Feierbach. I. Paul Johann Anselm, a German jurist, born in Jena, Nov. 14,1775, died in Frankfort, May 29, 1833. He studied law at Jena, and became professor of feudal law there in 1801, of criminal and civil law at Kiel in 1802, and at Landshut in 1804. In 1805 he was appointed to prepare a civil code for Bavaria, in 1808 became privy councillor, in 1814 a judge at Bamberg, and in 1817 president of the court of appeals at Anspach. While there he undertook to investigate the story of Kaspar Hauser, without much regard to the sovereign families thought to be compromised in the matter. He was the author of many standard law books. Of these, the Lehrbuch des gemeinen in Deutsch-land gultigen peinliclien Rechts (1801) is one of the highest authorities on the subject of criminal law in Germany.

II. Ludwig Andreas, a German philosopher, son of the preceding, born in Landshut, July 28, 1804, died near Nuremberg, Sept. 12, 1872. He studied theology and philosophy at Heidelberg and Berlin, and became a tutor at the university of Erlangen in 1828, but retired into private life soon after, occupying himself solely with literary labors. In 1844 he delivered a brief course of lectures at the university of Heidelberg. He subsequently retired to a small village in Franconia, where he directed an industrial establishment, and devoted his leisure hours to literary pursuits. The latter part of his life was passed in poverty, and • a subscription for his benefit was raised not long before his death. Among his works (a collection of which has been published in 10 vols., Leipsic, 1846-'66) the following are the most important: Abalard and Heloise (Anspach, 1833); Geschichte der neuern Philoso-phie ton Bacon ton Verulam bis Spinoza (1863); Darstellung, Fnticickelung und KritiK der Leibniz schen Philosophic (1837); Pierre Bayle (1838); Das Wesen des Christenthums (Leipsic, 1841; English translation by Mrs. Lewes, London, 1854); Has Wesen der Religion (2d ed., 1849); and Gottheit, Freiheit und Unsterblich-Jceit (1866). Feuerbach transformed the Hegelian doctrine into naturalism.

The leading principle of his philosophy is the identification of God with the idealized essence of man, or the deified essence of nature. His own statement is:My theory may be condensed in two words: nature and man. That being which, in my opinion, is the presupposition, the cause of existence of man, is not God-a mysterious, vague, indefinite term-but nature. On the other hand, that being in which nature becomes conscious of itself, is man. . . . True, it follows from my theory that there is no God, that is to say, no abstract being;, distinct from nature and man, which disposes of the destinies of the universe and mankind at its discretion; but this negation is only a consequence of the cognition of God's identity with the essence of nature and man."