BIEECE
BIOT
the nature of living tissue which have made
him a classic authority in anatomy. Bichat
was appointed physician to the Hotel-Dieu
at the early age of twenty-seven (1799).
His chief works Traitc des membranes
(1800), Anatomie generate (1801), and
Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la
mort (1801) are manuals of Materialism,
but his generous life and high ideals show
that, as in the case of other Materialists,
his philosophy did not lack inspiration.
D. July 22, 1802.
BIERCE, Ambrose, (" Dod Grile"), American humorist. B. June 24, 1842. Bierce served in the Civil War, and was brevetted major "for distinguished ser vices." He afterwards adopted journalism and edited the Argonaut and the Wasp (1877-84). His Cobwebs from an Empty Skull (1874) was the first of a series of humorous works which made him a great favourite of the American public. His collected works were published in twelve volumes in 1912. Bierce s thorough Eationalism is best seen in his Cynic s Word Book (1906), which contains many caustic definitions of religious things. " Canonicals " are said to be " the motley worn by jesters at the Court of Heaven." Faith is defined as " belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel."
BICKERSTETH, Henry, M.A., Baron Langdale, Master of the Kolls. B. June 18, 1783. Ed. Kirkby Lonsdale Grammar School, Edinburgh, and Cambridge (Caius College). He was senior wrangler and senior Smith s prizeman. Admitted to the Inner Temple in 1808, and called to the bar in 1811, he became a King s Counsel in 1827. In 1834 he declined the position of Solicitor General, which was offered him, and two years later he was appointed Master of the Eolls, admitted to the Privy Council, and created Baron Langdale. In 1850 he refused the Lord Chancellorship. Baron Langdale, who adjudicated on the Gorham case in 1850, had a high repute 75
both for ability and conscientiousness. He
was a great friend of Bentham, James
Mill, and Sir F. Burdett, and he agreed
with them in rejecting the prevailing creed.
His biographer, T. D. Hardy (Memoirs of
the Bight Honourable Henry Lord Langdale,
2 vols., 1852), diplomatically says that his-
religious feeling was "too deep and too
exalted for the common opinions of the
age," but admits that he w^as generally
regarded by those who knew him as
" destitute of religious feeling " (i, 25). He
does not attempt to say what Lord
Langdale s beliefs were. He was, in fact,
an ardent Benthamite, but he apparently
admitted some shade of Theism. He was
a great admirer of the works of J. S. Mill.
D. Apr. 18, 1851.
BINET, Alfred, French psychologist. B. July 8, 1857. Ed. Paris (law and medicine). From 1880 onward he devoted himself to psychology, and in 1886 his Psychologie du raisonnement inaugurated a, brilliant series of psychological works. In 1895 he became joint editor of L Annee Psychologique. He was Director of the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology at the Sorbonne, and was especially interested in the psychology of the child. In its obituary notice Nature observed : "The science of psychology has suffered a severe loss by his death." Binet was not a dogmatic Materialist, as is sometimes said, but he held that mind cannot exist apart from matter (see L dme et le corps, 1905, English translation 1907). D. Oct., 1911.
BIOT, Jean Baptiste, F.E.S., French astronomer. B. Apr. 21, 1774. Ed. College Louis le Grand and Ecole Poly- technique, Paris. After teaching for some years at Beauvais he was, in 1800, appointed professor at the College de France. Biot reached the first rank of French astronomers and mathematicians, a very brilliant group in his time, and rendered great service to his science. He was admitted to the Institut, the English Eoyal Society (1815), and the Legion of 76
