volume of poetry in 1902 sustained his reputation. His last poetical work (1905) was Kung Salomo och Morolf, poems founded on an eastern legend. As a critic he first attracted attention by his books on the Gustavian age of Swedish letters: Teater och drama under Gustaf III. (1889), &c. He was an active collaborator in the review Ord och Bild. He died in 1906, at a time when he was engaged on his Linné, posthumously published, a fragment of a great work on Linnaeus.
LEVI, HERMANN (1839–1900), German orchestral conductor,
was born at Giessen on the 7th of November 1839, and was the
son of a Jewish rabbi. He was educated at Giessen and Mannheim,
and came under Vincenz Lachner’s notice. From 1855 to
1858 Levi studied at the Leipzig conservatorium, and after a
series of travels which took him to Paris, he obtained his first
post as music director at Saarbrücken, which post he exchanged
for that at Mannheim in 1861. From 1862 to 1864 he was chief
conductor of the German opera in Rotterdam, then till 1872
at Carlsruhe, when he went to Munich, a post he held until 1896,
when ill-health compelled him to resign. Levi’s name is indissolubly
connected with the increased public appreciation of
Wagner’s music. He conducted the first performance of Parsifal
at Bayreuth in 1882, and was connected with the musical life
of that place during the remainder of his career. He visited
London in 1895.
LEVI, LEONE (1821–1888), English jurist and statistician,
was born of Jewish parents on the 6th of June 1821, at Ancona,
Italy. After receiving an early training in a business house in
his native town, he went to Liverpool in 1844, became naturalized,
and changing his faith, joined the Presbyterian church. Perceiving
the necessity, in view of the unsystematic condition of
the English law on the subject, for the establishment of chambers
and tribunals of commerce in England, he warmly advocated
their institution in numerous pamphlets; and as a result of his
labours the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, of which Levi was
made secretary, was founded in 1849. In 1850 Levi published
his Commercial Law of the World, being an exhaustive and comparative
treatise upon the laws and codes of mercantile countries.
Appointed in 1852 to the chair of commercial law in King’s
College, London, he proved himself a highly competent and
popular instructor, and his evening classes were a most successful
innovation. He was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1859,
and received from the university of Tübingen the degree of
doctor of political science. His chief work—History of British
Commerce and of the Economic Progress of the British Nation,
1763–1870, is perhaps a rather too partisan account of British
economic development, being a eulogy upon the blessings of
Free Trade, but its value as a work of reference cannot be
gainsaid. Among his other works are: Work and Pay; Wages
and Earnings of the Working Classes; International Law, with
Materials for a Code. He died on the 7th of May 1888.
LEVIATHAN, the Hebrew name (livyāthān), occurring in the
poetical books of the Bible, of a gigantic animal, apparently
the sea or water equivalent of behemoth (q.v.), the king of the
animals of the dry land. In Job xli. 15 it would seem to represent
the crocodile, in Isaiah xxvii. 1 it is a crooked and piercing
serpent, the dragon of the sea; cf. Psalms civ. 26. The etymology
of the word is uncertain, but it has been taken to be connected
with a root meaning “to twist.” Apart from its scriptural
usage, the word is applied to any gigantic marine animal such
as the whale, and hence, figuratively, of very large ships, and
also of persons of outstanding strength, power, wealth or influence.
Hobbes adopted the name as the title of his principal work,
applying it to “the multitude so united in one person . . . called
a commonwealth. . . . This is the generation of that Leviathan,
or rather . . . of that mortal God, to which we owe under the
immortal God, our peace and defence.”
LEVIRATE (Lat. levir, a husband’s brother), a custom,
sometimes even a law, compelling a dead man’s brother to
marry his widow. It seems to have been widespread in primitive
times, and is common to-day. Of the origin and primitive
purpose of the levirate marriage various explanations have been
put forward:—
1. It has been urged that the custom was primarily based on the law of inheritance; a wife, regarded as a chattel, being inherited like other possessions. The social advantage of providing one who should maintain the widow doubtless aided the spread of the custom. The abandonment of a woman and her children in the nomadic stage of civilization would be equivalent to death for them; hence with some peoples the levirate became a duty rather than a right. Among the Thlinkets, for example, when a man dies, his brother or his sister’s son must marry the widow, a failure in this duty occasioning feuds. The obligation on a man to provide for his sister-in-law is analogous to other duties devolving on kinsfolk, such as the vendetta.
2. J. F. McLennan, however, would assume the levirate to be a relic of polyandry, and in his argument lays much stress on the fact that it is the dead man’s brother who inherits the widow. But among many races who follow the custom, such as the Fijians, Samoans, Papuans of New Guinea, the Caroline Islanders, and some tribes in the interior of Western Equatorial Africa, the rule of inheritance is to the brother first. Thus among the Santals, “when the elder brother dies, the next younger inherits the widow, children and all the property.” Further, there is no known race where it is permitted to a son to marry his own mother. Inheriting a woman in primitive societies would be always tantamount to marrying her, and, apart from any special laws of inheritance, it would be natural for the brother to take over the widow. In polygamous countries where a man leaves many widows the son would have a right of ownership over these, and could dispose of them or keep them as he pleased, his own mother alone excepted. Thus among the Bakalai, an African tribe, widows may marry the son of their dead husband, or in default of a son, can live with the brother. The Negroes of Benin and the Gabun and the Kaffirs of Natal have similar customs. In New Caledonia every man, married or single, must immediately marry his brother’s widow. In Polynesia the levirate has the force of law, and it is common throughout America and Asia.
3. Another explanation of the custom has been sought in a semi-religious motive which has had extraordinary influence in countries where to die without issue is regarded as a terrible calamity. The fear of this catastrophe would readily arise among people who did not believe in personal immortality, and to whom the extinction of their line would be tantamount to annihilation. Or it is easily conceivable as a natural result of ancestor-worship, under which failure of offspring entailed deprivation of cherished rites and service.[1] Thus it is only when the dead man has no offspring that the Jewish, Hindu and Malagasy laws prescribe that the brother shall “raise up seed” to him. In this sense the levirate forms part of the Deuteronomic Code, under which, however, the obligation is restricted to the brother who “dwelleth together” (i.e. on the family estate) with the dead man, and the first child only of the levirate marriage is regarded as that of the dead man. That the custom was obsolescent seems proved by the enjoining of ceremony on any brother who wished to evade the duty, though he had to submit to an insult from his sister-in-law, who draws off his sandal and spits in his face. The biblical story of Ruth exemplifies the custom, though with further modifications (see Ruth, Book of). Finally the custom is forbidden in Leviticus, though in New Testament times the levirate law was still observed by some Jews. The ceremony ordained by Deuteronomy is still observed among the orthodox. Among the Hindus the levir did not take his brother’s widow as wife, but he had intercourse with her. This practice was called niyoga.
4. Yet another suggested origin of the levirate is agrarian, the motive being to keep together under the levirate husband the
- ↑
An expression of this idea is quoted from the Mahābhārata
(Muir’s trans.), by Max Müller (Gifford Lectures), Anthropological
Religion, p. 31—
“That stage completed, seek a wife
And gain the fruit of wedded life,
A race of sons, by rites to seal,
When thou art gone, thy spirit’s weal.”
