B
B The second letter in the Græco-Roman alphabet. The Phœnician character had a closed loop, which in the Aramaic alphabets opened out, assuming the shape seen in the square Hebrew and the Arabic, letter. There were two complete loops in the Greek form, from which was developed the prevalent cursive form B. The minuscule b of our alphabet is from the majuscule Latin of the mediæval manuscripts, and its relation in form to the capital letter is obvious. It is found as early as the First Century of our era, scratched on the walls of buildings in Pompeii. In time the upper loop was lost, and the letter assumed practically its present form. The Hebrew name for the letter is beth, 'a house,' because the original pictographic form was the outline of a house or tent. This word appears as βῆτα, bēta, in the Greek alphabet, and is retained in our word alpha-bet. See Alphabet; Letters.
Phonetic Character. B is the voiced or soft labial explosive. According to certain fixed laws, it may interchange with p, v, or f. (See Philol- ogy; Phonetics; Grimm's Law.) Thus, Lat. bibo. I drink, Skt. pib-āmi, Old Irish ebaim, Cornish evaf ; and Gk. iirtffKOTOS, episkopos, bishop, AS. biscōop, Fr. cveque ; again (orig. bh) Skt. bhar-ami, I bear, Gk. 0^pu, pherO, Lat. fero, Eng. bear. In Greek and late Latin (of the Fourth Century), b was softened to v, as is the case in modern Greek today. During the clas- sical period of Latin, the sound was that which we now have. But later it had the sound of v, which in many cases passed into French and Italian; for example, Lat. habere. It. avere, Fr. avoir; and Lat. tabula, It. tavola. In Spanish b between two vowels has very much the sound of v, and there is also a tendency to sound b in place of v. Before s or t, the b in Latin was sounded like p, as we know from inscriptions where pleps is written for plebs, and urps appears for urbs. Thus, we have scripsi for scrib-si. and opsequor for ob-sequor. The letter b is silent now in some words of Latin derivation, like debt, doubt, and also when excrescent, as in limb (AS. lim), lamb, thumb, and the like.
As Abbreviation. B is used also as a symbol and in abbreviations. The Greek ji denoted 2, and B 2000. In chemistry, B stands for boron, one of the elements. In music, B denotes the seventh or 'leading' tone of the diatonic scale of C. In academic degrees, B. is an abbreviation of Bacealaureus, Bachelor. See Abbreviations.
BAADER, ba'der, Benedict Franz Xaver von (1765-1841). A German Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher. He was born in Munich, March 27, 1765, the third son of the court physician to the Elector of Bavaria. His elder brothers were distinguished, Clemens as an author and Joseph as an engineer. Franz stud- ied medicine at Ingolstadt and Vienna, graduat- ing in 1784; assisted his father in medicine, but disliked the profession; studied engineering in the mining districts, and lived five years in England (1791-96), where he became acquainted with rationalistic philosophy, which he thought little less than satanic. The religious specu- lations of Eckhart, Saint Martin, and espe- cially Böhme, were more to his mind. He held intimate friendship with Jacobi, and learned something of Schelling. Though deeply inter- ested in philosophy, he kept his engineering practice. On his return from England he was appointed consulting engineer of the Bavarian mines; won the prize of 10,000 gulden for the discovery that Glauber's salt, instead of potash, may be employed in making glass; was ennobled in 1813 for his valuable services, and was superintendent of mines, 1817-1820. His first published work was Fermenta Cognitionis (Berlin, 1822-24, five parts; sixth part, Leipzig, 1825), in which he combated modern philosophy and recommended that of Böhme. In 1826 he was appointed professor of philosophy and speculative theology in the new University of Munich. Some of his lectures while occupying that chair have been published (Vorlesunqen über spekulative Dogmatik, Münster, 1828-38). In 1838 he opposed the interference in civil matters of the Roman Catholic Church, to which he belonged, for which opposition he was interdicted from lecturing on the philosophy of religion during the last three years of his life. The interdict took the form of a general order forbidding laymen to lecture on the subject. So he was restricted to his lectures on psychology and anthropology. His criticism of the Papacy and his desire to see it abolished no doubt contributed to his being silenced. Baader is considered to have been the greatest speculative Roman Catholic theologian of modern times, and his influence has gone beyond the bounds of his Church. He also contrasted Eastern and Western Catholicism, to the detriment of the latter (Stuttgart, 1841); but ere he died he recanted. He died in Munich, May 21, 1841. His works were published in a collected edition (Leipzig, 1851--
