On Enlightenment: Is It and Could It Be Dangerous to the State, to Religion, or Dangerous in General? A Word to Be Heeded by Princes, Statesmen, and Clergy
Andreas Riem (1749-1807) came to Berlin in 1782 after studies in theology to serve as pastor at the Friedrichshospital. He published widely on religious and political questions and, with Gottlob Nathanael Fischer, was co-editor of the Berlinisches Journal der Aufklärung, which appeared in eight volumes between 1788 and 1790. His anonymous pamphlet, Über Aufklärung, published early in 1788, had an enormous impact. It appeared in four editions within a few weeks’ time and was eventually supplemented by a second volume that elaborated on points raised in the initial pamphlet. After Riem’s authorship became known, he was forced to resign his position at the Friedrichshospital;, stating that he could not abide by the provisions of Woellner's Religion Edict because they would force him to teach doctrines that—since they contradicted what could be known on the basis of pure reason—were contrary to his own convictions. He maintained his appointment as secretary to the Berlin Academy of Arts and Mechanical Sciences until 1793 when he was exiled from Prussia because of hïs political writings. He settled in Homburg, where he lived under the name “Dr. Freund,” and traveled extensively in Germany, Holland, England, and France. He published eight volumes of reflections on his travels—with special attention to political questions—between 1795 and 1801.
INTRODUCTION
I have read so much about this important issue and have heard even more; but I freely confess that I do not completely approve of either the writings or the arguments. Let critics and the public judge to what extent my own deserve approval.
First published in Berlin in 1788 as an anonymous pamphlet entitled Über Aufklärung. Ob sie dem Staate—der Religion—oder überhaupt gefährlich sei und sein könne? Ein Wort zur Beherzigung für Regenten, Staatsmänner und Priester.
Most of those who wrote about enlightenment have not determined, or have incorrectly determined, the concepts this word comprises. What conclusions were to be expected, given that these concepts were not established? And how manifold and various must be the resulting judgments when everyone could substitute his own concepts.
And still nothing is so clear and simple as the idea presented in the mere word enlightenment. “It is nothing more than the effort of the human spirit to bring to light, according to principles of a pure doctrine of reason and for the promotion of utility, all the objects of the world of ideas, all human opinions and their consequences, and everything that has influence on humanity.” Is it still necessary even for the most mediocre intelligence to ask whether these efforts are beneficial or damaging? Perhaps they would be harmful for someone steeped in prejudice, and who, in the habit of seeing things askew, loves these prejudices dearly and possesses an inordinate abundance of obstinacy that prevents him from giving them up.
Many people blindfold the truth, so that it cannot see their follies. More people, whose spirits are incapable of any noble greatness, wish to banish it from their fellow humans, in order to have no judge of their follies and no critic of their nonsense. And most people have a genuine interest in fostering prejudices, because there is no field of speculation more productive for important financial operations than the stupidity of a class of men which cunning and deceit is ready to bleed dry. I flatter no man, least of all the foolish. Stupid approval is insufferable to me. Just as little do I sacrifice the truth to falsehood for the sake of temporal reward. I can err, but I will guard against doing so; and if this common lot of humanity should fall to me, then I have learned through enlightenment that to allow oneself to be corrected is honorable. I believe, with Solomon, that truth can demand to be proclaimed on every corner, and that stifling it is more damaging than Jesuitism. Proud frivolity may always clothe the truth in hieroglyphs like the Egyptian priests; I prefer its naked beauty to the baroque ornamentation of prejudice's fashion. The reader can reflect on what I am about to say and decide if I am right.
1. ENLIGHTENMENT IS A REQUIREMENT OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
If you found yourself in the middle of a barbarous tribe of Negroes on the coast of Africa and saw how they wildly dishonored human rights; if you saw a Xinga1 dance around the sacrificial victims of a bloodthirsty religion, crushing their skulls with a battle-ax so that the brains sprayed around, and drinking the blood of these unfortunates with fiery thirst—compassionate European!—would you not wish that Xinga might be more enlightened?
When an English barbarian hangs a black slave up in an iron cage in the deepest forest, so that for days birds of prey eat him alive piece by piece, turning his torment into infernal torture—would it not be better for humanity if Carolina, where this occurred, were more enlightened and would learn to honor the rights of humanity?
When the Iroquois roast the Hurons on a spit over a slow fire, the women slowly cutting strips of flesh lengthwise from the body, pulling the nails from the hands and feet in slow torture, and, after having tormented him for days, blame themselves for letting him succumb to their tortures too soon—what better could one wish for this wild barbaric people than enlightenment?
The child on its mother's breast feels the impulse toward it. It looks out at strange objects and its restless spirit tirelessly pursues its efforts toward instruction and truth, until death gives its noble strivings an end. If there can be any duty in the world to stifle or hinder the impulses of the soul toward proper knowledge, then, you enemies of truth, why not raise your children like animals? Yes, you say, but one must allow this impulse to develop only to a certain degree, mix in prejudice instead of truth, and block it where wisdom could be harmful. But who of you has ever demonstrated that prejudice, this shameful synonym of falsehood, is more useful than enlightenment, which is the result of truth? Who has shown the overly wise fools the boundaries of how far they must go to fill the understanding with errors and spoil it for truth? And who can prove the slander which claims that truth can be harmful? Why did God share such a rich measure of understanding if it causes unhappiness? Why give it at all, if one is not permitted to use all of it?
From the wild, uncultured man who locks up the powers of his spirit inside himself and who, tyrannized by the prejudice of eternal rituals, does not develop them, to the European who in dumb obstinacy persists in his prejudices—have not all the smarter, more enlightened peoples and human beings reached a higher level than they, a level envied by short-sightedness and prejudice? If your understanding remains within the borders of custom you will become as laughable to the more enlightened people as the miserable Chinese, who gaze astonished at the works of enlightenment, without assimilating them into their arts and sciences, and who for thousands of years had astronomical calculations which they needed the insights of other peoples to correct, but who have not improved them, because they inherited them from their forefathers.
