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# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sect

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​SECT, a body of persons holding distinctive or separate doctrines or opinions, especially in matters of religion; thus there are various sects among the Jews, the Mahommedans, and the Buddhists, &c. In the Christian Church it has usually a hostile or deprecatory sense and is applied, like “sectary,” to all religious bodies outside the one to which the user of the term belongs.
The latter use has been influenced by the false etymology which makes the word mean “cut off" (Lat. secure, to cut). The derivation has been long a matter of dispute. The Latin secta was used in classical Latin first of a way, a trodden or beaten path; it seems to be derived from secare, to cut, cf. the phrase secare viam, to travel, take one's way, Gr. τέμνων ὁδόν. From the phrase sectam sequi, to follow in the footsteps of any one, the word came to mean a party, following, faction. Another transferred sense is a manner or mode of life, so hanc sectam rationem ue vitae . . . secuti sumus (Cic. Cael. 17, 40). It was also the regullar word for a school of philosophy and so translates αἴρεσις, lit. choice (αἰρεῖσθαι, to choose), from which is derived “heresy” (q.v.). The Vulgate (N.T.) translates αἴρεσις sometimes by secta, sometimes by haeresis. In Med. Lat., besides these uses we find secta meaning a suit at law, a suit of clothes, and a following or suite. These meanings point to the derivation of secta adopted by Skeat (Etym. Dict., 1910); which connects the word with sequi, to follow. Whichever derivation is accepted a “sect” does not mean a part “cut off” from the church.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Secret

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​SECRET (Lat. secretum, hidden, concealed), that which is concealed from general knowledge. In special senses the word is applied to (a) a prayer in the Roman and other liturgies, said during mass by the priest in so low a voice that it does not reach the congregation, and (b) a covering or skull-cap made of steel fitting close to the head.
In law, the question of secrecy is an important one. Generally, English law does not require a solicitor or barrister to disclose secrets entrusted to them by a client, and the same probably holds good in the case of medical men. In the case of ministers of religion, it has never been definitely settled how far they can be compelled to disclose in evidence what has been confided in the secrecy of the confessional. But according to the 113th Canon, a priest of the Church of England would commit an ecclesiastical offence in revealing a secret disclosed to him' in confession “except it be such as by the laws of this realm his own life may be called into question for concealing the same.” As to what are called “trade secrets,” it had been decided (Merryweather v. Moore, 1892, 2 Ch. 518) that it is a breach of contract to reveal trade secrets acquired during service.
Official Secrets.—By the Official Secrets Act 1889 it was made a misdemeanour for an official to communicate any information or documents concerning the military or naval affairs of Her Majesty, to any person to whom it ought not to be communicated. If the information be communicated to a foreign state it is a felony. In Germany the betrayal of military secrets is punishable under an imperial law of 1893.
Secret Service.—In practically every civilized country, there is always a department of the government charged with the duty of espionage, either diplomatic or domestic. Its officials work in secret, and certain sums of money are placed at the disposal of the head of the department, and expended as he may think lit, without having to render any specific account of them. Various departments of governments have also their own departmental secret service, for the better guarding against frauds, such as in the United States, the Treasury Department and the Post Office.
The various European codes generally have dealt with breach of secrecy, e.g. s. 300 of the German Penal Code imposes a fine up to 1500 marks and imprisonment up to three months on doctors, attorneys and other professional persons who reveal a secret entrusted to them in their professional capacity. For this offence also the French code, art. 378, imposes imprisonment of from one to six months and a fine of from 100 to 500 francs.
See Brouardel, Le Secret médical (Paris, 1893); Hallays, Le Secret professionnel (Paris, 1890).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Secrétan, Charles

