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

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. ↑

206 Kronenberg, p. 90. ↑

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). ↑

212Wahrheit und Dichtung, Th. I, B. iv (Werke, ed. 1886, xi, 123). ↑

213Id. Th. III, B. xiv, par. 20 (Werke, xii, 159). ↑

214Id. pp. 165, 186. ↑

215Id. p. 184. ↑

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. ↑

219Id. Feb. 4, 1829. ↑

220 Hurst, Hist. of Rationalism, 3rd ed. p. 150. ↑

221Wahrheit 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. ↑

225 In Die Sendung Moses. ↑

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. ↑

230Id. 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. ↑

231Beantwortung 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. ↑

236Religion 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. ↑

238E.g. Stück iv, Th. i, preamble (p. 221, ed. cited). ↑

239Id. 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. ↑