Have not all arts and sciences had their lamentable epochs, in which even philosophy was nonsense? The Sorbonne was in an uproar and ferment in the days when the entire scholarly community of Paris divided over Aristotle, when Galileo dared to say that the earth was round. What if, in those days, prejudice in the service of stupidity had triumphed over enlightened reason? What would have become of philosophy and natural science? If France had had no Richelieus, no Colberts, if Europe had had no incomparable Frederick, what would European civics and prosperity be now?2 When our immortal king, this king of all kings, accumulated treasure, the short-sighted cried out about greed. However, when he carried on his magnificent wars without burdening his own land with new taxes while Austria and France strained their nations to the maximum and weighted them with monstrous debts whose interest alone cost millions, repaid by their subjects' sweat, then prejudice was silent and all of Europe followed the rules of his statecraft and thrift.
Should religion alone be excluded from the great privileges of enlightenment? That is of course what monastic stupidity maintained, during Luther's time as well as the time of the abominable Athanasius and of the persecutors of heretics from the Dominican order.3 And this principle of the most miserable priestly stupidity is supposed to be protected in my time among Protestants? If enlightenment is not necessary, then you Protestants, why not deliver yourselves into the nets of secretive Jesuitism and return to the mother church out of which enlightenment led you? Or, you priests who struggle for prejudices and against enlightenment, name me the man from your midst who would have completely cleansed religion from the nonsense that foolishness, obstinacy, and the miserable opinions of the Roman court had woven into it. Is it Luther or Calvin? Or what is the name of the great mortal who grasped the fullness of all truth, who separated the kernel from the hull and impressed upon religion the stamp of infallible truth? If religion does not need it, why do your theologians scuffle, why do your exegetes battle; why does your De Marees cry out as if human understanding held a knife to the throat of religion?4 Why is it that unity is everywhere more simple and nowhere more difficult to bring about than among you? If you value understanding, why do you brand its friends with the name of guardians of Zion, a name before which your orthodox used to turn their eyes and bow their heads to the earth? When an unclean spirit arises from an intolerant idol, why must it immediately become a superintendent, distressing the world and harassing the realm of pure understanding with its nonsense?
“Yes,” you respond, “but someone must guard the purity of doctrine, and who is better suited to do that than a servant of its views?” So your doctrine is pure, and in order to remain so it must oppose the principles of pure reason? It is true, and must protect prejudices? Perfect, and must avoid the light of judgment? A strange philosophy, that not even Duns Scotus could have concocted so perversely! Religion is pure, true, and perfect, but the understanding may never dare to test and judge this! Mohammed proved the truth of his religion on the same grounds; so did Moses. A fool in Berlin, whose name is not worth mentioning, proved the truth of his nonsense in the same way.5 So, too, Rosenberg proved his worthiness as Messiah.6 Enthusiasts of all periods forbid the free use of the understanding because they must fear it. You men with the zeal of Elijah, why do you insult a good religion such as Christianity with such absurd demands?
You will say further “But don't the enlighteners go too far, and what will become of religion in the end?” Where you are right, I grant it. Your complaints are in part justified, in part, however, not. There are false enlighteners, hotheads who pass their notions off as philosophy, and their mistakes as truth. Just like you, and just as intolerantly, they want to set their opinions—which usually begin where they should stop—on the throne in order to reign over those of their fellow men. They destroy systems before they have built better ones. They are brilliant meteors who shine for a moment only to be forever extinguished in darkness. But do you not go too far in generalizing what is true only of individual cases, in taking the field against enlightenment in general when you should fight the mistakes that individual powerful geniuses [Kraftgenies] have promulgated? A man without subtle knowledge of human nature, who thinks himself to be an enlightener but who is not supported by reason, whose teachings betray the stamp of an unpracticed understanding, does not deserve the name “enlightener.”
You will not lose the religion of your fathers; don't worry about that. Pure reason does not undermine religion, but rather its aberrations. You will lose prejudices and retain religion. The closer you bring religion to the light of reason, the more securely and durably it will be established for the future. Religion will not have to fear any attack by the understanding because the understanding approves of it, and if the understanding is its support, religion will become necessary and holy to the human race. However, if you oppose reason, a wiser posterity by virtue of its gradual progress which you, with all your usurpatory power, are unable to hinder, will look back on your names with the contempt with which they brand the names of Torquemada, Emser, and all the priests who once played the role you do.7
Was enlightenment necessary, when universal stupidity lay upon Europe, when its people were barbarians and its kings were executioners? When the fathers of the fatherland roasted their children to a delicious aroma for the idol of the papacy, the orthodoxy of the Roman court, the devil of superstition and prejudice? When crusades were undertaken against provinces and kingdoms of another faith? When royal envoys in Rome received blows of penance in the name of their kings? When the head of the Roman Empire begged forgiveness in bare feet in the snow at Hildebrand's window?8 Or was enlightenment not necessary? Oh you kings of the earth—who ally yourselves with priests and associate with the intolerance of unworthy men, who side with intolerance against understanding and enlightenment, which compassionately removed the shameful shackles of priestly despotism from the feet of your ancestors—you have enlightenment to thank for your greatness, the understanding to thank for your security and the purified principles that are the pillars of your throne. What was it but enlightenment that made you into real rulers? It was enlightenment that wrested the anathemas from the hand of the holy sinner in Rome so that they couldn't reach you. It was enlightenment that fought fearlessly for the security of your lives and your honor, which had been undermined by religious prejudices that freed peoples from the oath of loyalty they had sworn to you. It protected you from your own children, whom false religious zeal had turned into your persecutors. It burned the priest defiant in his garb of holiness, who as your subject pushed his way to your throne, raised the disloyal right against you, and, in the midst of your palaces and heroes, cursed you; who robbed your subjects of an honorable burial, of the practice of religion and of everything by virtue of which the state's happiness flourishes. Why do you want to persecute your benefactor? Why do you want to be forced by the obstinacy of your father confessors or insipid advisers into a constraint on your own conscience that you put on more easily than