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​SECRÉTAN, CHARLES (1815-1895), Swiss philosopher, was born on the 19th of January 1815, at Lausanne, where he died on the 21st of January 1895. Educated in his native town and later under Schelling at Munich, he became professor of philosophy at Lausanne (1838 to 1846), and at Neuchâtel (1850 to 1866). In 1866 he returned to his old position at Lausanne. In 1837 he founded, and for a time edited, the Revue suisse. His principal works were La Philosophie de la liberté (1848); La Raison et le Christianisme (1863); La Civilisation et les croyances (1887); Mon Utopie (1892). The object of his writing was to build up a rational, philosophical religion, to reconcile the ultimate bases of Christianity with the principles of metaphysical philosophy.
For a detailed examination of his philosophy, see Pillon, La Philosophie de Charles Secrétan.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Seckendorf, Veit Ludwig von

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​SECKENDORF, VEIT LUDWIG VON (1626–1692), German statesman and scholar, was a member of a German noble family, which took its name from the village of Seckendorf between Nuremberg and Langenzenn. The family was divided into eleven distinct lines, but only three survive, widely distributed throughout Prussia, Württemberg and Bavaria. Veit Ludwig von Seckendorf, son of Joachim Ludwig von Seckendorf, was born at Herzogenaurach, near Erlangen, on the 20th of December 1626. In 1639 the reigning duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Ernest the Pious, made him his protégé. Entering the university of Strassburg in 1642, he devoted himself to history and jurisprudence. The means for his higher education came from Swedish officers, former comrades of his father who had been actively engaged in the Thirty Years’ War and who was executed at Salzwedel on the 3rd of February 1642 for his dealings with the Imperialists. After he finished his university course Duke Ernest gave him an appointment in his court at Gotha, where he laid the foundation of his great collection of historical materials and mastered the principal modern languages. In 1652 he was appointed to important judicial positions and sent on weighty embassages. In 1656 he was made judge in the ducal court at Jena, and took the leading part in the numerous beneficent reforms of the duke. In 1664 he resigned office under Duke Ernest, who had just made him chancellor and with whom he continued on excellent terms, and entered the service of Duke Maurice of Zeitz (Altenburg), with the view of lightening his official duties. After the death of Maurice in 1681 he retired to his estate, Meuselwitz in Altenburg, resigning nearly all his public offices. Although living in retirement, he kept up a correspondence with the principal learned men of the day. He was especially interested in the endeavours of the pietist Philipp Jakob Spener to effect a practical reform of the German church, although he was hardly himself a pietist. In 1692 he ​was appointed chancellor of the new university of Halle, but he died a few weeks afterwards, on the 18th of December.
Seckendorf’s principal works were the following:—Teutscher Fürstenstaat (1656 and 1678), a handbook of German public law; Der Christenstaat (1685), partly an apology for Christianity and partly suggestions for the reformation of the church, founded on Pascal’s Pensées and embodying the fundamental ideas of Spener; Commentarius historicus et apologeticus de Lutheranismo sive de Reformatione (3 vols., Leipzig, 1692), occasioned by the Jesuit Maimbourg’s Histoire du Luthéranisme (Paris, 1680), his most important work, and still indispensable to the historian of the Reformation as a rich storehouse of authentic materials.
See Richard Pahner, Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff und seine Gedanken über Erziehung und Unterricht (Leipzig, 1892), the best sketch of Seckendorf’s life, based upon original sources. See also Theodor Kolde, “Seckendorf,” in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie (1906).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Secker, Thomas

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​SECKER, THOMAS (1693-1768), archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Sibthorpe Nottinghamshire. He studied medicine in London, Paris and Leiden, receiving his M.D. degree at Leiden in 1721. Having decided to take orders he graduated, by special letters from the chancellor, at Exeter College, Oxford, and was ordained in 1722. In 1724 he became rector of Houghton-1e-Spring, Durham, resigning in 1727 on his appointment to the rectory of Ryton, Durham, and to a canonry of Durham. He became rector of St James's, Westminster, in 1733, and bishop of Bristol in 1735. About this time George II. commissioned him to arrange a reconciliation between the prince of Wales and himself, but the attempt was unsuccessful. In 1737 he was translated to Oxford, and he received the deanery of St Paul's in 1750. In 1758 he became archbishop of Canterbury. His advocacy of an American episcopate, in connexion with which he wrote the Answer to Dr Mayhew's Observations on the Charter and Conduct of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (London 1764), raised considerable opposition in England and America.
His principal work was Lectures on the Catechism of the Church of England (London, 1769).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lister, Martin

