957 



REASON. 



RECKONING AT SEA. 



wages, with or without food, and a certain sum besides, as harvest 

 money. In other districts the labourers reap the corn by the acre, 

 with a certain allowance of beer, or money instead of it. The price 

 of fagging in Middlesex and within 30 miles around London varies 

 from nine to twelve shillings per acre, according to the crop, and if it 

 is lodged, as much as fifteen shillings ia often paid, including beer. 

 The use of the scythe considerably diminishes the expense, as fewer 

 labourers are required. 



There have been many attempts to introduce machinery for reaping 

 corn; and within the 'past ten years the principle of the reaping- 

 machine, invented by the Rev. Mr. Bell, of Forfarshire, a quarter of a 

 century ago, and since successfully carried out in the United States of 

 America, has been largely applied by many makers on both sides of the 

 Atlantic, and we have now ten or twelve different, reaping-machines, 

 more or less differing from Bell's reaper, in successful operation. Many 

 tnds of such machines are now at work-in this country, and effect 

 a great saving both of time and money at harvest time. Crosskill, of 

 Beverley, manufactures Bell's reaper ; Burgess & Key, of Newgate- 

 street, manufacture M'Cormick's reaper, in which a serrated edge, oscil- 

 lating in front of the corn, cuts it and lays it on a traversing screw. plat- 

 form, by which, aa in Bell's, it is carried aside and laid in swathes 

 on the ground. Cuthbert, of Bedal, and many others, manufacture a 

 smaller machine, in which the corn is delivered from the platform on 

 which it falls by a man who rides on the machine. All these machines 

 are in extensive and successful use. 



REASON, according to the common notion, is the highest faculty 

 of the human mind, by which man is distinguished from brutes, 

 and which enables him to contemplate things spiritual as well as 

 material, to weigh all that can be said or thought for and against them, 

 and hence to draw conclusions, and to act accordingly. A man may 

 therefore be eaid to possess reason in proportion as he actually exer- 

 cises that power, that is, reasons and acts according to the conclusions 

 or results at which he has arrived. In such expressions as " We have 

 reason to believe such an account," or " He has no reason to be dis- 

 satisfied," the word " reason " does not signify the mental power itself, 

 but the conclusion or result of the process of reasoning, in contra- 

 ili-tinction to motives, which are never the results of mental opera- 

 tions, but merely outward circumstances by which our actions are 

 influenced. 



Thus far reason is of a purely practical nature, and Kant therefore 

 divided reason (if we may venture to translate his word Vernunft by 

 the English word reaum) into practical and theoretical. The latter, 

 which ia also called pure, ideal, or transcendental reason, is, accord- 

 ing to him, the mind's power of producing ideas a priori from its own 

 resources, or the power of conceiving things and their attributes which 

 lie beyond the sphere of our experience, such as infinity, the absolute, 

 Ood, the supreme good, &c. How far our knowledge of these things 

 can extend is shown in the work of Kant, entitled ' Kritik der reinen 

 \\-rnunft,' or ' Criticism of Pure Reason.' Reason, in ite practical 

 acceptation, forms ideas d putteriari, in as far as it derives them from a 

 consideration and comparison of the phenomena of the external world, 

 endeavours to discover unity in variety, and traces all phenomena to 

 one source, a supreme reason, of which human reason is only a reflex. 



Schelling defines reason to be the identity of the subjective and the 

 objective, that is, the identity of the power which knows and that 

 which it knows, which includes the knowledge of this identity. Aa 

 the original identity, says he, exists in God, or is God, reason is a 

 direct knowledge or an intellectual perception of God, of whom no 

 t knowledge is possible. Hence God and reason are essentially 

 of the game nature ; they are identical : God is in reason, and reason 

 U in God. 



(G. M. Klein, lleitrdye zum Slitdlen der Philotophie alt Winemehafl 

 de All. There are some good remarks on this subject in S. T. Cole- 



>.) 

 .:.\TK. [DISCOUNT.] 



KKI1EC (Reliec, Fr.), a musical instrument of the violin kind, which 

 li.ul three strings tuned in fifths, played on by a bow. This, which 

 has long been in disuse, was small in size, something between the 

 m'l"Tii violin and the dancing-master's kit, or pocket-fiddle, and seems 

 to have been the primitive violin. Laborde says that it was the 

 fiivuurite instrument of the minstrels ; and the ri/Mle, of which 

 C'haucer and Gower speak, is supposed to have been the rebec. It 

 woo much used at festive entertainments. Milton, in L'Alkyru, uieu- 

 ti.-in it as the " jocund rebec." 



REBELLION. [S<.vuu,i,.xTY.] 



REI5UTTER. [PLEADIHG.] 



RECAPTION. [REPLEVIN.] 



RECAPTURE. [PRIZE.] 



RECEIPT, a written discharge of a debtor ou the payment of 

 money due. When given for sums greater than two pounds, it must 

 be stamped. Though evidence of payment, it is not absolute proof, 

 and may accordingly be rebutted by showing that it ha* been given 

 under mistake, or obtained by fraud. 



