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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Instrument

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​INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from instruere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare), that which can be used as a means to an end, hence a mechanical contrivance, implement or tool; the word is more particularly applied to the implements of applied science, in mathematics, surgery, surveying, &c., while those of the handicrafts are generally known as “tools.” A specific use of the term is for the various contrivances used to produce musical sounds, “musical instruments.”
In law an “instrument” is any formal or written document by which expression is given to a legal act or agreement. This is a classical use of the Lat. instrumentum, a document, record. The term may be used in a wide sense, as a mere writing, meant only to form a record, or in a particular sense with reference to certain statutes. For example, the Stamp Act 1891 defines an instrument as an expression including every written document; for the purposes of the Forgery Act 1861 a post-office telegram accepting a wager has been defined as an instrument. In expressions such as “deed, will, or other written instrument” the word means any written document under which a right or liability, legal or equitable, exists.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Intellect

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​INTELLECT (Lat. intellectus, from intelligere, to understand), the general term for the mind in reference to its capacity for knowing or understanding. It is very vaguely used in common language. A man is described as “intellectual” generally because he is occupied with theory and principles rather than with practice, often with the further implication that his theories are concerned mainly with abstract matters: he is aloof from the world, and especially is a man of training and culture who cares little for the ordinary pleasures of sense. “Intellect” is thus distinguished from “intelligence” by the field of its operations, “intelligence” being used in the practical sphere for readiness to grasp a situation. (The employment of the word as a synonym for “news” is mere journalese; such phrases as “Intelligence Department” in connexion with newspapers and public offices are more justifiable.) In philosophy the “intellect” is contrasted with the senses and the will; it sifts and combines sense-given data, which otherwise would be only momentary, lasting practically only as long as the stimuli continued to operate. It thus includes the cognitive processes, and is the source of all real knowledge. Various attempts have been made to narrow the use of the term, e.g. to the higher regions of knowledge entirely above the region of sense (so Kant), or to conceptual processes; but no agreement has been reached. “Intellection” (i.e. the process as opposed to the capacity) has similarly been narrowed (e.g. by Professor James Ward) to the sphere of concepts; other writers, however, give it a much wider meaning. “Intellectualism” is a term given to any system which emphasizes the cognitive function; thus aesthetic intellectualism is that view of aesthetics which subordinates the sensual gratification or the delight in purely formal beauty to what may be called the ideal content.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lesina

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​LESINA (Serbo-Croatian, Hvar), an island in the Adriatic Sea, forming part of Dalmatia, Austria. Lesina lies between the islands of Brazza on the north and Curzola on the south; and is divided from the peninsula of Sabbioncello by the Narenta channel. Its length is 41 m.; its greatest breadth less than 4 m. It has a steep rocky coast with a chain of thinly wooded limestone hills. The climate is mild, and not only the grape and olive, but dates, figs and the carob or locust-bean flourish. The cultivation of these fruits, boat-building, fishing and the preparation of rosemary essence and liqueurs are the principal resources of the islanders. Lesina (Hvar) and Cittavecchia (Starigrad) are the principal towns and seaports, having respectively 2138 and 3120 inhabitants. Lesina, the capital, contains an arsenal, an observatory and some interesting old buildings of the 16th century. It is a Roman Catholic bishopric, and the centre of an administrative district, which includes Cittavecchia, Lissa, and some small neighbouring islands. Pop. (1900) of island 18,091, of district 27,928.
To the primitive “Illyrian” race, whose stone cists and bronze implements have been disinterred from barrows near the capital, may perhaps be attributed the “Cyclopean” walls at Cittavecchia. About 385 B.C., a Greek colony from Paros built a city on the site of the present Lesina, naming it Paros or Pharos. The forms Phara, Pharia (common among Latin writers), and Pityeia, also occur. In 229 B.C. the island was betrayed to the Romans by Demetrius, lieutenant of the Illyrian queen Teuta; but in 219, as Demetrius proved false to Rome also, his capital was razed by Lucius Aemilius Paullus. Neos Pharos, now Cittavecchia, took its place, and flourished until the 6th century, when the island was laid waste by barbarian invaders. Constantine Porphyrogenitus mentions Lesina as a colony of pagan Slavs, in the 10th century. Throughout the middle ages it remained a purely Slavonic community; and its name, which appears in old documents as Lisna, Lesna or Lyesena, “wooded” is almost certainly derived from the Slavonic lyés, “forest,” not from the Italian lesina, “an awl.” But the old form Pharia persisted, as Far or Hvar, with the curious result that the modern Serbo-Croatian name is Greek, and the modern Italian name Slavonic in origin. Lesina became a bishopric in 1145, and received a charter from Venice in 1331. It was sacked by the enemies of Venice in 1354 and 1358; ceded to Hungary in the same year; held by Ragusa from 1413 to 1416; and incorporated in the Venetian dominions in 1420. During the 16th century Lesina city had a considerable maritime trade, and, though sacked and partly burned by the Turks in 1571, it remained the chief naval station of Venice, in these waters, until 1776, when it was superseded by Curzola. Passing to Austria in 1797, and to France in 1805, it withstood a Russian attack in 1807, but was surrendered by the French in 1813, and finally annexed to Austria in 1815.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lesion

