he heaped on
their weaknesses and their pretensions, the more that in his satires his
characters are rather abstract types of men than concrete
individualities; his principal pieces are, "Les Precieuses Ridicules,"
"L'Ecole des Femmes," "Le Tartuffe," "Le Misanthrope," "George Dandin,"
"L'Avare," "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme," "Les Fourberies de Scapin," "Le
Malade malgre Lui," "Les Femmes Savantes," and "Le Malade Imaginaire";
though seriously ill, he took part in the performance of this last, but
the effort was too much for him, and he died that night; from the grudge
which the priests bore him for his satires on them he was buried without
a religious service (1622-1673).

MOLINA, LUIS, a Spanish Jesuit and theologian, author of a theory
called Molinism, which resolves the doctrine of predestination into a
mere foreknowledge of those who would accept and those who would reject
the grace of God in salvation.

MOLINOS, MIGUEL DE, a Spanish theologian, born at Saragossa;
published a book called the "Spiritual Guide," which, as containing the
germ of Quietism, was condemned by the Inquisition, and its author
sentenced to imprisonment for life (1627-1696).

MOLLAH, a judge of the highest rank among the Turks on matters of
law, both civil and sacred.

MOLLWITZ, a village in Silesia, 20 m. SE. of Breslau, where
Frederick the Great defeated the Austrians 1741.

MOLOCH or MOLECH, the chief god of the Ammonites, the worship
of whom, which prevailed among all the Canaanites, was accompanied with
cruelties, human sacrifices among others, revolting to the humane spirit
of the Jewish religion; originally it appears to have been the worship of
fire, through which the innocent as well as the guilty have often to pass
for the achievement of the noblest enterprises, which degenerated at
length into selfish sacrifices of others for interests of one's own, into
the substitution of the innocent for the guilty by way of atonement to
the Deity!

MOLTKE, COUNT VON, surnamed the Silent, great German field marshal,
born in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, of an old family; was pre-eminent as a
military strategist, planned and conducted the Prussian campaign against
Austria in 1866, and the German campaign against France in 1870-72; was
in the service of Denmark before he entered the Prussian (1800-1891).

MOLUCCAS or SPICE ISLANDS (400), an archipelago of mountainous
islands, mostly volcanic, between Celebes and New Guinea, is in two m