A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume...

161Sämmtliche Schriften, ed. Lachmann, 1857, xi (2), 248. Sime (ii, 190) mistranslates this passage; and Schmidt (ii, 326) mutilates it by omissions. Fontanes (Le Christianisme moderne: Étude sur Lessing, 1867, p. 171) paraphrases it very loosely. ↑

162 Sime, ii, 190. ↑

163 Stahr, ii, 239; Sime, ii. 189. ↑

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. ↑

168 Stahr, ii, 241–44. ↑

169Id. ii, 245. ↑

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. ↑

171Von dem Zwecke, Jesus und seiner Jünger, Braunschweig, 1778. ↑

172 Taylor, Histor. Survey of German Poetry, i, 365. ↑

173 Stahr, ii, 253–54. ↑

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. ↑

183Deutsche 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. ↑

191Philosophische Betrachtung über Theologie und Religion überhaupt, und über die Jüdische insonderheit, 1784. ↑

192 Pünjer, i, 544–45. ↑

193 Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ch. ix, Bohn ed. p. 71. ↑

194 See the details in Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 368–72; Kahnis, p. 60. ↑

195Marokkanische Briefe. Aus dem Arabischen. Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1785. The Letters purport to be written by one of the Moroccan embassy at Vienna in 1783. ↑

196Briefe, xxi. ↑

197 P. 49. ↑

198 P. 232. ↑

199Das 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. ↑