The age in which Lotze lived and wrote in Germany was not one
peculiarly fitted to appreciate the position he took up. Frequently
misunderstood, yet rarely criticized, he was nevertheless greatly
admired, listened to by devoted hearers and read by an increasing
circle. But this circle never attained to the unity of a philosophical
school. The real meaning of Lotze’s teaching is reached only by
patient study, and those who in a larger or narrower sense call themselves
his followers will probably feel themselves indebted to him
more for the general direction he has given to their thoughts, for the
tone he has imparted to their inner life, for the seriousness with which
he has taught them to consider even small affairs and practical duties,
and for the indestructible confidence with which his philosophy
permits them to disregard the materialism of science, the scepticism
of shallow culture, the disquieting results of philosophical and
historical criticism.
See E. Pfleiderer, Lotze’s philosophische Weltanschauung nach ihren Grundzügen (Berlin, 1882; 2nd ed., 1884); E. von Hartmann, Lotze’s Philosophie (Leipzig, 1888); O. Caspari, H. Lotze in seiner Stellung zu der durch Kant begründeten neuesten Geschichte der Philosophie (Breslau, 1883; 2nd ed., 1894); R. Falckenberg, Hermann Lotze (Stuttgart, 1901); Henry Jones, A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Lotze (Glasgow, 1895); Paul Lange, Die Lehre vom Instincte bei Lotze und Darwin (Berlin, 1896); A. Lichtenstein, Lotze und Wundt (Bern, 1900). (J. T. M.; H. St.)
LOUBET, ÉMILE FRANÇOIS (1838– ), 7th president of the French republic, was born on the 30th of December 1838, the son of a peasant proprietor at Marsanne (Drôme), who was more than once mayor of Marsanne. He was admitted to the Parisian bar in 1862, and took his doctorate-in-law next year. He was still a student when he witnessed the sweeping triumph of the Republican party in Paris at the general election in 1863. He settled down to the exercise of his profession in Montélimar, where he married in 1869 Marie Louis Picard. He also inherited a small estate at Grignan. At the crisis of 1870 he became mayor of Montélimar, and thenceforward was a steady supporter of Gambetta’s policy. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1876 by Montélimar he was one of the famous 363 who in June 1877 passed the vote of want of confidence in the ministry of the duc de Broglie. In the general election of October he was re-elected, local enthusiasm for him being increased by the fact that the government had driven him from the mayoralty. In the Chamber he occupied himself especially with education, fighting the clerical system established by the Loi Falloux, and working for the establishment of free, obligatory and secular primary instruction. In 1880 he became president of the departmental council in Drôme. His support of the second Jules Ferry ministry and his zeal for the colonial expansion of France gave him considerable weight in the moderate Republican party. He had entered the Senate in 1885, and he became minister of public works in the Tirard ministry (December 1887 to March 1888). In 1892 President Sadi Carnot, who was his personal friend, asked him to form a cabinet. Loubet held the portfolio of the interior with the premiership, and had to deal with the anarchist crimes of that year and with the great strike of Carmaux, in which he acted as arbitrator, giving a decision regarded in many quarters as too favourable to the strikers. He was defeated in November on the question of the Panama scandals, but he retained the ministry of the interior in the next cabinet under Alexandre Ribot, though he resigned on its reconstruction in January. His reputation as an orator of great force and lucidity of exposition and as a safe and honest statesman procured for him in 1896 the presidency of the Senate, and in February 1899 he was chosen president of the republic in succession to Félix Fauré by 483 votes as against 279 recorded by Jules Méline, his only serious competitor. He was marked out for fierce opposition and bitter insult as the representative of that section of the Republican party which sought the revision of the Dreyfus case. On the day of President Faure’s funeral Paul Déroulède met the troops under General Roget on their return to barracks, and demanded that the general should march on the Élysée. Roget sensibly took his troops back to barracks. At the Auteuil steeplechase in June the president was struck on the head with a cane by an anti-Dreyfusard. In that month President Loubet