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​LESION (through Fr. from Lat. laesio, injury, laedere, to hurt), an injury, hurt, damage. In Scots law the term is used of damage suffered by a party in a contract sufficient to enable him to bring an action for setting it aside. In pathology, the chief use, the word is applied to any morbid change in the structure of an organ, whether shown by visible changes or by disturbance of function.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Les Saintes-Maries

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​LES SAINTES-MARIES, a coast village of south-eastern France in the department of Boûches-du-Rhône, 24 m. S.S.W. of Arles by rail. Pop. (1906) 544. Saintes-Maries is situated in the plain of the Camargue, 11/2 m. E. of the mouth of the Petit-Rhône. It is the object of an ancient and famous pilgrimage due to the tradition that Mary, sister of the Virgin, and Mary, mother of James and John, together with their black servant Sara, Lazarus, Martha, Mary Magdalen and St Maximin fled thither to escape persecution in Judaea. The relics of the two Maries, who are said to have been buried at Saintes-Maries, are bestowed in the upper storey of the apse of the fortress-church, a remarkable building of the 12th century with crenelated and machicolated walls. Two festivals are held in the town, a less important one in October, the other, on the 24th and 25th of May, unique for its gathering of gipsies who come in large numbers to do honour to the tomb of their patroness Sara, contained in the crypt below the apse.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Les Sables d'Olonne

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​LES SABLES D’OLONNE, a seaport of western France, capital of an arrondissement of the department of Vendée, on an inlet of the Atlantic seaboard, 23 m. S.W. of La Roche-sur-Yon by rail. Pop. (1906) 11,847. The town stands between the sea on the south and the port on the north, while on the west it is separated by a channel from the suburb of La Chaume, built at the foot of a range of dunes 65 ft. high, which terminates southwards in the rocky peninsula of L’Aiguille. The beautiful smoothly sloping beach, 1 m. in length, is much frequented by bathers. To the north of Sables extend salt-marshes and oyster-parks, yielding 6,000,000 to 8,000,000 oysters per annum. Sables has a church built in the Late Gothic style towards the middle of the 17th century. The port, consisting of a tidal basin and a wet-dock, is accessible to vessels of 2000 tons, but is dangerous when the winds are from the south-west. The lighthouse of Barges, a mile out at sea to the west, is visible for 17 to 18 nautical miles. The inhabitants are employed largely in sardine and tunny fishing; there are imports of coal, wood, petroleum and phosphates. Boat-building and sardine-preserving are carried on. The town has a sub-prefecture and a tribunal of first instance.
Founded by Basque or Spanish sailors, Sables was the first place in Poitou invaded by the Normans in 817. Louis XI., who went there in 1472, granted the inhabitants various privileges, improved the harbour, and fortified the entrance. Captured and recaptured during the Wars of Religion, the town afterwards became a nursery of hardy sailors and privateers, who harassed the Spaniards and afterwards the English. In 1696 Sables was bombarded by the combined fleets of England and Holland. In the middle of the 18th century hurricanes caused grievous damage to town and harbour.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lesbonax

