A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Achelis, Thomas
Achelis, Thomas, German ethnologist. B. June 17, 1850. Ed. Gottingen University. Achelis taught ethnology in a college at Bremen from 1874 until he died, devoting his attention particularly to the evolution of religion. He was associate-editor of the Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte and editor of the Archiv für Religionswissenschaft. His numerous and weighty works include biographies of several distinguished German Rationalists. As he held a very high position in his science in Germany, he is often described as a Protestant; but in his Adolf Bastian (1892) he entirely agrees with that eminent and thorough Rationalist. He quotes several pages of the most advanced heresy from Bastian's Mensch in der Geschichte [see Bastian], and adds that, while this may seem to some poetical and extravagant, it is "from the scientific point of view an entirely sound conception" (p. 26) D. 1909.