claims for Haller great learning (2nd ed. p. xix). He seems in reality
to have had very little, as he represents that Jesus in his day
"was the only teacher who recommended chastity to men" (p. 82).
[1298] Rettung der Offenbarung gegen die Einwürfe der
Freigeister. Haller wrote under a similar title, 1775-76.
[1299] Baur, Gesch. der christl. Kirche, iv, 599.
[1300] Gostwick, p. 15.
[1301] Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. viii; Werke, xi, 329.
[1302] Schlosser, Hist. of Eighteenth Cent., Eng. tr. 1843. i, 150;
Hagenbach, tr. p. 66.
[1303] Hagenbach, tr. p. 63.
[1304] Id., Kirchengeschichte, i, 232.
[1305] Kahnis, p. 43; Tholuck, Abriss, p. 34.
[1306] See the extracts of Büchner, Zwei gekrönte Freidenker, 1890,
pp. 45-47.
[1307] Thiébault, Mes Souvenirs de Vingt Ans de Séjour à Berlin, 2e
édit. 1805, i, 126-28. See i, 355-56, ii, 78-82, as to the baselessness
of the stories (e.g., Pusey, Histor. Inq. into Ger. Rationalism,
p. 123) that Frederick changed his views in old age. Thiébault, a
strict Catholic, is emphatic in his negation: "The persons who assert
that [his principles] became more religious ... have either lied or
been themselves mistaken." Carlyle naturally detests Thiébault. The
rumour may have arisen out of the fact that in his Examen critique du
Système de la Nature Frederick counter-argues d'Holbach's impeachment
of Christianity. The attack on kings gave him a fellow-feeling with
the Church.
[1308] Cp. the argument of Faure, Hist. de Saint Louis, 1866, i,
242-43; ii, 597.
[1309] Examen de l'Essai sur les préjugés, 1769. See the passage in
Lévy-Bruhl, L'Allemagne depuis Leibniz, p. 89).
[1310] G. Weber, Gesch. der deutschen Literatur, 11te Aufl. p. 99.
[1311] Zur Gesch. der Relig. und Philos. in Deutschland--Werke,
ed. 1876, iii, 63-64. Goethe's blame (W. und D., B. vii) is passed
on purely literary grounds.
[1312] Hagenbach, tr. pp. 103-104; Cairns, p. 177.
[1313] This post he left to become secretary of the Academy of
Painting.
[1314] Cited by Pünjer, i, 545-46.
[1315] Id. p. 546.
[1316] Hagenbach, tr. pp. 100-103; Saintes, pp. 91-92; Pünjer, p. 536;
Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 7.
[1317] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 298, 351.
[1318] Id. i, 294 sq.
[1319] The book is remembered in France by reason of Eberhard's
amusing mistake of treating as a serious production of the Sorbonne
the skit in which Turgot derided the Sorbonne's findings against
Marmontel's Bélisaire.
[1320] Hagenbach, tr. p. 109.
[1321] Eberhard, however, is respectfully treated by Lessing in his
discussion on Leibnitz's view as to eternal punishment.
[1322] Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 8.
[1323] Saintes, pp. 92-93.
[1324] Cp. Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 348, 363.
[1325] Id. i, 367; tr. pp. 124-25; Saintes, p. 94; Kahnis, p. 45. Pusey
(150-51, note) speaks of Teller and Spalding as belonging, with
Nicolai, Mendelssohn, and others, to a "secret institute, whose object
was to remodel religion and alter the form of government." This seems
to be a fantasy.
[1326] So Steffens, cited by Hagenbach, tr. p. 124.
[1327] P. Gastrow, Joh. Salomo Semler, 1905, p. 45. See Pusey,
140-41, note, for Semler's account of the rigid and unreasoning
orthodoxy against which he reacted. (Citing Semler's Lebenschreibung,
ii, 121-61.) Semler, however, records that Baumgarten, one of the
theological professors at Halle, would in expansive moods defend theism
and make light of theology (Lebenschreibung, i, 103 ). Cp. Tholuck,
Abriss, as cited, pp. 12, 18. Pusey notes that "many of the principal
innovators had been pupils of Baumgarten" (p. 132, citing Niemeyer).
[1328] Cp. Dr. G. Karo, Johann Salomo Semler, 1905, p. 25; Saintes,
pp. 129-31.
[1329] Cp. Gostwick, p. 51; Pünjer, i, 561.
[1330] Karo, p. 44.
[1331] Cp. Saintes, p. 132 sq.
[1332] Cp. Karo, pp. 3, 8, 16, 28.
[1333] Over a hundred and seventy in all. Pünjer, i, 560; Gastrow,
p. 637.
[1334] Karo, pp. 5-6.
[1335] Gastrow, p. 223.
[1336] Pusey, p. 142; A. S. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, p. 313.
[1337] Cp. Karo, p. 5 sq.; Stäudlin, cited by Tholuck, Abriss, p. 39.
[1338] Kahnis. p. 116.
[1339] Wahre Gründe wanum Gott die Offenbarung nicht mit
augenscheinlichen Beweisen versehen hat.
[1340] Die Göttliche Eingebung, 1771.
[1341] Beweis das Gott die Menschen bereits durch seine Offenbarung
in der Natur zur Seligkeit fuhre.
[1342] Gostwick, p. 53; Pünjer, i, 546, note.
[1343] Cp. Kahnis, pp. 132-36, as to Bahrdt's early morals.
[1344] Geschichte seines Lebens, etc. 1700-91, iv, 119.
[1345] See below, p. 331.
[1346] Geschichte seines Lebens, Kap. 22; ii, 223 sq.
[1347] Baur, Gesch. der chr. Kirche, iv. 597.
[1348] Translated into English in 1789.
[1349] Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, Abschn. I--Werke, 1838 p. 239
(Eng. tr. 1838, pp. 50-51); Rousseau, Contrat Social, liv, iv,
ch. viii, near end; Locke, as cited above, p. 117. Cp. Bartholmèss,
Hist. crit. des doctr. relig. de la philos. moderne, 1855, i, 145;
Baur, as last cited.
[1350] See his Werke, ed. 1866, v, 317--Aus dem Briefe, die neueste
Literatur betreffend, 49ter Brief.
[1351] If Lessing's life were sketched in the spirit in which orthodoxy
has handled that of Bahrdt, it could be made unedifying enough. Even
Goethe remarks that Lessing "enjoyed himself in a disorderly tavern
life" (Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. vii); and all that Hagenbach
maliciously charges against Basedow in the way of irregularity of
study is true of him. On that and other points, usually glossed over,
see the sketch in Taylor's Historic Survey of German Poetry, 1830,
i, 332-37. All the while, Lessing is an essentially sound-hearted
and estimable personality; and he would probably have been the last
man to echo the tone of the orthodox towards the personal life of
the freethinkers who went further in unbelief than he.
[1352] E.g. his fable The Bull and the Calf (Fabeln, ii, 5), à propos
of the clergy and Bayle.
[1353] Sime, Life of Lessing, 1877, i, 102.
[1354] E.g. his early notice of Diderot's Lettre sur les
Aveugles. Sime, i, 94.
[1355] Dramaturgie, Stück 7.
[1356] Sime, i, 103-109.
[1357] Sime, i, 73, 107; ii, 253.
[1358] In his Gedanke über die Herrnhuter, written in 1750. See Adolf
Stahr's Lessing, sein Leben und seine Werke, 7te Aufl. ii, 183 sq.
[1359] Julian Schmidt puts the case sympathetically: "He had learned
in his father's house what value the pastoral function may have for
the culture of the people. He was bibelfest, instructed in the history
of his church, Protestant in spirit, full of genuine reverence for
Luther, full of high respect for historical Christianity, though on
reading the Fathers he could say hard things of the Church." Gesch. der
deutschen Litteratur von Leibniz bis auf unsere Zeit, ii (1886), 326.
[1360] Taylor, as cited, p. 361.
[1361] Sime, i, 73.
[1362] See Lessing's rather crude comedy, Der Freigeist, and Sime's
Life, i, 41-42, 72, 77.
[1363] Cp. his letters to his brother of which extracts are given by
Sime, ii, 191-92.
[1364] Sime, ii, 188.
[1365] As to the authorship see Saintes, pp. 101-102; and Sime's Life
of Lessing, i, 261-62, where the counter-claim is rejected.
[1366] Zur Geschichte und Literatur, aus dem 4ten Beitr.--Werke,
vi. 142 sq. See also in his Theologische Streitschriften the Axiomata
written against Pastor Goeze. Cp. Schwarz, Lessing als Theologe,
1854, pp. 146, 151; and Pusey, as cited, p. 51. note.
[1367] Compare the regrets of Pusey (pp. 51, 153), Cairns (p. 195),
Hagenbach (pp. 89-97), and Saintes (p. 100).
[1368] Sämmtliche 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.
[1369] Sime, ii, 190.
[1370] Stahr, ii, 239; Sime, ii. 189.
[1371] 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.
[1372] 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.
[1373] 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.
[1374] 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.
[1375] Stahr, ii, 241-44.
[1376] Id. ii, 245.
[1377] 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.
[1378] Von dem Zwecke, Jesus und seiner Jünger, Braunschweig, 1778.
[1379] Taylor, Histor. Survey of German Poetry, i, 365.
[1380] Stahr, ii, 253-54.
[1381] 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.
[1382] 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).
[1383] 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.
[1384] Sime, ii, ch. xxix, gives a good survey.
[1385] Letter to his brother, Feb., 1778.
[1386] Strauss, Das Leben Jesu (the second) Einleitung, § 14.
[1387] 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.
[1388] 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."
[1389] Karl Hillebrand, Lectures on the Hist. of German Thought,
1880, p. 109.
[1390] Deutsche Merkur, Jan. and March, 1788 (Werke, ed. 1797,
xxix, 1-144; cited by Stäudlin, Gesch. der Rationalismus und
Supernaturalismus, 1826, p. 233).
[1391] Kurtz, Hist. of the Chr. Church, Eng. tr. 1864, ii, 224.
[1392] T. C. Perthes, Das Deutsche Staatsleben vor der Revolution,
262 sq., cited by Kahnis pp. 58-59.
[1393] See above, pp. 321, 328.
