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.
A benefice is avoided or vacated 1, by death ; 2, by resignation, if the bishop is willing to accept the resignation ; 3, by cession, upon the clerk being instituted to another benefice or some other prefer ment incompatible with it ; 4, by deprivation and sentence of an ecclesiastical court ; 5, by act of law in consequence of simony ; 6, by default of the clerk in neglecting to read publicly in the church the Book of Common Prayer, and to declare his assent thereto within two months after his induction, pursuant to 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 4, vi.
The number of benefices with or without cure of souls in the Church of England, before the first statute to abridge pluralities was passed in 1838 (1 and 2 Viet. c. 106), was about 11,000. These benefices were served by some 10,000 clergy, of whom rather more than 5000 were incumbents holding one or more livings, and some of them altogether non-resident ; the remainder were assistant curates, for the most part residing in one parish and having full charge of another. The effect of the Pluralities Act in the course of about 30 years has been to produce a remarkable and most salu tary change. It was computed in 1867 that the parochial benefices were 12,888 in number, and the parochial clergy 17,869, of whom 4931 only were assistant-curates. The patronage of 6403 of these benefices was in private hands, whilst the patronage of 6485 was at the disposal of the Crown, or of public bodies or public functionaries. An approximate statement of the yearly value of all the benefices in England and "Wales, the number of which has undergone a con siderable increase since 1867, was drawn up in 1874 by Mr J. K. Aston for a select committee of the House of Lords on Church Patronage. From this statement it appears that the yearly value of all the benefices in public patronage is about 1,825,805, whilst the value of those in private patronage is about 1,893,226 ; but in Mr Aston s opinion these estimates are below the actual value.
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BENEKE, Friedrich Eduard, 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.
Beneke was a most prolific writer, and besides the works men tioned above, published large treatises in the several departments of philosophy, both pure and as applied to education and ordinary life. A complete list of his writings will be found in the appendix to Dressler s edition of the Lehrbuch der Psychologie als Natunvissen- schaft, 1861.
The distinctive peculiarity of Beneke s system consists, first, in the firmness with which he maintained, and the consistency with which he carried out the proposition, that in empirical psychology is to be found the basis of all philosophy ; and secondly, in his rigid treatment of mental phenomena by the genetic, or, as Professor Bain has called it, the natural history method. According to him, the formed or perfected mind with its defined faculties is a develop ment from simple elements, and the first problem of philosophy is the determination of these elements and of the laws or processes by which the development takes place. In his Ncue Psychologic (essays iii., viii., and ix.), he clearly marked out his position with regard to his predecessors and contemporaries, and both there and in the in troduction to his Lehrbuch, signalized as the two great stages in the progress of psychology the negation of innate ideas by Locke, and of faculties, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, by Hcrbart. The next step was made by himself, when he insisted that psycho logy must be treated as one of the natural sciences. As is the case with them, its content is given by experience alone, and dill crs from theirs only in being the object of the internal as opposed to the ex ternal sense. But by a scientific psychology Beneke in no wise meant what is now almost invariably thought of under that designation, a psychology founded on physiology. These two sciences, in his opinion, had quite distinct provinces, and gave no mutual assistance. Just as little help is to be expected from tho science of the body as from mathematics and metaphysics, both of which had been pressed by Herbart into the service of psychology. The true method of study is that applied with so much success in the physical sciences, critical examination of the given experience, and reference of it to ultimate causes, which may not be themselves perceived, but are nevertheless hypotheses necessary to account for the facts. (See on method, Neue Psych., essay i.)
Beneke, therefore, starting from the two assumptions that there is nothing, or at least no formed product, innate in the mind, and that definite faculties do not originally exist, and from the fact that our minds nevertheless actually have a definite content and definite modes of action, proceeds to state somewhat dogmatically his scientifically verifiable hypotheses as to the primitive condition of the soul, and the laws according to which it develops. Originally the soul is possessed of, or is, an immense variety of powers, faculties, or forces (conceptions which Beneke, in opposition to Herbart, holds to be metaphysically justifiable), differing from one another only in ten acity, vivacity, receptivity, and grouping. These primitive imma terial forces, so closely united as to form but one being (essence), acquire definiteness or form through the action upon them of stimuli or excitants from the outer world. This action of external impres sions which are appropriated by the internal powers, is the first fundamental process in the genesis of the completed mind. If the union of impression and faculty be sufficiently strong, consciousness (not scZ/ -consciousness) arises, and definite sensations and perceptions begin to be formed. These primitive sensations, however, are not to be identified with the sensations of the special senses, for each of these senses is a system of many powers which have grown into a definite unity, have been educated by experience. From various facts of ordinary experience it must be concluded that a second fundamental process is incessantly going on, viz., the formation of new powers of faculties, which takes place principally during sleep. The third and most important process results from the fact that the combination between stimulus and power may be weak or strong-