summoned Waldeck-Rousseau to form a cabinet, and at the same time entreated Republicans of all shades of opinion to rally to the defence of the state. By the efforts of Loubet and Waldeck-Rousseau the Dreyfus affair was settled, when Loubet, acting on the advice of General Galliffet, minister of war, remitted the ten years’ imprisonment to which Dreyfus was condemned at Rennes. Loubet’s presidency saw an acute stage of the clerical question, which was attacked by Waldeck-Rousseau and in still more drastic fashion by the Combes ministry. The French ambassador was recalled from the Vatican in April 1905, and in July the separation of church and state was voted in the Chamber of Deputies. Feeling had run high between France and England over the mutual criticisms passed on the conduct of the South African War and the Dreyfus case respectively. These differences were composed by the Anglo-French entente, and in 1904 a convention between the two countries secured the recognition of French claims in Morocco in exchange for non-interference with the English occupation of Egypt. President Loubet was a typical example of the peasant-proprietor class, and had none of the aristocratic, not to say monarchical, proclivities of President Fauré. He inaugurated the Paris Exhibition of 1900, received the tsar Nicholas II. in September 1901 and paid a visit to Russia in 1902. He also exchanged visits with King Edward VII., with the king of Italy and the king of Spain. The king of Spain’s visit in 1905 was the occasion of an attempt on his life, a bomb being thrown under his carriage as he was proceeding with his guest to the opera. His presidency came to an end in January 1906, when he retired into private life.
LOUDON, ERNST GIDEON, Freiherr von (1717–1790),
Austrian soldier, was born at Tootzen in Livonia, on the 2nd of
February 1717. His family, of Scottish origin,[1] had been settled
in that country since before 1400. His father was a lieutenant-colonel,
retired on a meagre pension from the Swedish service, and the boy was sent in 1732 into the Russian army as a cadet.
He took part in Field Marshal Münnich’s siege of Danzig in
1734, in the march of a Russian corps to the Rhine in 1735 and
in the Turkish war 1738–1739. Dissatisfied with his prospects
he resigned in 1741 and sought military employment elsewhere.
He applied first to Frederick the Great, who declined his services.
At Vienna he had better fortune, being made a captain in Trenck’s
free corps. He took part in its forays and marches, though not
in its atrocities, until wounded and taken prisoner in Alsace.
He was shortly released by the advance of the main Austrian
army. His next active service, still under Trenck, was in the
Silesian mountains in 1745, in which campaign he greatly distinguished
himself as a leader of light troops. He was present
also at Soor. He retired shortly afterwards, owing to his distaste
for the lawless habits of his comrades in the irregulars, and after
long waiting in poverty for a regular commission he was at last
made a captain in one of the frontier regiments, spending the
next ten years in half-military, half-administrative work in the
Carlstadt district. At Bunich, where he was stationed, he built
a church and planted an oak forest now called by his name.
He had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel when the outbreak
of the Seven Years’ War called him again into the field. From
this point began his fame as a soldier. Soon promoted colonel,
he distinguished himself repeatedly and was in 1757 made a
General-feldwacht-meister (major-general of cavalry) and a
knight of the newly founded order of Maria Theresa. In the
campaign of 1758 came his first opportunity for fighting an
action as a commander-in-chief, and he used it so well that
Frederick the Great was obliged to give up the siege of Olmütz
and retire into Bohemia (action of Dom-stadtl, 30th of June).
He was rewarded with the grade of lieutenant-field-marshal
and having again shown himself an active and daring commander
in the campaign of Hochkirch, he was created a Freiherr
in the Austrian nobility by Maria Theresa and in the peerage
of the Holy Roman Empire by her husband the emperor Francis.
Maria Theresa gave him, further, the grand cross of the order
she had founded and an estate near Kuttenberg in Bohemia.
He was placed in command of the Austrian contingent sent to
- ↑ His name is phonetically spelt Laudon or Laudohn by Germans, and the latter form was that adopted by himself and his family. In 1759, however, he reverted to the original Scottish form.