[1394] 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.
[1395] Letter to his brother, February 2, 1774.
[1396] 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).
[1397] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 372; Gostwick, pp. 52, 54.
[1398] Philosophische Betrachtung über Theologie und Religion
überhaupt, und über die Jüdische insonderheit, 1784.
[1399] Pünjer, i, 544-45.
[1400] Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ch. ix, Bohn ed. p. 71.
[1401] See the details in Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 368-72;
Kahnis, p. 60.
[1402] 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.
[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,
1684. After a youth of poverty and struggle he settled at Copenhagen in
1718, as professor of metaphysics, and attained the chair of eloquence
in 1720. Made Baron by King Frederick V of Denmark at his accession
in 1747. D. 1754.
[1508] Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum novam telluris theoriam
ac historiam quintæ monarchiæ ... exhibens, etc. Dr. Gosse, in
art. Holberg, Encyc. Brit., makes the mistake of calling the book a
poem. It is in Latin prose, with verse passages.
[1509] It was published thrice in Danish, ten times in German, thrice
in Swedish, thrice in Dutch, thrice in English, twice in French,
twice in Russian, and once in Hungarian.
[1510] Cap. vi, De religione gentis Potuanæ.
[1511] Cp. pp. 75-78, ed. 1754.
[1512] Cap. vi, p. 69; cp. cap. viii, De Academia, p. 101.
[1513] Id. p. 77.
[1514] He had visited England in his youth.
[1515] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 322. On p. 159 a somewhat contrary
statement is made, which obscures the facts. Cp. Schlosser, iv, 13,
as to Christian's martinet methods.
[1516] Geijer, i, 324.
[1517] Id. p. 343; Otté, p. 292.
[1518] Geijer, i, 342. Cp. Ranke, Hist. of the Popes,
Eng. tr. ed. 1908, ii, 399; iii, 345-46.
[1519] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 88-89, and refs.
[1520] Cp. Ranke, as cited, ii, 407.
[1521] Work cited, pp. 288-89. This writer gives the only intelligible
account of the private execution of Christina's secretary, Monaldeschi,
by her orders. Monaldeschi had either passed over to other hands some
of her letters to him, or kept them so carelessly as to let them be
stolen. Id. p. 11. For her cruel act she shows no trace of religious
or any other remorse. She was, in fact, a neurotic egoist. Cp. Ranke,
ii, 394, 405.
[1522] Bouillier, Hist. de la philos. cartés., i, 449-50.
[1523] Geijer, i, 342.
[1524] See his treatise, Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion
in Reference to Civil Society, Eng. tr. by Crull, 1698.
[1525] Heaven and Hell, 1758, §§ 353, 354, 464.
[1526] Translated as The Divine Providence.
[1527] §§ 235-264.
[1528] Work cited, § 241.
[1529] De cultu et amore Dei, 1745. tr. as The Worship and Love of God,
ed. 1885, p. 18.
[1530] "When he was contradicted he kept silence." Documents concerning
Swedenborg, ed. by Dr. Tafel, 1875-1877, ii, 564.
[1531] Cp. Swedenborg's letter to Beyer, in Documents, as cited,
ii, 279.
[1532] For many years he seldom went to church, being unable to listen
peacefully to the trinitarian doctrine he heard there. Documents,
as cited, ii, 560.
[1533] W. White, Swedenborg: his Life and Writings, ed. 1867, i, 188.
[1534] Schweitzer, Geschichte der skandinavischen Literatur, ii,
175, 225; C.-F. Allen, Histoire de Danemark, Fr. tr. ii, 1900-1901;
R. N. Bain, Gustavus Vasa and his Contemporaries, 1894, i, 226.
[1535] Correspondance de Grimm, ed. 1829-1831, vii, 229.
[1536] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 206.
[1537] Writing to his mother on his first visit to Paris, he takes
her, ostensibly as a libre esprit, into his confidence, disparaging
Marmontel and Grimm as vain. Joseph II in turn pronounced Gustavus "a
conceited fop, an impudent braggart" (Bain, as cited, i, 266). Both
monarchs set up an impression of want of balance, and the mother of
Gustavus, who forced him to break with her, does the same.
[1538] Bain, as cited, i, 224-31.
[1539] Id. ii, 208-12.
[1540] Id. i, 267-68.
[1541] Cp. Bain, ii, 272, 287, 293-96.
[1542] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 335.
[1543] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 322. Cp. pp. 161-63. Schlosser, iv, 15.
[1544] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 190; Otté, p. 322; C.-F. Allen, as cited,
ii, 194-201; Schlosser, iv, 319 sq.
[1545] Cp. Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters from Sweden, Norway, and
Denmark, 1796, Let. xviii. One of the grounds on which the queen
was charged with unchastity was, that she had established a hospital
for foundlings.
[1546] Trans. from the German, 1774; 2nd ed. 1825. See it also in the
work, Converts from Infidelity, by Andrew Crichton; vols. vi and vii
of Constable's Miscellany, 1827. This singular compilation includes
lives of Boyle, Bunyan, Haller, and others, who were never "infidels."
[1547] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 190-91.
[1548] Work cited, Letter vii.
[1549] Id. Letter viii, near end.
[1550] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 324.
[1551] He claimed that the remarks penned by him in an anti-atheistic
work, challenging its argument, represented not unbelief but the demand
for a better proof, which he undertook to produce. See Krasinski,
Sketch of the Religious History of the Slavonic Nations, 1851,
pp. 224-25. It is remarkable that the Pope, Innocent XI, bitterly
censured the execution.
[1552] Fletcher, History of Poland, 1831, p. 141.
[1553] Fletcher, pp. 145-46.
[1554] Hardwick, Church History: Middle Age, 1853, pp. 386-87.
[1555] L. Sichler, Hist. de la litt. Russe, 1887, pp. 88-89,
139. Cp. Rambaud, Hist. de Russie, 2e édit. pp. 249, 259,
etc. (Eng. tr. i, 309, 321, 328).
[1556] R. N. Bain, The First Romanovs, 1905, pp. 136-51; Rambaud,
p. 333 (tr. i, 414-17). The struggle (1654) elicited old forms of
heresy, going back to Manicheism and Gnosticism. In this furious
schism Nikon destroyed irregular ikons or sacred images; and savage
persecutions resulted from his insistence that the faithful should
use three fingers instead of two in crossing themselves. Many resisted
to the death.
[1557] Prince Serge Wolkonsky, Russian History and Literature, 1897,
pp. 98-101.
[1558] Morfill, History of Russia, 1902, p. 14; Bain, p. 201.
[1559] Cp. Wolkonsky, p. 101.
[1560] C. E. Turner, Studies in Russian Literature, 1882, p. 2.
[1561] Id. pp. 16, 17, 25, 26, 40; Sichler, p. 148.
[1562] Sichler, p. 139. Peter's dislike of monks won him the repute of
a freethinker. Morfill, p. 97. He was actually attacked as "Antichrist"
in a printed pamphlet on the score of his innovations. Personally, he
detested religious persecution, and was willing to tolerate anybody but
Jews; but he had to let persecution take place; and even to consent to
removing statues of pagan deities from his palace. Bain, pp. 304-309.
[1563] Cp. Bain, p. 392.
[1564] Turner, p. 22. Kantemir was the friend of Bolingbroke and
Montesquieu in Paris.
[1565] Sichler, p. 147.
[1566] Turner, pp. 40-41.
[1567] See the passages cited by Rambaud, p. 482, from her letter
to Voltaire.
[1568] Seume, Ueber das Leben ... der Kaiserin Catharina II: Werke,
ed. 1839, v, 239-40; Rambaud, pp. 482-84.
[1569] See Bishop Burnet's Letters, iv, ed. Rotterdam, 1686,
pp. 187-91.
[1570] Zeller, Histoire d'Italie, pp. 426-32, 450; Procter, Hist. of
Italy, 2nd ed. pp. 240, 268.
[1571] Burnet, as cited, pp. 195-97.
[1572] Prof. Flint, who insists on the deep piety of Vico, notes
that he "appears to have had strangely little interest in Christian
systematic theology" (Vico, 1884, p. 70).
[1573] Siciliani, Sul Rinnovamento della filosofia positiva in Italia,
1871, pp. 37-41.
[1574] Siciliani, p. 36.
[1575] Introduction (by Mignet?) to the Princess Belgiojoso's tr. La
Science Nouvelle, 1844, p. cxiii. Cp. Flint, Vico, 231.
[1576] Ganganelli, Papst Clemens XIV, seine Briefe und seine Zeit,
vom Verfasser der Römischen Briefe (Von Reumont), 1847, pp. 35-36,
and p. 155, note.
[1577] See the Storia della economia pubblica in Italia of G. Pecchio,
1829, p. 61 sq., as to the claim of Antonio Serra (Breve trattato,
etc. 1613) to be the pioneer of modern political economy. Cp. Hallam,
Lit. of Europe, iii, 164-66. Buckle (1-vol. ed. p. 122, note) has
claimed the title for William Stafford, whose Compendious or briefe
Examination of certain ordinary Complaints (otherwise called A Briefe
Conceipt of English Policy) appeared in 1581. But cp. Ingram (Hist. of
Pol. Econ. 1888, pp. 43-45) as to the prior claims of Bodin.
[1578] Briefe, as before cited, p. 408.
[1579] Correspondence littéraire, ed. 1829-31, vii, 331. Cp. Von
Reumont, Ganganelli, p. 33.
[1580] The Dei delitti e delle pene was translated into 22
languages. Pecchio, p. 144.
[1581] See in the 6th ed. of the Dei delitti (Harlem, 1766) the
appended Risposta ad uno scritto, etc., Parte prima, Accuse d'empietà.
[1582] See his letter to the Abbé Morellet, cited by Mr. Farrer in
ch. i of his ed. of Crimes and Punishments, 1880, p. 5. It describes
the Milanese as deeply sunk in prejudices.
[1583] Pecchio, p. 123.
[1584] Cp. McCulloch, Literature of Political Economy, 1845, p. 64;
Blanqui, Hist. de l'economie politique, 2e édit. ii, 432.
[1585] As to the genuineness of the Ganganelli letters, originally
much disputed, see Von Reumont's Ganganelli, Papst Clemens XIV;
seine Briefe und seine Zeit, 1847, pp. 40-44.
