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LAFFITTE, PIERRE (1823-1903), French Positivist, was born on the 21st of February 1823 at Beguey (Gironde). Residing at Paris as a teacher of mathematics, he became a disciple of Comte, who appointed him his literary executor. On the schism of the Positivist body which followed Comte's death, he was recognized as head of the section which accepted the full Comtian doctrine; the other section adhering to Lime, who rejected the religion of humanity as inconsistent with the materialism of Comte's earlier period. From 1853 Laffitte delivered Positivist lectures in the room formerly occupied by Comte in the rue Monsieur le Prince. He published Les Grands Types de l'humanite (1875) and Cours de philosophie premiere (1889). In 1893 he was appointed to the new chair founded at the College de France for the exposition of the general history of science, and it was largely due to his inspiration that a statue to Comte was erected in the Place de la Sorbonne in 1902. He died on the 4th of January 1903.
LA FL$CHE, a town of western France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Sarthe on the Loire, 31 M. S.S.W. of Le Mans by rail. Pop. (1906) town 7800; commune 10,663. The chief interest of the town lies in the Pry tanee, a famous school for the sons of officers, originally a college founded for the Jesuits in 1607 by Henry IV. The buildings, including a fine chapel, were erected from 162o to 1653 and are surrounded by a park. A bronze statue of Henry IV. stands in the market-place. La Fleche is the seat of a sub-prefect and of a tribunal of first instance, and carries on tammng, flour-milling, and the manufacture of paper, starch, wooden shoes and gloves. It is an agricultural market.
The lords of La Fleche became counts of Maine about 11oo, but the lordship became separate from the county and passed in the 16th century to the family of Bourbon and thus to Henry IV.