164 See Sime, ii, 222, 233: Stahr, ii, 254. Hettner, an admirer, calls the early Christianity of Reason a piece of sophistical dialectic. Litteraturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts, ed. 1872, iii. 588–89. ↑
165 Stahr, ii, 243. Lessing said the report to this effect was a lie; but this and other mystifications appear to have been by way of fulfilling his promise of secrecy to the Reimarus family. Cairns, pp. 203, 209. Cp. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, note 29. ↑
166 See it analysed by Bartholmèss, Hist. crit. des doctr. relig. de la philos. moderne, i, 147–67; and by Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historic Jesus (trans. of Von Reimarus zu Wrede), 1910. ↑
167 Gostwick, p. 47; Bartholmèss, i, 166. His book was translated into English (The Principal Truths of Natural Religion Defended and Illustrated) in 1766; into Dutch in 1758; in part into French in 1768; and seven editions of the original had appeared by 1798. ↑
170 The statement that, in Lessing’s age, “in north Germany men were able to think and write freely” (Conybeare, Hist. of N. T. Crit., p. 80) is thus seen to be highly misleading. ↑
171 Von dem Zwecke, Jesus und seiner Jünger, Braunschweig, 1778. ↑
172 Taylor, Histor. Survey of German Poetry, i, 365. ↑
174 Cp. Introd. to Willis’s trans. of Nathan. The play is sometimes attacked as being grossly unfair to Christianity. (E.g. Crouslé, Lessing, 1863, p. 206.) The answer to this complaint is given by Sime, ii, 252 sq. ↑
175 See Cairns, Appendix, Note I; Willis, Spinoza, pp. 149–62; Sime, ii, 299–303; and Stahr, ii, 219–30, giving the testimony of Jacobi. Cp. Pünjer, i, 564–85. But Heine laughingly adjures Moses Mendelssohn, who grieved so intensely over Lessing’s Spinozism, to rest quiet in his grave: “Thy Lessing was indeed on the way to that terrible error ... but the Highest, the Father in Heaven, saved him in time by death. He died a good deist, like thee and Nicolai and Teller and the Universal German Library” (Zur Gesch. der Rel. und Philos. in Deutschland, B. ii, near end.—Werke, ed. 1876, iii. 69). ↑
176 See in Stahr, ii, 184–85. the various characterizations of his indefinite philosophy. Stahr’s own account of him as anticipating the moral philosophy of Kant is as overstrained as the others. Gastrow, an admirer, expresses wonder (Johann Salomo Semler, p. 188) at the indifference of Lessing to the critical philosophy in general. ↑
177 Sime, ii, ch. xxix, gives a good survey. ↑
178 Letter to his brother, Feb., 1778. ↑
179 Strauss, Das Leben Jesu (the second) Einleitung, § 14. ↑
180 Hurst, History of Rationalism, 3rd ed. p. 130. “It was a popular belief, as an organ of pious opinion announced to its readers, that at his death the devil came and carried him away like a second Faust.” Sime, ii, 330. ↑
181 Cited by Hurst, Hist. of Rationalism, 3rd ed. p. 125. Outside Berlin, however, matters went otherwise till late in the century. Kurz tells (Gesch. der deutschen Literatur, ii, 461 b) that “the indifference of the learned towards native literature was so great that even in the year 1761 Abbt could write that in Rinteln there was nobody who knew the names of Moses Mendelssohn and Lessing.” ↑
182 Karl Hillebrand, Lectures on the Hist. of German Thought, 1880, p. 109. ↑
183 Deutsche Merkur, Jan. and March, 1788 (Werke, ed. 1797, xxix, 1–144; cited by Stäudlin, Gesch. der Rationalismus und Supernaturalismus, 1826, p. 233). ↑
184 Kurtz, Hist. of the Chr. Church, Eng. tr. 1864, ii, 224. ↑
185 T. C. Perthes, Das Deutsche Staatsleben vor der Revolution, 262 sq., cited by Kahnis pp. 58–59. ↑
