Practice of Medicine at London University.
He was also Consulting Physician to the
National Hospital for the Paralysed and
Epileptic, Physician to the University
College Hospital, and Censor of the Royal
College of Physicians. In 1871 Dr. Bastian
championed " spontaneous generation "
against Pasteur and Tyndall, and after he
had retired from his professorship he
devoted himself to experiments which, he
contended, prove this. His conclusions are
not generally accepted, but must remain
open. See his illustrated work, The Origin of Life (1911). His chief work, The Brain as an Organ of Mind (1881), is Materialistic. Bastian was a fearless and uncompromising Eationalist, passionately devoted to truth. D. Nov. 17, 1915.
BASTIAT, Frédéric, French economist. B. June 29, 1801. Bastiat inherited property in 1827, and he devoted himself particularly to economic questions. He adopted the principles of Cobden, and attracted much attention by advocating (especially in his journal Libre Échange) Free Trade in France. In 1848 he was returned to the National Assembly. His chief works are Sophismes Economiques (2 vols., 1847-48) and Harmonies Economiques (1850), in which his Rationalism finds occasional expression. D. Dec. 24, 1850.
BATES, Henry Walter, F.R.S., F.L.S., naturalist. B. Leicester, Feb. 8, 1825. Ed. Billesden. Bates was apprenticed to a Leicester hosier at the age of fourteen, and he completed his education at the Mechanics Institute. A. R. Wallace, who then taught in Leicester, encouraged him to study natural history, and Bates began to collect and to write in the Zoologist. In 1845 he went as clerk to Burton-on-Trent, but three years later he sailed with Wallace to South America. In 1850 he left Wallace and continued to travel in the upper Amazons. He returned to England in 1859 and, at Darwin s suggestion, wrote his Naturalist on the Amazons (published 1863). The memoir which Mr. Clodd prefixes to the 1892 edition of this work shows (p. lxxxvi) that Bates was an outspoken Agnostic. In 1864 he became assistant secretary to the Geographical Society. He was President of the Entomological Society in 1869 and 1878, and was a Chevalier of the Brazilian Order of the Rose. D. Feb. 16, 1892.
BATTELLI, Professor Angelo, Italian physicist. B. Mar. 1, 1862. He was professor of experimental physics at, successively, the universities of Cagliari, Padua, and Pisa, and has written a long series of works and papers on physical questions, especially magnetism and electricity. His writings have won the prize of the Academia dei Lincei (in 1889 and 1891) and the Bressa prize of 12,000 lire (1893). He has been Socialist Deputy for Pisa, then Urbino, in the Italian Parliament, and is a vigorous Rationalist and anti-clerical.
BATTISTI, Cesare, Italian geographer. B. Feb. 4, 1875. Ed. Vienna, Gratz (for law), and Florence (geography) Universities. He graduated in law in 1897, but chiefly devoted his life to advanced politics and to geography. In the Trentino (where he was born) he was one of the leading Pro-Italians (especially through his review, the Tridentum), and he was prosecuted forty times. He edited the Socialist daily Il Popolo, and was an ardent anti-clerical. His geographical works deal particularly with his native Trentino. Battisti was captured by the Austrians in the War, and hanged as a traitor. D. July 16, 1916.
BAUDELAIRE, Charles Pierre, French poet. B. Paris, Apr. 9, 1821. Ed. College de Lyon and Lycee Louis le Grand. Although Baudelaire came of a Catholic and aristocratic family, he adopted revolutionary opinions, and fought at the barricades in 1848. His family had in 1841 tried to divert him from the field of letters by travel, but his radical ideas were only
