[136] Cp. Kahnis, pp. 132–36, as to Bahrdt’s early morals. [↑]
[137] Geschichte seines Lebens, etc. 1700–91, iv, 119. [↑]
[139] Geschichte seines Lebens, Kap. 22; ii, 223 sq. [↑]
[140] Baur, Gesch. der chr. Kirche, iv. 597. [↑]
[141] Translated into English in 1789. [↑]
[142] 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. [↑]
[143] See his Werke, ed. 1866, v, 317—Aus dem Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend, 49ter Brief. [↑]
[144] 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. [↑]
[145] E.g. his fable The Bull and the Calf (Fabeln, ii, 5), à propos of the clergy and Bayle. [↑]