3960

Rembrandt

torical reality. Since we do not yet know all
the forms which'it has taken, every defini-
tion must be still only tentative. When man
realizes that he forms part of a world order,
the resultant feeling seems to he that which
is the basis of religion. This leaves room for
the feeble thought of the savage, and also
includes all the forms which emotion can
take, whether it results in moral conduct or
in naturalistic fetichism.

What has formed the starting-point in rel-
igious development has been variously rep-
resented. The question has been further com-
plicated by the fact that it has been some-
times represented as though belief in a prim-
itive monotheistic revelation were of the sub-
stance of the faith. Fetichism (Tylor, Comte,
Schultze), a belief in ghosts (Herbert Spen-
cer, Caspari, Le Bon), polytheism (Voltaire,
David Hume), pantheism (Ulrici, Caird),
henotheism (Max - Miiller, Von Hartrnann,
Schelling), monotheism (Creuzer, Professor
Rawlinson), have all been regarded as the
original basis from which the latter develop-
ment arose. All theories as to the origin and
development of religion are purely hypothe-
ses. Religion can be taken in its simplest
form as man's recognition of a world order
or a system of things in which he himself has
been merged. This was naturism, or a recog-
nition and worship of natural phenomena.
But man soon distinguished himself from the
system of which he formed a part. He realized
not merely his community of origin, but his
difference of nature. What so distinguished
him was his possession of a soul. Correspond-
ing with this stage of development is anim-
ism.

But gradually he became conscious of how
the soul, though involved in the body and
influenced by it, was capable of controlling
it and was not determined by it. Hence arose
spiritism, according to which spirit is the con-
trolling factor and end of the world order.
The spirits which animate outward things are
conceived on the human analogy, as mani-
festing themselves through these outward
things, but also as capable of separating from
them. It is here that Herbert Spencer sets his
origin of all religion, when he forms his the-
ory about ghosts, and makes the first gods to
have been ancestors, the first worship, funeral
rites.

Closely allied to animism, and springing
from it, is the primitive form of polytheism,
which endowed certain natural phenomena
on the analogy of men with spirits. It is ne-
cessary, however, to distinguish between this

primitive polytheism and a refined polythe-
ism such as appears in Brahmanism, which
makes the many gods little more than im-
personations of the attributes of the one God.
Polytheism has been finally transcended in
the great monotheistic religions of Judaism,
Islam, and Christianity.

Remainder, the remnant of an estate lim-
ited to commerce after the termination of a
preceding estate or estates granted by the
same conveyance. Where a remainder is lim-
ited to a person in being capable of taking
it whenever and however the preceding es-
tate or estates may be terminated, it is said
to be vested. If the person to whom a re-
mainder is limited is unborn at the time, or
is uncertain for any reason, or the event upon
which it will take effect is uncertain, it is
said to be contingent.

Remak, Robert (1815-65), German physi-
cian, was born in Posen. He studied in Ber-
lin, where in 1859 he became a professor do-
ing valuable work by his microscopical re-
searches in embryology and pathology, as
well as by his discoveries in the employment
of electricity for medical purposes.

Remarque, Erich Maria (1897- ),
author, born in Onasbruck, Westphalia, Ger-
many. His book All Quiet On the Western
Front (1929), was translated into many lan-
guages. The film version was banned in Ger-
many. It was followed by a sequel, The Road
Back (1931). Flotsam appeared in 1941.

Rembrandt, Harmensz van Rhyn
(1606-69), one of the greatest of painters,
the glory of the Dutch school, was born in
Leyden. A realist and gifted with keen in-
sight into, and intuitive sympathy with, the
inner lives of men and women, he was ever
an eager student of human nature, and pre-
ferred for his subjects—whether of burgher
or beggar—faces that bore the marks of life's
experience. Thus it was he became pre-em-
inently the painter of old age. His masterly
portrait-groups, such as the Night Watch
(Amsterdam) and the Anatomical Lecture,
are in Holland. One of the secrets of Rem-
brandt's skill, perhaps the fundamental sec-
ret, is that his art is an intensification of sel-
ected facts, not a distortion of them. And for
their intensification he used color and chiaro-
scuro in a manner to suggest the mystery that
lies under the surface of things seea. Accord-
ing to Lord Leighton, he was 'the supreme
painter who revealed to the world the poetry
of twilight and the magic mystery of gloom.1

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, contains several of his works, and his