MITTERMAIER
MOLESWORTH
and lecturer on biology at Charing Cross
Hospital; from 1892 to 1896 and 1901-
1903 examiner in zoology to the Eoyal
College of Physicians ; and since 1903 he
has been secretary of the Zoological Society.
Dr. Mitchell has translated several of
Metchnikov s works, and written a number
of volumes on biology as well as a life of
Huxley (T. H. Huxley, 1900). He is an
Agnostic with a leaning to Materialism.
All that we know of ultimate reality is
that it is not us," he says ; but he goes on
to describe himself as " one who dislikes
all forms of supernaturalism, and who does
not shrink from the implications even of
the phrase that thought is a secretion of
the brain as bile is a secretion of the liver "
(Evolution and the War, 1915, pp. 7 and
107).
MITTERMAIER, Professor Karl Joseph Anton, German jurist. B. Aug. 5, 1787. Ed. Heidelberg University. After teaching for a few years at Landshut, he was appointed professor at Bonn in 1819, and at Heidelberg in 1821. Mittermaier was elected to the Bavarian Parliament in 1831, and became one of the leaders of the Liberals. In 1847 he was President of the second chamber, and he succeeded in getting many reforms passed. After the unsuccessful Revolution of 1848 he resigned his professorship of law, and was content to work for prison reform. He wrote a number of weighty volumes on law and penal reform, and founded the Kritische Zeitschrift fur Eechtsioissenschaft. D. Aug. 28, 1867.
MOLESCHOTT, Professor Jakob, M.D.,
German physiologist. B. Aug. 9, 3822 (of Dutch parents). Ed. Heidelberg Univer sity. Moleschott closely studied the Hegelian philosophy as well as physiology, and in 1845 he won the prize of Haarlem University for an essay on Liebig s theory of plant nutrition. In the same year he began medical practice at Utrecht, but he was essentially a student, and in 1847 he began to teach at Heidelberg University. 513
In 1850 he published his Physioloqie der
Nahrungsmittel. His next and chief work,
Die Physiologic des Stoffwechsels (1851),
raised a great outcry of Materialism, and
the Government and the University autho
rities warned him. He resigned, but in
1856 he was offered the chair of physiology
at Zurich, and in 1861 at Turin. In the
increasingly liberal atmosphere of Italy
Moleschott found great honour. He was
raised to the Senate in 1876, and was
appointed professor of physiology at Rome
University, to the horror of the Catholics,
in 1878. Moleschott was a very distin
guished physiologist, and a number of
discoveries are recorded in his scientific
works and papers. He is, however, chiefly
known now as " the father of the modern
Materialistic movement," as Lange calls
him. He accepted the title " Materialist "
with great courage, and was as consistent
in his writings as he was generous and
idealistic in his life and character. There
is a fine chapter on him in Biichner s Last
Words on Materialism (Eng. trans., 1901).
D. May 20, 1893.
MOLESWORTH, The Right Honourable Robert, F.R.S., first Viscount Moles worth, Irish politician. B. Sep. 7, 1656. Ed. Dublin University. He supported the Prince of Orange in the Revolution of 1688, and was afterwards called to the Privy Council and employed at London. He sat in the Irish Parliament from 1695 to 1699, and in the English Parliament from 1705 to 1708 and 1714 to 1725 ; and he was on the Irish Privy Council (1697- 1712 and 1714-25). The Royal Society admitted him in 1698, and he was created Baron and Viscount in 1719. Molesworth was an intimate friend of Toland and Shaftesbury, and shared their Deistic views quite openly. He gives them expres sion in the preface to his Account of Denmark as it was in the year 1692 (1694), a work which greatly pleased the London Deists. D. May 22, 1725.
MOLESWORTH, Sir William, writer
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