186 See above, pp. 321, 328. ↑
187 Kant distinguishes explicitly between “rationalists,” as thinkers who would not deny the possibility of a revelation, and “naturalists,” who did. See the Religion innerhalb der grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Stück iv, Th. i. This was in fact the standing significance of the term in Germany for a generation. ↑
188 Letter to his brother, February 2, 1774. ↑
189 Known as Zopf-Schulz from his wearing a pigtail in the fashion then common among the laity. “An old insolent rationalist,” Kurtz calls him (ii, 270). ↑
190 Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 372; Gostwick, pp. 52, 54. ↑
191 Philosophische Betrachtung über Theologie und Religion überhaupt, und über die Jüdische insonderheit, 1784. ↑
193 Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ch. ix, Bohn ed. p. 71. ↑
194 See the details in Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 368–72; Kahnis, p. 60. ↑
195 Marokkanische Briefe. Aus dem Arabischen. Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1785. The Letters purport to be written by one of the Moroccan embassy at Vienna in 1783. ↑
199 Das zum Theil einzige wahre System der christlichen Religion. It had been composed in its author’s youth under the title False Reasonings of the Christian Religion; and the MS. was lost through the bankruptcy of a Dutch publisher. ↑
200 Noack, Th. III, Kap. 9, p. 194. ↑
201 Mauvillon further collaborated with Mirabeau, and became a great admirer of the French Revolution. He left freethinking writings among his remains. They are not described by Noack, and I have been unable to meet with them. ↑
202 It was a test of the depth of the freethinking spirit in the men of the day. Semler justified the edict; Bahrdt vehemently denounced it. Hagenbach, i, 372. ↑
203 Cp. Crabb Robinson’s Diary, iii, 48; Martineau, Study of Spinoza, p. 328; Willis, Spinoza, pp. 162–68. Bishop Hurst laments (Hist. of Rationalism, 3rd ed. p. 145) that Herder’s early views as to the mission of Christ “were, in common with many other evangelical views, doomed to an unhappy obscuration upon the advance of his later years by frequent intercourse with more skeptical minds.” ↑
204 On the clerical opposition to him at Weimar on this score see Düntzer, Life of Goethe, Eng. tr. 1883, i, 317. ↑
205 Cp. Kronenberg, Herder’s Philosophie nach ihrem Entwickelungsgang, 1889. ↑
207 Stuckenberg, Life of Immanuel Kant, 1882, pp. 381–87; Kronenberg, Herder’s Philosophie, pp. 91, 103. ↑
208 Kahnis, p. 78, and Erdmann, as there cited. Erdmann finds the pantheism of Herder to be, not Spinozistic as he supposed, but akin to that of Bruno and his Italian successors. ↑
209 The chief sample passages in his works are the poem Das Göttliche and the speech of Faust in reply to Gretchen in the garden scene. It was the surmised pantheism of Goethe’s poem Prometheus that, according to Jacobi, drew from Lessing his avowal of a pantheistic leaning. The poem has even an atheistic ring; but we have Goethe’s own account of the influence of Spinoza on him from his youth onwards (Wahrheit und Dichtung, Th. III, B. xiv; Th. IV, B. xvi). See also his remarks on the “natural” religion of “conviction” or rational inference, and that of “faith” (Glaube) or revelationism, in B. iv (Werke, ed. 1866, xi, 134); also Kestner’s account of his opinions at twenty-three, in Düntzer’s Life, Eng. tr. i, 185; and again his letter to Jacobi, January 6, 1813, quoted by Düntzer, ii, 290. ↑