strip off? Why do you who are born to rule want to be slaves to spiritual scandalmongers, who certainly do not seek your welfare, but rather seek their hieratic pride through all sorts of the most cunning deceptions. Go on and believe, in spite of it all, that forgiveness of sins lies within the power of a priest; but then renounce also the privilege of noble freedom: to be accountable only to God and to the reckoning of your conscience! Be slaves on the throne, wear the chains of superstition and prejudice; but thereby renounce forever the respect of the noble men of your nation and of posterity. The future does not flatter sovereigns. Thus it justly condemned Charles IX as an assassin of his subjects.9 Thus posterity wisely judges Louis the persecutor whom some have called “the Great”10—and speaks of his conversions by dragoons, gallows and galleys, as the bloodthirsty man deserves. Weak sovereigns shine only in the circle of their flatterers. When the hand of death snatches the diadem from their head, posterity speaks their name with contempt. Philip II and the accomplice to his intolerance, a devil in the form of a duke from Alba, slaughter hundreds of thousands.11 What else are they doing but engraving the stamp with which posterity brands their memory and laying the foundation for their eternal shame, as long as history remembers their names? Happy the country that has a king who loves religion but persecutes no one who is a good citizen of the state, who allows his court preachers to hold their own opinions and also protects those who think differently from them, who loves enlightenment and does not hamper it, who would rather rule over reasonable people than over stupid blockheads, who are often more dangerous than rapacious animals. Happy is the land that has enlightenment to thank for its Joseph II, and happy every kingdom that believes it is indebted to enlightenment for the good sovereigns, just laws, noble actions, and all good fortunes that it produces.
Human understanding also needs enlightenment. Every development of its powers, every correction of its ideas, every refinement of its knowledge, and every perfection of its abilities is enlightenment. Without enlightenment there are no corrected principles of human thought, no truth in sensations, no correctness in judgment, no improvement in speculation, and no perfection of the principles of philosophy. It has worked wonders in the realm of nature and in the realm of wisdom. Because of enlightenment we can calmly listen to the thunder roll. Indeed, it has shown us how to harness lightning. Through it the great spectacles of nature received a majesty that without it, in the hands of superstition, were tools of divine vengeance. It showed men the means to navigate, safely and securely, in the most harrowing ocean storm through waves tamed by their inventions. It taught us how to increase the fruitfulness of the earth and showed the farmer how to maintain himself more easily. It encountered resistance in prejudices, but conquered them—only gradually, indeed, but all the more powerfully.
2. HOW FAR DOES ENLIGHTENMENT EXTEND? DOES IT HAVE LIMITS OR NOT?
This question is important. The verdict on whether enlightenment is useful or damaging, and whether enlightenment or deception is better, depends on its consideration.
If enlightenment consists in the justification of concepts in accordance with principles of pure truth, then whoever sets limits on it commits a crime. The further it extends its rule, the happier it makes the state and its rulers. We will consider this with respect to the administration of the state and with respect to religion and then pass judgment.
Does the state lose or gain through enlightenment? Does religion lose or gain through enlightenment? Is deception at all necessary and useful?
3. DOES THE STATE LOSE OR GAIN THROUGH ENLIGHTENMENT?
Enlightenment takes the field against deception and prejudice. What, then, does the state in which enlightenment is victorious lose? Deception and prejudice.
This inquiry proceeds from the ruler, whom enlightenment makes into the father of his land, to the least of his subjects, whom enlightenment would make virtuous.
The ruler who demands mere obedience is a despot. For him, everything—his entire state—is his property. He tyrannizes the thoughts of his subjects, which he must fear. In Siam the despot asserts a claim to everything. When the servants of his tyranny see a tree with lovely fruit they tell the person who planted and cared for it that the fruits are for the emperor. If the Ottoman emperor has a wealthy minister whose treasure he craves, he sends mutes with the cord, and the minister obediently proffers his neck. If he hears of a beauty who is the only daughter of a Muslim, he tears her from the arms of her father and mother for his own desires. The emperor of China sets his mandarins on jackasses; the ruler of Japan commands them to cut open their stomachs; the king of Spain hands his subjects over to the Inquisition; and petty despots usurp rights over one's own conscience. Is the monarch who behaves thus enlightened and happy by virtue of his prejudices and deception? Were not the emperors of Siam, the Ottoman Empire, China, and Japan, and almost all the rulers of the Greek empire either murdered, maimed, blinded, or slaughtered in some other way? All this was the result of despotism, which—after religion—is the most atrocious of deceptions.
Sovereigns who ruled their states as fathers—were their people less subjects to them than in the states of the despots? Did their enlightened principles of statecraft not earn them the love of their subjects and did they not secure the loyalty of their people? Did their subjects not take it to be their duty to die for them? And when virtuous rulers fell, when Ravaillac murdered Henry IV, was it due to enlightenment or the lack of an enlightened religion and its servants?12 Which of Prussia's monarchs needed a bodyguard to protect him from his subjects, or which could walk freely among them, like a father among his children? And Prussia is indisputably the most enlightened state in the world. In the capital of enlightenment the life of the monarch is secure, and the welfare of the subjects is most firmly grounded in the wisest civil code of all nations, as is—so far—their right of conscience and civil freedom; would God that it were forever. Science and the arts flourish. Its rulers, who did not affect the air of arbitration over Europe's princes, rule with Prussia's usual resolution. Other kings and their ministers speak in their cabinets about influencing Europe. Prussia's rulers, and Hertz- berg, and Finckenstein, did not talk, but they acted.13 They move like a storm high and holy through a land, and evil people are terrified by their thunder. They move through, and the storm was a blessing to the land. Prussia! You shine like a sun before the world. Idolized by his people, your king was the terror and wonder of the nation. Your ministers, just and enlightened, took the rights of peoples into account, and did not, out of pride, fail to recognize the merit of good and wise fellow citizens of lower position. Under their king your people was the freest on earth, because every reasonable, enlightened, and unenlightened person could think and act as he wanted as long as he did not encroach on human rights. You are the living proof that enlightenment makes the state in which it dwells happy. Oh never let priestly cunning and dullness spread their dark hellish wings over you, and never let stupidity eclipse your great name and your honor! Never let it knock the heavenly crown of universal tolerance from your head, lofty Prussia!
