Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/360

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EEINHOLD


REMUS AT


the Order of the Saviour, member of the Academy of Inscriptions and the Eoyal Belgian Academy, etc. In his Religions et Societes (1905 ; a collection of his lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes) he pleads for religion in a liberal sense, but is Agnostic as regards theology. "The Unknowable remains," he says, but " all the hypotheses which have become beliefs, all the hopes of a beyond and the moral laws which piety has raised on these anthropo-cosmo- logical bases, have been gradually shattered by the pitiless ram of a better-observed reality and a better-conducted experience" (p. 39).

REINHOLD, Professor Ernst Chris tian Gottlieb, German philosopher. B. Oct. 18, 1793. Ed. Kiel University. He became a teacher and sub-rector of a college at Kiel. In 1822 he began to teach at Kiel University, and in 1824 he was appointed professor of logic and meta physics at Jena University. In the main he followed the ideas of his father (see next paragraph), but in some respects he was nearer to Kant. He called himself a " Speculative Theist." His ideas are best found in his Theorie des menschlichen Erkenntnissvermogens und der Metaphysik (2 vols., 1832-34) and System der Meta physik (1854). D. Sep. 17, 1855.

REINHOLD, Professor Karl Leon- hard, German philosopher, father of pre ceding. B. Oct. 26, 1758. Ed. Jesuit College, Vienna. Eeinhold became a Jesuit in 1772, but the Society was suppressed in the following year, and he entered a Bar- nabite College and taught philosophy there. He adopted the Eationalist ideas which were current in Vienna under Joseph II, and abandoned Catholicism. He joined the Freemasons and a Eationalist Society at Vienna called " Zur Wahren Eintracht." Catholic Vienna troubled him so much that he expatriated himself and settled in Germany. He studied at Leipzig Univer sity and adopted Kant s philosophy. Later he lived at Weimar, where he collaborated 647


on Wieland s Deutsche Mercur and married Wieland s daughter. In 1787 he was- appointed professor of philosophy at Jena, and in 1794 at Kiel. For a time Eeinhold, who won great distinction as a teacher, adhered to the mysticism of Jacobi, but his last work (Die alte Frage, Was ist Wahrheit ?, 1820) shows that he returned to a Eationalistic Theism. D. Apr. 10, 1825..

REMSBURG, John E., American writer. B. Jan. 7, 1848. His father lost his sight when John was six years old, and he had little schooling. He entered the army at the age of sixteen, and fought in the Civil War. He then became a teacher, and was engaged in education until 1880. For four years he was a Superintendent of Public Instruction. In 1880 he began his long period of service to American Eationalism by publishing a Life and Vindication of Paine. Since that time he has written many important Eationalist works, espe cially proving the opinions of the various- Eationalistic Presidents of the United States, and has lectured all over America. S. P. Putnam estimates that, in various languages, " fully three hundred thousand copies of his lectures have been circulated " (Four Hundred Years of Freethought,. p. 791).

REMUSAT, Count Charles Francois Marie de, French historian and statesman. B. Mar. 14, 1797. Ed. Lycee Napoleon and Ecole de Droit, Paris. Eemusat deserted the law, in which he was trained, for letters and political journalism. He at first supported Guizot, but after a time- he passed to the left centre in French politics. He entered the Chambre in 1830, and became Under- Secretary of State in 1836 and Minister of the Interior in 1840. Though by no means a Eadical, he opposed Louis Napoleon s coup d etat in 1851, and was banished. He returned at the general amnesty in 1859, and devoted himself to. science and letters. From 1871 to 1873 he was Minister of Foreign Affairs and a warm supporter of his friend Thiers.. 648