LESSING
LEVALLOIS
a quarter of a century Lerroux has con
ducted a spirited fight for Eepublicanism,
Socialism, and Eationalism in Spain. He
has edited nearly every advanced organ in
Spain, and is now editor and owner of
El Progreso. He has thrice represented
Barcelona in the Cortes, and has been con
demned no less than three hundred times
for his press utterances. Thirty years in
prison and several years of exile represent
the sentences passed on this irrepressible
warrior against reaction.
LESSING, Gotthold Ephraim, German dramatist and critic. B. Jan. 22, 1729. Ed. Leipzig University. Lessing was destined for the Church, but he deserted theology for the study of medicine and philosophy. In 1750 he again, under pressure from his father, a pastor, took up theology, but he was now far advanced in Eationalism, and he turned to journalism and letters. He opened his dramatic career with Miss Sara Sampson in 1755 ; and his Minna von Barnhelm (1767) is still regarded by many as the greatest of German comedies. In 1760 he was admitted to the Berlin Academy. His Laokoon (1766) is a magnificent study in sesthetics ; and his best-known work, Nathan der Weise (1779), embodies his ripe Eationalism. From 1769 to 1775 he was in charge of the Wolfenbiittel Library, and he there edited the Wolfenbiittel Frag ments, which opened the era of Biblical criticism. His timid and wavering utter ances often suit the orthodox, but (as Eobertson shows in a lengthy analysis in his Short History of Freethought, ii, 323-26) he took a purely naturalist view of Chris tianity, and was " from first to last a free thinker in the sense that he never admitted any principle of authority." D. Feb. 15, 1781.
LETOURNEAU, Professor Charles Jean Marie, anthropologist. B. 1831. Letourneau, who was professor of the history of civilizations at the Parisian School of Anthropology and was in 1886 441
President of the Anthropological Society,
followed the principle of evolution with
great learning and thoroughness through
biology and sociology. Each of his works
(L evohition de la morale, 1886; L Evolution
dumariage, 1888; L evolution de I esclavage,
1895, etc.) is valuable, and together they
form a library of modern culture (La
Bibliotheque Anthropologique). His works
are very numerous and varied. He was a
Materialist. " We know that there is
nothing in the whole universe except active
matter," he held. He translated Haeckel
and Biichner into French. D. 1902.
LEUBA, Professor James Henry,
Ph.D., American psychologist. B. Apr. 9, 1868. Ed. Neuchatel (Switz.), Clark University (U.S.), and Leipzig, Halle, Heidelberg, and Paris Universities. He settled in America in 1887, and in 1889 he was appointed professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College, where he still is. He belongs to the American Psychological Association, the College of Teachers of Education, and other societies. His chief interest is the psychology of religion, on which he is a high authority (The Psycho logical Origin and the Nature of Religion, 1909 ; A Psychological Study of Religion, 1912 ; The Beliefs in God and Immortality, 1916). In the preface to his Psychological Study of Religion he defines himself as an "empirical idealist." He thinks that belief in a personal God seems no longer possible" (p. 125), he finds "little that is acceptable in the Eoman Catholic and the Protestant dogmas " (p. 275), and he believes that it is no longer the consciousness of God, but the consciousness of Man, that is the power making for righteousness " (p. 311). He pleads for religion rather on the lines of a new Positivism.
LEYALLOIS, Jules, French writer. B, May 18, 1829. He undertook journa listic work (on L Opinion, etc.) in Paris in 1850, and five years later he became secre tary to Sainte Beuve. He completed Michelet s History, and wrote a number of 442