[1586] Lett. lvi, Eng. tr. 1777, i, 141-42. No. lxxii in Von Reumont's
Ganganelli, 1847.
[1587] Lett. xiii, 1749. Eng. tr. i, 44-46; No. cxiv in Von Reumont's
translation.
[1588] Lett. vi and xiv; Nos. ix and xxii in Von Reumont.
[1589] Lett. xxx, p. 83; No. xxxiv in Von Reumont.
[1590] Lett. xci; No. xcii in Von Reumont.
[1591] Lett. cxlvi; No. xiii in Von Reumont.
[1592] Lett. lxxxii, 1753 or 1754; No. lxi in Von Reumont.
[1593] Lett. cxxiv, 1769. This letter is not in Von Reumont's
collection, and appears to be regarded by him as spurious--or unduly
indiscreet.
[1594] Lett. lxxxiii, 1754; No. lxxiii in Von Reumont.
[1595] Corr. Litt. as cited, vii, 104.
[1596] Zeller, p. 473.
[1597] Zeller, pp. 478-79.
[1598] Julien Luchaire, Essai sur l'evolution intellectuelle de
l'Italie de 1815 à 1830, 1906, p. 3.
[1599] Parini wrote a reproving Ode on the subject. (Henri Hauvette,
Littérature Italienne, 1906, p. 371.) He was one of those disillusioned
by the course of the Revolution. (Id. p. 375.)
[1600] Hauvette, pp. 391-93.
[1601] Coxe, Memoirs of the Bourbon Kings of Spain, ed. 1815, iv, 408.
[1602] Villanueva, Vida Literaria, London, 1825.
[1603] Buckle, iii, 547-48 (1-vol. ed. 599-600). The last victim
seems to have been a woman accused of witchcraft. Her nose was cut
off before her execution. See the Marokkanische Briefe, 1785, p. 36;
and Buckle's note 272.
[1604] Letter of D'Alembert to Voltaire, 13 mai, 1773.
[1605] Grimm, Corr. Litt. x, 393.
[1606] Llorente, ii, 534.
[1607] As to which see Buckle, p. 607.
[1608] Llorente, ii, 544.
[1609] Id. ii, 544-47.
[1610] Grimm is evidently in error in his statement (Correspondance,
ed. 1829-31, x, 394) that one of the main grievances against Olavidès
was his having caused to be made a Spanish translation of Raynal's
book, which was never published. No such offence is mentioned by
Llorente. The case of Almodobar had been connected in French rumour
with that of Olavidès.
[1611] Llorente, ii, 532.
[1612] Id. ii, 534-35.
[1613] Id. pp. 547-48.
[1614] Llorente, ii. 549-50.
[1615] Id. ii, 472-73.
[1616] Id. pp. 436-40.
[1617] Id. ii, 440-42. Llorente mentions that Clavijo edited a
journal named The Thinker, "at a time when hardly anyone was to be
found who thought." A Frenchman, Langle having asserted, in his Voyage
d'Espagne, that the Thinker was without merit, the historian comments
that if Langle is right in the assertion, it will be the sole verity
in his book, but that, in view of his errors on all other matters,
it is probable that he is wrong there also.
[1618] Llorente, p. 449.
[1619] Id. ii, 450-51. The book was prohibited, but a printer at
Bayonne reissued it with an additional volume of the tracts written
for and against it.
[1620] Id. ii, 469-72.
[1621] Buckle, p. 618.
[1622] Id. p. 612.
[1623] Id. p. 613.
[1624] Carnota, The Marquis of Pombal, 2nd ed. 1871, p. 242.
[1625] Id. p. 240.
[1626] Id. pp. 261-62.
[1627] Id. p. 262.
[1628] Id. p. 375.
[1629] Cp. P. Godet, Hist. litt. de la suisse française, 1900.
[1630] E. de Budé, Vie de François Turrettini, 1871,
pp. 12-18. B. Turrettini was commissioned to write a history of the
Reformation at Geneva, which however remains in MS. He was further
commissioned in 1621 to go to Holland to obtain financial help for the
city, then seriously menaced by Savoy; and obtained 30,000 florins,
besides smaller sums from Hamburg and Bremen.
[1631] Cp. Budé, as cited, pp. 24 (birth-date wrong), 294; and the
Avis de l'Éditeur to the Traité de la Verité de la Religion Chrétienne
of J. A. Turretin, Paris, 1753.
[1632] Work cited, i, 8, note.
[1633] Lettre à Damilaville, 6 décembre, 1763. The reserved youth may
have been either Jean-Alphonse, grandson of the Socinian professor,
who was born in 1735 and died childless, or some other member of the
numerous Turrettini clan.
[1634] Voltaire to Damilaville, 12 juillet, 1763. "Il faut que vous
sachiez," explains Voltaire "que Jean Jacques n'a été condamné que
parce qu'on n'aime pas sa personne."
[1635] Voltaire to Damilaville, 21 auguste, 1763.
[1636] Cp. i, 2, 16, 56, 58, 65, 68, 70, 71, 73, 94; ii, 290, etc.
[1637] For instance: "Je me recommande contr'eux [les prêtres] à Dieu
le père, car pour le fils, vous savez qu'il a aussi peu de crédit
que sa mère à Genève" (Lettre à D'Alembert, 25 mars, 1758).... "Une
république où tout le monde est ouvertement socinien, exceptés ceux
qui font anabaptistes ou moraves. Figurez-vous, mon cher ami, qu'il
n'y a pas actuellement un chrétien de Genève à Berne; cela fait
frémir!" (To the same, 8 fév. 1776.)
[1638] On this see the correspondence of Voltaire and D'Alembert,
under dates 8, 28, and 29 janvier, 1757.
[1639] Lettre à D'Alembert, 27 août, 1757.
[1640] Lettres sur le Déisme, 1759, p. 6. Cp. pp. 84, 94, 103,
105, 412.
[1641] John Wesley in his Journal, dating May, 1737, speaks of having
everywhere met many more "converts to infidelity" than "converts to
Popery," with apparent reference to Carolina.
[1642] Such is the wording of the passage in the Autobiography in the
Edinburgh edition of 1803, p. 25, which follows the French translation
of the original MS. In the edition of the Autobiography and Letters
in the Minerva Library, edited by Mr. Bettany (1891, p. 11), which
follows Mr. Bigelow's edition of 1879, it runs: "Being then, from
reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points
of our religious doctrine...."
[1643] Only in 1784, however, appeared the first anti-Christian work
published in America, Ethan Allen's Reason the only Oracle of Man. As
to its positions see Conway, Life of Paine, ii, 192-93.
[1644] Autobiography, Bettany's ed. pp. 56, 65, 74, 77, etc.
[1645] Letter of March 9, 1790. Id. p. 636.
[1646] Cp. J. T. Morse's Thomas Jefferson, pp. 339-40.
[1647] MS. cited by Dr. Conway, Life of Paine, ii, 310-11.
[1648] Memoirs of Jefferson, 1829, iv, 300-301. The date is 1817. These
and other passages exhibiting Jefferson's deism are cited in Rayner's
Sketches of the Life, etc., of Jefferson, 1832, pp. 513-17.
[1649] Memoirs of Jefferson, iv, 331.
[1650] Dr. Conway, Life of Paine, ii, 310.
[1651] Extract from Jefferson's Journal under date February 1, 1800,
in the Memoirs, iv, 512. Gouverneur Morris, whom Jefferson further
cites as to Washington's unbelief, is not a very good witness; but
the main fact cited is significant.
[1652] Compare the testimony given by the Rev. Dr. Wilson, of Albany,
in 1831, as cited by R. D. Owen in his Discussion on the Authenticity
of the Bible with O. Bacheler (London, ed. 1840, p. 231), with
the replies on the other side (pp. 233-34). Washington's death-bed
attitude was that of a deist. See all the available data for his
supposed orthodoxy in Sparks's Life of Washington, 1852, app. iv.
[1653] So far as is known, Paine was the first writer to use the
expression "the religion of Humanity." See Conway's Life of Paine,
ii, 206. To Paine's influence, too, appears to be due the founding
of the first American Anti-Slavery Society. Id. i, 51-52, 60, 80, etc.
[1654] Cp. Conway's Life of Paine, ii, 205-207.
[1655] A letter of Franklin to someone who had shown him a freethinking
manuscript, advising against its publication (Bettany's ed. p. 620),
has been conjecturally connected with Paine, but was clearly not
addressed to him. Franklin died in 1790, and Paine was out of America
from 1787 onwards. But the letter is in every way inapplicable to
the Age of Reason. The remark: "If men are so wicked with religion,
what would they be without it?" could not be made to a devout deist
like Paine.
[1656] Conway, Life of Paine, ii, 254-55.
[1657] See Dr. Conway's chapter, "The American Inquisition," vol. ii,
ch. xvi; also pp. 361-62, 374, 379. The falsity of the ordinary charges
against Paine's character is finally made clear by Dr. Conway, ch. xix,
and pp. 371, 383, 419, 423. Cp. the author's pamphlet, Thomas Paine: An
Investigation (Bonner). The chronically revived story of his death-bed
remorse for his writings--long ago exposed (Conway, ii, 420)--is
definitively discredited in the latest reiteration. That occurs in
the Life and Letters of Dr. R. H. Thomas (1905), the mother of whose
stepmother was the Mrs. Mary Hinsdale, née Roscoe, on whose testimony
the legend rests. Dr. Thomas, a Quaker of the highest character,
accepted the story without question, but incidentally tells of the
old lady (p. 13) that "her wandering fancies had all the charm of
a present fairy-tale to us." No further proof is needed, after the
previous exposure, of the worthlessness of the testimony in question.
[1658] Conway, ii, 371.
[1659] See the details in Conway's Life, ii, 280-81, and note. He
had also a scheme for a gunpowder motor (id. and i, 240), and various
other remarkable plans.
[1660] Conway, ii, 362-71.
[1661] Testimonies quoted by R. D. Owen, as cited, pp. 231-32.
[1662] Conway, ii, 422.
