MERIAN, JEAN BERNARD, an eminent philosopher, was born at Leichistall, in the canton of Bâle, in 1723. His father, who was a highly respected pastor in his native town, removed to Bâle, and was placed in 1738 at the head of the Protestant churches of the canton. The objects of study which attracted him most were poetry and philosophy; for he possessed in an almost equal degree a taste for philology and philosophy, for metaphysics and the fine arts. Having received his doctor's degree at the age of seventeen, he soon after entered the church, and distinguished himself as a preacher. After a short residence at Lausanne, which enabled him to perfect himself in the French language, Merian accepted the place of preceptor to the sons of a gentleman in Amsterdam, where he spent four years. In 1748 he received from Maupertuis, president of the Academy of Berlin, an invitation to attach himself to that learned body, with the offer of a pension from Frederick II. Merian did not hesitate to respond to this flattering proposal, but came immediately to Berlin, where, during more than half a century, he exerted a most salutary influence not only over the Academy of Sciences, but over public instruction in general in Prussia. He enriched the philosophical literature of the academy by a series of memoirs on some of the most important problems in morals and metaphysics, and which are generally regarded as masterpieces of clearness and impartiality. On the death of Formey, whose doge he pronounced in 1797, Merian was appointed perpetual secretary to the academy. He died on the 12th of February 1807, lamented by many of the
greatest names in Europe, with whom he had been long associated, such as Euler, Lagrange, Sulzer, Lambert, Ancillon, &c.
At the request of Frederick II. Merian translated Claudian's Enlèvement de Proserpine; and afterwards published the Essais Philosophiques of David Hume, and the Lettres Cosmologiques of Lambert. In his philosophical memoirs his main object is to combat the philosophy of Leibnitz. These will be found in the Memoirs of the Academy of Berlin, extending over a period of upwards of forty years, from 1749 to 1804. (For further information respecting Merian, see the Éloge Historique of Fr. Ancillon, published in the Memoirs of the Berlin Academy for 1810; also Cours d'Histoire de la Philosophie Moderne of Victor Cousin, vol. i., first series; and the Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques, Paris, 1849.)