Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/288

 MESLIEE

MICHELET

MESLIER, Jean, French writer. B. 1678. Ed. Catholic seminary. Meslier was a priest, the cure of Etrepigny, in Champagne, who was held in high esteem by all for his austerity and charity. People were astonished, when he died, to learn that he had been a secret student of Bayle and Montaigne, and had left the manuscript of a sceptical work, Mon Testament, in which Christianity was severely criticized. He left his property to his parishioners, and desired to be buried in his garden. Voltaire secured a copy of the manuscript, and it was published in 1762. Meslier s criticism was very acute, and was of much use to later writers. Voltaire proposed for him the following epitaph : &quot; Here lies a very honest priest, who at death asked God s pardon for having been a Christian.&quot; D. 1733.

METCHNIKOY, Professor Il ya,

Eussian embryologist and zoologist. B. May 15, 1845. Ed. Kharkov, Giessen, and Munich Universities. From 1870 to 1882 he was professor of zoology at Odessa, but the remainder of his life has been devoted to research in France. His early works were on embryology, but later works of a more popular and philosophical character (The Nature of Man, Eng. trans., 1904 ; The Prolongation of Life, 1906, etc.) have brought him to the notice of the general public. His very important researches were rewarded by the Nobel Prize in 1908 ; and he was an Officer of the Legion of Honour, Officer of Public Instruction, Member of the Academy of Medicine, Director of the Pasteur Institute, and member of many learned societies. Metch- nikov was a Monist, and he contributed to the Monistischc Jahrhundert. His Ration alism is also clear in his Nature of Man. The Albert Medal of the Royal Society of Arts was awarded him just after his death. D. July 16, 1916.

MEYER, Hans, Ph.D., LL.D., German writer. B. Mar. 22, 1858. Ed. Leipzig, Berlin, and Strassburg Universities. He 503

studied law, but in 1882 he set out on a great voyage round the world, and has climbed some of the highest ranges of Asia, Africa, and America, and written various works of travel. In 1884 he joined his father in the famous Meyer publishing firm, and edited the Konversations-Lexikon (the chief German encyclopaedia) and other works. In 1891 he married Professor Haeckel s daughter Lisbeth, and he shares the views of his father-in-law. Meyer is a Privy Councillor of Saxony, and member of a dozen geographical societies.

MIALL, Professor Louis Compton,

D.Sc., F.R.S., biologist. B. 1842. From 1876 to 1907 he was the professor of biology at Leeds University, and he has written a number of biological works (including a History of Biology for the Rationalist Press Association, 1911). Other of his chief works are Thirty Years of Teaching (1897) and The Early Naturalists (1912). He was Fullerian professor of physiology at the Royal Institution in 1904-1905, and President of the Zoological Section of the British Association in 1897 and of the Education Section in 1908.

MICHELET, Jules, D. es L., French historian. B. Aug. 21, 1798. Ed. College Charlemagne. In 1821 he was appointed professor of history at Sainte-Barbe College, and five years later he published his first historical work, Tableau chronologique de I histoire moderne. After the July Revolu tion he was appointed supervisor of the historical section of the Imperial Archives, tutor of the Princess Clementine, and pro fessor of history at the Sorbonne. He had already written a Rationalist history of the Jesuits (1843, in collaboration with E. Quinet) and his very anti-clerical Le pretre, la femme, et la famille (1845) ; and he had published several volumes of his great Histoire de France (18 vols., 1833-66). In the preface to the 1869 edition of this he writes that &quot; man is his own Prometheus,&quot; and that he has &quot; no faith but humanity &quot; (pp. viii and xvii). The entire preface is a 504