells asked him if he believed in " a moral government of the universe," he answered evasively that "the scale was so vast, and we saw such a little of it." It is plain that, while his poems contain Theistic expressions, he ended in Agnosticism. D. Aug. 12, 1891.

LOWELL, Percival, American astro nomer, cousin of J. E. Lowell. B. Mar. 13, 1855. Ed. Boston Latin School and Har vard University. He lived in Japan from 1883 to 1893, and his Soul of the Far East (1886) shows him in close agreement with

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