210 See the Alt-Testamentliches Appendix to the West-Oestlicher Divan. ↑
211 Heine, Zur Gesch. der Rel. u. Phil. in Deutschland (Werke, ed. 1876, iii, 92). ↑
212 Wahrheit und Dichtung, Th. I, B. iv (Werke, ed. 1886, xi, 123). ↑
213 Id. Th. III, B. xiv, par. 20 (Werke, xii, 159). ↑
216 Cited by Baur, Gesch. der christl. Kirche, v, 50. ↑
217 Compare, as to the hostility he aroused, Düntzer, i, 152, 317, 329–30, 451; ii, 291 note, 455, 461; Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe, März 6, 1830; and Heine, last cit. p. 93. ↑
218 Eckermann, März 11, 1832. ↑
220 Hurst, Hist. of Rationalism, 3rd ed. p. 150. ↑
221 Wahrheit und Dichtung, Th. III, B. viii; Werke, xi, 334. ↑
222 Cp., however, the estimate of Krause, above, p. 207. Virchow, Göthe als Naturforscher, 1861, goes into detail on the biological points, without reaching any general estimate. ↑
223 Remarked by Hagenbach, tr. p. 238. ↑
224 Letter to Goethe, August 17, 1795 (Briefwechsel, No. 87). The passage is given in Carlyle’s essay on Schiller. ↑
226 See the Philosophische Briefe. ↑
227 Carlyle translates, “No Rights of Man,” which was probably the idea. ↑
228 Letter to Goethe, July 9, 1796 (Briefwechsel, No. 188). “It is evident that he was estranged not only from the church but from the fundamental truths of Christianity” (Rev. W. Baur, Religious Life of Germany, Eng. tr. 1872, p. 22). F. C. Baur has a curious page in which he seeks to show that, though Schiller and Goethe cannot be called Christian in a natural sense, the age was not made un-Christian by them to such an extent as is commonly supposed (Gesch. der christl. Kirche, v, 46). ↑
229 Cp. Tieftrunk, as cited by Stuckenberg, Life of Immanuel Kant, p. 225. ↑
230 Id. p. 376. In his early essay Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik (1766) this attitude is clear. It ends with an admiring quotation from Voltaire’s Candide. ↑
231 Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? in the Berliner Monatschrift, Dec. 1784, rep. in Kant’s Vorzügliche kleine Schriften, 1833, Bd. i. ↑
232 For an able argument vindicating the unity of Kant’s system, however, see Prof. Adamson, The Philosophy of Kant, 1879, p. 21 sq., as against Lange. With the verdict in the text compare that of Heine, Zur Gesch. der Relig. u. Philos. in Deutschland, B. iii (Werke, as cited, iii, 81–82); that of Prof. G. Santayana, The Life of Reason, vol. i, 1905, p. 94 sq.; and that of Prof. A. Seth Pringle-Pattison, The Philosophy of Religion in Kant and Hegel, rep. in vol. entitled The Philosophical Radicals and Other Essays, 1907, pp. 264, 266. ↑
233 Stuckenberg, pp. 225, 332. ↑
234 Cp. Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben ... dargestellt, 1877, i, 33, 48; Kronenberg, Herder’s Philosophie, p. 10. ↑
235 Cp. Hagenbach, Eng. tr. p. 223. ↑
236 Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Stück iii, Abth. i, § 5; Abth. ii (ed. 1793, pp. 145–46, 188–89). ↑
237 Work cited, Stück ii, Abschn. ii, Allg. Anm. p. 108 sq. ↑
238 E.g. Stück iv, Th. i, preamble (p. 221, ed. cited). ↑
239 Id. Stück iii, Abth. ii, Allg. Anm.: “This belief,” he avows frankly enough, “involves no mystery” (p. 199). In a note to the second edition he suggests that there must be a basis in reason for the idea of a Trinity, found as it is among so many ancient and primitive peoples. The speculation is in itself evasive, for he does not give the slightest reason for thinking the Goths capable of such metaphysic. ↑
240 Stück iii, Abth. i, § 5; pp. 137, 139. ↑
241 Stück iii, Abth. ii, p. 178. ↑
