Rating

3934

Rattlesnake

paper, glass, iron and steel, chemicals, and
furniture; p.41,210.

Rating. The rating of an enlisted man in
the navy is the grade or position held by
him in the service. The rating of every en-
listed man is made, primarily, by the com-
manding officer of the ship to which he is
attached and is revocable by that officer.

Rationalism. In theology, a system by
which religious opinions are deduced from
reason. The term is used loosely and popu-
larly in Great Britain and America, but in
Germany technically and exactly, being ap-
plied to a theological school which flourished
in the late iSth and early igth centuries, and
which came in as a sort of mediator between
supernaturalism and naturalism or deism.
Rationalism, in the modern English accepta-
tion of the term, is intellectually the opposite
of irrationality, and denotes thinking that
aims at the proof of propositions by reason-
ing alone, or as little influenced as possible
by emotion.

In philosophy, rationalism has two well-
marked meanings. In epistemology it means
the type of philosophy which makes reason
the chief source of knowledge. Empiricism,
on the contrary, holds that all knowledge is
generated by experience. The modern philos-
ophy of such thinkers as Descartes, Spinoza,
and Leibnitz was strongly rationalistic;
while the British thinkers Locke, Berkeley,
and Hume were empiricist in tendency, Hume
in particular being an extreme representative
of empiricism.

In ethics, rationalism is used as an anti-
thesis to hedonism, and then means an ethical
theory which recognizes in reason the only
source of moral truth, and which therefore
tends to depreciate pleasure and feeling gen-
erally as incapable of yielding any objective
moral principles, and as apt to interfere with
the purity of moral motives and action.

Rationing is the equal allocation of com-
modities of which there is or may be a war-
time shortage. It was begun in the U. S. in
1942, its control being made a function of the
Office of Price Administration.

Rations. A ration is the allowance for the
daily subsistence of one person in the armed
forces. In the U. S. army rations are known as
garrison, field, travel, and emergency rations.
The garrison ration is issued-to troops in gar-
risons or permanent camps; the field ration to
troops in active campaign; the travel ration to
troops travelling otherwise than by march-
ing, or when they are separated from cooking
facilities; and the emergency ration to troops

in active campaign for use on emergent occa-
sions.

Ratisbon (Ger. Regensburg), tn., Bavaria,
prov. Upper Palatinate, on r. bk. of Danube.
The town is exceptionally rich in mediaeval
remains and works of art. It manufactures
tobacco, machinery, pencils, and soap. Six
m. below the town, above the Danube, stands
the Walhalla, or hall of fame for distin-
guished Germans. The town was founded
by Tiberius. It was the capital of the East-
ern Franks in the gth century. Near the
cathedral is the hall in which the German
Diets held their meetings from 1645 to 1806.
Numerous ecclesiastical councils have been
held here; the bishopric was founded in 642;
p. 76,948.

Ratlam, chief tn., Ratlam state, Central
India, 65 m, n.w. of Indore. Center of opium
and grain trade in Malwa; p. of State 85489.

Rattlesnake (Crotalus), a genus of pois-
onous snakes confined to the New World.
The rattlesnakes belong to the pit-vipers
(Crotalinae), a group of viperine serpents
characterized by the presence of a deep sen-

Rattlesnake.

sory pit between the eye and the nostril at
each side j but their special peculiarity is the
rattle, or appendage of the tail. This con-
sists of a series of hollow horny rings, or
'hells,' loosely joined together, so that they
are freely movable, and produce, when
shaken, a loud rattling noise. The extremity
of the Battle is a button-like structure, which
is really the horny tip of the tail. The use
of the rattle has been much discussed; the
usual explanation is that the sound is of serv-
ice in warning off enemies, but it seems
more likely that it is used as a call during
the breeding season.

The common rattlesnake (C. durissus),
found in the Eastern United States from Ver-
mont to Florida, and westward to the Great
Plains, varies in color from yellow to brown,
olive, or black, and is marked with wide
wavy bands of dark brown or black. It is
about four 'ft. long and an inch and a half
in diameter, and lives preferably on moun-
tain ledges and in other rocky places, large