LANGE, FRIEDRICH ALBERT (1828-1875), German philosopher and sociologist, was born on the 28th of September 1828, at Wald, near Solingen, the son of the theologian, J. P. Lange (q.v.). He was educated at Duisburg, Zürich and Bonn, where he distinguished himself by gymnastics as much as by study. In 1852 he became schoolmaster at Cologne; in 1855 privatdozent in philosophy at Bonn; in 1858 schoolmaster at Duisburg, resigning when the government forbade schoolmasters to take part in political agitation. Lange then entered on a career of militant journalism in the cause of political and social reform. He was also prominent in the affairs of his town, yet found leisure to write most of his best-known books, Die Leibesübungen (1863), Die Arbeiterfrage (1865, 5th ed. 1894), Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart (1866; 7th ed. with biographical sketch by H. Cohen, 1902; Eng. trans., E. C. Thomas, 1877), and J. S. Mill’s Ansichten über die sociale Frage (1866). In 1866, discouraged by affairs in Germany, he moved to Winterthur, near Zürich, to become connected with the democratic newspaper, Winterthurer Landbote. In 1869 he was Privatdozent at Zürich, and next year professor. The strong French sympathies of the Swiss in the Franco-German War led to his speedy resignation. Thenceforward he gave up politics. In 1872 he accepted a professorship at Marburg. Unhappily, his vigorous frame was already stricken with disease, and, after a lingering illness, he died at Marburg, on the 23rd of November 1875, diligent to the end. His Logische Studien was published by H. Cohen in 1877 (2nd ed., 1894). His main work, the Geschichte des Materialismus, which is brilliantly written, with wide scientific knowledge and more sympathy with English thought than is usual in Germany, is rather a didactic exposition of principles than a history in the proper sense. Adopting the Kantian standpoint that we can know nothing but phenomena, Lange maintains that neither materialism nor any other metaphysical system has a valid claim to ultimate truth. For empirical phenomenal knowledge, however, which is all that man can look for, materialism with its exact scientific methods has done most valuable service. Ideal metaphysics, though they fail of the inner truth of things, have a value as the embodiment of high aspirations, in the same way as poetry and religion. In Lange’s Logische Studien, which attempts a reconstruction of formal logic, the leading idea is that reasoning has validity in so far as it can be represented in terms of space. His Arbeiterfrage advocates an ill-defined form of socialism. It protests against contemporary industrial selfishness, and against the organization of industry on the Darwinian principle of struggle for existence.
See O. A. Ellissen, F. A. Lange (Leipzig, 1891), and in Monatsch. d. Comeniusgesell. iii., 1894, 210 ff.; H. Cohen in Preuss. Jahrb. xxvii., 1876, 353 ff.; Vaihinger, Hartmann, Dühring und Lange (Iserlohn, 1876); J. M. Bösch, F. A. Lange und sein Standpunkt d. Ideals (Frauenfeld, 1890); H. Braun, F. A. Lange, als Socialökonom (Halle, 1881).
(H. St.)
LANGE, JOHANN PETER (1802-1884), German Protestant theologian, was of peasant origin and was born at Sonneborn near Elberfeld on the 10th of April 1802. He studied theology at Bonn (from 1822) under K. I. Nitzsch and G. C. F. Lücke, held several pastorates, and eventually (1854) settled at Bonn as professor of theology in succession to Isaac A. Dorner, becoming also in 1860 counsellor to the consistory. He died on the 9th of July 1884. Lange has been called the poetical theologian par excellence: “It has been said of him that his thoughts succeed each other in such rapid and agitated waves that all calm reflection and all rational distinction become, in a manner, drowned” (F. Lichtenberger). As a dogmatic writer he belonged to the school of Schleiermacher. His Christliche Dogmatik (3 vols., 1849-1852, new edition, 1870) “contains many fruitful and suggestive thoughts, which, however, are hidden under such a mass of bold figures and strange fancies, and suffer so much from want of clearness of presentation, that they did not produce any lasting effect” (Otto Pfleiderer).
His other works include Das Leben Jesu (3 vols., 1844-1847), Das apostolische Zeitalter (2 vols., 1853-1854). Grundriss der theologischen Enzyklopädie (1877). Grundriss der christlichen Ethik (1878), and Grundriss der Bibelkunde (1881). In 1857 he undertook with other scholars a Theologisch-homiletisches Bibelwerk, to which he contributed commentaries on the first four books of the Pentateuch, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Matthew, Mark, Revelation. The Bibelwerk has been translated, enlarged and revised under the general editorship of Dr Philip Schaff.
LANGEAIS, a town of west-central France in the department of Indre-et-Loire, on the right bank of the Loire, 16 m. W.S.W. of Tours by rail. Pop. (1906) town, 1755; commune, 3550. Langeais has a church of the 11th, 12th and 15th centuries but is chiefly interesting for the possession of a large château built soon after the middle of the 15th century by Jean Bourré, minister of Louis XI. Here the marriage of Charles VIII. and Anne of Brittany took place in 1491. In the park are the ruins of a keep of late 10th-century architecture, built by Fulk Nerra, count of Anjou.