Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/576

560 transferred to the archbishop of Canterbury, certain ecclesi astical persons having been declared by a previous statute (21 Henry VIII. c. 13) to be entitled to such dispensations. The system of pluralities carried with it, as a necessary consequence, systematic non-residence on the part of many incumbents, and delegation of their spiritual duties in respect of their cures of souls to assistant curates. The evils attendant on this system were found to be so great that in 1838 an Act of Parliament, 1 and 2 Viet. c. 106, was passed to abridge the holding of benefices in plurality, and it was enacted that no person should hold under any circumstances more than two benefices, and this privilege was made subject to the restriction that his benefices were within ten statute miles of each other. By a subsequent Act, 13 and 14 Viet. c. 98, the restriction has been further narrowed, and no spiritual person may now hold two bene fices except the churches of such benefices are within three miles of each other by the nearest road, and the annual value of one of such benefices does not exceed one hundred pounds. By this statute the term benefice is defined to mean benefice with cure of souls and no other, and therein to comprehend all parishes, perpetual curacies, donatives, endowed public chapels, parochial chapelries, and chapelries or districts belonging or reputed to belong, or annexed or reputed to be annexed, to any church or chapel.

1em 1em  BENEKE,, a distinguished German psychologist, was born at Berlin on the 17th February 1798. He was educated under Bernhardi at the Gymna sium Fredericianum, and studied at the universities of Halle and Berlin. He directed his attention in the first instance to theology, coming under the influence of Schleiermacher and De Wette, but afterwards to pure philosophy, studying particularly English writers, and the German modifiers of KantLnism, such as Jacobi, Fries, and Schopenhauer. In 1820 he published his Theory of Knowledge, his Empirical Psychology as the Foundation of all Knowledge, and his inaugural dissertation De Veris Philosophies Initiis. In all these writings appeared very strongly his fundamental view, that philosophical speculation must be limited to the facts of inner experience, and that a true psychology, which is the basis of all knowledge, must be formed by treating these facts according to the rigid methods of physical science. His marked opposition to the philosophy of Hegel, then dominant in Berlin, came to the front still more clearly in the short tract, New Foundation of Metaphysics, intended to be the programme for his lectures as privat-docent, and in the able treatise, Ground-work of a Physic of .Ethics, written in direct antagonism to Kant s Metaphysic of Ethics, and attempting to deduce ethical principles from a basis of empirical feel ing. In the same year (1822) his lectures were prohibited at Berlin, according to his own belief through the influence of Hegel with the Prussian authorities, who also prevented him from obtaining a chair from the Saxon Government. He retired to Gottingen, lectured there for some years, and was then allowed to return to Berlin. In 1832 he received an appointment as Professor Extraordinarius in the university, which he continued to hold till his death. On 1st March 1854 he disappeared from his home ; and some months later his body was found in the canal near Chaiiottenburg. There was some suspicion that he had committed suicide in a fit of mental depression.

1em 1em 