 Lau had studied law in his home town of Königsberg before moving to Halle in 1694 where he attended lectures by Thomasius. In 1695, he embarked on a trip through Europe and England (where he apparently met Newton), taking up a position as councillor with the young Duke of Courland on his return. The early death of his patron saw Lau turn to intellectual pursuits, and in 1717 he published a number of treatises on various subjects, including the anonymous Meditationes philosophicae de Deo, mundo et homine (Philosophical Meditations concerning God, the World, and the Human Being). The text covers a wide range of philosophical (and medical and political) topics, and is distinctive in its eclectic borrowings from Spinoza, Locke, Plotinus, and Giordano Bruno, among others. Its general philosophical outlook might most accurately be characterized as pantheistic, both in the Spinozistic sense inasmuch as Lau defends the world’s pre-existence in God and denies its creation ex nihilo (although the extent of Lau’s Spinozism is disputed; cf. Schröder 1987: 128–132), but also and especially in the sense of the Irish freethinker John Toland’s pantheism inasmuch as Lau attempts to outline the foundations of a universal religion. Due to its strident denunciation of the clergy and a genealogical critique of the current political order, the Meditations was instantly controversial, and Lau’s publisher was eventually pressured into revealing Lau’s authorship. This led to Lau’s imprisonment, during which he attempted suicide, and his subsequent expulsion from Frankfurt am Main; Lau’s appeal to his mentor, Thomasius, for a review of the proceedings was also met with a painful denunciation. Lau attempted to return to his study of the law, but his unorthodox opinions and previous brush with infamy made this impossible (in spite of a formal recantation of his earlier views). He died, in poor mental health, in Altona in 1740.