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​LESBONAX, of Mytilene, Greek sophist and rhetorician, flourished in the time of Augustus. According to Photius (cod. 74) he was the author of sixteen political speeches, of which two are extant, a hortatory speech after the style of Thucydides, and a speech on the Corinthian War. In the first he exhorts the Athenians against the Spartans, in the second (the title of which is misleading) against the Thebans (edition by F. Kiehr, Lesbonactis quae supersunt, Leipzig, 1907). Some erotic letters are also attributed to him.
The Lesbonax described in Suidas as the author of a large number of philosophical works is probably of much earlier date; on the other hand, the author of a small treatise Περὶ Σχημάτων on grammatical figures (ed. Rudolf Müller, Leipzig, 1900), is probably later.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lesches

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​LESCHES (Lescheos in Pausanias x. 25. 5), the reputed author of the Little Iliad (Ἰλιὰς μικρά), one of the “cyclic” poems. According to the usually accepted tradition, he was a native of Pyrrha in Lesbos, and flourished about 660 B.C. (others place him about 50 years earlier). The Little Iliad took up the story of the Homeric Iliad, and, beginning with the contest between Ajax and Odysseus for the arms of Achilles, carried it down to the fall of Troy (Aristotle, Poetics, 23). According to the epitome in the Chrestomathy of Proclus, it ended with the admission of the wooden horse within the walls of the city. Some ancient authorities ascribe the work to a Lacedaemonian named Cinaethon, and even to Homer.
See F. G. Welcker, Der epische Cyclus (1865–1882); Müller and Donaldson, Hist. of Greek Literature, i. ch. 6; G. H. Bode, Geschichte der hellenischen Dichtkunst, i.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lescure, Louis Marie Joseph, Marquis de

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​LESCURE, LOUIS MARIE JOSEPH, Marquis de (1766–1793), French soldier and anti-revolutionary, was born near Bressuire. He was educated at the École Militaire, which he left at the age of sixteen. He was in command of a company of cavalry in the Régiment de Royal-Piémont, but being opposed to the ideas of the Revolution he emigrated in 1791; he soon, however, returned to France, and on the 10th of August 1792 took part in the defence of the Tuileries against the mob of Paris. The day after, he was forced to leave Paris, and took refuge in the château of Clisson near Bressuire. On the outbreak of the revolt of Vendée against the Republic, he was arrested and imprisoned with all his family, as one of the promoters of the rising. He was set at liberty by the Royalists, and became one of their leaders, fighting at Thouars, taking Fontenay and Saumur (May-June 1793), and, after an unsuccessful attack on Nantes, joining H. du Verger de la Rochejaquelein, another famous Vendean leader. Their peasant troops, opposed to the republican general F. J. Westermann, sustained various defeats, but finally gained a victory between Tiffauges and Cholet on the 19th of September 1793. The struggle was then concentrated round Chatillon, which was time after time taken and lost by the Republicans. Lescure was killed on the 15th of October 1793 near the château of La Tremblaye between Einée and Fougères.
See Marquise de la Rochejaquelein (Lescure’s widow, who afterwards married La Rochejaquelein), Mémoires (Paris, 1817); Jullien de Courcelles, Dictionnaire des généraux français, tome vii. (1823); T. Muret, Histoire des guerres de l’ouest (Paris, 1848); and J. A. M. Crétineau-Joly, Guerres de Vendée (1834).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lesghians

