Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/371

Rh E E I E E I 353 farewell meal with them. Three days after he was taken seriously ill, and died March 1, 1768. Reimarus's reputation as a classical and historical scholar rests on the valuable edition of Dio Cassius (1750-52) which he prepared from the. materials collected by his father-in-law, J. A. Fabricius. In the department of philosophy he published a work on logic ( Vernunftlehre als Amveisung zum richtigen Gebrauche der Vernunft, 1756, fifth edition 1790), and two very popular books bearing on the great religious questions of the day. The first of these works was a collection of essays on the principal truths of natural religion (Abhandlungenvondenvornehmst- en Wahrheiten der naturlichen Religion, 1754, 6th ed. 1791) ; the second (Betrachtungen iiber die Kunsttriebe der T/tiere, 1762, 4th ed. 1798) dealt with one particular branch of the same subject. In these works he appears as a powerful opponent of French materialism and Spinoza's pantheism, a zealous teleologist and able wielder of the argument from design. His philosophical position is essentially that of Christian Wolff. But it is the work (carefully kept back during his lifetime, strangely enough) from which Lessing published certain chapters after the author's death with which his name is most widely asso- ciated. Lessing's relation to this work has been stated in the article LESSING. Its title in the MS. is Apologie oder Schutzschrift fur die verniinftigen Verehrer Gottes. The original MS. is in the Hamburg town library ; a copy was made for the university library of Gottingen, 1814, and other copies are known to exist. In addition to the seven fragments published by Lessing, a second portion of the work was issued in 1787 by C. A. E. Schmidt (a pseudo- nym), under the title Uebrige nock ungedruclcte Werke des Wolf enbiitt else/ten Fragmentisten, and a further portion by D. W. Klose in Niedner's Zeitschrift fur historische Theo- logie, 1850-52. Two of the five books of the first part and the whole of the second part, as well as appendices on the canon, remain still, and will probably always remain, imprinted. But D. F. Strauss has given an exhaustive analysis of the whole work in his book on Reimarus. The standpoint of Reimarus in his Apologie is that of pure natu- ralistic deism. Miracles and mysteries are denied, and natural religion is put forward as the absolute contradiction of revealed. The essential truths of the former are the existence of a wise and good Creator and the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. These truths are discoverable by reason, and are such as can constitute the basis of a universal and rational religion. A revealed religion could never obtain universality, as it could never be made intelligible and credible to all men. Even supposing its possibility, the Bible does not present such a revelation. It abounds in error as to matters of fact, contradicts human experience, reason, and morals, and is one tissue of folly, deceit, enthusiasm, selfishness, and crime. Moreover, it is not a doctrinal compendium, or catechism, which a revelation would have to be. What the Old Testament says of the worship of God is little, and that little worthless, while its writers are unacquainted with the second fundamental truth of religion, the immortality of the soul. The design of the Avriters of the New Testament, as well as that of Jesus, was not to teach true rational religion, but to serve their own selfish ambitions, in pro- moting which Reimarus makes them exhibit an inconceivable combination of conscious fraud and enthusiasm. With all his acuteness as a rationalistic critic, and the destructive force of his attack upon the old orthodox conception of the nature of the Bible and revelation, Reimarus must be regarded simply as the classical representative of rationalism in its absolute inability to form any remotely just conception of God, religion, revelation, the Bible, and Christianity. His Apologie is the historical monument to the in- capacity of rationalism with regard to philosophy, religion, and true historical and literary criticism. By the higher and profounder ideas and historical insight of Lessing, Herder, Semler, Kant, and Schleiermacher, his entire position was rendered antiquated, and the permanently valid portions of his criticism of the Bible are of value only as destructive of a theory, now outlived, of it and religion. But as a learned, acute, and logical assailant of that theory he must l)e honoured with a place amongst the pioneers of truer views of both. See the " Fragments" as published by Lessing, reprinted in vol. xv. of Les- siny's Werke, Hempel's edition ; D. F. Strauss, Hermann Samuel Reimarus und seine Schutzschrift fur die verniinftigen Verehrer Gottes, 1861, 2d. ed. 1877; Rev. Charles Voysey, Fragments from Reimarus, London, 1879 (a translation of the life of Reimarus by Strauss, with the second part of the seventh fragment, on the "Object of Jesus and his Disciples"); the Lives of Lessing by Danzel and G. E. Guhrauer, Sime, and Zimmern ; Kuno Fischer, Geschichte derneuern Philosophic, vol. ii. pp. 759-772, 2d ed. 18G7; Zeller, Geschichte' der deutschen Philosophic, 2d ed. 1875, pp. 243-6. REIMS. See RHEIMS. REINAUD, JOSEPH TOUSSAINT (1795-1867), a distin- guished French Orientalist, was born in 1795 at Lambesc, Bouches du Rhone, and began to study for the church, but, being drawn towards Eastern learning, he came to Paris in 1815 and became a pupil of Silvestre de Sacy. In 1818 and the following year he was at Rome as an attache to the French minister, and studied under the Maronites of the Propaganda, but gave special attention to Mohammedan coins. In 1824 he entered the department of Oriental MSS. in the Royal Library at Paris, and in 1838, on the death of De Sacy, he succeeded to his chair in the school of living Oriental languages. In 1847 he became presi- dent of the Societe Asiatique, and in 1858 conservator of Oriental MSS. in the Imperial Library. In all these func- tions Reinaud maintained the great reputation of the French Oriental school, -and he also did good service with his pen. His first important work was his classical descrip- tion of the collections of the Due de Blacas (1828). To history he contributed an essay on the Arab invasions of France, Savoy, Piedmont, and Switzerland (1836), and various collections for the period of the crusades ; he edited (1840) and in part translated (1848) the geography of Abulfeda; to him too is due a useful edition of the very curious records of early Arabic intercourse with China of which Renaudot had given but an imperfect translation (-Relation des Voyages, &c., 1845) and various other essays illustrating the ancient and mediaeval geography of the East. His chief quality was indefatigable industry. REINDEER. See DEER. REINEKE VOS. See GERMAN LITERATURE, vol. x. pp. 522, 527, and ROMANCE. REINHOLD, KARL LEONHARD (1758-1823), who played a considerable part in the early spread and develop- ment of the Kantian philosophy, was born at Vienna in 1758. At the age of fourteen he entered the Jesuit College of St Anna with the intention of becoming a priest of the order. The order was dissolved by the pope in the following year ; but young Reinhold, being full of Catholic and monastic zeal, joined a similar college of the order of St Barnabas in 1774. There he remained nine years, before the end of which his scientific and philosophic studies had completely estranged him from the life and aims of the cloister. In 1783 he fled to North Germany, and settled in "Weimar, where he became Wieland's col- laborateur on the German Mercury, and eventually his son-in-law. In the German Mercury he published, in the years 1786-87, his Brief e iiber die Kantische Philosophic, which, by their clear and eloquent exposition were most important in making Kant known to a wider circle of readers. Reinhold himself had read the Critique five times without a single ray of light ; in the end it was the ethical side of the system by which he found him- self attracted and convinced. As a result of the Letters, Reinhold at once received a call to the neighbouring university of Jena, where he taught from 1787 to 1794, and largely contributed to make Jena, after Konigsberg, the second home of the Kantian philosophy. In 1789 he published his chief work, the Versitch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermdgens, in which he attempted to simplify the Kantian theory and make it more of a unity. In 1794 he accepted a call to Kiel, but his departure from Jena marks the zenith of his reputa- tion. He taught at Kiel till his death in 1823, but his independent activity was at an end. His essentially receptive and impressible nature yielded first to the XX. 45