There are opponents of enlightenment who maintain the lie that it demands unbounded freedom. Only miserable prejudice and stupid frailty can do this. The introduction of property among people made laws necessary and the requirements of societies necessitated leaders. Call them what you will—emperors, kings, aristocrats, democrats—the name makes no difference here. In short, every society needs a leader, a power to make laws and to execute them. What would the laws be without warders, or the security of the state without an adept helmsman at the rudder? And is there a nobler freedom than this: to want to do nothing against the law? The upright citizen does not even consider overstepping penal law. The laws are not tyrants that shackle his freedom, because he wants nothing that is harmful to the state. Enlightenment accepts the unconditioned necessity of reining in excessive, deliberate, and damaging folly. Only a shallow determinist can defend rancor against laws. But is a determinist an enlightener or a creator of darkness? Once again: for the person who wants to do no evil there is no law that threatens his freedom.
But do not public taxes encroach on human freedom? What does enlightenment say about this? This is its answer: Citizens of the state! Can you protect your property against domestic and foreign enemies by yourselves, if your plunderers are stronger than you? Without laws, what would become of the security of your property? Where there are laws, there must be men who make and administer them. There must be a sovereign who puts these men into action and keeps them active. Isn't it fitting that you contribute your share to the support of your sovereign and his officials, who are there not for his sake but for the sake of the state? And what would your sovereign be without majesty?—like you, and with no competence to maintain the obedience of the rebellious and the respect of all. Your property requires an army against your neighbor's envy and thirst for conquest. Who will sustain them if not the whole of the state on whose account—and for whom alone—they exist?
Detractors of enlightenment allege that it is dangerous and fosters principles of freedom that would be dangerous to the state. The more it spreads, the more clearly it spells out the duties of the monarch to his subjects and of the subject to his monarch, and the more willing it makes both to act in noble consent for the good of the whole. To be sure, it does not laud tyrants or flatter weak minors [Unmündigen] because they sit on the throne. But even in weak rulers it honors the blessings of hereditary succession to the throne. And without insulting (for true enlightenment never insults majesty) it becomes adviser to the sovereign and benefactor of the state.
It is shameful when a would-be enlightener publicly and without discretion rises up against monarchs and their servants and maliciously characterizes their intentions. Even when the sovereign and his ministers err, enlightenment says: spare the man for the sake of the monarch, on account of his majesty, which even in tyrants deserves respect, because the laws and the public good require it. The inconsiderate voice of an undeserved reproach sows the seeds of dissatisfaction, discord, and rebellion. The voice of wise reproach is often a useful evil for the state, if only it does not pave the way to tumult. The voice of enlightenment does indeed dare to pass judgment on political errors, but only when they are generally pernicious and the voice of the truth can approach the throne in no other way. But its tone is that of the most ardent goodwill for what is best for the majesty and its subjects. The language to use before majesty is not that of Orbilius but of the fine statesman who clothes his truths in pleasing garments and presents them with the reverence that is owed to the throne.14 Deception and conceited arrogance, however, throw the slightest error of the ruler and his civil servants onto the scale, and, unmoved by the many other good deeds effected by the active life of kings and their ministers, these armchair politicians criticize them for small failings. But deception never lays the quantity of good brought about by the assiduous efforts of the public administrators on the other side of the scale—otherwise it would be silenced by its conscience.
Further: Did destructive political revolutions arise out of enlightenment or out of deception? What brought about the free state of the United Colonies?15 Deception of the English government and deception of the colonies. If the ministers of Great Britain had known the truth about the situation in its colonies, they would indisputably have acted differently. If the colonies had acted without deception, they would not now be a sort of anarchic state that maintains itself through weak bonds without any majesty, a state whose constitution is without true inner greatness and without the force that a well-ordered state ruled by a sovereign must have. Every province is sovereign, and so every province is by itself powerless! There is no spirit of harmonious unity, and everywhere there are false concepts of freedom!
How happy was Holland under its old constitution? Was it truth and enlightenment or foolishness and deception that made this land an object of intrigue, a theater of riot, rebellion, and civil war? Did not its unenlightened demagogues lead it to the brink of the abyss, where it would have toppled into the depths of the most frenzied anarchy had not the more enlightened genius of Prussia rushed to save it?16
What were the Netherlands when the deception and the prejudices of Philip II made it into a theater for every abomination? Compare Spain with Prussia. The former, however much enlightenment seeks to make progress, still lies very much under the yoke of prejudice and deception. Where is the financial situation, the entire national economy, and political constitution more orderly—in the unenlightened or in the enlightened land? Was it not deception and lack of enlightenment about these matters that devoured the enormous treasures of the New World—all the gold and silver from Peru and Mexico? The mines of Potosi are exhausted and where is their gold?17 The more enlightened nations have divided among themselves the booty that they earned. Is a proof still necessary of whether enlightenment or deception is advantageous or detrimental to the stàte?