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​LESGHIANS, or Lesghis (from the Persian Leksi, called Leki by the Grusians or Georgians, Armenians and Ossetes), the collective name for a number of tribes of the eastern Caucasus, who, with their kinsfolk the Chechenzes, have inhabited Daghestan from time immemorial. They spread southward into the Transcaucasian circles Kuba, Shemakha, Nukha and Sakataly. They are mentioned as Λῆχαι by Strabo and Plutarch along with the Γῆλαι (perhaps the modern Galgai, a Chechenzian tribe), and their name occurs frequently in the chronicles of the Georgians, whose territory was exposed to their raids for centuries, until, on the surrender (1859) to Russia of the Chechenzian chieftain Shamyl, they became Russian subjects. Moses of Chorene mentions a battle in the reign of the Armenian king Baba (A.D. 370–377), in which Shagir, king of the Lekians, was slain. The most important of the Lesghian tribes are the Avars (q.v.), the Kasimukhians or Lakians, the Darghis and the ​Kurins or Lesghians proper. Komarov gives the total number of the tribes as twenty-seven, all speaking distinct dialects. Despite this, the Lesghian peoples, with the exception of the Udi and Kubatschi, are held to be ethnically identical. The Lesghians are not usually so good-looking as the Circassians or the Chechenzes. They are tall, powerfully built, and their hybrid descent is suggested by the range of colouring, some of the tribes exhibiting quite fair, others quite dark, individuals. Among some there is an obvious mongoloid strain. In disposition they are intelligent, bold and persistent, and capable of reckless bravery, as was proved in their struggle to maintain their independence. They are capable of enduring great physical fatigue. They live a semi-savage life on their mountain slopes, for the most part living by hunting and stock-breeding. Little agriculture is possible. Their industries are mainly restricted to smith-work and cutlery and the making of felt cloaks, and the women weave excellent shawls. They are for the most part fanatical Mahommedans.
See Moritz Wagner, Schamyl (Leipzig, 1854); von Seidlitz, “Ethnographie des Kaukasus,” in Petermann’s Mitteilungen (1880); Ernest Chantre, Recherches anthropologiques dans le Caucase (Lyon, 1885–1887); J. de Morgan, Recherches sur les origines des peuples du Caucase (Paris, 1889).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Raucourt, Mlle

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​ RAUCOURT, MLLE (1756-1815), French actress, whose real name was Françoise Marie Antoinette Saucerotte, was born in Nancy on the 3rd of March 1756, the daughter of an actor, who took her to Spain, where she played in tragedy at the age of twelve. By 1770 she was back in France at Rouen, and her success as Euphémie in Belloy's Gaston et Bayard caused her to be called to the Comédie Française, where in 1772 she made her début as Dido. She played all the classical tragedy parts to crowded houses, until the scandals of her private life and her extravagance ended her popularity. In 1776 she suddenly disappeared. Part of the ensuing three years she was in prison for debt, but some of the time she spent in the capitals of northern Europe, followed everywhere by scandal. Under protection of the queen she reappeared at the Théâtre Français in 1779, and renewed her success in Phèdre, as Cleopatra, and all her former rôles. At the outbreak of the Revolution she was imprisoned for six months with other royalist members of the Comédie Française, and she did not reappear upon that stage until the close of 1793, and then only for a short time. She deserted, with a dozen of the best actors in the company, to found a rival colony, but a summons from the Directory brought her back in 1797. Napoleon gave her a pension, and
in 1806 she was commissioned to organize and direct a company that was to tour Italy, where, especially in Milan, she was enthusiastically received. She returned to Paris a few months before her death on the 15th of January 1815. Her funeral was the occasion of a riot. The clergy of her parish having refused to receive the body, the crowd broke in the church doors, and were only restrained from further violence by the arrival of an almoner sent post-haste by Louis XVIII. She is buried at Père Lachaise.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ravaillac, François

