LAROCHE
248
LAROMIGUIERE
ty-seven different articles on a variety of topics. As the pastor of a church, as the successor of Dr. Goodrich in the professor's chair, and as a literarj' man, lie acquit- ted himself with fidelity and success. He was a man simple and unpretending in his tastes and habits, of great purity of character, and of strong faith in Christ as his Saviour. See New Englander, 18G2, April, art. ix ; Appleton, Xew Am. Cyclop, vol. x, s. v. ; Conrjreg. Q,uaii. 18G3 ; Dr. Theodore Woolsey, Funeral Discourse com- memorative of Rec. W. A. Larned (New Haven, 18G2, 8vo). (;H.A.B.)
Laroche, Alaix de, also called Alanus de Rupe, a French Koman Catholic theologian, was born in Brit- tany about the year 1428. While yet quite young he joined the Dominicans, studied philosophy and tlieology at I'aris, and was sent to the Netherlands in 1459. Af- ter lecturing for a while in the convents of Lille and Douai, he became professor of theology at Gand in 14G8, and at Rostock in 1470. He died at ZwoU Sept. 8, 1475. Full of zeal, but very deficient in knowledge, Laroche labored ceaselessly to propagate the use of the rosary ; he w'as the first to preach on this practice, introducing in his sermons marvellous stories which he mostly in- vented himself. His works were published more than a century after his death, under the title Beatus Alanus de Rape redivivus, de Psalterio, seu Rosario ChrisH et Ma- rice, tractafus, in V partes distributns (Friburg, 1619, 4to ; Col. 1624; Naples, 1630). See Trithemius, Z^e Script. Eccles. c. 850; Choquet, Script. Belrj. Ord. Prcedicat. p. 202-218; Echard, Script. Ord. Prcedicat. ; Paqnot, Me- moires, etc., iii, 144-150 ; Hoefer, Noiiv. Biog. Geninde, xxix, G22. See Rosarv. (J. N. P.)
Larochefoucauld, Francois, Drc de, a noted French philosophical writer, the descendant of an old French family of great celebrity, was born in 1G13. He early enjoyed the fiivor and confidence of the court, but involved himself in intrigues against cardmal Richelieu, and in the tumults of the Fronde, and was obliged to retire into private life. Ever attached to literary pur- suits, he cultivated the society of the most eminent lit- erary persons of his time, Boileau, Racine, and Moliere, and composed his famous Memoires (Cologne, 1G62 ; Amsterdam, 1723, etc.), in which he gives a simple but masterly historic account of the political events of his time. In 16G5 he published Reflexions ou Sentences et Maximes Morcdes, a work containing 360 detached thoughts, of which, perhaps, the most widely celebrated is his definition of hj-pocrisy, as "the homage which vice renders to virtue." The book is regarded as a model of French prose, and exhibits much acuteness of observation, and a clear perception of the prevalent cor- TU])tion and hypocrisy of his time. Larochefoucauld died Marcli 17, 1680. His (Eui-res Completes were edit- ed by Depping (Par. 1818), and his writings have l)cen commented on by a host of critics of the most different schools, as Voltaire, Viuet, Sainte-Beuve, and Victor Cou- sin. See Suard, Notice sur La Rochefoucanld; Sainte- Beuve, Etmh's sur La Rochefoucauld, in his Portraits des Femmes ; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Gmerale, xxix, G34 sq. — Chambers, Cgclopceclia, s. v.
Laromiguiere, Pierre, a distinguished French metaphysician, was born at Livignac-le-Haut. Aveyron, Nov. 3, 175G. He studied at the College of Villefranche, and became successively jirofcssor of i)hil()sophy at Car- cassonne, Tarbes and La FK-clie, and Toulouse. "^ In 1790 he went to Paris, where he soon became professor of the normal school. In 1812 he confined himself to his office of librarian of the university, still retaining, however, the title of jjrofessor of the faculty of philosophy. He died at Paris Aug. 12, 1«37. With the exception of a few miscellaneous pieces, his chief reputation as a phi- losopher rests ou his Le^on.t de Philosophie (3d ed. Paris, 1826, 3 vols. 12mo). He had been'educated a zealous pui)il of Condillac, but there were, as Cousin expresses it, two men in Laromiguiere. the ancient an<l the mod- ern ; the disciple and the adversary of Condillac.
iMromiguiere's Philosophy. — (1.) Classification of the Faculties. — " These powers and capacities he separates into two great classes— those of the understanding and those of the wUl. The faculties of the understanding he reduces to these three : 1. Attention; 2. Comparison ; 3. Reasoning. Of these three, attention is the fundamental principle from which the other two proceed ; and of these two, again, the phenomena usually denoted by the words memory, judgment, imagination, etc., arc simply modi- fications. Since, however, these three generic powers, in their last analysis, are all included in the first, the whole of the phenomena of the understanding may be said to spring from the one great fundamental faculty of attention. If we now turn to the tcill, we find, according to M. Laro- > miguiere, a comi)lete parallel existing between its phe- nomena and those we have just been considering. The foundation of all voluntary action in man is desii-e; and in the same manner as we have already seen the two latter faculties of the luiderstanding spring from the first, so now we see springing from desire, as the basis, the two corresponding phenomena of preference and lib- erty. These three powers, then, being established, all the subordinate powers of the will are without difficulty reducible to them, so that, at length, we have the com- plete man viewed in two different aspects — in the one as an intellectual, in the otlier as a voluntary being, the chief facts of his intellectual exactly corresponding to those of his voluntary existence. Lastly, to bring the whole system to a state of complete unity, our author shows that desire itself is, strictly speaking, a peculiar form of attention ; that the fundamental principle, there- fore, of our intellectual and voluntary life is the same ; that the power of attention, broadly viewed (being, in fact, but another expression for the natural activity of the human mind), is the point from which the whole originally proceeds. Now the contrast between this psychology and that of Condillac is sufficiently striking, the one being indeed, in a measure, directlj' opposite to the other. The one lays at the foundation of our whole intellectual and active life a faculty ])urc\y passice in its nature, and regards all phenomena as simply transfor- mations of it; the other assumes a primitive power, the very essence of which is actiriti/, and makes all our other powers more or less share in this essence."