The following may also be consulted, Nöldeke, Die A.T. Literatur, pp. 142-148 (1868); Seinecke, Gesch. des Volkes Israel, ii. 29 ff. (1884); Stade, Gesch. p. 701, n. 1 (1887); Smend in Z.A.T.W. (1888), p. 62 f.; Steinthal, “Die Klagelieder Jer.” in Bibel und Rel.-philosophie, 16-33 (1890); Driver, L.O.T. (1891), p. 428, “The Lamentations”; and Cheyne’s article “Lamentations (Book),” in Enc. Bibl. iii.
(C. J. B.*)
LAMETH, ALEXANDRE THÉODORE VICTOR, Comte de (1760-1829), French soldier and politician, was born in Paris on the 20th of October 1760. He served in the American War of Independence under Rochambeau, and in 1789 was sent as deputy to the States General by the nobles of the bailliage of Péronne. In the Constituent Assembly he formed with Barnave and Adrien Duport a sort of association called the “Triumvirate,” which controlled a group of about forty deputies forming the advanced left of the Assembly. He presented a famous report in the Constituent Assembly on the organization of the army, but is better known by his eloquent speech on the 28th of February 1791, at the Jacobin Club, against Mirabeau, whose relations with the court were beginning to be suspected, and who was a personal enemy of Lameth. However, after the flight of the king to Varennes, Lameth became reconciled with the court. He served in the army as maréchal-de-camp under Luckner and Lafayette, but was accused of treason on the 15th of August 1792, fled the country, and was imprisoned by the Austrians. After his release he engaged in commerce at Hamburg with his brother Charles and the duc d’Aiguillon, and did not return to France until the Consulate. Under the Empire he was made prefect successively in several departments, and in 1810 was created a baron. In 1814 he attached himself to the Bourbons, and under the Restoration was appointed prefect of Somme, deputy for Seine-Inférieure and finally deputy for Seine-et-Oise, in which capacity he was a leader of the Liberal opposition. He died in Paris on the 18th of March 1829. He was the author of an important History of the Constituent Assembly (Paris, 2 vols., 1828-1829).
Of his two brothers, Théodore Lameth (1756-1854) served in the American war, sat in the Legislative Assembly as deputy from the department of Jura, and became maréchal-de-camp; and Charles Malo François Lameth (1757-1832), who also served in America, was deputy to the States General of 1789, but emigrated early in the Revolution, returned to France under the Consulate, and was appointed governor of Würzburg under the Empire. Like Alexandre, Charles joined the Bourbons, succeeding Alexandre as deputy in 1829.
See F. A. Aulard, Les Orateurs de l’Assemblée Constituante (Paris, 1905); also M. Tourneux, Bibliog. de l’histoire de Paris (vol. iv., 1906, s.v. “Lameth”).
LAMETTRIE, JULIEN OFFRAY DE (1709-1751), French physician and philosopher, the earliest of the materialistic writers of the Illumination, was born at St Malo on the 25th of December 1709. After studying theology in the Jansenist schools for some years, he suddenly decided to adopt the profession of medicine. In 1733 he went to Leiden to study under Boerhaave, and in 1742 returned to Paris, where he obtained the appointment of surgeon to the guards. During an attack of fever he made observations on himself with reference to the action of quickened circulation upon thought, which led him to the conclusion that psychical phenomena were to be accounted for as the effects of organic changes in the brain and nervous system. This conclusion he worked out in his earliest philosophical work, the Histoire naturelle de l’âme, which appeared about 1745. So great was the outcry caused by its publication that Lamettrie was forced to take refuge in Leiden, where he developed his doctrines still more boldly and completely, and with great originality, in L’Homme machine (Eng. trans., London, 1750; ed. with introd. and notes, J. Assézat, 1865), and L’Homme plante, treatises based upon principles of the most consistently materialistic character. The ethics of these principles were worked out in Discours sur le bonheur, La Volupté, and L’Art de jouir, in which the end of life is found in the pleasures of the senses, and virtue is reduced to self-love. Atheism is the only means of ensuring the happiness of the world, which has been rendered impossible by the wars brought about by theologians. The soul is only the thinking part of the body, and with the body it passes away. When death comes, the farce is over (la farce est jouée), therefore let us take our pleasure while we can. Lamettrie has been called “the Aristippus of modern materialism.” So strong was the feeling against him that in 1748 he was compelled to quit Holland for Berlin, where Frederick the Great not only allowed him to practise as a physician, but appointed him court reader. He died on the 11th of November 1751. His collected Œuvres philosophiques appeared after his death in several editions, published in London, Berlin and Amsterdam respectively.
The chief authority for his life is the Éloge written by Frederick the Great (printed in Assézat’s ed. of Homme machine). In modern times Lamettrie has been judged less severely; see F. A. Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus (Eng. trans. by E. C. Thomas, ii. 1880); Nérée Quépat (i.e. René Paquet), La Mettrie, sa vie et ses œuvres (1873, with complete history of his works); J. E. Poritzky, J. O. de Lamettrie, Sein Leben und seine Werke (1900); F. Picavet, “La Mettrie et la critique allemande,” in Compte rendu des séances de l’Acad. des Sciences morales et politiques, xxxii. (1889), a reply to German rehabilitations of Lamettrie.