Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 16, Slice 1 "L" to "Lamellibranchia"

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Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 16, Slice 1

       L to Lamellibranchia

Author: Various

Release Date: January 23, 2013 [EBook #41902]

Language: English

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VOLUME XVI

L to LORD ADVOCATE

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VOLUME XVI SLICE I

L to Lamellibranchia

Articles in This Slice

INITIALS USED IN VOLUME XVI. TO IDENTIFY INDIVIDUAL

CONTRIBUTORS,1 WITH THE HEADINGS OF THE

ARTICLES IN THIS VOLUME SO SIGNED.

1 A complete list, showing all individual contributors, appears in the final volume.

PRINCIPAL UNSIGNED ARTICLES

L

a letter which was the twelfth letter of the Phoenician alphabet. It has in its history passed through many changes of form, ending curiously enough in its usual manuscript form with a shape almost identical with that which it had about 900

B.C.

was practically confined to the west of Argolis. The name of the Greek letter is ordinarily given as Lambda, but in Herodotus (above) and in Athenaeus x. p. 453 e, where the names of the letters are given, the best authenticated form is Labda. The Hebrew name, which was probably identical with the Phoenician, is Lamed, which, with a final vowel added as usual, would easily become Lambda, b being inserted between m and another consonant. The pronunciation of l varies a great deal according to the point at which the tongue makes contact with the roof of the mouth. The contact, generally speaking, is at the same point as for d, and this accounts for an interchange between these sounds which occurs in various languages, e.g. in Latin lacrima from the same root as the Greek δάκρυ and the English tear. The change in Latin occurs in a very limited number of cases and one explanation of their occurrence is that they are borrowed (Sabine) words. In pronunciation the breath may be allowed to escape at one or both sides of the tongue. In most languages l is a fairly stable sound. Orientals, however, have much difficulty in distinguishing between l and r. In Old Persian l is found in only two foreign words, and in Sanskrit different dialects employ r and l differently in the same words. Otherwise, however, the interchanges between r and l were somewhat exaggerated by the older philologists. Before other consonants l becomes silent in not a few languages, notably in French, where it is replaced by u, and in English where it has occasionally been restored in recent times, e.g. in fault which earlier was spelt without l (as in French whence it was borrowed), and which Goldsmith could still rhyme with aught. In the 15th century the Scottish dialect of English dropped l largely both before consonants and finally after a and ū, a’ = all, fa’ = fall, pu’ = pull, ’oo’ = wool, bulk pronounced like book, &c., while after o it appears as w, row (pronounced rau) = roll, know .

(P. Gi.)

LAACHER SEE,

a lake of Germany, in the Prussian Rhine Province, 5 m. W. of Brohl on the Rhine, and N. of the village of Niedermendig. It occupies what is supposed to be a crater of the Eifel volcanic formation, and the pumice stone and basalt found in great quantities around it lend credence to this theory. It lies 850 ft. above the sea, is 5 m. in circumference and 160 ft. deep, and is surrounded by an amphitheatre of high hills. The water is sky blue in colour, very cold and bitter to the taste. The lake has no natural outlet and consequently is subjected to a considerable rise and fall. On the western side lies the Benedictine abbey of St Maria Laach (Abballa Lacensis) founded in 1093 by Henry II., count palatine of the Rhine. The abbey church, dating from the 12th century, was restored in 1838. The history of the monastery down to modern times appears to have been uneventful. In 1802 it was abolished and at the close of the Napoleonic wars it became a Prussian state demesne. In 1863 it passed into the hands of the Jesuits, who, down to their expulsion in 1873, published here a periodical, which still appears, entitled Stimmen aus Maria Laach. In 1892 the monastery was again occupied by the Benedictines.

LAAGER,

a South African Dutch word (Dutch leger, Ger. lager, connected with Eng. lair) for a temporary defensive encampment, formed by a circle of wagons. The English word is leaguer, an armed camp, especially that of a besieging or beleaguering army. The Ger. lager, in the sense of store, is familiar as the name of a light beer (see

Brewing

).

LAAS, ERNST

(1837-1885), German philosopher, was born on the 16th of June 1837 at Fürstenwalde. He studied theology and philosophy under Trendelenburg at Berlin, and eventually became professor of philosophy in the new university of Strassburg. In Kant’s Analogien der Erfahrung (1876) he keenly criticized Kant’s transcendentalism, and in his chief work Idealismus und Positivismus (3 vols., 1879-1884), he drew a clear contrast between Platonism, from which he derived transcendentalism, and positivism, of which he considered Protagoras the founder. Laas in reality was a disciple of Hume. Throughout his philosophy he endeavours to connect metaphysics with ethics and the theory of education.

His chief educational works were Der deutsche Aufsatz in den obern Gymnasialklassen (1868; 3rd ed., part i., 1898, part ii, 1894), and Der deutsche Unterricht auf höhern Lehranstalten (1872; 2nd ed. 1886). He contributed largely to the Vierteljahrsschr. f. wiss. Philos. (1880-1882); the Litterarischer Nachlass, a posthumous collection, was published at Vienna (1887). See Hanisch, Der Positivismus von Ernst Laas (1902); Gjurits, Die Erkenntnistheorie des Ernst Laas (1903); Falckenberg, Hist. of Mod. Philos. (Eng. trans., 1895).

