L'Homme Machine

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Preface. . . . v Frederic the Greats Eulogy on Julien Offray De La Mettne . i LHomme Machine n Man a Machine 83 The Natural History of the Soul Extracts ... 151 Appendix 163 La Mettries Relation to His Predecessors and to His Successors 165 Outline of La Mettries Metaphysical Doctrine . . .175 Notes 176 Works Consulted and Cited in the Notes ... 205 Index 209 PREFACE. PREFACE. E French text presented m this volume is taken from that of a Leyden edition of 1748, in other words, from that of an edition published in the year and in the place of issue of the first edition. The title page of this edition is reproduced in the present volume. The original was evidently the work of a Dutch compositor unschooled in the French language, and is full of imperfections, inconsistencies, and grammatical blun ders By the direction of the publishers these obviously typo graphical blunders have been corrected by M. Lucien Arreat of Paris, The translation is the work of several hands It is founded on a version made by Miss Gertrude C Bussey from the French text in the edition of J. Assezat and has been revised by Professor M. W, Calkins who is responsible for it in its present form. Mademoiselle M. Garret, of the Wellesley Col lege department of French, andProfessor George Santayana, of Harvard University, have given valued assistance and this opportunity is taken to acknowledge their kindness in solving the problems of interpretation which have been submitted to them It should be added that the translation sometimes sub ordinates the claims of English structure and style in the effort to render La Mettnes meaning exactly. The paragraphing of the French is usually followed, but the italics and the capitals are not reproduced. The page-headings of the translation re fer back to the pages of the French text and a few words in serted by the translators are enclosed in brackets. The philosophical and historical Notes are condensed and adapted from a masters thesis on La Mettne presented by Miss Bussey to the faculty of Wellesley College. FREDERIC THE GREATS EULOGY ON JULIEN OFFRAY DE LA METTRIE. FREDERIC THE GREATS EULOGY ON JULIEN OFFRAY DE LA METTRIE. TULIEN Offray de la Mettrie was born in Saint J Malo, on the twenty-fifth of December, 1709, to Julien Offray de la Mettrie and Marie Gaudron, who were living by a trade large enough to provide a good education for their son. They sent him to the college of Coutance to study the humanities he went from there to Paris, to the college of Plessis he studied his rhetoric at Caen, and since he had much genius and imagination, he won all the prizes for eloquence. He was a born orator, and was pas sionately fond of poetry and belles-lettres, but his father thought that he would earn more as an ec clesiastic than as a poet, and destined him for the church. He sent him, the following year, to the college of Plessis where he studied logic under M. Cordier, who was more a Jansenist than a logician. It ischaracteristic of an ardent imagination to seize forcefully the objects presented to it, as it is characteristic of youth to be prejudiced in favor of the first opinions that are inculcated. Any other scholar would have adopted the opinions of his teacher but that was not enough for young La Mettrie he became a Jansenist, and wrote a work which had great vogue in that party. 4 MAN A MACHINE. In 1725, he studied natural philosophy at the college of Harcourt, and made great progress there. On his return to Brittany, M...