Page:EB1911 - Volume 23.djvu/74

Rh fon something which must be thought and yet cannot be thought" (Höffding, History of Modern Philosophy, Eng. trans., vol. ii.).

See R. Kell, Wieland und Reinhold (2nd ed., Leipzig, 1890); J. E. Erdmann, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (Berlin, 3661); histories of philosophy by R. Folckenberg and W. Windelan

REINKENS, JOSEPH HUBERT (1821–1896), German Old Catholic bishop, was born at Burtscheid, near Aix-la-Chapelle, on the 1st of March 1821, his father being a gardener. In 1836, on the death of his mother, he took to manual work in order to support his numerous brothers and sisters, but in 1840 he was able to go to the gymnasium at Aix, and he afterwards studied theology at the universities of Bonn and Munich. He was ordained priest in 1848, and in 1849 graduated as doctor in theology. He was soon appointed professor of ecclesiastical history at Breslau, and in 1865 he was made rector of the university. During this period he wrote, among other treatises, monographs on Clement of Alexandria, Hilary of Poitiers and Martin of Tours. In consequence of an essay on art, especially in tragedy, after Aristotle, he was made doctor in philosophy in the university of Leipzig. When, in 1870, the question of papal infallibility was raised, Reinkens attached himself to the party opposed to the proclamation of the dogma. He wrote several pamphlets on church tradition relative to infallibility and on the procedure of the Council. When the dogma of infallibility was proclaimed, Reinkens joined the band of influential theologians, headed by Döllinger, who resolved to organize resistance to the decree. He was one of those who signed the Declaration of Nüremberg in 1871, and at the Bonn conferences with Orientals and Anglicans in 1874 and 1875 he was conspicuous. The Old Catholics having decided to separate themselves from the Church of Rome, Reinkens was chosen their bishop in Germany at an enthusiastic meeting at Cologne in 1873 (see ). On the 11th of August of that year he was consecrated by Dr Heykamp, bishop of Deventer. Reinkens devoted himself zealously to his office, and it was due to his efforts that the Old Catholic movement crystallized into an organized church, with a definite status in the various German states. He wrote a number of theological works after his consecration, but none of them so important as his treatise on Cyprian and the Unity of the Church (1873). The chief act of his episcopal career was his consecration in 1876 of Dr Edward Herzog to preside as bishop over the Old Catholic Church in Switzerland. In 1881 Reinkens visited England, and received Holy Communion more than once with bishops, clergy and laity of the Church of England, and in 1894 he defended the validity of Anglican orders against his co-religionists, the Old Catholics of Holland. He died at Bonn on the 4th of January 1896.

REISKE, JOHANN JACOB (1716–1774), German scholar and physician, was born on the 25th of December 1716 at Zorbig in Electoral Saxony. From the Waisenhaus at Halle he passed in 1733 to the university of Leipzig, and there spent five years. He tried to find his own way in Greek literature, to which German schools then gave little attention; but, as he had not mastered the grammar, he soon found this a sore task and took up Arabic. He was very poor, having almost nothing beyond his allowance, which for the five years was only two hundred thalers. But everything of which he could cheat his appetite was spent on Arabic books, and when he had read all that was then printed he thirsted for manuscripts, and in March 1738 started on foot for Hamburg, joyous though totally unprovided, on his way to Leiden and the treasures of the Warnerianum. At Hamburg he got some money and letters of recommendation from the Hebraist Wolf, and took ship to Amsterdam. Here d’Orville, to whom he had an introduction, proposed to retain him as his amanuensis at a salary of six hundred guilders. Reiske refused, though he thought the offer very generous; he did not want money, he wanted manuscripts. When he reached Leiden (June 6, 1738) he found that the lectures were over for the term and that the MSS.” were not open to him. But d’Orvi1le and A. Schultens helped him to private teaching and reading for the press, by which he was able to live. He heard the lectures of A. Schultens, and practised himself in Arabic with his son J. J. Schultens. Through Schultens too he got at Arabic MSS., and was even allowed sub rosa to take them home with him. Ultimately he seems to have got free access to the collection, which he re-catalogued—the work of almost a whole summer, for which the curators rewarded him with nine guilders.

Reiske’s first years in Leiden were not unhappy, till he got into serious trouble by introducing emendations of his own into the second edition of Burmann’s Petronius, which he had to see through the press. His patrons withdrew from him, and his chance of perhaps becoming professor was gone; d’Orville indeed soon came round, for he could not do without Reiske, who did work of which his patron, after dressing it up in his own style, took the credit. But A. Schultens was never the same as before to him; Reiske indeed was too independent, and hurt him by his open criticisms of his master’s way of making Arabic mainly a handmaid of Hebrew. Reiske, however, himself admits that Schultens always behaved honourably to him. In 1742 by Schultens’s advice Reiske took up medicine as a study by which he might hope to live if he could not do so by philology. In 1746 he graduated as M.D., the fees being remitted at Schultens’s intercession. It was Schultensitoo who conquered the difficulties opposed to his graduation at the last moment by the faculty of theology on the ground that some of his theses had a materialistic ring. On the 10th of June 1746 he left Holland and settled in Leipzig, where he hoped to get medical practice.

But his shy, proud nature was not fitted to gain patients, and the Leipzig doctors would not recommend one who was not a Leipzig graduate. In 1747 an Arabic dedication to the electoral prince of Saxony got him the title of professor, but neither the faculty of arts nor that of medicine was willing to admit him among them, and he never delivered a course of lectures. He had still to go on doing literary task-work, but his labour was much worse paid in Leipzig than in Leiden. Still he could have lived and sent his old mother, as his custom was, a yearly present of a piece of leather to be sold in retail if he had been a better manager. But, careless for the morrow, he was always printing at his own cost great books which found no buyers. His academical colleagues were hostile; and Ernesti, under a show of friendship, secretly hindered his promotion. His unsparing reviews made bad blood with the pillars of the university.

At length in 1758 the magistrates of Leipzig rescued him from his misery by giving him the recto rate of St Nicolai, and, though he still made no way with the leading men of the university and suffered from the hostility of men like Ruhnken and J. D. Michaelis, he was compensated for this by the esteem cf Frederick the Great, of Lessing, Karsten Niebuhr, and many foreign scholars. The last decade of his life was made cheerful by his marriage with Ernestine Müller, who shared all his interests and learned Greek to help him with collations. In proof of his gratitude her portrait stands beside his in the first volume of the Oratores Graeci. Reiske died on the 14th of August 1774, and his MS. remains passed, through Lessing’s mediation, to the Danish minister Suhm, and are now in the Copenhagen library.

Reiske certainly surpassed all his predecessors in the range and quality of his knowledge of Arabic literature. It was the history, the fealia of the literature, that always interested him; he did not care for Arabic poetry as such, and the then much praised Hariri seemed to him a grammatical pedant. He read the poets less for their verses than for such scholia as supplied historical notices. Thus for example the scholia on Jarīr furnished him with a remarkable notice of the prevalence of Buddhist doctrine and asceticism in ʽIrāk under the Omayyads. In the Adnotationes historicae to his Abulfeda (Abulf. Annales Moslemici, 5 vols., Copenhagen, 1789–91), he collected a veritable treasure of sound and original research; he knew the Byzantine writers as thoroughly as the Arabic authors, and was alike at home in modern works of travel in all languages and in ancient and medieval authorities. He was interested too in