[1663] Memoir of Sydney Smith, by his daughter, Lady Holland, ed. 1869,
p. 49. Lady Holland remarks on the same page that her father's religion
had in it "nothing intolerant."
[1664] Memoir of Sydney Smith, p. 142.
[1665] Julien Luchaire, Essai sur l'évolution intellectuelle de
l'Italie, 1906, pp. 5-7.
[1666] Dr. Ramage, Nooks and Byeways of Italy, 1868, pp. 76,
105-13. Ramage describes the helplessness of the better minds before
1830.
[1667] Luchaire, pp. 35, 36.
[1668] Id. p. 30.
[1669] Doblado (Blanco White), Letters from Spain, 1822. p. 358.
[1670] Thus the traveller and belletrist J. G. Seume, a zealous
deist and opponent of atheism, and a no less zealous patriot,
penned many fiercely freethinking maxims, as: "Where were the most
so-called positive religions, there was always the least morality";
"Grotius and the Bible are the best supports of despotism"; "Heaven
has lost us the earth"; "The best apostles of despotism and slavery
are the mystics." Apokryphen, 1806-1807, in Sämmtliche Werke, 1839,
iv, 157, 173, 177, 219.
[1671] C. H. Cottrell, Religious Movements of Germany, 1849, p. 12 sq.
[1672] Cp. the author's Evolution of States, pp. 138-39.
[1673] When I thus planned the treatment of the nineteenth century in
the first edition of this book, it was known to me that Mr. Alfred
W. Benn had in hand a work on The History of English Rationalism in
the Nineteenth Century; and the knowledge made me the more resolved
to keep my own record condensed. Duly published in 1906 (Longmans,
2 vols.), Mr. Benn's book amply fulfilled expectations; and to
it I would refer every reader who seeks a fuller survey than the
present. Its freshness of thought and vigour of execution will more
than repay him. Even Mr. Benn's copious work, however--devoting as it
does a large amount of space to a preliminary survey of the eighteenth
century--leaves room for various English monographs on the nineteenth,
to say nothing of the culture history of a dozen other countries.
[1674] Lecky, Hist. of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, ed. 1892,
iii, 382.
[1675] Cp. Conway's Life of Paine, ii, 252-53.
[1676] This translation, issued by "Sherwood, Neely, and Jones,
Paternoster Row, and all booksellers," purports to be "with
additions." The translation, however, has altered d'Holbach's atheism
to deism.
[1677] By W. Huttman. The book is "embellished with a head of Jesus"--a
conventional religious picture. Huttman's opinions may be divined from
the last sentence of his preface, alluding to "the high pretentions
and inflated stile of the lives of Christ which issue periodically
from the English press."
[1678] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 208-209.
[1679] See Harriet Martineau's History of the Peace, ed. 1877, ii,
87, and Mrs. Carlile Campbell's The Battle of the Press (Bonner,
1899), passim, as to the treatment of those who acted as Carlile's
shopmen. Women were imprisoned as well as men--e.g. Susanna Wright,
as to whom see Wheeler's Dictionary, and last ref. Carlile's wife and
sister were likewise imprisoned with him; and over twenty volunteer
shopmen in all went to jail.
[1680] Hone's most important service to popular culture was his issue
of the Apocryphal New Testament, which, by co-ordinating work of the
same kind, gave a fresh scientific basis to the popular criticism of
the gospel history. As to his famous trial for blasphemy on the score
of his having published certain parodies, political in intention, see
bk. i, ch. x (by Knight) of Harriet Martineau's History of the Peace.
[1681] Holyoake, Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life, i, 109-10. See
p. 111 as to other cases.
[1682] Art. by Holyoake in Dict. of Nat. Biog. Cp. Sixty Years,
per index.
[1683] Articles in Dict. of Nat. Biog.
[1684] Holyoake, Sixty Years, i, 47.
[1685] Kirkup, History of Socialism, 1892, p. 64.
[1686] "From an early age he had lost all belief in the prevailing
forms of religion" (Kirkup, p. 59).
[1687] Reformers of almost all schools, indeed, from the first
regarded Owen with more or less genial incredulity, some criticizing
him acutely without any ill-will. See Podmore's Robert Owen, 1906, i,
238-42. Southey was one of the first to detect his lack of religious
belief. Id. p. 222, n.
[1688] Podmore, i, 246.
[1689] Kirkup, as cited, p. 64.
[1690] Podmore, ii, 640.
[1691] "Extraordinary self-complacency," "autocratic action,"
"arrogance," are among the expressions used of him by his ablest
biographer. (Podmore, ii, 641.) Of him might be said, as of Emerson
by himself, "the children of the Gods do not argue"--the faculty
being absent.
[1692] Pamphlet sold at 1 1/2d., and "to be had of all the
Booksellers."
[1693] Of George Combe's Constitution of Man (1828), a deistic work,
over 50,000 copies were sold in Britain within twelve years, and 10,000
in America. Advt. to 4th ed. 1839. Combe avows that his impulse came
from the phrenologist Spurzheim.
[1694] See the details in his Last Trial by Jury for Atheism in
England.
[1695] The Gospel its Own Witness, 1799. rep. in Bohn's ed. of
The Principal Works and Remains of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, 1852,
pp. 136-37.
[1696] See Prof. Flint's tribute to the reasoning power of Bradlaugh
and Holyoake in his Anti-Theistic Theories, 4th ed. pp. 518-19.
[1697] See Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's Charles Bradlaugh, i, 149, 288-89.
[1698] For a full record see Part II of Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's
Charles Bradlaugh.
[1699] After Bradlaugh had secured his seat, the noble lord even
sought his acquaintance.
[1700] Though young Conservative members, after 1886, privately
professed sympathy.
[1701] Work cited, p. 524.
[1702] Coquerel, Essai sur l'histoire générale du christianisme,
1828, préf.
[1703] Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Diary in France, 1845, pp. 75-77.
[1704] "The miserable and deistical principle of the equality of all
religions" (id. p. 188). Cp. pp. 151, 153.
[1705] Id. pp. 15, 37, 45, 181, 185, 190.
[1706] Id. pp. 157-61. As to the general vogue of rationalism in France
at that period, see pp. 35, 204: and compare Saisset, Essais sur la
philosophie et la religion, 1845; The Progress of Religious Thought as
illustrated in the Protestant Church of France, by Dr. J. R. Beard,
1861; and Wilson's article in Essays and Reviews. As to Switzerland
and Holland, see Pearson, Infidelity, its Aspects, etc., 1853,
pp. 560-64, 575-84.
[1707] Louis Philippe sought to suppress this book, of which many
editions had appeared before 1830. See Blanco White's Life, 1845,
ii. 168.
[1708] Prof. E. Lavisse, Un Ministre: Victor Duruy, 1895 (rep. of
art. in Revue de Paris, Janv. 15 and Mars 1, 1895), p. 117.
[1709] Id. pp. 99-105.
[1710] Id. pp. 107-118.
[1711] Id. pp. 118-27.
[1712] Llorente, Hist. crit. de l'Inquisition de l'Espagne, 2e édit,
iv, 153.
[1713] Rapport of Ch. Fulpius in the Almanach de Libre Pensée, 1906.
[1714] Squier, Notes on Central America, 1856, p. 227.
[1715] Before 1840 the popular freethought propaganda had been partly
carried on under cover of Radicalism, as in Carlile's Republican, and
Lion, and in various publications of William Hone. Cp. H. B. Wilson's
article "The National Church," in Essays and Reviews, 9th ed. p. 152.
[1716] Described as "our chief atheistic organ" by the late
F. W. Newman "because Dr. James Martineau declined to continue
writing for it, because it interpolated atheistical articles between
his theistic articles" (Contributions ... to the early history of the
late Cardinal Newman, 1891, p. 103). The review was for a time edited
by J. S. Mill, and for long after him by Dr. John Chapman. It lasted
into the twentieth century, under the editorship of Dr. Chapman's
widow, and kept a free platform to the end.
[1717] Pastor W. Baur, Hamburg, Religious Life in Germany during the
Wars of Independence, Eng. tr. 1872, p. 41. H. J. Rose and Pusey,
in their controversy as to the causes of German rationalism, were
substantially at one on this point of fact. Rose, Letter to the Bishop
of London, 1829, pp. 19, 150, 161.
[1718] Id. p. 481.
[1719] Ueber die Religion: Reden an die gebildeten unter ihren
Verächtern. These are discussed hereinafter.
[1720] Lichtenberger, Hist. of Ger. Theol. in the Nineteenth
Cent. Eng. tr. 1889, pp. 122-23.
[1721] See the same volume, passim.
[1722] Karl von Raumer, Contrib. to the Hist. of the German
Universities, Eng. tr. 1859, p. 79. The intellectual tone of
W. Baur and K. von Raumer certainly protects them from any charge of
"enlightenment."
[1723] Laing, Notes of a Traveller, 1842, p. 181.
[1724] C. H. Cotterill, Relig. Movements of Germany in the Nineteenth
Century, 1849, pp. 39-40.
[1725] Id. pp. 27-28, 41-42.
[1726] Cp. Laing, as cited, pp. 206-207, 211.
[1727] Cotterill, as cited, p. 84.
[1728] Cotterill. as cited, pp. 43-47.
[1729] Rapport de Ida Altmann, in Almanach de Libre Pensée, 1906,
p. 20.
[1730] The principal have been: Das freie Wort and Frankfurter Zeitung,
Frankfort-on-Main; Der Freidenker, Friedrichshagen, near Berlin; Das
freireligiöse Sonntagsblatt, Breslau; Die freie Gemeinde, Magdeburg;
Der Atheist, Nuremberg; Menschentum, Gotha; Vossische Zeitung, Berlin;
Berliner Volkszeitung, Berlin; Vorwärts (Socialist), Berlin; Weser
Zeitung, Bremen; Hartungsche Zeitung, Königsberg; Kölnische Zeitung,
Cologne.
[1731] Studemund, Der moderne Unglaube in den unteren Ständen, 1901,
p. 14.
[1732] Id. p. 22.
[1733] A. D. McLaren, An Australian in Germany, 1911, pp. 181, 184.
[1734] Studemund, Der moderne Unglaube in den unteren Ständen, 1901,
pp. 17, 21.