What may a state expect when its ministers are enlightened men, and what may it expect when they are prejudiced, deceptive, or deceived civil servants? In which court is it more probable that its plans and their execution are good? In the former or the latter? Consider how much devastation and unhappiness is wrought by unenlightened ministers who hold the king's heart in their hands! The reputation of the monarch, whom they make act as they see fit, is at stake. The decrees that brought prejudice and a dearth of enlightenment to the public are eternal documents of shame for those in whose name they were issued. Are there not courts where the priestly spirit, where secret Jesuitism, rules through sovereigns and their ministers? Where reasonable people are persecuted and banished openly? Where rulers are led to renounce their sovereign rights and subject themselves to the pride of a clerical grandee? Where, instead of cultivating right and justice, the placating of the lower courts of law is carelessly connived? Where money can even purchase verdicts? Where the avarice of civil servants exploits the official positions of the land and transfers them, not to the most worthy, but to the highest bidder? Where spiritual office is allotted not to the worthiest but to the most stupid, if only in the fullness of his stupidity he is properly orthodox? Are these consequences of enlightenment or of deception? Where ministers rule like sovereigns, where they closely surround the person of the sovereign so that no plea, no indictment, can come near the throne of the ruler, where the minister flatters the weaknesses of the monarch, admires his mistakes, murders the last kernel of virtue and greatness of soul, and makes him, who would have become a father to his people, into the greatest despot—is it better to be an enlightened or a prejudiced minister?
Will the men employed in any branch of public administration be more useful to the state as deceived or as enlightened men? Enlightenment is opposed to all considerations of self-interest obtained at the expense of official duties and the state. The enlightened person sees himself as the servant of the general interest and not merely of his own. He serves only the law, and pays no attention to the person. Thus Prussian officials in the epoch of Frederick II served the lowliest farmer as well as the most preeminent prince with unflinching impartiality. Our courts of law dispensed justice to those with whom justice sided. No rank confused the calm investigative spirit of the enlightened judge, who, without letting himself be diverted, always focused on the pure goal of his inquiry, namely, truth, justice, and laws.
When deception obscures the gaze of the judge or intrigue is on the lips of the lawyers; when the most well spoken, the most persuasive, carries away the judge's verdict through flowery language and declamation; where rank and position are considered; where innocence is oppressed out of fear of insulting the great and distinguished; where the jurist can be bribed and his verdicts are for sale; where connections bend the law and favors pervert it—where is it better? In the state of deception or the state of enlightenment?
The scholar is, needless to say, a scholar only in proportion to his enlightenment. The more he is ruled by preconceived opinions, false premises, and deceptions, the less he is a scholar. Was Wolff greater, or his persecutor?18 Galileo, or the priests who made him miserable? If philosophy had remained an eternal, fatuous Aristotelian dialectic, how could the branches of scholarship ever have developed through enlightenment to the high level at which they now stand? Is a Duns Scotus just as good as a Kant? Or is a scholastic Jesuit as good as Leibniz, Lessing, and Mendelssohn? In general, what would have become of philosophy, physics, astronomy, and all types of science, if no men like Locke, Newton, Leibniz, Kant, Bode, Herschel, Euler, and so forth, had enlightened these sciences and enriched them with new discoveries?19
The theologian—my heart pounds anxiously when I think of this—what is he without enlightenment? A miserable priest [Pfaffe]—a reason-renouncing fool, a persecutor of enlightenment. He and his companions are a gang of conspirators against the rights of human understanding, and when he combines power with his abundant stupid prejudice, he is a bloodthirsty wolf in sheep's clothing—a pestilence on humanity and the corrupter of all good taste. Judge, impartial world, whether these accusations are too strong or too mild! Was it enlightenment or deception that exterminated at least 80 million people by the sword, the pestilence of war, and the glowing flames of the pyre? The stupid theologians, from the earliest times onward, what tyrants of humanity were they? The priests with those sundry Egyptiac labels: the bonzees, talapoins, and priests of all names, what devastation have they not wrought through their influence on the state!20 The demon of rage has infiltrated even you, Christianity, most holy of all religions. You, who fight so nobly against the spirit of persecution and human hatred; you, who with your Founder, shine with greater brilliance with every new light of enlightenment. But what am I saying, that it infiltrated you? No, it penetrated your teachers. Through them it usurped the conscience of rulers and bathed itself in the blood of citizens and the so-called unbelievers, or through them it triumphed over the rights of reason and humanity.
From the time of Constantine to the present, how many countless victims, slaughtered by priestly rage, has history produced? In the time of the church's vigorous coups de main against heretics, was it thanks to the theologians that even one individual escaped death? Had it been able to annihilate every heathen on earthy would the priestly spirit of the unenlightened era of the crusades have spared a single victim from religious frenzy? How many millions does a single enlightened Las Casas reckon to have fallen at the hands of the frenzy of unenlightened religion in America?21 Who can hear the name of Cajamarca without sympathy, or mention the name of Atahualpa, who was burned as a heretic, without tears?22 Who can think, without being moved, of orthodox Spaniards hunting irreligious Americans to their death with dogs, then feeding the dogs with their flesh, dismembering and publicly selling the limbs of these unfortunate ones for dog food? What else was Bartholomew's night, but a monument to the unenlightened priestly spirit? The massacres in Ireland, the ubiquitous smouldering pyres of all nations that herald the intolerance of the priests, the courts of the inquisition, the autos-da-fé—do they not all originate in Rome, the seat of unenlightened priestly despotism?23 I throw up my hands in despair at the countless number of horrifying scenes with which the deceptive priests have ravaged the globe. And Rome would still exterminate all Protestants and subjugate all peoples, its Jesuits would perform the roles of executioners and hangmen while the rest of the priests serve as their lackeys, if enlightenment did not hold its mighty aegis over the peoples.
