best traditions of the Encyclopaedists. He published during his lifetime no less than 1,200 scientific memoirs, his chief works being: "Organic Chemistry Based on Synthesis," 1860; "Lectures on the General Methods of Synthesis," 1864; "Lectures on Isomery," 1865 ; "Chemical Synthesis," 1875.
Blanc, Louis (1811–1882), French Socialist and historian. He proved that the misery of the masses was caused by individualism and the commercial and industrial competition which the latter leads to, and he advocated the reconstruction of society upon the basis of solidarity, the first step being the socialisation of the instruments of production. He wanted, therefore, the "Organisation of Labour," the State helping in promoting social workshops. He was thus, with Pecqueur and Vidal, one of the first promoters of Socialism organised by the State. During the Revolution of 1848 he became a member of the Provisional Government and the chairman of a special committee for the re-organisation of production. His chief works are: "Organisation of Labour"; a History of the French Revolution, in eight volumes, written from the Jacobinist (Robespierrist) point of view; a History of Ten Years (1830–1840); etc. After the coup d'état of Napoleon III. he was for many years a refugee in England.
Brehons.—Among all the free stems, Celtic, Saxon, Scandinavian, Slavonian, Finnish, and so on, which did not belong to the Roman Empire, and had no written law during the first centuries of the Christian era, the tradition of the law—that is, the decisions previously taken in different cases by the folkmotes—was kept in memory by special men who usually kept that knowledge either in their families or in special guilds. It was their duty to recite the traditional common law during the popular festivals which were kept in connection with the great folkmotes of large portions of the federated stems, and for that purpose the law was often put in the shape of verses, or triads, to facilitate memory. This habit is still widely in use in many parts of Western Asia. In Ireland, the keepers of the law were known as the Brehons, and they combined this function with sacerdotal functions. The collection of the Irish common law, compiled in the middle of the fifth century, and known as the Senchus Mor ("Great Antiquity"), is one of the most remarkable documents among the many similar collections of unwritten common law dating from that period. Modern historians continually represent Brehons and similar reciters of the law as law-makers; but this was not the case. The law-makers were the folkmotes—the Brehons, the Knyazes of the Slavonians, etc., being only the keepers of law in its old forms.
Büchner, Ludwig (1824–1899), German naturalist and philosopher, especially renowned for his work "Force and Matter," which represented an attempt to give, on the basis of modern knowledge in natural science, and in a perfectly popular and accessible form, the substance of an atomist-materialistic comprehension of the Universe. Hundreds of