Elie Luzac

He was three times married, first with Augustine Ernestine Tick in Hamburg on 3 November 1750; next to a miss Massuet; and finally to the widow Cabryn-In 't Hout.

[1] He studied the Classics under Tiberius Hemsterhuis and mathematics and physics under Pieter van Musschenbroek and Johan Lulofs at Leiden University.

[2] After he finished his formal studies he wrote a so-called Disquisitio politico-moralis about the question Num civis innocens irae hostis longe potentioris juste permitti possit, ut excidium totius civitatis evitetur[Note 1] in 1749.

But only in 1759 did he receive a law degree with the dissertation Specimen juris inaugurale de modo procedendi extra ordinem in causis criminalibus.

[Note 2][3] He practiced law, but was more attracted to the study of jurisprudence, especially Natural law, and in 1753 he published a "Leibnizian" natural-law treatise entitled le Bonheur ou nouveau système de jurisprudence naturelle, followed in 1756 by Recherches sur quelques principes des connoissances humaines along the same lines.

His own ideas in this matter were laid down in Du Droit Naturel civil et politique, en forme d'entretiens, which was only partially and posthumously published in 1802.

He published 'L'homme machine by the Materialist philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie which brought him to the unwelcome attention of the censors in the form of the Consistory of the Walloon church congregation in Leiden, that accused him of defending "materialism".

[6] More publicly he polemicized with Jan Wagenaar in the so-called Witten-Oorlog, a running battle about the history of the controversy between the stadtholders and the Dutch States Party Regenten like Johan de Witt.