By enlightening religion, Luther gave it a loftier purview. Burning a Servetus in Geneva and preaching Christian love, Calvin only made use of the weapons of a purer understanding that disciplined much folly in his time.24 Zwingli was incontestably the best of his time. His enlightenment did not breathe the spirit of exaggerated hate against those who think differently, as did Luther's and Calvin's, but rather displayed the calm seriousness of the thinker and the steadfast but tolerant courage of a reformer. The ardor of the religious reformers was partly inherited by the clergy of their denominations. Lutherans and members of the Reformed church persecuted, reviled, abused, and hated each other, so that their zeal brought Crell to the scaffold because he appeared suspicious to the Lutherans.25 In England this zeal also produced rebellions and for similar reasons brought Charles I to the scaffold.26 Enthusiastic Puritans were victorious over their opponents and spattered the earth with the blood of their fellow citizens. What would not a Goeze still have done for a long time, if enlightenment had not removed his sting?27 And what would so many Protestant priests still do each day, if the dangerous power had not been snatched from them? Deception and prejudice lurk in their lair, surrounded by tools formerly used by the priests to persecute heretics. But thanks be to Providence that enlightenment guards the entrance with the cherub's sword, so that these monstrosities can do no damage. The investigator sees smouldering in the ashes a wildfire that would consume everything if enlightenment did not hinder its explosion. The more the clergyman defends the deceptions with which he cheats and deceives the world, the more he abandons himself to the sophisms that flow from his deception and that gently bolster unscrupulousness. The lower enlightenment sinks, the stronger the head of prejudice, and the higher prejudice climbs, the easier the passage to active persecutions becomes. Give them time to develop without opposition, and they will deliver up enlightened persons, first to hunger and finally to the green wood of the pyre.
No class of men on earth was more destructive than the priesthood. If I am wrong, then name the class which was. There were always laws against murderers and bandits, but not against the treacherous assassins in priestly garb. War was answered with war and it came to an end; but for thousands of years the priesthood's war against reason was protected, and it continues unabated.
All the worthy men who belong to this profession are so many shining proofs that only enlightenment produces genuine dignity. What would Jerusalem, Spalding, Teller, Döderlein, Eichhorn, and all the men of all denominations who are like them and whose numbers, thank heavens, are already great, what would they be if they had not been brought forth by enlightenment?28 Would not a deserved obscurity brood over the memory of their names, if they had not sought and disseminated the enlightenment of religion, according to their talents and each in his own way? Such men deserve the highest respect, since they could not have soared so high without fighting great obstacles. How long did the intolerant hounds run barking behind many of these men, until enlightenment, taking the upper hand, commanded: “Silence!”? Now they are safe. If here and there a de Marees29 chafes at the corner of their garment, they can put up with it calmly, because the enemy of reason has lost his teeth.
All that I mentioned above were consequences of deception and prejudice. If the earth could give back the blood of those murdered by religious hatred and collect it in one place, how monstrously large would the dimensions of this sea be? Ha! How triumphantly the orthodox would sail it, build palaces on its islands and pleasure domes on its banks! The religious hatred of all peoples would see to it that its sources never dried up, and its borders would be widened by rivers and streams of blood from all lands, including you, Prussia. In your midst, religious hatred would raise high the purple flag and would curse the world from the pinnacles of your temples, as the
powerless ruler in the Vatican now does.
This will seem exaggerated only to him who does not know the spirit of the Roman church and of all intolerant priests, who all along have trampled the rights of majesty and the state, and who refrain from doing so now only because they are not able. And who secures the rulers and their states? Deception or enlightenment?
But a step closer to our Protestant clergy: Do the state, the laws, and more lowly folk stand to gain more from enlightened minds, or from minds full of old rubbish and rigid religious doctrine? The enlightened doctrines of religion's pure truths, and the great central point of their instruction, are that their principal commandment is the sincere fulfillment of duties to others and that the true consolation in life and death springs from the testimony of a good conscience. Later, the blind adherents of a confused and obscure system deceive their numerous followers (since the name of simpletons is legion everywhere) into seeking a good conscience through faith. They undermine civic virtues by placing them far below faith and representing them as imperfect and stained with sin. Pride and ignorance are companions; stupidity and the spirit of persecution are no less so. I know clergy who, in the fire of their billingsgate eloquence,30 cry out at every opportunity against scoffers at religion where there are none. They set forth the utility of the incomprehensible mystery of the Trinity without understanding the principle from which it is supposed to originate. Their lungs are truly their best aid in stigmatizing reason and enlightenment, and their obstinacy and their stupid, eager stubbornness are their only means of supplementing their impoverished nonsense. As much as he may struggle, it is still true that a fool remains a fool, even if ground in a mortar. Was it these sorts of stupid monks who incited congregations against enlightenment—or the intelligent ones? Was it these sorts who incited the dizzy spirit of revolt against the most salutary organizations and fanned the flames of rebellion—or was it the enlightened ones?
