Lessing. – His Contribution to the Religion of Reason. – His Thoughts on Purified Pantheism.

Abstract

Friend D., who surprised us in the last morning lesson, chided me as he departed. “How do you come to make our Lessing,” he said, “into a defender of such a misguided and decried teaching? Did no other name occur to you, on which you could foist this suspicious business?” You know, was my answer, that whenever I am casting about for a critic in such things, it is Lessing who first occurs to me. I have long had a philosophical exchange with him; for several years we communicated our thoughts about these matters to each other, communicating them with an unbiased love of truth that did not allow any place for either being self-opinionated or aiming simply to please. Thus, whenever a philosophical proposition is to be discussed, whenever the reasons for and against are to be compared with one another and weighed against one other, it is his image, sometimes out of sheer habit, that still hovers before me. – “Nonetheless, I would hesitate,” he said, “to help myself to his name on this occasion. I would not want, for anything in the world, to arouse the slightest suspicion towards the religious principles of this excellent man.