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​LISTER, MARTIN (c. 1638–1712), English naturalist and physician, was born at Radclive, near Buckingham. He was nephew of Sir Matthew Lister, physician to Anne, queen of James I., and to Charles I. He was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, 1655, graduated in 1658/9, and was elected a fellow in 1660. He became F.R.S. in 1671. He practised medicine at York until 1683, when he removed to London. In 1684 he received the degree of M.D. at Oxford, and in 1687 became F.R.C.P. He contributed numerous articles on natural history, medicine and antiquities to the Philosophical ​Transactions. His principal works were Historiae animalium Angliae tres tractatus (1678); Historiae Conchyliorum (1685–1692), and Conchyliorum Bivalvium (1696). As a conchologist he was held in high esteem, but while he recognized the similarity of fossil mollusca to living forms, he regarded them as inorganic imitations produced in the rocks. In 1683 he communicated to the Royal Society (Phil. Trans., 1684), An ingenious proposal for a new sort of maps of countries; together with tables of sands and clays, such as are chiefly found in the north parts of England. In this essay he suggested the preparation of a soil or mineral map of the country, and thereby is justly credited with being the first to realize the importance of a geological survey. He died at Epsom on the 2nd of February 1712.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Liston, John

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​LISTON, JOHN (c. 1776–1846), English comedian, was born in London. He made his public début on the stage at Weymouth as Lord Duberley in The Heir-at-law. After several dismal failures in tragic parts, some of them in support of Mrs Siddons, he discovered accidentally that his forte was comedy, especially in the personation of old men and country boys, in which he displayed a fund of drollery and broad humour. An introduction to Charles Kemble led to his appearance at the Haymarket on the 10th of June 1805 as Sheepface in the Village Lawyer, and his association with this theatre continued with few interruptions until 1830. Paul Pry, the most famous of all his impersonations, was first presented on the 13th of September 1825, and soon became, thanks to his creative genius, a real personage. Liston remained on the stage till 1837; during his last years his mind failed, and he died on the 22nd of March 1846. He had married in 1807 Miss Tyrer (d. 1854), a singer and actress.
Several pictures of Liston in character are in the Garrick Club, London, and one as Paul Pry in the South Kensington Museum.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lissa (Prussia)

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​LISSA (Polish Lézno), a town in the Prussian province of Posen, 25 m. N.E. from Glogau by rail and at the junction of lines to Breslau, Posen and Landsberg. Pop. (1905) 16,021. The chief buildings are the handsome palace, the medieval town-hall, the four churches and the synagogue. Its manufactures consist chiefly of shoes, machinery, liqueurs and tobacco; it also possesses a large steam flour-mill, and carries on a brisk trade in grain and cattle.
Lissa owes its rise to a number of Moravian Brothers who were banished from Bohemia by the emperor Ferdinand I. in the 16th century and found a refuge in a village on the estate of the Polish family of Leszczynski. Their settlement received municipal rights in 1561. During the Thirty Years’ War the population was reinforced by other refugees, and Lissa became an important commercial town and the chief seat of the Moravian Brothers in Poland. Johann Amos Comenius was long rector of the celebrated Moravian school here. In 1656 and 1707 Lissa was burned down.
See Voigt, Aus Lissas erster Blütezeit (Lissa, 1905), and Sanden, Geschichte der Lissaer Schule (Lissa, 1905).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Liston, Robert