[1735] Glossen zu Yves Guyot's und Sigismund Lacroix's "Die wahre
Gestalt des Christentums."
[1736] Studemund, p. 22.
[1737] Id. p. 23.
[1738] Id. p. 27.
[1739] Id. pp. 37-38.
[1740] Id. pp. 40-42. Cp. p. 43. Pastor Studemund cites other
inquirers, notably Rade, Gebhardt, Lorenz, and Dietzgen, all to the
same effect.
[1741] E.g. Pastor A. Kalthoff's Was wissen wir von Jesus? 1901. Since
that date the opinion has found new and powerful supporters in Germany.
[1742] "The people in the country do not read; in the towns they read
little. The journals are little circulated. In Russia one never sees
a cabman, an artisan, a labourer reading a newspaper" (Ivan Strannik,
La pensée russe contemporaine, 1903, p. 5).
[1743] Cp. E. Lavigne, Introduction à l'histoire du nihilisme russe,
1880, pp. 149, 161, 224; Arnaudo, Le Nihilisme, French trans. pp. 37,
58, 61, 63, 77, 86, etc.; Tikhomirov, La Russie, p. 290.
[1744] Tikhomirov, La Russie, pp. 325-26, 338-39.
[1745] Cp. Priestley, Essay on the First Principles of Government,
2nd ed. 1771, pp. 257-61, and Conway's Centenary History of South
Place, pp. 63, 77, 80.
[1746] See Rev. Joseph Hunter, An Historical Defence of the Trustees of
Lady Henley's Foundations, 1834; The History, Opinions, and Present
Legal Position of the English Presbyterians (official), 1834; An
Examination and Defence of the Principles of Protestant Dissent,
by the Rev. W. Hamilton Drummond, of Dublin, 1842.
[1747] Conway, Autobiography, 1905, i, 123.
[1748] So Prof. William James, The Will to Believe, etc., 1897, p. 133.
[1749] Conway, Emerson at Home and Abroad, 1883, ch. vii.
[1750] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts,
1848, ii, 422. Rationalism seems to have spread soonest in the canton
of Zürich. Id. ii, 427.
[1751] Grote, Seven Letters concerning the Politics of Switzerland,
pp. 34-35. Hagenbach (Kirchengeschichte, ii, 427-28) shows no shame
over the insurrection at Zürich. But cp. Beard, in Voices of the
Church in Reply to Dr. Strauss, 1845, pp. 17-18.
[1752] Cp. the rapport of Ch. Fulpius in the Almanach de Libre
Pensée, 1906.
[1753] G. M. Theal, South Africa ("Story of the Nations" series),
pp. 340, 345. Mr. Theal's view of the mental processes of the Boers
is somewhat à priori, and his explanation seems in part inconsistent
with his own narrative.
[1754] An English acquaintance of my own at Cape Town, who before
the war not only was an orthodox believer, but found his chief weekly
pleasure in attending church, was so astounded by the general attitude
of the clergy on the war that he severed his connection, once for
all. Thousands did the same in England.
[1755] I write on the strength of personal testimonies spontaneously
given to me in South Africa, some of them by clergymen of the Dutch
Reformed Church.
[1756] See the evidence collected in the pamphlet The Churches and
the War, by Alfred Marks. New Age Office, 1905.
[1757] For the survey here reduced to outline I am indebted to two
Swedish friends.
[1758] Cp. Lamon's Life of Lincoln, and J. B. Remsburg's Abraham
Lincoln: Was he a Christian? (New York, 1893.)
[1759] Remsburg, pp. 318-19.
[1760] Personal information.
[1761] Remsburg, p. 324.
[1762] Of these the New York Truthseeker has been the most energetic
and successful.
[1763] White, Warfare, i, 81.
[1764] White, Warfare, i, 84, 86, 314, 317, 318.
[1765] This view is not inconsistent with the fact that popular
forms of credulity are also found specially flourishing in the
West. Cp. Bryce, The American Commonwealth, 3rd ed. ii, 832-33.
[1766] As to the absolute predominance of rationalistic unbelief
(in the orthodox sense of the word) in educated Germany in the first
third of the century, see the Memoirs of F. Perthes, Eng. tr. 2nd
ed. ii, 240-45, 255, 266-75. Despite the various reactions claimed by
Perthes and others, it is clear that the tables have never since been
turned. Cp. Pearson, Infidelity, pp. 554-59, 569-74. Schleiermacher was
charged on his own side with making fatal concessions. Kahnis, Internal
Hist. of German Protestantism, Eng. tr. 1856, pp. 210-11; Robins,
A Defence of the Faith, 1862, i, 181; and Quinet as there cited.
[1767] Aus Schleiermachers Leben: In Briefen, 1860, i, 42, 84. The
father's letters, with their unctuous rhetoric, are a revelation of
the power of declamatory habit to eliminate sincere thought.
[1768] Werke, 1843, i, 140.
[1769] See Kabnis, p. 214, and refs. as to his relations with
Frau Grunow. "He belonged to the circle of Prince Louis, in which
intellect and art, but not morality," reigned. Ib. Compare the
sympathetic Lichtenberger, Hist. of Ger. Theol. in the Nineteenth
Cent. Eng. tr. 1889, pp. 103-104. It was of course his clerical
character that disadvantaged Schleiermacher in such matters.
[1770] Lichtenberger, as cited, p. 87.
[1771] Lichtenberger, as cited, p. 89.
[1772] Id. p. 109.
[1773] Id. pp. 123-24.
[1774] Id. p. 119.
[1775] Id. p. 129.
[1776] Strauss, Die Halben und die Ganzen, 1865, p. 18.
[1777] For estimates of his work cp. Baur, Kirchengeschichte des
19ten Jahrh., p. 45; Kahnis, as last cited; Pfleiderer, Development
of Theology in Germany, 1893, bk. i, ch. iii; bk. ii, ch. ii;
Lichtenberger, as cited; and art. by Rev. F. J. Smith in Theol. Review,
July, 1869.
[1778] Reuss, History of the Canon, Eng. tr. 1890, p. 387. Cp. Strauss,
Einleitung in Das Leben Jesu, § 10.
[1779] See a good account of the development in Strauss's Introductions
to his two Lives of Jesus.
[1780] In a volume entitled Offenbarung und Mythologie.
[1781] Hebräische Mythologie des alten und neuen Testaments.
[1782] Evangeliencommentar, 1800-1804; Leben Jesu, 1828.
[1783] Probabilia de Evangelii et Epistolarum Joannis Apostoli indole
et origine.
[1784] It is thus inaccurate--Strauss himself being the witness--to
say, as does Dr. Conybeare (Hist. of N. T. Crit. p. 107), that
Strauss was the first German writer to discern the unhistoricity of
the Fourth Gospel.
[1785] Das Leben Jesu, pref. to first ed. end.
[1786] Hausrath, David Friedrich Strauss und die Theologie seiner Zeit,
1878, ii, 233-34.
[1787] Pref. to work cited. Eng. tr. 1875, i, 86, 89.
[1788] Lichtenberger, as cited, p. 391.
[1789] Kritik der evang. Gesch. der Synoptiker, ed. 1846, Vorrede,
pp. v-xiii.
[1790] Baur, Kirchengesch. des 19ten Jahrh., pp. 388-89.
[1791] Gesch. der Politik, Kultur, und Aufklärung des 18ten Jahrh. 4
Bde. 1843-45; Gesch. der französ. Revolution, 3 Bde. 1847.
[1792] Russland und das Germanenthum, 1847.
[1793] Lichtenberger, p. 378.
[1794] Philo, Strauss, Renan, und das Urchristenthum, 1874; Christus
und die Cäsaren, 1877.
[1795] Das Christenthum und die chr. Kirche, 1854, p. 34.
[1796] Das Leben Jesu für das deutsche Volk bearbeitet, § 41, 3te
Aufl. p. 254, 1st par.
[1797] Id. ib.
[1798] Cp. Christianity and Mythology, pt. iii, div. ii, § 6.
[1799] Pref. to second Leben Jesu, ed. cited, p. xv.
[1800] Zeller, David Friedrich Strauss, 2te Aufl. p. 113.
[1801] Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism, 1893,
p. 16. Eichhorn seems to have known Astruc's work only at second-hand,
yet, without him, it might be contended, Astruc's work would have
been completely lost to science. (Id. p. 23.)
[1802] See Dr. Cheyne's surveys, which are those of a liberal
ecclesiastic--a point of view on which he has since notably advanced.
[1803] Cheyne, pp. 187-88.
[1804] Kuenen, The Hexateuch, Eng. tr. introd. pp. xiv-xvii.
[1805] Dr. Beard, in Voices of the Church in Reply to Strauss, 1845,
pp. 16-17.
[1806] Zeller, D. F. Strauss, Eng. tr. 1879, p. 56.
[1807] See Gunkel, Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verständnis des Neuen
Testaments, 1903, pp. 1-2, note.
[1808] Mythen der alten Perser als Quellen christlicher Glaubenslehren,
1835; Der Mystagog, oder Deutung der Geheimenlehren, Symbole und Feste
der christlichen Kirche, 1838; Rabbinische Quellen und Parallelen
zu neutestamentlichen Schriftstellen, 1839; Biblische Mythologie des
alten und neuen Testaments, 1842; Der Festkalender, 1847, etc.
[1809] Der Mystagog, 1838, p. vii, note, and p. 241.
[1810] See Nork's preamble on Hr. Fr. Daumer, ein kurzweiliger
Molochsfänger, in his Biblische Mythologie, Bd. i.
[1811] After being acquitted in 1880. The first charge was founded
on his Britannica article "Bible"; the second on the article "Hebrew
Language and Literature," which appeared after the acquittal.
[1812] These utterances were noted for their "vigour and independence"
by Kuenen, and also by Dr. Cheyne, who remarks that the earlier
work of Kalisch on Exodus (1855) was somewhat behind the critical
standpoint of contemporary investigators on the Continent. (Founders
of Old Testament Criticism, p. 207.)
[1813] See his Introduction to the Study of the Old Testament,
pref. "It is the spirit of compromise that I chiefly dread for our
younger students," wrote Dr. Cheyne in 1893 (Founders, p. 247). His
courteous criticism of Dr. Driver does not fail to point the moral
in that writer's direction.