LA BADIE, JEAN DE

(1610-1674), French divine, founder of the school known as the Labadists, was born at Bourg, not far from Bordeaux, on the 13th of February 1610, being the son of Jean Charles de la Badie, governor of Guienne. He was sent to the Jesuit school at Bordeaux, and when fifteen entered the Jesuit college there. In 1626 he began to study philosophy and theology. He was led to hold somewhat extreme views about the efficacy of prayer and the direct influence of the Holy Spirit upon believers, and adopted Augustinian views about grace, free will and predestination, which brought him into collision with his order. He therefore separated from the Jesuits, and then became a preacher to the people, carrying on this work in Bordeaux, Paris and Amiens. At Amiens in 1640 he was appointed a canon and teacher of theology. The hostility of Cardinal Mazarin, however, forced him to retire to the Carmelite hermitage at Graville. A study of Calvin’s Institutes showed him that he had more in common with the Reformed than with the Roman Catholic Church, and after various adventures he joined the Reformed Church of France and became professor of theology at Montauban in 1650. His reasons for doing so he published in the same year in his Déclaration de Jean de la Badie. His accession to the ranks of the Protestants was deemed a great triumph; no such man since Calvin himself, it was said, had left the Roman Catholic Church. He was called to the pastorate of the church at Orange on the Rhone in 1657, and at once became noted for his severity of discipline. He set his face zealously against dancing, card-playing and worldly entertainments. The unsettled state of the country, recently annexed to France, compelled him to leave Orange, and in 1659 he became a pastor in Geneva. He then accepted a call to the French church in London, but after various wanderings settled at Middelburg, where he was pastor to the French-speaking congregation at a Walloon church. His peculiar opinions were by this time (1666) well known, and he and his congregation found themselves in conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities. The result was that la Badie and his followers established a separate church in a neighbouring town. In 1669 he moved to Amsterdam. He had enthusiastic disciples, Pierre Yvon (1646-1707) at Montauban, Pierre Dulignon (d. 1679), François Menuret (d. 1670), Theodor Untereyk (d. 1693), F. Spanheim (1632-1701), and, more important than any, Anna Maria v. Schürman (1607-1678), whose book Eucleria is perhaps the best exposition of the tenets of her master. At the head of his separatist congregation, la Badie developed his views for a reformation of the Reformed Churches: the church is a communion of holy people who have been born again from sin; baptism is the sign and seal of this regeneration, and is to be administered only to believers; the Holy Spirit guides the regenerate into all truth, and the church possesses throughout all time those gifts of prophecy which it had in the ancient days; the community at Jerusalem is the continual type of every Christian congregation, therefore there should be a community of goods, the disciples should live together, eat together, dance together; marriage is a holy ordinance between two believers, and the children of the regenerate are born without original sin, marriage with an unregenerate person is not binding. They did not observe the Sabbath, because—so they said—their life was a continual Sabbath. The life and separatism of the community brought them into frequent collision with their neighbours and with the magistrates, and in 1670 they accepted Society is in Miss Edith Sichel’s Women and Men of the French Renaissance (1901). See also J. Favre, Olivier de Magny (1885).

LABEL

(a French word, now represented by lambeau, possibly a variant; it is of obscure origin and may be connected with a Teutonic word appearing in the English lap, a flap or fold), a slip, ticket, or card of paper, metal or other material, attached to an object, such as a parcel, bottle, &c., and containing a name, address, description or other information, for the purpose of identification. Originally the word meant a band or ribbon of linen or other material, and was thus applied to the fillets (infulae) attached to a bishop’s mitre. In heraldry the label is a mark of cadency.

In architecture the term label is applied to the outer projecting moulding over doors, windows, arches, &c., sometimes called Dripstone or Weather Moulding, or Hood Mould. The former terms seem scarcely applicable, as this moulding is often inside a building where no rain could come, and consequently there is no drip. In Norman times the label frequently did not project, and when it did it was very little, and formed part of the series of arch mouldings. In the Early English styles they were not very large, sometimes slightly undercut, sometimes deeply, sometimes a quarter round with chamfer, and very frequently a roll or scroll-moulding, so called because it resembles the part of a scroll where the edge laps over the body of the roll. Labels generally resemble the string-courses of the period, and, in fact, often return horizontally and form strings. They are less common in Continental architecture than in English.

LABEO, MARCUS ANTISTIUS

(c. 50

B.C.

-

A.D.

18), Roman jurist, was the son of Pacuvius Antistius Labeo, a jurist who caused himself to be slain after the defeat of his party at Philippi. A member of the plebeian nobility, and in easy circumstances, the younger Labeo early entered public life, and soon rose to the praetorship; but his undisguised antipathy to the new régime, and the somewhat brusque manner in which in the senate he occasionally gave expression to his republican sympathies—what Tacitus (Ann. iii. 75) calls his incorrupta libertas—proved an obstacle to his advancement, and his rival, Ateius Capito, who had unreservedly given in his adhesion to the ruling powers, was promoted by Augustus to the consulate, when the appointment should have fallen to Labeo; smarting under the wrong done him, Labeo declined the office when it was offered to him in a subsequent year (Tac. Ann. iii. 75; Pompon, in fr. 47, Dig. i. 2). From this time he seems to have devoted his whole time to jurisprudence. His training in the science had been derived principally from Trebatius Testa. To his knowledge of the law he added a wide general culture, devoting his attention specially to dialectics, philology (grammatica), and antiquities, as valuable aids in the exposition, expansion, and application of legal doctrine (Gell. xiii. 10). Down to the time of Hadrian his was probably the name of greatest authority; and several of his works were abridged and annotated by later hands. While Capito is hardly ever referred to, the dicta of Labeo are of constant recurrence in the writings of the classical jurists, such as Gaius, Ulpian and Paul; and no inconsiderable number of them were thought worthy of preservation in Justinian’s Digest. Labeo gets the credit of being the founder of the Proculian sect or school, while Capito is spoken of as the founder of the rival Sabinian one