LA METTRIE, JULIEN-OFFROY de. — Physician and philosopher, born in St-Malo on 25 December 1709, died in Berlin on 11 November 1751. He was a military physician in Paris from 1742. Risking the Bastille because of his work Histoire naturelle de l'âme (The Hague 1745), he took refuge with Frederick II. His other works include: L'Homme machine (Leiden 1748), L'Homme plante (Potsdam 1748), and Réflexions sur l'origine des animaux (Berlin 1750).
La M. is among the most conscious theorists of eighteenth-century materialism. Organized matter contains within itself a principle of movement that differentiates it, and the various degrees of animal life derive from the degree of this differentiation. Thought is merely a property of organized matter (as, for example, electricity is); every activity is created by need (man, having more needs than other beings, occupies the highest point of evolution); every eudemonistic solution arises solely from atheism. Likewise, every relationship of associated life lies outside spiritual solutions: materialism is for La M. the sole antidote to misanthropy.