[1814] Conrad, The German Universities for the Last Fifty Years,
Eng. tr. 1885, p. 74. See p. 100 as to the financial measures taken;
and p. 105 as to the essentially financial nature of the "reaction."
[1815] Id. p. 103.
[1816] Id. p. 104.
[1817] Id. p. 112. See pp. 118-19 as to Austria.
[1818] Id. pp. 97-98.
[1819] White, Warfare, i, 239. In February, 1914, on a given Sunday,
out of a Protestant population of over two millions, only 35,000
persons attended church in Berlin. Art. on "Creeds, Heresy-Hunting,
and Secession in German Protestantism To-day," in Hibbert Journal
for July, 1914, p. 722.
[1820] See Haeckel's Freedom in Science and Teaching, Eng. tr. with
pref. by Huxley, 1879, pp. xix, xxv, xxvii, 89-90; and Clifford.
[1821] Büchner, for straightforwardly renouncing his connection with
the State Church a generation ago, was blamed by many who held his
philosophic opinions. In our own day, there has arisen a considerable
Austrittsbewegung, or "Withdrawal Movement"; while creedless clerics
strive to remain inside a Church bent on ejecting them. A. D. McLaren,
in Hibbert Journal for July, 1914, art. cited.
[1822] Tracts for the Times, vol. ii, ed. 1839; Records of the Church,
No. xxiv.
[1823] Tracts for the Times, No. 3.
[1824] Id. No. 32.
[1825] Cross's Life, 1-vol. ed. p. 79.
[1826] Account of the Printed Text of the Greek N. T., 1854, pref. and
pp. 47, 112-13, 266.
[1827] A third brother, Charles Robert, became an atheist. This,
as well as his psychic infirmity, insures him sufficiently severe
treatment at the hands of his theistic brother in the introduction
to the latter's Contributions Chiefly to the Early History of the
late Cardinal Newman, 1891.
[1828] Latterly abandoned by the learned author, who before his death
disclosed his name--W. R. Cassels.
[1829] See the testimonies of Pfleiderer, The Development of Theology
since Kant, Eng. tr. 1890, p. 397, and Dr. Samuel Davidson, Introd. to
the Study of the New Testament, pref. to 2nd ed.
[1830] Ptie. i, liv. i, ch. v.
[1831] Id. i, liv. iii, ch. ii.
[1832] It is further to be remembered, however, that Mr. Matthew
Arnold saw fit to defend Chateaubriand, calling him "great," when
his fame was being undone by common sense.
[1833] C. Wordsworth, Diary in France, 1845, pp. 55-56, 124, 204.
[1834] Essais sur la philosophie et la religion, 1845, p. 193.
[1835] Histoire, tom. vii, Renaissance, introd. § 6.
[1836] M. Faguet writes (Études sur le XIXe Siècle, p. 352) that
"Michelet croit à l'âme plus qu'à Dieu, encore que profondément
déiste. Les théories philosophiques modernes lui étaient
pénibles." This may be true, though, hardly any evidence is offered
on the latter head; but when M. Faguet writes, "Est-il chrétien? Je
n'en sais rien ... mais il sympathise avec la pensée chrétienne,"
he seems to ignore the preface to the later editions of the Histoire
de la révolution française. To pronounce Christianity, as Michelet
there does, essentially anti-democratic, and therefore hostile to
the Revolution, was, for him, to condemn it.
[1837] Letter to Sainte-Beuve, cited by Levallois, Sainte-Beuve,
1872, p. 14.
[1838] Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, p. 951.
[1839] "L'incrédulité de Sainte-Beuve était sincère, radicale,
et absolue. Elle a été invariable et invincible pendant trente
ans. Voilà la vérité" (Jules Levallois, Sainte-Beuve, 1872,
préf. p. xxxiii). M. Levallois, who writes as a theist, was one of
Sainte-Beuve's secretaries. M. Zola, who spoke of the famous critic's
rationalism as "une négation n'osant conclure," admitted later that
it was hardly possible for him to speak more boldly than he did
(Documents Littéraires, 1881, pp. 314, 325-28). And M. Lavisse has
shown (as cited above, p. 406) with what courage he supported Duruy in
the Senate against the attacks of the exasperated clerical party. See
also his letter of 1867 to Louis Viardot in the avant-propos to that
writer's Libre Examen: Apologie d'un Incrédule, 6e édit. 1881, p. 3.
[1840] That Wordsworth was not an orthodox Christian is fairly
certain. Both in talk and in poetry he put forth a pantheistic
doctrine. Cp. Benn, Hist. of Eng. Rationalism, i, 227-29; and
Coleridge's letter of Aug. 8, 1820, in Allsopp's Letters, etc.,
of S. T. Coleridge, 3rd ed. 1864, pp. 56-57.
[1841] Leslie Stephen, George Eliot, p. 27.
[1842] Mr. Benn (Hist. of Eng. Rationalism, i, 226, 309 sq.) has some
interesting discussions on Scott's relation to religion, but does
not take full account of biographical data and of Scott's utterances
outside of his novels. The truth probably is that Scott's brain was
one with "watertight compartments."
[1843] At the age of twenty-five we find him writing to Gifford: "I
am no bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that because I doubted
the immortality of man I should be charged with denying the existence
of God" (letter of June 18, 1813).
[1844] By the Court of Chancery, in 1822, the year in which copyright
was refused to the Lectures of Dr. Lawrence. Harriet Martineau,
History of the Peace, ii, 87.
[1845] W. Sharp, Life of Severn, 1892, pp. 86-87, 90, 117-18.
[1846] On reading Lamb's severe rejoinder, Southey, in distress,
apologized, and Lamb at once relented (Life and Letters of John
Rickman, by Orlo Williams, 1912, p. 225). Hence the curtailment of
Lamb's letter in the ordinary editions of his works.
[1847] William Allingham: A Diary, 1907, p. 253. Cp. p. 268.
[1848] Id. p. 232.
[1849] Allingham, as cited, p. 254.
[1850] Id. p. 211. Carlyle said the same thing to Moncure Conway.
[1851] Cp. Prof. Bain's J. S. Mill, pp. 157, 191; Froude's London
Life of Carlyle, i, 458.
[1852] Bain, p. 128.
[1853] See Brougham's letters in the Correspondence of Macvey Napier,
1879, pp. 333-37. Brougham is deeply indignant, not at the fact, but
at the indiscreet revelation of it--as also at the similar revelation
concerning Pitt (p. 334).
[1854] My Relations with Carlyle, 1903, p. 2.
[1855] Morning Post, March 9, 1849.
[1856] Germany, by Bisset Hawkins, M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P., Inspector
of Prisons, late Professor at King's College, etc., 1838, p. 171.
[1857] History, ch. xix. Student's ed. ii, 411.
[1858] Sometimes he gives a clue; and we find Brougham privately
denouncing him for his remark (Essay on Ranke's History of the Popes,
6th par.) that to try "without the help of revelation to prove the
immortality of man" is vain. "It is next thing to preaching atheism,"
shouts Brougham (Letter of October 20, 1840, in Correspondence of
Macvey Napier, p. 333), who at the same time hotly insisted that
Cuvier had made an advance in Natural Theology by proving that there
must have been one divine interposition after the creation of the
world--to create species. (Id. p. 337.)
[1859] In 1830, for instance, we find a Scottish episcopal D.D. writing
that "Infidelity has had its day; it, depend upon it, will never
be revived--NO MAN OF GENIUS WILL EVER WRITE ANOTHER WORD IN ITS
SUPPORT." Morehead, Dialogues on Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 266.
[1860] Cp. the author's Modern Humanists, pp. 189-94.
[1861] Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System (1797),
8th ed. p. 368. Wilberforce points with chagrin to the superiority
of Mohammedan writers in these matters.
[1862] "In point of tendency I should class her books among the most
irreligious I ever read," delineating good characters in every aspect,
"and all this without the remotest allusion to Christianity, the only
true religion." Cited in O. Gregory's Brief Memoir of Robert Hall,
1833, p. 242. The context tells how Miss Edgeworth avowed that she had
not thought religion necessary in books meant for the upper classes.
[1863] Art. "The Faith of Richard Jefferies," by H. S. Salt, in
Westminster Review, August, 1905, rep. as pamphlet by the R. P. A.,
1906.
[1864] The writer of these scurrilities is Mr. Bramwell Booth, War Cry,
May 27, 1905.
[1865] Cp. Mrs. Sutherland Orr's article on "The Religious Opinions of
Robert Browning" in the Contemporary Review, December, 1891, p. 878;
and the present writer's Tennyson and Browning as Teachers, 1903.
[1866] Apropos of his Theatrocrat, which he pronounced "the
most profound and original of English books." Mr. Davidson in a
newspaper article proclaimed himself on socio-political grounds an
anti-Christian. "I take the first resolute step out of Christendom,"
was his claim (Daily Chronicle, December 20, 1905).
[1867] See Talks with Emerson, by C. J. Woodbury, 1890, pp. 93-94.
[1868] It was in his old age that Whitman tended most to "theize"
Nature. In conversation with Dr. Moncure Conway, he once used the
expression that "the spectacle of a mouse is enough to stagger a
sextillion of infidels." Dr. Conway replied: "And the sight of the
cat playing with the mouse is enough to set them on their feet again";
whereat Whitman tolerantly smiled.
[1869] Kahnis, Internal Hist. of Ger. Protestantism, Eng. tr. 1856,
p. 78.
[1870] Geständnisse, end (Werke, ed. 1876, iv, 59).
[1871] Zur Gesch. der Relig. und Philos. in Werke, ed. cited, iii, 80.
[1872] See Ernest Newman's Study of Wagner, 1899, p. 390, note,
as to the vagueness of Wagnerians on the subject.
[1873] Tikhomirov, La Russie, 2e édit. p. 343.
[1874] See Comte de Voguë's Le roman russe, p. 218, as to his
propaganda of atheism.
[1875] Arnaudo, Le Nihilisme et les Nihilistes, French tr. 50.
[1876] Tikhomirov, p. 344.
[1877] "Il [Tourguénief] était libre-penseur, et détestât l'apparat
religieux d'une manière toute particulière." I. Pavlovsky, Souvenirs
sur Tourguénief, 1887, p. 242.
