Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/459

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

VIBCHOW


VISCHEB


was by this time a popular idol, continued his agitation, and in 1840 again suffered a year s vile treatment in prison. He settled at Bath in 1841, and edited the Vindicator. He made very successful lecture tours in America in 1866, 1867, 1869, and 1875. Vincent used to attend services of the Society of Friends, and gave lay sermons in chapels occasionally, but he never joined any denomination, and was married in a Registry Office. He was a " Free Chris tian " or Theist. D. Dec. 29, 1878.

YIRCHOW, Professor Rudolph, M.D., German pathologist and anthropologist. B. Oct. 13, 1821. Ed. Berlin University. He was appointed prosector of anatomy at Berlin Charity Hospital in 1846, and in the following year lecturer on pathological anatomy at Berlin University. In the same year, 1847, he co-operated with Reinhardt in founding the Archiv fur pathologische Anatomic uncl Physiologic, which he edited until his death. He took an active part in the democratic movement of 1848, and lost his chair at Berlin for doing so ; but Wiirzburg University offered him a professorship, and he won such dis tinction in his science that Berlin recalled him in 1856. He was the founder of cellular pathology, and one of the highest authorities in Europe. In 1861 he became a member of the Berlin Municipal Council, and in 1862 a Deputy in the Prussian Diet. From 1880 to 1893 he was a member of the Reichstag. Virchow w r as for years the leader of the Progressist Party, and later of the Free-Thinking Liberals. The phrase " Kulturkampf," which became the battle- cry against the Catholics, came from him. He, however, opposed Bismarck as well as the Socialists, and this partly explains the friction with his great Rationalist con temporary Haeckel (who was an ardent Bismarckian). The chief cause of their quarrel was that Virchow, who in later years dreaded advanced social ideas and thought that evolution encouraged them, made a lamentable opposition to the spread of Darwinism ; and he disliked the positive

845


title "Monist" and (likeDu Bois-Reymond) preferred to remain Agnostic. His Ration alism is best seen in a lecture on " The Task of Science " (1871), which Professor Schmidt quotes at length in Was Wir Ernst Haeckel Verdanken (i, 142-47). He was less aggressive in later years, but this is all that is involved in what Haeckel calls his "conversion." He retained throughout life a warm zeal for popular enlightenment and the promotion of science. He was one of the chief founders of the German Anthropological Society and the Berlin Pathological Institute ; and he wrote a large number of authoritative works on anatomy, pathology, and anthropology. Few men received more academic honours than Virchow. D. Sep. 5, 1902.

YIROLLEAUD, Professor Charles Gabriel, French orientalist. B. July 2, 1879. Virolleaud has been for some years Maitre des Conferences at the Lyons Faculty of Letters. He has made a thorough study of Semitic languages and Babylonian matters, and has written a number of works on them. His Ration alism is chiefly developed in his Legende du Christ (1908).

YISCHER, Professor Friedrich Theo- dor von, German oesthetist. B. June 30, 1807. Ed. Tubingen University. Vischer entered the Lutheran ministry, and served for a year at Horsheim. He then quitted the Church, and studied at the German and Austrian art centres. He began to teach aesthetics at Tiibingen in 1833, and became extraordinary professor in 1837. He was appointed ordinary professor of aesthetics and the history of German literature at Tubingen in 1844, but he was suspended for two years after delivering his first lecture on account of his heretical expressions. In 1848 he was elected to the Frankfort Parliament. He became professor at the Zurich Polytechnic in 1855, and at the Stuttgart Polytechnic in 1866. Vischer, who was in his time one of the first authorities on aesthetics in 84G