And now to the people: Do they gain by deception or by enlightenment? It is a basic tenet of the Roman church that the people be kept stupid, and so it withheld the Bible from them. It is a basic tenet of the Protestant orthodoxy as well, and so it denies the people the right to a true interpretation of the Bible. What do the people gain from religion and the Bible when it is falsely interpreted to them, and when deceiving them is a duty? Is it not a proof of the poverty of the orthodox system itself and the danger of its doctrines that they must be kept secret? Then for whom, gentlemen, was it the truth? Only for the clergy? Go ahead and take the honor for this claim. The rest of us heartily renounce it. So religion contains dangerous, useless truths that are injurious to citizens and the state? So, my lord-defenders of deception in religious matters, this is how you yourselves would describe the religion of Satan, if there were one. And this dangerous, injurious religion would be the true Christian religion, which the common man is not permitted to know. Deceptions—for example, that man is saved by grace alone and not through his works; or that the blood of Jesus Christ makes the most horrible, foul deeds pardonable if only one believes; or that through Christ a sinner in the hour of his death becomes as blessed as if he had never committed a sin; or that all good works do no good without belief in miserable human statutes, and so forth—all of this would be better than convictions grounded in the religion of Christ.31 The religion of Christ teaches that virtue and good works must unfailingly make blessed even him who cannot believe everything indiscriminately, that through nothing other than virtue and a change of heart, all vices can lose their corruptive influence temporally and eternally, without the blood of Christ contributing anything further; that without the testimony of a clean conscience in the hour of death no consolation or happiness is to be expected because the wicked have cultivated no virtues in their hearts that will be carried on in a state of future blessedness; and so forth. Suppose we were to teach that adherence to Christ's pure doctrine of virtue, and not belief in the Trinity, can be advantageous to you. Should not these and similar precepts—the daylight of reasonable Christian religion as opposed to the darkness and midnight of the dogma that you spread—be more advantageous to the people than the lies and deceptions with which you drive the common people like oxen to the slaughterhouse of continuing corruption? Tell me, what harm can the teachings of enlightenment do them? And of what use to them are your doctrines of the necessity of belief in deceptions before good works? And tell me, I ask you, before God and your conscience, what are the deceptions of religion that are supposed to be useful to the people and which are in conflict with reason and better than her truths? If you can answer this, then speak! But if you cannot, then it is best to be silent. Finally, show that these doctrines and those that accord with principles of a pure understanding, or the religion of enlightenment, are not the doctrines of the One whom you falsely claim to be the Founder of your doctrines and who, through the light of nature, has restored divine religion!
Was the Reformation not enlightenment? What would have become of our religion if in those days the priestly clamor that this enlightenment be proclaimed heretical and injurious had been honored? If you speak well of this enlightenment and thank God for it, why do you chastise and groan over its progress? Because perhaps it is going too far? But can the truth become too clear, and would it be more useful if it were obscured? Or, in the event that it is disguised in hieroglyphs, is it not as good as nonexistent for the people? Do the people have a true or a false religion when its truths are withheld from them and in their place they are given deception or falsehood? Do they then have a Christian religion, or one that is false and filled with prejudice and deception? And can I not ask, as Christ once did: “Can one also pick grapes from the thorns, or figs from thistles?”32 The propagators of error, the guardians of religious deception and those who defend hiding the truth, do they not belong to those of whom Christ said: “They are ravenous wolves in priestly garb”?33 Does not the claim that the people must not be enlightened presuppose that you are teaching them a false religion?
It is a detestable principle that where such important matters as religion are concerned, lies are more useful than truth. Are not you who know the truth and who spread prejudice, this enemy of truth, willfully perverting the truth? Where did Christ ever teach: Keep quiet about the truth that I teach and encourage the teaching of error? Where did He ever say that the people should be kept superstitious and deceived? Was it not precisely the common people to whom He taught the truths of His Father in heaven, which are the same as the truths of reason? Are you His followers, who do the opposite of what you were sent to do, to waken the spirit of truth that leads to all truths, and not just to some? Did the apostles also lead these people by the nose with errors and deceptions? Or did they set to work honestly and in an upright manner? In Christ's times the miserable Pharisees and the arrogant scriptural authorities sought to preserve the deception of the people and against the wise enlightener and enlightenment cried out: “Crucify, crucify!” Do you do anything different against those who restore his teaching? Like the senseless Jew who cried, “His teaching is not from God, but from the devil,”34 do you not call out in the same tone: “Their teaching is not Christian because it is the teaching of reason and not of faith”? So, the Christian religion was a doctrine that is against reason and not compatible with reason? A doctrine of prejudice and irrationality?
NOTES
1. Xinga was the sister of the king of Angola who fought against the Portuguese in the seventeenth century.—TRANS.
2. Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642), French prelate and statesman, minister to Louis XIII; Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683), French statesman and adviser to Louis XIV, famous for his fiscal policies.—TRANS.
3. Saint Athanasius (ca. 297-373), patriarch of Alexandria, was a champion of Nicene orthodoxy against Arianism, a widespread heresy that argued that Jesus Christ was created by God prior to everything else and hence was neither equal to nor eternal with God. The Dominicans, founded by Saint Dominic in 1216 as a monastic order dedicated to preaching and study, were assigned the task of administering the Inquisition in 1233.—TRANS.
4. Simon Ludwig Eberhard de Marees (1717-1802) was a Protestant theologian in Dessau and the author of polemics and theological works that argued strenuously for orthodoxy in matters of faith.—TRANS.
5. Possibly a reference to Johann Christian Woellner, Frederick William II’s minister who, on gaining control of the Central Consistory and the Higher Board of Education, issued his Censorship and Religion edicts.—TRANS.
6. Riem is presumably referring to Johann Paul Philip Rosenfeld, who was well known in the 1780s for his claim to be the true Messiah and who promised to break the seven seals on the Book of Life if he was provided with the requisite seven virgins. His attempts to recruit the daughters of peasants into his service led to clashes with public authorities, and in 1784, after the death of two of the young women he recruited, he received a life sentence in the fortress at Spandau, where he died in 1788. See Paul Schwartz, “Philipp Rosenfeld (1731-1788) ein neuer Messias in der Mark,” Jahrbuch für brandenburgische Kirchengeschichte 11/12(1914): 113-159.—TRANS.
7. Tomás de Torquemada (1420-1498) was notorious for his role as director of the Spanish Inquisition; Hieronymus Emser was a Catholic theologian who engaged in bitter polemics with Luther over Luther's translation of the New Testament.—TRANS.
8. A reference to Henry IV's humbling of himself before Pope Gregory VII (Hildebrand) after his excommunication during the Investiture Controversy.—TRANS.
9. Charles IX (1550-1574), king of France from 1560 under the regency of his mother, Catherine de' Medici. He approved the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (1570) at which thousands of Huguenots were murdered.—TRANS.