[1878] See the article "Un Précurseur d'Henrik Ibsen, Soeren
Kierkegaard," in the Revue de Paris, July 1, 1901.
[1879] Prof. A. D. White, Hist. of the Warfare of Science with
Theology, 1896, i, 17, 22.
[1880] The phrase is used by a French Protestant pastor. La vérité
chrétienne et la doute moderne (Conférences), 1879, pp. 24-25.
[1881] Antiquities of the Jews, by William Brown, D.D., Edinburgh,
1826, i, 121-22. Brown quotes "from a friend" a demonstration of the
monstrous consequences of a stoppage of the earth's rotation.
[1882] Theopneustia: The Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures,
Eng. trans. Edinburgh, 1850, pp. 246-49. Gaussen elaborately argues
that if eighteen minutes were allowed for the stoppage of the earth's
rotation, no shock would occur. Finally, however, he argues that there
may have been a mere refraction of the sun's rays--an old theory,
already set forth by Brown.
[1883] Dr. C. R. Edmonds, Introd. to rep. of Leland's View of the
Deistical Writers, Tegg's ed. 1837, p. xxiii.
[1884] The work consists of twelve "Mémoires" or treatises, six of
which were read in 1796-1797 at the Institute. They appeared in book
form in 1802.
[1885] Rapports, Ier Mémoire, § ii, near end. (Éd. 1843,
p. 73.) Cp. Préf. (pp. 46-47).
[1886] Ed. cited, p. 54. Cp. p. 207, note.
[1887] Not published till 1824.
[1888] Ueberweg, ii, 339.
[1889] Cp. Luchaire, as cited, p. 36.
[1890] Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, ii, 134.
[1891] "Since Cabanis, the referring back of mental functions to
the nervous system has remained dominant in physiology, whatever
individual physiologists may have thought about final causes" (Lange,
ii, 70). Compare the tribute of Cabanis's orthodox editor Cerise
(ed. 1843, Introd. pp. xlii-iii).
[1892] Rapports, IIe Mémoire, near end. (Ed. cited, p. 122.)
[1893] See the already cited introduction of Cerise, who solved the
problem religiously by positing "a force which executes the plans
of God without our knowledge or intervention" (p. xix). He goes on
to lament the pantheism of Dr. Dubois (whose Examen des doctrines de
Cabanis, Gall, et Broussais (1842) was put forward as a vindication
of the "spiritual" principle), and of the German school of physiology
represented by Oken and Burdach.
[1894] Lawrence's Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural
History of Man, 8th ed. 1840, pp. 1-3. The aspersion of Abernethy is
typical of the orthodox malignity of the time. Cabanis in his preface
had expressly contended for the all-importance of morals. The orthodox
Dr. Cerise, who edited his book in 1843, while acknowledging the high
character of Cabanis, thought fit to speak of "the materialists" as
"interested in abasing man" (introd. p. xxi). On the score of fear
of demoralization, the champions of "spirit" themselves exhibited
the maximum of baseness.
[1895] Lawrence's Lectures, p. 9, note.
[1896] Id. pp. 168-69.
[1897] Yet Lawrence was created a baronet two months before his
death. So much progress had been made in half a century.
[1898] Work cited, pp. 355 sq., 375 sq. The tone is at times expressive
of a similar attitude towards historical religion--e.g.: "Human
testimony is of so little value ... that it cannot be received with
sufficient caution. To doubt is the beginning of wisdom." Id. p. 269.
[1899] Cp. Whewell, Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed. iii, 505.
[1900] White, as cited, i, 222-23, gives a selection of the language
in general use among theologians on the subject.
[1901] The early policy of the Geological Society of London (1807),
which professed to seek for facts and to disclaim theories as premature
(cp. Whewell, iii, 428; Buckle, iii, 392), was at least as much
socially as scientifically prudential.
[1902] See the excellent monograph of W. M. Mackenzie, Hugh Miller:
A Critical Study, 1905, ch. vi; and cp. Spencer's essay on Illogical
Geology--Essays, vol. i; and Baden Powell's Christianity without
Judaism, 1857, p. 254 sq. Miller's friend Dick, the Thurso naturalist,
being a freethinker, escaped such error. (Mackenzie, pp. 161-64.)
[1903] Cp. the details given by Whewell, iii, 406-408, 411-13,
506-507, as to early theories of a sound order, all of which came to
nothing. Steno, a Dane resident in Italy in the seventeenth century,
had reached non-Scriptural and just views on several points. Cp. White,
Hist. of the Warfare of Science with Theology, i, 215. Leonardo da
Vinci and Frascatorio had reached them still earlier. Above, vol. i,
p. 371.
[1904] Metamorphoses, lib. xv.
[1905] He had just completed a work on the subject at his
death. Cp. Mackenzie, Hugh Miller, as cited, pp. 134-35, 146-47.
[1906] Christianity and Judaism, pp. 256-57.
[1907] See Charles Darwin's Historical Sketch prefixed to the Origin
of Species.
[1908] Meding, as cited by Darwin, 6th ed. i, p. xv. Goethe seems
to have had his general impulse from Kielmeyer, who also taught
Cuvier. Virchow, Göthe als Naturforscher, 1861, Beilage x.
[1909] Memoirs of Newton, i, 131. Cp. More Worlds than One, 1854,
pp. vi, 226.
[1910] See Darwin's Sketch, as cited.
[1911] Letter of March 16, 1845, in Life of Whewell, by Mrs. Stair
Douglas, 2nd ed. 1882, pp. 318-19. If this statement be true as to
Owen, he shuffled badly in his correspondence with the author of the
Vestiges. See the Life of Sir Richard Owen, 1894, i, 251.
[1912] Mackenzie, Hugh Miller, p. 185.
[1913] Foot-Prints of the Creator, end.
[1914] Oxford Essays, 1856, p. 5.
[1915] Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed. iii, 479-83; Life,
as above cited. Whewell is said to have refused to allow a copy of the
Origin of Species to be placed in the Trinity College Library. White,
i, 84.
[1916] White, i, 70 sq.
[1917] Edward Clodd, Thomas Henry Huxley, 1902, pp. 19-20.
[1918] Luthardt, Fundamental Truths of Christianity, Eng. tr. 1865,
p. 74.
[1919] See the many examples cited by White. As late as 1885 the
Scottish clergyman Dr. Lee is quoted as calling the Darwinians
"gospellers of the gutter," and charging on their doctrine "utter
blasphemy against the divine and human character of our incarnate Lord"
(White, i, 83). Carlyle is quoted as calling Darwin "an apostle of
dirt-worship." His admirers appear to regard him as having made amends
by admitting that Darwin was personally charming.
[1920] E.g. the Education, small ed. pp. 41, 155.
[1921] I am informed on good authority that in later life Huxley
changed his views on the subject. He had abundant cause. As early as
1879 he is found complaining (pref. to Eng. tr. of Haeckel's Freedom
in Science and Teaching, p. xvii) of the mass of "falsities at present
foisted upon the young in the name of the Church."
[1922] See a choice collection in the pamphlet What Men of Science
say about God and Religion, by A. E. Proctor; Catholic Truth Society.
[1923] Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. 1888, iii, 179.
[1924] It is doubtful whether C. A. Walckenaer should be so
described. His Essai sur l'histoire de l'espèce humaine (1798) has
real scientific value.
[1925] See the author's Buckle and his Critics, 1895.
[1926] Europe during the Middle Ages, 11th ed. i, 377.
[1927] Cp. his Decline of the Roman Republic, 1864, i, 345-47; and
note on p. 447 of his translation of Plutarch's Brutus, Bohn ed. of
Lives, vol. iv.
[1928] See The Dynamics of Religion, pp. 227-33.
[1929] It is difficult to understand the claim made for Hegel by his
translator, the Rev. E. B. Speirs, that any student of his lectures
on the Philosophy of Religion "will be constrained to admit that in
them we have the true 'sources' of the evolution principle as applied
to the study of religion" (edit. pref. to trans. of work cited, i,
p. viii). To say nothing of Fontenelle and De Brosses, Constant had
laid out the whole subject before Hegel.
[1930] Primitive Culture, i. 2.
[1931] Life and Letters, i, 151.
[1932] Principles of Sociology, 3 vols. 1876-96.
[1933] Cp. Saintes, Hist. crit. du rationalisme en Allemagne, p. 323.
[1934] Id. pp. 322-24.
[1935] As to Hegel's mental development cp. Dr. Beard on "Strauss,
Hegel, and their Opinions," in Voices of the Church in Reply to
Strauss, 1845, pp. 3-4.
[1936] E. Caird, Hegel, 1883, p. 94.
[1937] E.g. Philos. of Religion, introd. Eng. tr. i, 38-40.
[1938] Id. p. 41. Cp. pp. 216-17.
[1939] Id. p. 219.
[1940] Cp. Morell, as cited, and pp. 195-96; and Feuerbach, as
summarized by Baur, Kirchengeschichte des 19ten Jahrh. p. 390.
[1941] Cp. Michelet as cited by Morell, ii, 192-93.
[1942] As to Strauss cp. Beard, as above cited, pp. 21-22, 30; and
Zeller, David Friedrich Strauss, Eng. tr. pp. 35, 47-48, 71-72, etc.
[1943] As to Vatke see Pfleiderer, as cited, p. 252 sq.; Cheyne,
Founders of O. T. Criticism, 1893, p. 135.
[1944] E.g. Dr. Hutchison Stirling. See his trans. of Schwegler's
Handbook of the History of Philosophy, 6th ed. p. 438 sq.
[1945] Baur, last cit. p. 389.
[1946] Geständnisse, Werke, iv, 33. Cp. iii, 110.
[1947] Cp. Hagenbach, pp. 369-72; Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought,
pp. 387-88. On Bauer's critical development and academic career see
Baur, Kirchengesch. des 19ten Jahrh. pp. 386-89.
[1948] Die Selbstzersetzung des Christenthums und die Religion der
Zukunft, 2te Aufl. 1874 trans. in Eng. as The Religion of the Future,
1886.
