A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson

at Vienna in 1783. [1403] Briefe, xxi. [1404] P. 49. [1405] P. 232. [1406] 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. [1407] Noack, Th. III, Kap. 9, p. 194. [1408] 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. [1409] 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. [1410] 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." [1411] On the clerical opposition to him at Weimar on this score see Düntzer, Life of Goethe, Eng. tr. 1883, i, 317. [1412] Cp. Kronenberg, Herder's Philosophie nach ihrem Entwickelungsgang, 1889. [1413] Kronenberg, p. 90. [1414] Stuckenberg, Life of Immanuel Kant, 1882, pp. 381-87; Kronenberg, Herder's Philosophie, pp. 91, 103. [1415] 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. [1416] 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. [1417] See the Alt-Testamentliches Appendix to the West-Oestlicher Divan. [1418] Heine, Zur Gesch. der Rel. u. Phil. in Deutschland (Werke, ed. 1876, iii, 92). [1419] Wahrheit und Dichtung, Th. I, B. iv (Werke, ed. 1886, xi, 123). [1420] Id. Th. III, B. xiv, par. 20 (Werke, xii, 159). [1421] Id. pp. 165, 186. [1422] Id. p. 184. [1423] Cited by Baur, Gesch. der christl. Kirche, v, 50. [1424] 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. [1425] Eckermann, März 11, 1832. [1426] Id. Feb. 4, 1829. [1427] Hurst, Hist. of Rationalism, 3rd ed. p. 150. [1428] Wahrheit und Dichtung, Th. III, B. viii; Werke, xi, 334. [1429] 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. [1430] Remarked by Hagenbach, tr. p. 238. [1431] Letter to Goethe, August 17, 1795 (Briefwechsel, No. 87). The passage is given in Carlyle's essay on Schiller. [1432] In Die Sendung Moses. [1433] See the Philosophische Briefe. [1434] Carlyle translates, "No Rights of Man," which was probably the idea. [1435] 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). [1436] Cp. Tieftrunk, as cited by Stuckenberg, Life of Immanuel Kant, p. 225. [1437] 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. [1438] Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? in the Berliner Monatschrift, Dec. 1784, rep. in Kant's Vorzügliche kleine Schriften, 1833, Bd. i. [1439] 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. [1440] Stuckenberg, pp. 225, 332. [1441] Cp. Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben ... dargestellt, 1877, i, 33, 48; Kronenberg, Herder's Philosophie, p. 10. [1442] Cp. Hagenbach, Eng. tr. p. 223. [1443] Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Stück iii, Abth. i, § 5; Abth. ii (ed. 1793, pp. 145-46, 188-89). [1444] Work cited, Stück ii, Abschn. ii, Allg. Anm. p. 108 sq. [1445] E.g. Stück iv, Th. i, preamble (p. 221, ed. cited). [1446] 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. [1447] Stück iii, Abth. i, § 5; pp. 137, 139. [1448] Stück iii, Abth. ii, p. 178. [1449] 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. [1450] Stuckenberg, Life of Immanuel Kant, p. 329. [1451] Borowski, Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuel Kant's, 1804, cited by Stuckenberg, p. 357. [1452] Stuckenberg, pp. 359-60. [1453] Stuckenberg, p. 361. [1454] Cp. F. C. Baur, Gesch. der christl. Kirche, v, 63-66. [1455] The first, on "Radical Evils," appeared in a Berlin monthly in April, 1792, and was then reprinted separately. [1456] Stuckenberg, p. 361. [1457] Ueberweg, ii, 141; Stuckenberg, p. 363. [1458] Stuckenberg, pp. 304-309. [1459] Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, Stück iv, Th. 2. [1460] Cp. Stuckenberg, p. 332; Seth Pringle-Pattison, as cited. [1461] Stuckenberg, pp. 340, 346, 354, 468. [1462] Letter of May 22, 1799, reproduced by Heine. [1463] Zur