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​LISTON, ROBERT (1794–1847), Scottish surgeon, was born on the 28th of October 1794 at Ecclesmachan, Linlithgow, where his father was parish minister. He began the study of anatomy under Dr John Barclay (1758–1826) at Edinburgh in 1810, and soon became a skilful anatomist. After eight years’ study, he became a lecturer on anatomy and surgery in the Edinburgh School of Medicine; and in 1827 he was elected one of the surgeons to the Royal Infirmary. In 1835 he was chosen professor of clinical surgery in University College, London, and this appointment he held until his death, which occurred in London on the 7th of December 1847. Liston was a teacher more by what he did than by what he said. He taught simplicity in all operative procedures; fertile in expedients, of great nerve and of powerful frame, he is remembered as an extraordinarily bold, skilful and rapid operator. He was the author of The Elements of Surgery (1831–1832) and Practical Surgery (1837), and made several improvements in methods of amputation, and in the dressing of wounds.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Lista y Aragon, Alberto

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​LISTA Y ARAGON, ALBERTO (1775–1848), Spanish poet and educationalist, was born at Seville on the 15th of October 1775. He began teaching at the age of fifteen, and when little over twenty was made professor of elocution and poetry at Seville university. In 1813 he was exiled, on political grounds, but pardoned in 1817. He then returned to Spain and, after teaching for three years at Bilbao, started a critical review at Madrid. Shortly afterwards he founded the celebrated college of San Mateo in that city. The liberal character of the San Mateo educational system was not favoured by the government, and in 1823 the college was closed. Lista after some time spent in Bayonne, Paris and London was recalled to Spain in 1833 to edit the official Madrid Gazette. He was one of the founders of the Ateneo, the free university of Madrid, and up till 1840 was director of a college at Cadiz. All the leading spirits of the young generation of Spaniards, statesmen, writers, soldiers and diplomatists came under his influence. He died at Seville on the 5th of October 1848.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sedan-chair

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​SEDAN-CHAIR, a portable chair or covered vehicle, with side windows, and entrance through a hinged doorway at the front, the roof also opening to allow the occupant to stand. It is carried on poles by two “chairmen.” Alike in Paris and in London the sedan-chair man was an institution—in the one city he was usually an Auvergnat, in the other an Irishman.
The sedan-chair was a fashionable mode of transport in towns up to a century or so ago. It took its name from the town of Sedan, in France, where it was first used, and was introduced into England by Sir S. Duncombe in 1634. Although a typically 18th-century vehicle it was used in the 17th, and had been known much earlier. Indeed, the ancient sedia gestatoria of the popes is really a rudimentary form of sedan-chair. These vehicles were ​often beautifully painted, even the greatest French pastoralists not disdaining to 'embellish their panels. It is still in use at the public baths at Ischl, in Austria, and also in the city of Bath, England, as a mode of transit in connexion with the medical baths. The sedan-chair can be taken into the bedroom, and the invalid conveyed without exposure to the outer air to and from the mineral-water bath. The poles are so arranged that the chair may be carried up and down stairs and still preserve its horizontal position.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Seddon, Thomas

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​SEDDON, THOMAS (1821–1856), English landscape painter, was born in London on the 28th of August 1821. His father was a cabinetmaker, and the son for some time followed the same occupation; but in 1842 he was sent to Paris to study ornamental art. On his return he executed designs for furniture for his father. In 1849 he made sketching expeditions in Wales and France, and in 1852 began to exhibit in the Royal Academy, sending a figure-piece, Penelope, and afterwards landscapes, deriving their subjects from Brittany. In the end of 1853 he joined Holman Hunt at Cairo. He worked for a. year in Egypt and Palestine, executing views which Ruskin pronounced to be “the first landscapes uniting perfect artistical skill with topographical accuracy; being directed, with stern self-restraint, to no other purpose than that of giving to persons who cannot travel trustworthy knowledge of the scenes which ought to be most interesting to them.” Seddon's Eastern subjects were exhibited in Berners Street, London, in 1855, and in Conduit Street in 1856. In October 1856 Seddon again visited Cairo, where he died on the 23rd of November. In 1857 his works were exhibited in the rooms of the Society of Arts, and his important and elaborately finished picture, “Jerusalem and the Valley of Jehoshaphat,” was purchased by subscription and presented to the National Gallery.
A memoir of Seddon, by his brother, was published in 1859.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sedbergh

