What Is to Be Done Toward the Enlightenment of the Citizenry?
Johann Karl Wilhelm Möhsen (1722-1795) was one of the most esteemed physicians of his day. Born in Berlin, he studied at Halle and Jena, returned to Berlin in 1742, and in 1778 became the personal physician of Frederick the Great. He cultivated an interest in the history of science and was a member of a number of learned societies, including the Berlin Wednesday Society, a secret society of Friends of Enlightenment that played a major role in the discussion of the question “What is enlightenment?” In the lecture translated here, Möhsen posed a series of questions about the nature of enlightenment that sparked intense debates within the Wednesday Society.
Our intent is to enlighten ourselves and our fellow citizens. The enlightenment of as great a city as Berlin has it difficulties, but once they have been overcome, light will spread not only into the provinces, but throughout the entire land, and how fortunate would we not be if only a few sparks, fanned here, came in time to spread a light over all of Germany, our common fatherland.
In order to achieve our goal, let it be proposed
1. that it be determined precisely: What is enlightenment?
2. that we determine the deficiencies and infirmities in the direction of the understanding, in the manner of thinking, in the prejudices and in the ethics of our nation—or at least of our immediate public—and that we investigate how they have been promoted thus far.
3. that we first attack and root out those prejudices and errors that are the most pernicious, and that we nurture and propagate those truths whose general recognition is most necessary.
It also would be worth investigating,
4. why the enlightenment of our public has as yet not advanced very far, notwithstanding that for more than forty years the freedom to think, to speak, and also to publish would seem to have ruled here more than in other lands,1 and that the education of our youth has also gradually improved.
It is known that our great monarch has recently taken pains, in his essay on German literature,2 to point out the deficiencies for which it can be reproached, the reasons for these deficiencies, and the means by which it may be improved. He has, on occasion, blamed the lack of enlightenment on defective instruction in schools and universities, on which a great deal has already been written.3
Since, however, he accuses our language of imperfection in expressing intelligibly the most accurate, vigorous, and brilliant ideas,4 then perhaps it should also be an object of our efforts,
5. to see to the improvement of our language, and to investigate how far these reproaches are deserved.
It is indeed not to be denied that our monarch has taken the enlightenment of the nation more to heart than the enlightenment of German literature. It appears, however, that at present he still has great reservations about this step.
Before the essay on German literature was published, the Academy had posed the Prize Question for 1778: “Is it useful for the common mass of mankind to be deceived, either by being misled into new errors or by being maintained in accustomed errors?”5 One sees from the distribution of the prize—which was divided, with half awarded to the affirmative prize essay and the other half to the negative essay—that the enlightened Royal Academy chose this expedient in order not to give offense with a definitive judgment. In the 1780 royal essay [De la littérature allemande], which appeared shortly after the Academy's question, one notes that the monarch—in spite of the fact that he prescribes the style and order of argument to all the faculties and sciences,6 and in spite of the fact that it could not have been entirely unknown to him that the learned clergy, through their sermons to their congregations and through their influence on the minds of men, could enlighten many more hundreds of people in a shorter time and uproot many more errors than all the treatises—passed over such matters entirely and excused himself by saying that he “would observe a respectful silence with regard to theology, since one says that it should be a holy science, into whose sacred realm the laity may not venture.”7
From this arises the proposal:
6. whether or not a closer investigation of the two opposing prize essays, and those which received honorable mention,8 might be arranged, in order to contrast the arguments for both sides and to consider if our efforts are useful or harmful, not only for the public, but also for the state and the government.
We can surely decide the last proposal according to our own insights, since we fulfill the duties of well-intentioned patriots under the seal of secrecy, our preeminent commandment. We have no Augustus as protector and no Maecenas and maecenatism among us, whom we might fear to offend with our remarks, we do not await the rewards of a house of Este, or Medici, of Francis I and Louis XIV,9 whom the monarch mentions, nor can our judgment be led by a thirst for honor or praise, for we remain anonymous, and our preeminent and sole reward is the inner conviction, to promote, as well as we can and without any further intention, the best for our fellow citizens and for posterity.
NOTES
1. Frederick the Great (1712-1786) assumed the Prussian throne in 1740 and began his reign with a general relaxation of censorship regulations. For a discussion of Frederick's stance toward censorship, see the essay by Möhsen's colleague in the Mittwochsgesellschaft, Ernst Ferdinand Klein, “On Freedom of Thought and of the Press,” Berlinische Monatsschrift 3 (1784): 312-330, translated below, pp. 87-96.—TRANS.
2. Frederick's De la littérature allemande was published in Berlin in 1780.—TRANS.
3. Frederick devoted part of De la littérature allemande to a discussion of the failings of German schools and universities. See Oeuvres de Frédéric le Grand, ed. Johann David Erdmann Preuß, (Berlin, 1846-1857), 7:98-101.—TRANS.
4. Möhsen refers here to Frederick's claim in De la littérature allemande that the German language could not do justice to “les pensées les plus justes, les plus fortes, les plus brillantes.” See Preuß, Oeuvres, 7:97, and the more sustained discussion on pp. 101-108.—TRANS.
5. Frederick proposed this question, which he had previously addressed in chapter 18 of his Anti-Machiavel, to the academy in 1777. The prize was divided between the affirmative response by Frédéric de Castillon and the negative response of R. Z. Becker.—TRANS.
6. A reference to Frederick's extended discussion, in De la littérature allemande, of the proper language and presentation of arguments within the various academic disciplines.—TRANS.
7. “Je me renferme également dans un respectueux silence à l'égard de la théologie. On dit que c'est une science divine, et qu'il n'est pas permis aux profanes de toucher à l'encensoir.” De la littérature allemande, in Preuß, Oeuvres, 7:100.—TRANS.
8. In addition to the two winning essays, three other essays answering the question in the negative and six answering the question in the affirmative were included in the academy's Accessit. Three of these essays were eventually published.—TRANS.
9. Caius Maecenas was a Roman statesman who served as adviser to the emperor Augustus and, on his retirement, a patron of Horace, Virgil, and Propertius—hence the use of his name as a synonym for a patron of the arts (in German, Mäzene) and for patronage of the arts (in German, Mäzenaten). The Este were a noble family and patrons of the arts in Renaissance Ferrara and Modena; the Medici played the same role in Florence. Francis I (king of France from 1515 to 1547) was the patron of Rabelais, Marot, and Budé and the founder of the Collège de France, while Louis XIV (who reigned from 1643 to 1715) was the patron of Molière, Racine, La Fontaine, and Le Brun, among others. For Frederick's discussion of the absence of such patrons in Germany, see De la littérature allemande, in Preuß, Oeuvres, 7:95-96.—TRANS.
Originally delivered as a lecture before the Berlin Wednesday Society on 17 December 1783. Edited and first published by Ludwig Keller in “Die Berliner Mittwochs-Gesellschaft Monatshefte der Comenius-Gesellschaft 5, nos. 3-4 (1896): 73-76. Some preliminary and concluding comments, dealing with the immediate circumstances of the delivery of the lecture, have been omitted.