Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/490

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WUNDT


WUETZ


1630 and 1640. T. Edwards says in his Gangrcena (quoted in Professor Masson s Life of Milton, vol. ii) that Wright was a Presbyterian who left the Church about 1638, and went from depth to depth of heresy until he reached " Atheism." It is clear only that he rejected the authority of the Bible, the doctrines of the Church, and the immortality of the soul. He was most outspoken and aggressive in a very dangerous age. An anti-clerical work of his, w r ith the ironical title of Jus Divinum Presbyterii, has been lost ; but we have memorials of his controversy with Eichard Baxter, whose Unreasonableness of Infidelity was directed against him. The anonymous Fides Divina : the Ground of True Faith Asserted (1657), which is an attack on the Bible, is believed to be Writer s reply. To Baxter s further work Writer replied with An Apologetic Narration (1658). As nothing more is found, it is conjectured that he died soon afterwards.

WUNDT, Professor Wilhelm Max,

M.D., Ph.D., Jur.D., German physiologist and psychologist. B. Aug. 16, 1832. Ed. Heidelberg, Tubingen, and Berlin Univer sities. In 1857 he began to teach at Heidelberg, and in 1865 he became extra ordinary professor. He passed to Zurich in 1874, and in 1875 was appointed pro fessor of philosophy at Leipzig. At Leipzig he founded an Institute for Experimental Psychology, which served as model for many others throughout the world and gave a great impetus to scientific psycho logy. Wundt s thorough training in physio logy and important original work on the nervous system and the senses gave him a very solid basis for psychological study, and he was one of the first to carry inductive methods into that field. It coloured his whole philosophy and made him a thorough Rationalist. He taught an evolutionary ethic, rejected the idealism of the current German schools of metaphysics, and taught that the soul was not a simple immaterial substance, but a complex of psychic elements (and therefore not personally

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immortal). God he regarded as " a divine world-ground," in a Pantheistic sense, or the transcendental idea of unity ; and he boldly accused Christianity of lapsing into early superstition in claiming miracles (System der Philosophic, 1889, pp. 649-51). He was virtually the creator of scientific psychology, and the long list of his weighty works ranges from physiology to logic, ethics, and metaphysics. He was one of the founders of the science of Folk Psychology, and he established and edited Philoso2ihische Studien. His Grundziige der Physiologischen Psychologic (1874) is & classic of empirical psychology. Wundt had the Prussian order Pour le M6rite and innumerable other honours.

WUNSCH, Professor Christian Ernst,

Ph.D., M.D., German mathematician. B. Oct. 31, 1744. Wiinsch was the son of a weaver, and in his youth he worked, in great poverty, as a weaver. He gave much trouble to his pastor by his sceptical questions, and at the close of his appren ticeship he wandered afoot for a period. After his return he was a master weaver at his native place, Hohenstein. He made a, thorough study of mathematics and astro nomy, and in 1780 found occupation in the schools at Leipzig. When the great comet appeared some time afterwards Wiinsch so successfully explained it, and appeased the population, that he was offered a scholar ship at the University. He graduated in medicine and philosophy, and in 1784 he was appointed professor of mathematics and physics at Frankfoii on the Oder. He was " half a heretic " (Allgem. Deutsche Biog.), or a moderate Rationalist ; and he wrote a few substantial works on physics and chemistry. D. May 28, 1828.

WURTZ, Professor Charles Adolphe,

M.D., French chemist. B. Nov. 26, 1817. Ed. Giessen and Strassburg Universities. In 1843 he was appointed head of the chemical section of the Faculty of Medicine at Strassburg, and two years later preparer of lectures at the Sorbonne. He succeeded

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