REINHOLDKarl Leonhard (1758-1823), who played a considerable part in the early spread and development of the Kantian philosophy, was born at Vienna in 1758. At the age of fourteen he entered the Jesuit College of St Anna with the intention of becoming a priest of the order. The order was dissolved by the pope in the following year; but young Reinhold, being full of Catholic and monastic zeal, joined a similar college of the order of St Barnabas in 1774. There he remained nine years, before the end of which his scientific and philosophic studies had completely estranged him from the life and aims of the cloister. In 1783 he fled to North Germany, and settled in Weimar, where he became Wieland’s collaborateur on the German Mercury, and eventually his son-in-law. In the German Mercury he published, in the years 1786-87, his Briefe über die Kantische Philosophie, which, by their clear and eloquent exposition were most important in making Kant known to a wider circle of readers. Reinhold himself had read the Critique five times without a single ray of light; in the end it was the ethical side of the system by which he found himself attracted and convinced. As a result of the Letters, Reinhold at once received a call to the neighbouring university of Jena, where he taught from 1787 to 1794, and largely contributed to make Jena, after Königsberg, the second home of the Kantian philosophy. In 1789 he published his chief work, the Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens, in which he attempted to simplify the Kantian theory and make it more of a unity. In 1794 he accepted a call to Kiel, but his departure from Jena marks the zenith of his reputation. He taught at Kiel till his death in 1823, but his independent activity was at an end. His ...