1709-1751

French physician and philosopher whose materialistic interpretations of psychic and physiological phenomena were published in A Natural History of the Soul (1745), L'Homme-machine(1747), Discourse on Happiness (1748), and The Small Man in a Long Queue (1751). La Mettrie taught that atheism was the only road to happiness and that the purpose of human life was to experience the pleasures of the senses. Many aspects of his theories were incorporated into behaviorism and modern materialism.