242 Kant explicitly concurs in Warburton’s thesis that the Jewish lawgiver purposely omitted all mention of a future state from the Pentateuch; since such belief must be supposed to have been current in Jewry. But he goes further, and pronounces that simple Judaism contains “absolutely no religious belief.” To this complexion can philosophic compromise come. ↑
243 Stuckenberg, Life of Immanuel Kant, p. 329. ↑
244 Borowski, Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuel Kant’s, 1804, cited by Stuckenberg, p. 357. ↑
245 Stuckenberg, pp. 359–60. ↑
247 Cp. F. C. Baur, Gesch. der christl. Kirche, v, 63–66. ↑
248 The first, on “Radical Evils,” appeared in a Berlin monthly in April, 1792, and was then reprinted separately. ↑
250 Ueberweg, ii, 141; Stuckenberg, p. 363. ↑
251 Stuckenberg, pp. 304–309. ↑
252 Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Stück iv, Th. 2. ↑
253 Cp. Stuckenberg, p. 332; Seth Pringle-Pattison, as cited. ↑
254 Stuckenberg, pp. 340, 346, 354, 468. ↑
255 Letter of May 22, 1799, reproduced by Heine. ↑
256 Zur Gesch. der Rel. u. Philos. in Deutschland. Werke, as cited, iii, 96, 98. ↑
259 Stuckenberg, p. 351. “It is only necessary,” adds Stuckenberg (p. 468, note 142), “to develop Kant’s hints in order to get the views of Strauss in his Leben Jesu.” ↑
260 Id. p. 375. Erhard stated that Pestalozzi shared his views on Christian ethics. ↑
262 Cp. Weber, Gesch. der deutschen Literatur, 11te Aufl. p. 119; R. Unger, Hamann und die Aufklärung, 1911. ↑
263 Bartholmèss, Hist. crit. des doctr. relig. de la philos. moderne, 1855, i, 136–40. ↑
264 In demanding a “history of the human conscience” (Neue Anthropologie, 1790) Platner seems to have anticipated the modern scientific approach to religion. ↑
265 Gespräche über den Atheismus, 1781. ↑
266 Lehrbuch der Logik und Metaphysik, 1795. ↑
267 W. Smith, Memoir of Fichte, 2nd ed. p. 10. ↑
268 Id. pp. 12, 13, 20, 23, 25, etc. ↑
272 Adamson, Fichte, 1881, p. 32; Smith, as cited, pp. 64–65. ↑
273 Letter to Kant, cited by Smith, p. 63. ↑
274 Asserted by Stuckenberg, Life of Kant, p. 386. ↑
275 Cp. Robins, A Defence of the Faith, 1862, pt. i, pp. 132–33; Adamson, Fichte, pp. 50–67; W. Smith, Memoir of Fichte, pp. 106–107. ↑
277 Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters, 16te Vorles. ed. 1806, pp. 509–510. ↑
278 Compare the complaints of Hurst, Hist. of Rationalism, 3rd ed. pp. 136–37, and of Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Bohn ed. p. 72. Fichte’s theory, says Coleridge (after praising him as the destroyer of Spinozism), “degenerated into a crude egoismus, a boastful and hyperstoic hostility to Nature, as lifeless, godless, and altogether unholy, while his religion consisted in the assumption of a mere ordo ordinans, which we were permitted exotericé to call God.” Heine (as last cited, p. 75) insists that Fichte’s Idealism is “more Godless than the crassest Materialism.” ↑
279 Grundzüge, as cited, p. 502. ↑
280 Cp. Seth Pringle-Pattison, as cited, p. 280, note. ↑
281 Kurtz, Hist. of the Chr. Church, Eng. tr. 1864, ii, 225. Jahn was well in advance of his age in his explanation of Joshua’s cosmic miracle as the mistaken literalizing of a flight of poetic phrase. See the passage in his Introduction to the Book of Joshua, cited by Rowland Williams, The Hebrew Prophets, ii (1871), 31, note 33. ↑
282 R. N. Bain, Gustavus Vasa and his Contemporaries, 1894, i. 265–68. ↑
283 A. Sorel, L’Europe et la révolution française, i (1885), p. 458. ↑
284 See articles on Beethoven by Macfarren in Dictionary of Universal Biography, and by Grove in the Dictionary of Music and Musicians. ↑