[1949] See Schopenhauer's dialogues on Religion and Immortality,
and his essay on The Christian System (Eng. tr. by T. B. Samplers),
and Nietzsche's Antichrist. The latter work is discussed by the writer
in Essays in Sociology, vol. ii.
[1950] Prof. Seth Pringle-Pattison, who passes many just criticisms
on their work (Philos. of Relig. in Kant and Hegel, rep. with The
Philosophical Radicals), does not seem to suspect this determination.
[1951] Baur gives a good summary, Kirchengeschichte, pp. 390-94.
[1952] "M. Feuerbach et la nouvelle école hégélienne," in Études
d'histoire religieuse.
[1953] A. Kohut, Ludwig Feuerbach, sein Leben und seine Werke, 1909,
p. 48.
[1954] Die Halben und die Ganzen, p. 50. "Feuerbach a ruiné le système
de Hegel et fondé la positivisme." A. Lévy, La philosophie de Feuerbach
et son influence sur la litt. allemande, 1904, introd. p. xxii.
[1955] E.g. "All knowledge, all conviction, all piety ... is based
on the principle that in the spirit, as such, the consciousness of
God exists immediately with the consciousness of itself." Philos. of
Relig. Eng. tr. introd. i. 42-43.
[1956] Essence of Christianity, Eng. tr. 1854, p. 12.
[1957] Kirchengeschichte des 19ten Jahrhunderts, pp. 393-94.
[1958] Cp. A. Lévy, as cited, ch. iv.
[1959] Id. ch. ii.
[1960] Reden über Religion, ihr Entstehen und Vergehen, an die
Gebildeten unter ihren Verehrern--a parody of the title of the famous
work of Schleiermacher.
[1961] Work cited, p. 119.
[1962] Büchner expressly rejected the term "materialism" because of its
misleading implications or connotations. Cp. in Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's
Charles Bradlaugh the discussion in Pt. ii, ch. i, § 3 (by J. M. R.).
[1963] While the cognate works of Carl Vogt and Moleschott have
gone out of print, Büchner's, recast again and again, continues to
be republished.
[1964] Cp. Paul Deschanel, Figures Littéraires, 1889, pp. 130-32,
171-73; Lévy-Bruhl, The Philosophy of Auguste Comte, Eng. tr. 1903,
p. 190; and Ch. Adam, La Philosophie en France, 1894. p. 228.
[1965] Adam, as cited, pp. 227-30.
[1966] In his Mélanges philosophiques (1833), Eng. trans. (incomplete)
by George Ripley, Philos. Essays of Th. Jouffroy, Edinburgh, 1839, ii,
32. Ripley, who was one of the American transcendentalist group and
a member of the Brook Farm Colony, indicates his own semi-rationalism
in his Introductory Note, p. xxv.
[1967] Mélanges philosophiques, trans. as cited, ii, 95.
[1968] Essai, cited, i, 232, 237.
[1969] Id. pp. 241-43.
[1970] Id. p. 221.
[1971] Correspondance, 1858-86, letter of May 26, 1833.
[1972] Letters of August 1 and November 25.
[1973] Cp. Ch. Adam, La Philosophie en France, 1894, p. 105.
[1974] Id. p. 84.
[1975] Littré, Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive, pp. 123,
125-26.
[1976] Article in 1844, rep. in Essais sur la philosophie et la
religion, 1845, p. 1.
[1977] See M. Lévy-Bruhl's Philosophy of Auguste Comte,
Eng. tr. pp. 10-15. M. Lévy-Bruhl really does not attempt to meet
Littre's argument, which he puts aside.
[1978] Cp. Prof. Botta's chapter in Ueberweg's Hist. of Philos. ii,
513-16.
[1979] Veitch's Memoir of Sir William Hamilton, 1869,
p. 54. Cp. Hamilton's own Discussions, 1852, p. 187 (rep. of article
of 1839).
[1980] Veitch, p. 214.
[1981] In his Church of Englandism and its Catechism Examined (1818),
and Not Paul but Jesus (1823), by "Gamaliel Smith."
[1982] Under the pseudonym of Philip Beauchamp. See The Minor Works of
George Grote, edited by Professor Bain, 1873, p. 18; Athenæum, May 31,
1873; J. S. Mill's Autobiography, p. 69; and Three Essays on Religion,
p. 76.
[1983] Cp. Morell, Spec. Philos. of Europe in the Nineteenth Century,
ii, 620; and Life and Corr. of Whately, by E. Jane Whately, abridged
ed. p. 159.
[1984] Articles in the Edinburgh Review (1829-30); and professorial
lectures at Edinburgh (1839-56).
[1985] Cp. Veitch's Memoir, pp. 195-97.
[1986] Bampton Lectures on The Limits of Religious Thought, 4th
ed. pref. p. xxxvi, note. After thus declaring all metaphysics to be
profoundly delusive, Mansel shows at his worst (Philosophy of the
Conditioned, 1866, p. 188) by disparaging Mill as an incompetent
metaphysician.
[1987] Id. p. xxxviii.
[1988] Spencer has avowed in his Autobiography (ii, 75) what might be
surmized by critical readers, that he wrote the First Part of First
Principles in order to guard against the charge of "materialism." This
motive led him to misrepresent "atheism," and there was a touch of
retribution in the general disregard of his disavowal of materialism,
at which he expresses surprise. The broad fact remains that for
prudential reasons he set forth at the very outset of his system a
set of conclusions which could properly be reached only at the end,
if at all.
[1989] As to his fluctuations, which lasted till his death, cp. the
author's New Essays towards a Critical Method, 1897, pp. 144-47,
149-54, 168-69.
[1990] Baur, Die christliche Lehre der Versöhnung, 1838, pp. 54-63,
124-31.
[1991] Benrath, Bernardino Ochino, Eng. tr. pp. 248-87.
[1992] Field's Memoirs of Parr, 1828, ii, 363, 374-79.
[1993] See Pearson's Infidelity, its Aspects, Causes, and Agencies,
1853, p. 215 sq. The position of Maurice and Parr (associated with
other and later names) is there treated as one of the prevailing forms
of "infidelity," and called spiritualism. In Germany the orthodox
made the same dangerous answer to the theistic criticism. See the
Memoirs of F. Perthes, Eng. tr. 2nd. ed. ii, 242-43.
[1994] Ed. cited, pp. 158-59.
[1995] Pearson, as cited, pp. 560-62, 568-79, 584-84.
[1996] Letter in W. L. Courtney's J. S. Mill, 1889, p. 142.
[1997] Cp. Schechter, Studies in Judaism, 1896, pp. 59, 71. Schechter
writes with a marked Judaic prejudice.
[1998] Id. pp. 117-18.
[1999] This title imitates that of the famous More Nebuchim of
Maimonides.
[2000] Zunz, cited by Schechter, p. 79.
[2001] Whence Krochmal is termed the Father of Jewish
Science. Id. p. 81.
[2002] A Life of Mr. Yukichi Fukuzawa, by Asatarô Miyamori, revised
by Prof. E. H. Vickers, Tokyo, 1902, pp. 9-10.
[2003] Pamphlet cited, p. 16.
[2004] A curious example of sporadic freethought occurs in a pamphlet
published towards the end of the eighteenth century. In 1771 a writer
named Motoori began a propaganda in favour of Shintôism with the
publication of a tract entitled Spirit of Straightening. This tract
emphatically asserted the divinity of the Mikado, and elicited a
reply from another writer named Ichikawa, who wrote: "The Japanese
word kami (God) was simply a title of honour; but in consequence of
its having been used to translate the Chinese character shin (shên)
a meaning has come to be attached to it which it did not originally
possess. The ancestors of the Mikados were not Gods, but men, and were
no doubt worthy to be reverenced for their virtues; but their acts were
not miraculous nor supernatural. If the ancestors of living men were
not human beings, they are more likely to have been birds or beasts
than Gods." Art.: "The Revival of Pure Shinto," by Sir E. N. Satow,
in Trans. Asiatic Society of Japan.
[2005] Lafcadio Hearn, Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation, 1904,
p. 313; cp. p. 46.
[2006] Thus the third emperor of the Ming dynasty in China (1425-1435),
referring to the belief in a future life, makes the avowal: "I am fain
to sigh with despair when I see that in our own day men are just as
superstitious as ever" (Prof. E. H. Parker, China and Religion, 1905,
p. 99).
[2007] See Hearn, as cited, passim.
[2008] Cp. Sir F. S. P. Lely, Suggestions for the Better Governing
of India, 1906, p. 59.
[2009] See article on "The Future of Turkey" in the Contemporary
Review, April, 1899, by "A Turkish Official."
[2010] Yet, as early as the date of the Crimean War, it was noted by
an observer that "young Turkey makes profession of atheism." Ubicini,
La Turquie actuelle, 1855, p. 361. Cp. Sir G. Campbell, A Very Recent
View of Turkey, 2nd ed. 1878, p. 65. Vambéry makes somewhat light of
such tendencies (Der Islam im 19ten Jahrhundert, 1875, pp. 185,187);
but admits cases of atheism even among mollahs, as a result of European
culture (p. 101).
[2011] Ubicini (p. 344), with Vambéry and most other observers,
pronounces the Turks the most religious people in Europe.
[2012] H. M. Baird, Modern Greece, New York, 1856, pp. 123-24.
[2013] Id., p. 320.
[2014] Id., p. 339.
[2015] Id., p. 86.
[2016] Id., p. 340.
[2017] Prof. Neocles Karasis, Greeks and Bulgarians in the Nineteenth
and Twentieth Centuries, London, 1907, pp. 15-17, citing a Bulgarian
journal.
[2018] In the Edinburgh Mirror of 1779 (No. 30) Henry Mackenzie speaks
of women freethinkers as a new phenomenon.
[2019] "She bought 2,000 acres in Tennessee, and peopled them with
slave families she purchased and redeemed" (Wheeler, Biog. Dict.).
[2020] See Lord Morley's Life of Gladstone, 1903, ii, 110-11, as to
the embarrassment felt in English official circles at the time of
Garibaldi's visit.
[2021] On the whole case see The Life, Trial, and Death of Francisco
Ferrer, by William Archer: Chapman & Hall, 1911; and The Martyrdom
of Ferrer, by Joseph McCabe: R. P. A., 1910.