10. Jean Mondot, in the French translation of passages from Riem's essay (Qu'est-ce que les Lumières? [Saint-Étienne, 1991]) suggests that this is a reference to Louis XIV.—TRANS.
11. Philip II (1527-1598) was king of Spain during the Inquisition. In 1567, he appointed Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, duque de Alba, as governor of the Netherlands, where rebels were seeking religious toleration and self-government. Alba established a special court in Brussels, the infamous “Court of Blood,” and executed about 18,000 people.—TRANS.
12. Henry IV (1553-1610), king of France from 1589, was responsible for issuing the Edict of Nantes, which established political rights and religious liberty for the Huguenots. He was assassinated by François Ravaillac, a religious fanatic.—TRANS.
13. Ewald Friedrich von Hertzberg and Karl Wilhelm Finck von Finckenstein directed the Prussian Department of State under the reign of Frederick the Great and Frederick William II. Both played an active role in the negotiations with England during the Patriot Revolution in the United Provinces between 1781 and 1787 that eventually resulted in the dispatching of 20,000 Prussian troops to put down the rebellion of the Dutch Patriots, supported by France, against the pro-English Orange party.—TRANS.
14. Orbilius Pupillus, a Roman grammarian and schoolmaster, was Horace's teacher. He was famous for thé severity of the discipline he imposed on his pupils.—TRANS.
15. A reference to the United States, which at the time of the publication of Riem's pamphlet was governed by the Articles of Confederation, whose weakness Riem proceeds to discuss.—TRANS.
16. A reference to Prussia's intervention in the Patriot Revolution in support of a coalition of patricians and monarchists loyal to the prince of Orange.—TRANS.
17. Potosí, in southern Bolivia, was founded in 1545 and was a rich source of silver (not, as Riem has it, gold) in the second half of the sixteenth century. During the seventeenth century, however, it was unable to compete with mines in Peru and Mexico.—TRANS.
18. Bowing to opposition from the theological faculty, Frederick William I dismissed Christian Wolff from the University of Halle and exiled him from Prussia in 1723.—TRANS.
19. Johann Elert Bode (1747-1826) was director of the Berlin Observatory and founder of the Berliner Astronomisches Jahrbuch. In 1772, he published a paper generating a mathematical series that correlated with the empirical distances between the planets that were known at the time (“Bode's law,” as it came to be known, has not held true for Neptune and Pluto). Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel (1738-1822) attained fame as a conductor and astronomer in England where he became Sir William Herschel, private astronomer to the king, after discovering Uranus in 1781 (which did agree with “Bode's law”). Leonhard Euler (1703-1783), the Swiss mathematician, who in addition to his work in calculus also computed the motion of the moon, was invited to Berlin by Frederick the Great in 1741 and lived there until 1766.—TRANS.
20. Bonzen from the Japanese bonzi (religious person) and bo-zi (teacher of the law) and Talapoinen, from Peguan tala pôi (my lord), were used in eighteenth-century Europe as terms (usually disparaging) for Buddhist monks or priests.—TRANS.
21. Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474-1566) was a Spanish missionary who campaigned against slavery and working conditions among the native population of the Spanish colonies in the New World.—TRANS.
22. Atahualpa was the last Inca chief of Peru. Pizarro imprisoned him after inviting him into the city of Cajamarca. He was executed in 1533.—TRANS.
23. “Massacres in Ireland” is probably a reference to the massacre of Protestants in Ulster in 1641 at the start of a rebellion against the rule of Thomas Went-worth, Charles I's deputy. The revolt was put down in 1649-1650 by Oliver Cromwell with losses in the hundreds of thousands.—TRANS.
24. Michael Servetus (1511-1553) was a Spanish theologian, acquainted with many Swiss and German reformers, whose views on the Trinity were condemned by both Catholic and Protestant theologians. Under an assumed name, he served as physician to the archbishop of Vienne, where he became known for his skill at dissection and for his discoveries about the circulation of blood. He continued to publish his theological writings in secret. Condemned by the Inquisition, he was imprisoned but escaped. He was seized in Geneva by order of Calvin, tried, and burned at the stake.—TRANS.
25. Nikolaus Crell (1550-1601), a Saxon theologian who was viewed by orthodox Lutherans as having led the Saxon ruler, Christian I, away from Lutheran orthodoxy toward the teachings of Melanchthon and Calvin. He lost influence after the death of Christian I and was executed in 1601.—TRANS.
26. Charles I (1600-1649), king of England from 1625, waged a harsh campaign against religious nonconformists in the years leading up to the English Civil War.—TRANS.
27. Johan Melchior Goeze (1717-1786), the well-known orthodox Lutheran theologian who launched a bitter attack on Reimarus's and Lessing's rather unorthodox theological writings.—TRANS.
28. Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Jerusalem, Johann Joachim Spalding, Wilhelm Abraham Teller, and Christian Albrecht Döderlin were prominent Enlightenment theologians. Johann Gottfried Eichhorn was trained as a philologist, Orientalist, and theologian. He taught Oriental languages at Jena between 1775 and 1787 and became a professor of philosophy at Göttingen in 1788.—TRANS.
29. See note 4.—TRANS.
30. The term, which refers to abusive language, appears in English in Riem's pamphlet.—TRANS.
31. Lessing made a similar distinction between “Christianity” and the “religion of Christ” in a posthumously published fragment contained in his Theologischen Nachlass, a volume edited by his brother, Karl Lessing, and published in 1784. See Lessings Werke, ed. Karl Lachmann and Franz Muncker (Stuttgart, 1904), XVL518-519 (translated by Henry Chadwick as “The Religion of Christ” in Lessing's Theological Writings [Stanford, 1956], 106).—TRANS.
32. Matt. 7:16.—TRANS.
33. See Matt. 7:15: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”—TRANS.
34. See Matt. 9:32: “He casts out demons by the prince of demons.”—TRANS.