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​SEDBERGH, a market town in the Skipton parliamentary division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 281/2 m. S.S.E. of Penrith by a branch of the London & North-Western railway. Pop. (1901) 2430. It is pleasantly situated at the junction of several small streams forming the river Lune, in a deep valley surrounded by high-lying moors. The church of St Andrew is principally late Norman. The grammar school was founded by Dr Roger Lupton, provost of Eton College, in 1528, but as it was connected with a chantry it was suppressed by Henry VIII., to be re founded in 1551 by Edward VI.; it now takes rank among the important public schools.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sedgley

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​SEDGLEY, an urban district of Staffordshire, England, between Dudley and Wolverhampton, in the parliamentary borough of Wolverhampton. Pop. (1901) 15,951. The district abounds in coal, lime and ironstone. Nails, rivets, chains, fire-irons, locks and safes are produced. The parish includes the large manufacturing districts of Upper and Lower Gornal, Coseley and Deepfields, the last having a station on the London & North-Western railway, 10 m. W.N.W. from Birmingham.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sedilia

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​SEDILIA (the plural of Lat. sedile, seat), in ecclesiastical architecture, the term given to the seats on the south side of the chancel near the altar for the use of the officiating priests. They are generally three in number, for the priest, deacon and sub-deacon. The custom of recessing them in the thickness of the wall began about the end of the 12th century; some early examples consist only of stone benches, and there is one instance of a single seat or arm-chair in stone at Lenham in Kent, thought by some to be a confessional. The niches or recesses in which they are sunk are often richly decorated with canopies and subdivided with moulded shafts, pinnacles and tabernacle work; the seats are sometimes at different levels, the eastern being always the highest, and sometimes an additional niche is provided in which the piscina is placed.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Seddon, Richard John

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​SEDDON, RICHARD JOHN (1845–1906), New Zealand statesman, was born at Eccleston, Lancashire, England, in 1845, his father being a schoolmaster at Eccleston Hill school. He was brought up to the engineering trade, and when eighteen Went to Australia and entered the railway Workshops at Melbourne. He was caught by the “gold fever” and went to Bendigo, where he spent some time in the diggings; but in 1866 he joined an uncle on the west coast of New Zealand, starting work as a miner. In 1869 he married Miss Louisa lane Spotswood, of Melbourne. In the same year he was elected to a seat on his local Road Board, and he was soon returned to the Westland Provincial Council for the Arahura district, becoming its first chairman of committees. In 1879 he was returned to the New Zealand parliament for Kumara, and sat for that constituency for twenty-six years, though its name was changed to Westland. He was a member of the Ballance ministry (1891), holding the portfolios for public works, defence and mines; and on Ballance's death (1893) became premier, a position he retained till his sudden death on the 10th of June 1906. During these years Seddon held a unique place in the public life of New Zealand, and in its relations with the empire. He combined his premiership with various offices—as colonial treasurer, minister for education, postmaster-general, telegraph commissioner, minister of marine, minister for land purchase, and minister for labour,—but his strenuous personality, and the confidence inspired by his determination to make New Zealand a living force among the British dominions, were the dominating features in all his course of action. His large physique, his profound earnestness, his gift of popular oratory, his expansive kindliness and his power of dealing with men, made him supreme among his own people. He became known in a wider sphere after his attending the colonial conference in London in 1897, and -thenceforth he was regarded as one of the pillars of British imperialism. During the Boer War, and afterwards in the movement for preferential trade with the colonies, he was an enthusiastic supporter of Mr Chamberlain, though he was characteristically outspoken in opposition to the introduction of Chinese labour into South Africa. His rough and ready views were frequently open to criticism, but his vigorous patriotism and intensity of character give hima permanent place among those who have worked for the consolidation of the British dominions.
A Life, by J. Drummond, was published in 1907.