EEGNAUD
EEIMAEUS
continued to issue Rationalist works. In
1884 he translated Biichner s Force and
Matter into French. He took part in
several International Congresses of Free
thinkers.
REGNAUD DE SAINT -JEAN D ANGELY, Count Michel Louis Etienne,
French politician. B. 1761. Ed. Paris. He was trained in law, but entered the Navy, and in 1789 he was sent to the States General. He was prominent in the National Convention, and it was at his demand that Voltaire s remains were removed to the Pantheon and a statue was erected to him at Paris. He edited the Journal de Versailles. In 1793 he was appointed hospital administrator to the Army of Italy, and he accompanied the expedition to Egypt. Napoleon admitted him to the Council of State, and in 1810 made him Secretary of State for the Imperial Family. In 1816 he was pro scribed, and he sailed for America. Three years later he was permitted to return, but he died of joy on being restored to his family in 1819.
REID, Sir George Archdall O Brien,
KB. E. , M.B.,C.M.,A.R.S.E., physician and writer. B. 1860. ^.Edinburgh University. He lived for some time in India, where he was born, and New Zealand, and travelled in many other lands. Sir George sums up his early career, briefly, as having been in succession a schoolmaster, a Kauri-gum digger, a stockman, a hunter, and joint- editor of Bedrock. As a scientific writer, particularly on questions of heredity, he first won attention by his Present Evolu tion of Man in 1896. Alcoholism (1901), The Principles of Heredity (1905), The Laivs of Heredity (1910), and other works and scientific papers, have since given him a position of authority. He received his title in 1919. In his Principles of Heredity Sir George very freely expresses his thorough Rationalism. " Almost without exception," he remarks, " religions have restrained the instinct of curiosity hence
643
the prolonged intellectual and social stagna
tion in which so many races have sunk "
(p. 296). Chapter xxiii abounds in such
expressions. " Probably in all history,"
he says, " there is no instance of a society
in which ecclesiastical power was dominant
which was not at once stagnant, corrupt,
and brutal" (p. 309).
REIL, Professor Johann Christian,
M.D., German physician. B. Feb. 28, 1759. Ed. Gottingen and Halle Uni versities. He practised for some years at Rhaude, and was in 1787 appointed extra ordinary professor of medicine at Halle University. In the following year he became professor of therapeutics and Director of the Halle Clinic. In 1810 he obtained the chair of clinics at Berlin Uni versity. During the Napoleonic troubles Reil was general superintendent of the war hospitals, and in the course of his devoted service he contracted typhus. He was, " one of the most distinguished physi cians and medical writers of the time " (Allgem. Deutsche Biog.). Master of every branch of his science, he was a special authority on the nervous system and on fevers (on which he wrote a five-volume work, 1799-1815), and he brought about great reforms in the treatment of the insane. He founded the Magazin fur psychische Heilkunde in 1803. In his Exercitationum anatomicarum Fasciculus I (1796) he professes Materialism : " All phenomena are either matter or presenta tions," he says. He rejects the idea of the immaterial. D. Nov. 22, 1813.
REIMARUS, Hermann Samuel,
German writer. B. Dec. 22, 1694. Ed. Jena and Wittemberg Universities. After travelling in Holland and England, Reimarus was appointed rector of Weimar Gym nasium (1723). In 1728 he became pro fessor of Hebrew and mathematics at Hamburg Gymnasium. In philosophy he followed Wolff. He accepted natural religion (or Deism) only, and denied that there was anything supernatural in Chris- 644
