Maximilien Paul Emile Littre

LITTRE, MAXIMILIEN PAUL EMILE , French lexicographer and philosopher, was born in Paris on Feb. I, 1801. He was educated at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand, where he had for friends Hachette and Eugene Burnouf. He then studied the English and German languages, and classical and San skrit literature and philology. He intended to become a doctor, and had completed his studies when his father's death (1827) made it necessary for him to begin earning money. He began to teach classics, and in 1835 became a regular contributor to the National, and eventually director of the paper. In 1839 appeared the first volume of his edition (completed 1862) of the works of Hippocrates, which secured his election the same year into the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. He also became a friend of Comte, and popularized his ideas in numerous works on the positivist philosophy.

About 1844 he started working on his great

Dictionnaire de la langue francaise. In the revolution of July 1848 he took part in the repression of the extreme republican party in June 1849. His essays, contributed during this period to the National, were collected together and published under the title of Conservation, revolution et positivisme in 1852, and show a thorough acceptance of all the doctrines propounded by Comte. During the later years of Comte's life, he found himself out of sympathy with the more mystic ideas of his friend and master, but he concealed his dif ferences of opinion, and Comte failed to perceive that his pupil had outgrown him, as he himself had outgrown his master Saint Simon. After Comte's death in 1858 he felt free to publish his own ideas in his Paroles de la philosophie positive (1859), and at still greater length in his work in Auguste Comte et la philos ophie positive (1863).

About 1863, after completing his Hippocrates and his Pliny, he set to work in earnest on his French dictionary. In the same year he was proposed for the Academie Francaise, but rejected, owing to the opposition of Mgr. Dupanloup, bishop of Orleans, who denounced him in his Avertissement aux peres de famille as the chief of the French materialists. He also at this time started with G. Wyrouboff the Philosophie Positive, a review which was to embody the views of modern positivists. His life was thus absorbed in literary work till the overthrow of the empire called on him to take a part in politics. He felt himself too old to undergo the privations of the siege of Paris, and retired with his family to Brittany, whence he was summoned by Gambetta to Bordeaux, to lecture on history, and thence to Versailles to take his seat in the senate to which he had been chosen by the department of the Seine. In Dec. 1871 he was elected a member of the Academie Francaise in spite of the renewed opposition of Dupanloup, who resigned his seat rather than receive him When he was on the point of death, his wife had him baptized, and his funeral was conducted with the rites of the Catholic Church. He died on June 2, 1881.

Littre's Dictionary was completed in 1873 An authoritative in terpretation is given of the use of each word, based on the various meanings it had held in the past.

For his life consult C. A. Sainte-Beuve, Notice sur M. Littre, sa vie et ses travaux (1863) ; and Nouveaux Lundis, vol. v. ; also the notice by M. Durand-Greville in the Nouvelle Revue of Aug. 1881; E. Caro, Littre et le positivisme (1883) , Pasteur, Discours de reception at the Academy, where he succeeded Littre, and a reply by E. Renan.