Émile Littré

Émile Maximilien Paul Littre ( born February 1, 1801 in Paris, † June 2, 1881 ) was a French philologist, philosopher and historian of medicine.

He initially studied medicine and needed only to finish his PhD thesis when his father suddenly died and his mother left her impoverished. So he could not lead to the end of the study.

Littre was 1863-1877 out the four-volume Dictionnaire de la langue française and was admitted to the Académie française in 1871. To protest against the election of Littre, Félix Dupanloup came back in 1875 as a member of the Académie française and the same year published his book against Freemasonry: Etude sur la Franc- Maçonnerie.

On his deathbed he received in complete conversion of the holy baptism.

Freemasonry

1875 asked Littre at the Grand Orient de France to take charge, where he was initiated in the presence of 2,000 Masons in the Lodge La Clémente Amitié. When asked if he believed in the existence of God, he replied: " A sage of antiquity, which a king asked the same question, thought day after day and never felt able to answer. I ask you to demand from me neither affirmation nor negation. No science denies a > first cause ', because nowhere it hits something that testifies against such, nor is such evidence. All knowledge is relative, time and again one encounters beings and primal laws, the deepest reason we do not recognize. Who pronounce decisively that he is not a believer in God nor atheist, only proves his lack of understanding of the problem of growth and decay of things. "

This recording has been recognized extensively in the daily temps. (See also: Edmond About, Pierre Benoit ( writer ). )