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​RAVAILLAC, FRANÇOIS (1578-1610), the assassin of Henry IV. of France, was born near Angoulême. He was of humble origin and began life as a valet de chambre, but afterwards became a lawyer and also teacher of a school. After having been imprisoned by his creditors, he sought admission to the recently founded order of Feuillants, but after a short probation was dismissed as a visionary. An application for admission to the Society of Jesus was equally unsuccessful in 1606. His disappointments fostered a fanatical temperament, and rumours that the king was intending to make war upon the pope suggested to him the idea of assassination, which he carried out on the 14th of May 1610. In the course of his trial he was frequently put to the torture, but persistently (and it is now believed truly) denied that he had been prompted by any one or had any accomplices. Sentence of death was carried out on the 27th of May following.
See Jules Loiseleur, Ravaillac et ses complices (1873), and E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, tome vi. (Paris, 1905).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Raupach, Ernst Benjamin Salomo

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​ RAUPACH, ERNST BENJAMIN SALOMO (1784–1852), German dramatist, was born on the 21st of May 1784 at Straupitz, near Liegnitz in Silesia, a son of the village pastor. He attended the gymnasium at Liegnitz, and studied theology at the university of Halle. In 1804 he obtained a tutorship ​ in St Petersburg. He preached at times in the German Lutheran church, wrote his first tragedies, and in 1817 was appointed professor of German literature and history at a training college in connexion with the university. Owing to an outburst of jealousy against Germans in Russia, culminating in police supervision, Raupach left St Petersburg in 1822 and undertook a journey to Italy. The literary fruits of his travels were Hirsemenzels Briefe aus und über Italien (1823). He next visited Weimar, but, being coldly received by Goethe, abandoned his idea of living there and settled in 1824 in Berlin. Here he spent the remainder of his life, writing for the stage, which for twenty years he greatly influenced, if not wholly controlled, in the Prussian capital. He died at Berlin on the 18th of March 1852.
Raupach was a prolific writer of both tragedies and comedies; of the former, Die Fürsten Chawansky (1818), Der Liebe Zauberkreis (1824), Die Leibeigenen, oder Isidor und Olga (1826), Rafaele (1828), Der Nibelungenhort (1834) and Die Schule des Lebens (1841), and of the latter Die Schleichhändler (1828) and Der Zeitgeist (1830) are pieces which have enjoyed great popularity owing to their skilful dramatic handling. On the other hand, the historical dramas with which his name is chiefly associated, Die Hohenstaufen (1837–38), a cyclus of 15 dramatic pieces founded on Friedrich von Raumer's Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, as also the trilogy Cromwell (1841–44), are superficial in treatment. Raupach had a great knowledge of theatrical effect and situations, but he contorts historical facts in order to suit his political hobby, which was the separation of church and state.
Raupach's collected dramas appeared under the title Dramatische Werke ernster Gattung (16 vols., 1830–43) and Dramatische Werke komischer Gattung (4 vols., 1829–35). For his life see Pauline Raupach, Raupach, eine biographische Skizze (1853); also K. Goedeke, Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, 2nd ed. (1905), vol. viii., pp. 646–668.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Ravanastron

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​RAVANASTRON, an Indian stringed instrument played with a bow, used by wandering pilgrims. A Hindu tradition affirms that the musical bow was invented before 3000 B.C. by Ravanon, king of Ceylon, and that the instrument for which he invented it was named after him Ravanastron. Judging from precedent, it is probable that the ravanastron of the present day has changed little, if at all, for many centuries. It consists of half a round gourd, over which is fixed a sound-board of skin or parchment; to this primitive body without incurvation is attached a neck about twice the length of the body. The strings are either one or four in number, the pegs being set in the sides of the neck. The bridge is primitive and either straight or slightly arched, so that in bowing more than one string sounds at once.
The ravanastron is regarded by some writers as the first ancestor of the violin, on account of the alleged invention of the bow for use with it. This theory can only be accepted by those who consider the bow, which after all was common to such inferior instruments as the rebec, as of paramount importance, and the structural features of the instrument itself, the box sound-chest with ribs, which have always belonged to the most artistic types of instruments, such as the cithara and the guitar-fiddle, as of secondary importance.  (K. S.)