[176] 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. [↑]
[177] Sime, ii, ch. xxix, gives a good survey. [↑]
[178] Letter to his brother, Feb., 1778. [↑]
[179] Strauss, Das Leben Jesu (the second) Einleitung, § 14. [↑]
[180] 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. [↑]
[181] 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.” [↑]
[182] Karl Hillebrand, Lectures on the Hist. of German Thought, 1880, p. 109. [↑]
[183] Deutsche Merkur, Jan. and March, 1788 (Werke, ed. 1797, xxix, 1–144; cited by Stäudlin, Gesch. der Rationalismus und Supernaturalismus, 1826, p. 233). [↑]
[184] Kurtz, Hist. of the Chr. Church, Eng. tr. 1864, ii, 224. [↑]
[185] T. C. Perthes, Das Deutsche Staatsleben vor der Revolution, 262 sq., cited by Kahnis pp. 58–59. [↑]