Gesch. der Rel. u. Philos. in Deutschland. Werke, as cited, iii, 96, 98. [1464] Stuckenberg, p. 311. [1465] Id. p. 357. [1466] 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." [1467] Id. p. 375. Erhard stated that Pestalozzi shared his views on Christian ethics. [1468] Stuckenberg, p. 358. [1469] Cp. Weber, Gesch. der deutschen Literatur, 11te Aufl. p. 119; R. Unger, Hamann und die Aufklärung, 1911. [1470] Bartholmèss, Hist. crit. des doctr. relig. de la philos. moderne, 1855, i, 136-40. [1471] In demanding a "history of the human conscience" (Neue Anthropologie, 1790) Platner seems to have anticipated the modern scientific approach to religion. [1472] Gespräche über den Atheismus, 1781. [1473] Lehrbuch der Logik und Metaphysik, 1795. [1474] W. Smith, Memoir of Fichte, 2nd ed. p. 10. [1475] Id. pp. 12, 13, 20, 23, 25, etc. [1476] Id. pp. 34-35. [1477] Smith, p. 94. [1478] Id. p. 34. [1479] Adamson, Fichte, 1881, p. 32; Smith, as cited, pp. 64-65. [1480] Letter to Kant, cited by Smith, p. 63. [1481] Asserted by Stuckenberg, Life of Kant, p. 386. [1482] 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. [1483] Adamson, pp. 71, 73. [1484] Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters, 16te Vorles. ed. 1806, pp. 509-510. [1485] 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." [1486] Grundzüge, as cited, p. 502. [1487] Cp. Seth Pringle-Pattison, as cited, p. 280, note. [1488] 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. [1489] R. N. Bain, Gustavus Vasa and his Contemporaries, 1894, i. 265-68. [1490] A. Sorel, L'Europe et la révolution française, i (1885), p. 458. [1491] See articles on Beethoven by Macfarren in Dictionary of Universal Biography, and by Grove in the Dictionary of Music and Musicians. [1492] Grove, art. cited, ed. 1904, i, 224. [1493] Jonckbloet, Beknopte Geschiedenis der nederl. Letterkunde, ed. 1880, p. 282. [1494] Id. pp. 315-16. [1495] Cp. Trinius, Freydenker-Lexicon, pp. 336-37; Colerus, Vie de Spinoza, as cited, p. lviii. [1496] See Texte, Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit, Eng. tr. p. 29. [1497] Briefe, 1752, p. 451. [1498] This is the basis of Pope's reference to "illustrious Passeran" in his Epilogue to the Satires, 1738, ii, 124. The Rev. J. Bramstone's satire, The Man of Taste (1733), spells the name "Pasaran," whence may be inferred the extent of the satirist's knowledge of his topic. [1499] Reprinted, in French, at London in 1749, in a more complete and correct edition, published by J. Brindley. [1500] The copy in the British Museum is dated 1737, and the title-page describes Passerano as "a Piemontæse exile now in Holland, a Christian Freethinker." It is presumably a re-issue. [1501] Warburton in a note on Pope (Epilogue, as cited) characteristically alleges that Passerano had been banished from Piedmont "for his impieties, and lived in the utmost misery, yet feared to practise his own precepts; and at last died a penitent." The source of these allegations may serve as warrant for disbelieving them. Warburton, it will be observed, says nothing of an imprisonment in England. [1502] London ed. 1749, pp. 24-25. [1503] Koch, Histor. View of the European Nations, Eng. tr. 3rd ed. p. 103. Cp. Crichton and Wheaton, Scandinavia, 1837, i, 383-96; Otté, Scandinavian History, 1874, pp. 222-24; Villiers, Essay on the Reformation, Eng. tr. 1836, p. 105. But cp. Allen, Histoire de Danemark, Fr. tr. i, 298-300. [1504] Otté, pp. 232-36; Crichton-Wheaton, i, 398-400; Geijer, Hist. of the Swedes, Eng. tr. i, 125. [1505] Koch, p. 104; Geijer, i, 129. [1506] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 322. [1507] Ludwig Holberg, Baron Holberg, born at Bergen, Norway,