CHRISTOPH, a philosopher, historian, and literateur of Germany, was born at Warstadt, near Otterndorf in Hanover, in 1747. Passing from the gymnasium of Bremen, where he left behind him a reputation for extraordinary ardour, he entered the university of Göttingen, where he completed his education, and afterwards received the appointment of professor of philosophy in 1771. Although as a student he despised the lectures of his masters, despite their acknowledged eminence, preferring to study alone and by the aid of books, yet as a professor his influence and success were by no means remarkable. He was subsequently appointed vice-rector of his university, and became one of the most active members of the Royal Society of Göttingen, established a short time before by the illustrious Haller. He received the title of Aulic Counsellor from the Hanoverian government; and had the honour to be appointed by the Emperor Alexander to the delicate mission of selecting professors capable of naturalizing science and letters in the empire of Russia,—a task which Meiners discharged to the entire satisfaction of his imperial patron. He died on the 1st of May 1810. Meiners occupies a higher position as a writer than as a philosopher. The intellectual independence of his earlier years was more apparent than real when he attained to maturity. The success of his writings is chiefly attributable to two causes,—their popular style, and their practical character. His style, besides being very clear and methodical, is characterized by a happy combination of candour and good sense, which pleases the reader and awakens his interest. On meeting with a speculative problem, his first consideration is not how to subject it to a thorough-going analysis, but rather how to discourse about it in an easy, popular manner. He accordingly waged a perpetual war upon the disciples of Leibnitz and Wolf, and the partisans of Kant, denouncing them as unintelligible scholastics and dreaming mystics. Philosophy in the hands of Meiners ceased to deal with the recondite and the abstract; it became an agreeable piece of study, not requiring much thought, and doing no violence, by an abstract terminology, to the taste of the most fastidious. The only genuine philosopher of the eighteenth century he believed to be Rousseau; and he spared no pains in endeavouring to propagate his doctrines and excuse his errors. Meiners laboured to prove, from ancient and modern history, that public prosperity and individual wellbeing are alike inseparable from enlightenment and virtue. His writings exerted considerable influence in Germany, and his views of the physical and moral inferiority of the Negro race used to be triumphantly quoted in the British Parliament by the defenders of the slave trade.

Of the works of Meiners, which were very voluminous, the principal are,—Historia Doctrine de vero Deo, 1780; Gesch. des Ursprungs, &c., der Wissenschaften in Griechenland u. Rom, 3 Bde., 1781; Gesch. der Schönern Künste, 1787; Gesch. des Verfalls der Sitten, &c.; der Römer, 1791; Gesch. der Religionen, 1806–7; Untersuchungen über die Denk. u. Willenskräfte, 1806.