RKCEIVER. A receiver is a person appointed by the Court of 

 Cliancery to receive the rents and profits of land, or the produce 

 of other property, .which is in dispute in a cause in that court. He 

 U an officer or agent of the court, and as such under its general 

 control. 



A receiver is never appointed unless a suit is pending concerning the 

 property in question; and he is usually appointed upon motion in 

 court, after notice has been given to the proper parties. The motion 

 is generally made after answer ; under special circumstances it may be 

 made before answer, but the motion must be supported by sufficient 

 affidavits. The cases in which a receiver is appointed are those in 

 which there is great danger of property being wasted or lost, owing to 

 the want of a proper person to look after it. The following are some 

 instances in which a receiver will be appointed : when an infant is 

 entitled to real estate, especially if it be of considerable magnitude : in 

 suits between partners in trade for the purpose of winding up the 

 concern, when a partner is grossly misconducting himself, disposing of 

 the partnership property, or excluding his copartners from the manage- 

 ment of the partnership affairs : when there is danger of the assets of 

 a testator being lost or wasted through the misconduct of an executor. 

 A manager of West India estates has power to set and let them, and to 

 expend money in repairs ; but a receiver has not such power, except as 

 hereafter mentioned. 



Certain persons are disqualified from being receivers, such as a 

 solicitor in the cause, the next friend of the infant plaintiff, a peer of 

 the realm, and a receiver-general of a county. The receiver must give 

 security, according to the value of the property of which he is appointed 

 receiver. 



It is the duty of the receiver, when his appointment is completed, to 

 inform the tenants of the estate in question of his appointment, that 

 they may pay the rents to him. 



A receiver is paid by a per centage on the sum which he receives, 

 usually a shilling in the pound ; and sometimes, in the case of large 

 estates, by a fixed salary. He must annually pass his accounts of 

 receipts and payments. It is usually directed in the order or decree 

 for the appointment of a receiver, that the receiver shall from time to 

 time pay the balances which shall be due from him into the Bank, 

 with the privity of the Accountant-General, to the credit of the cause. 

 A receiver who does not pass his accounts and pay in the balances may 

 be deprived of his salary. (15 Ve. 273.) If he make default in 

 payment of his balances, the recognizances may be put in suit. A 

 receiver of rents and profits has to pass yearly or half-yearly accounts, 

 as the rents and profits are received, and he is chargeable with interest 

 at 5 per cent, on balances in his hands which he neglects to pay at the 

 times fixed for that purpose. 



When the receiver has passed his final account, and paid the balance 

 into the Bank, or to the person entitled to receive the money, to whom 

 the order directs him to pay it, he may apply by petition to the court 

 for the vacating of the recognizances and his own discharge, and an 

 order will be made accordingly, upon all the facts being proved to the 

 court, which are the foundation of the receiver's right to his dis- 

 charge. A receiver is not liable to make good unavoidable losses. 



RECEIVER. [DISTILLATION; RETORT.] 



RECIPROCAL, a mathematical term mostly applied to the fraction 

 made by inverting another fraction ; thus ' is the reciprocal of |, and 

 } of 7 or J. The term arises from the common meaning of the 

 adjective reciprocal, and would be properly applied in every case in 

 which A has to B the same sort of relation that B has to A. Custom 

 however confines the absolute use of the term to that above-mentioned. 

 A reciprocal property is one which each of two things has with 

 reference to the other ; thus if A and B be what are called conjugate 

 diameters of a conic section, the tangent at either extremity of A is 

 parallel to B, and that at either extremity of B is parallel to A. Hence 

 these lines are reciprocally connected with each other, and are there- 

 fore called conjugate; for the word conjugate, which denotes joined, 

 generally means joined by a reciprocal property. 



RECITATIVE (Recitativo, It.), language delivered in musical tones, 

 that is, in the sounds of the musical scale. It differs from the air in 

 having no fixed time or measure, the lengths of the notes depending 

 on the singer, who regulates them according to his own notion of the 

 emphasis and expression required ; and it is not governed by any prin- 

 cipal or predominant key, though its final cadence or close must be in 

 some cognate key of the air which follows, or, at least, in no very remote 

 key. Recitative is of two kinds Unaccompanied and Accompanied. 

 The first is when a few occasional chords are struck by the piano-forte, 

 or by a violoncello, to give the singer the pitch, and intimate to him 

 the harmony. The second is when all, or a considerable portion, of 

 the instruments in the orchestra accompany the singer, either in sus- 

 tained chorcls or in florid passages, as the composer may deem expe- 

 dient, in order to give the true expression or colouring to the passion 

 or sentiment to be expressed. Perhaps the Italian definition of recita- 

 tive, muiica parlante speaking music is the best, as it certainly is 

 the most concise, that can be offered. 



There can be no doubt that the language of the ancient drama, both 

 Greek and Roman, was delivered in a kind of recitative. [Music; 

 OPERA.] 



RECKONING AT SEA is the process of computing the several 

 lements which relate to the determination of the ship's place at any 

 time. The term may include the operations which are performed in 

 finding the latitude and longitude of the ship, the variation of the 

 the needle, &c., from celestial observations ; and the part which is in- 

 dependent of these is called the dtwl-rcckoiiiny. It is this last only 

 which we purpose here to explain. 



