FLUDD, or Flud, ROBERT [Robertus de Fluctibus] (1574-1637), English physician and mystical philosopher, the son of Sir Thomas Fludd, treasurer of war to Queen Elizabeth in France and the Low Countries, was born at Milgate, Kent. After studying at St John’s College, Oxford, he travelled in Europe for six years, and became acquainted with the writings of Paracelsus. He subsequently returned to Oxford, became a member of Christ Church, took his medical degrees, and ultimately became a fellow of the College of Physicians. He practised in London with success, though it is said that he combined with purely medical treatment a good deal of faith-healing. Following Paracelsus, he endeavoured to form a system of philosophy founded on the identity of physical and spiritual truth. The universe and all created things proceed from God, who is the beginning, the end and the sum of all things, and to him they will return. The act of creation is the separation of the active principle (light) from the passive (darkness) in the bosom of the divine unity (God). The universe consists of three worlds; the archetypal (God), the macrocosm (the world), the microcosm (man). Man is the world in miniature, all the parts of both sympathetically correspond and act upon each other. It is possible for man (and even for the mineral and the plant) to undergo transformation and to win immortality. Fludd’s system may be described as a materialistic pantheism, which, allegorically interpreted, he put forward as containing the real meaning of Christianity, revealed to Adam by God himself, handed down by tradition to Moses and the patriarchs, and revealed a second time by Christ. The opinions of Fludd had the honour of being refuted by Kepler, Gassendi and Mersenne. Though rapt in mystical speculation, Fludd was a man of varied attainments. He did not disdain scientific experiments, and is thought by some to be the original inventor of the barometer. He was an ardent defender of the Rosicrucians, and De Quincey considers him to have been the immediate, as J.V. Andreä was the remote, father of freemasonry. Fludd died on the 8th of September 1637.
See J.B. Craven, Robert Fludd, the English Rosicrucian (1902), where a list of his works is given; A.E. Waite, The Real History of the Rosicrucians (1887); De Quincey, The Rosicrucians and Freemasons; J. Hunt, Religious Thought in England (1870), i. 240 seq. His works were published in 6 vols., Oppenheim and Gouda, 1638.
FLÜGEL, GUSTAV LEBERECHT (1802-1870), German orientalist, was born at Bautzen on the 18th of February 1802. He received his early education at the gymnasium of his native town, and studied theology and philology at Leipzig. Gradually he devoted his attention chiefly to Oriental languages, which he studied in Vienna and Paris. In 1832 he became professor at the Fürstenschule of St Afra in Meissen, but ill-health compelled him to resign that office in 1850, and in 1851 he went to Vienna, where he was employed in cataloguing the Arabic, Turkish and Persian manuscripts of the court library. He died at Dresden on the 5th of July 1870.
Flügel’s chief work is an edition of the bibliographical and encyclopaedic lexicon of Haji Khalfa, with Latin translation (7 vols., London and Leipzig, 1835-1858). He also brought out an edition of the Koran (Leipzig, 1834 and again 1893); then followed Concordantiae Corani arabicae (Leipzig, 1842 and again 1898); Mani, seine Lehren und seine Schriften (Leipzig, 1862); Die grammatischen Schulen der Araber (Leipzig, 1862); and Ibn Kutlûbugas Krone der Lebensbeschreibungen (Leipzig, 1862). An edition of Kitâb-al-Fihrist, prepared by him, was published after his death.
FLÜGEL, JOHANN GOTTFRIED (1788-1855), German lexicographer, was born at Barby near Magdeburg, on the 22nd of November 1788. He was originally a merchant’s clerk, but emigrating to the United States in 1810, he made a special study of the English language, and returning to Germany in 1819, was in 1824 appointed lector of the English language in the university of Leipzig. In 1838 he became American consul, and subsequently representative and correspondent of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington and several other leading American literary and scientific institutions. He died at Leipzig on the 24th of June 1855.
The fame of Flügel rests chiefly on the Vollständige englisch-deutsche und deutsch-englische Wörterbuch, first published in 2 vols. (Leipzig) in 1830, which has had an extensive circulation not only in Germany but in England and America. In this work he was assisted by J. Sporschil, and a new and enlarged edition, edited by his son Felix Flügel (1820-1904), was published at Brunswick (1890-1892). Another edition, in two volumes, edited by Prof. Immanuel Schmidt and S. Tanger appeared (Brunswick, London & New York) in 1906. Among his other works are—Vollständige engl. Sprachlehre (1824-1826); Triglotte, oder kaufmännisches Wörterbuch in drei Sprachen, Deutsch, Englisch und Französisch (1836-1840); Kleines Kaufmännisches Handwörterbuch in drei Sprachen (1840); and Praktisches Handbuch der engl. Handelscorrespondenz (1827, 9th ed. 1873). All these have passed through several editions. In addition, Flügel also published in the English language: A series of Commercial Letters (Leipzig, 1822), a 9th edition of which appeared in 1874 under the title Practical Mercantile Correspondence and a Practical Dictionary of the English and German Languages (2 vols., Hamburg and Leipzig, 1847-1852; 15th ed., Leipzig, 1891). The last was continued and re-edited by his son Felix.