My Arrival in Berlin. Acquaintances. Mendelssohn. Doubting Metaphysical Systems. Teaching Locke and Adelung
ALTHOUGH I HAVE TAKEN a lengthy detour in presenting Maimonides’ famous work, I feel no need to apologize to the intelligent reader. Not only is the subject of my remarks inherently interesting, but Maimonides also had a decisive impact on my intellectual development. Now, however, I will return to the story of what I experienced in Berlin and elsewhere.
The first part of my autobiography ended with my journey to Berlin, so it is there that I will return to. Because I was traveling by stagecoach this time, I didn’t have to stop at the Rosenthaler Gate and wait for the Jewish elders [152] to question me. I rode without difficulty into the city, where I was able to lodge wherever I pleased.
Remaining in the city was a very different matter. The Jewish police officials daily searched the inns and hostels where foreigners might be, and they interrogated the lodgers about the nature and the prospective duration of their stay. The official in charge at the time, L. M., was a frightening fellow who treated poor foreigners in a thoroughly despotic manner. It goes without saying that the officials didn’t let up until foreigners had either found a permanent residence in the city or had left it. I received one such visit just a day after renting a room on the New Market from a Jew who took in poor travelers, most of whom were not only poor but also hungry.
L. M. subjected me to a thorough interrogation. I told him that since I was planning to find work as a private tutor, I didn’t know exactly how long my stay [153] would be. He was suspicious, thinking that he had seen me here before, and he seemed to regard me as being like a comet coming closer to the earth the second time around and posing a much greater threat. In addition, he saw that I had a Mylath Hygoian, or a Hebrew logic written by Maimonides with Mendelssohn’s commentary (I neglected to mention this in my account of Maimonides’ works).1 Upon making this discovery, L. M. flew into a rage. “Good, good,” he shouted, “I have seen enough!” Then, turning to me with a menacing expression, he said, “If you don’t want your departure to be a public spectacle, you will leave Berlin at once.” I trembled and didn’t know what to do. However, I had heard that a Polish Jew of considerable talents, respected in the best circles, had moved to Berlin to pursue his studies; I decided to seek him out.
Having received me as a compatriot, and in a very friendly way, he asked me where in Poland I was from and why I had come [154] to Berlin. As to the latter question, I answered that I had been drawn to science and philosophy from childhood on, adding that I had read assorted Hebrew writings on scientific topics. Now I had traveled to Berlin to be meimik bechochma (that is, to steep myself in science and scholarship). This odd rabbinic expression made him smile, and he warmly conveyed his approval. After we had spoken for a while, he asked me to call on him often, something I happily promised to do. I left in a cheerful mood.
The very next day, I went to see my Polish friend again and found him with several young people from a high-standing Jewish family. They apparently visited him often to discuss scientific theories and scholarly questions, and they wasted little time in engaging me in conversation. They seemed to find my dialect, guilelessness, and candor disarming. They laughed quite heartily when they heard the expression meimik bechochma, which they, too, knew. They [155] encouraged me, telling me I wasn’t wrong to think I could become meimik bechochma here. And when I revealed my fear of L. M., the Jewish police official, they again lifted my spirits. Indeed, they offered to use the influence of their family to secure sponsors, so that I could stay in Berlin for as long as I wanted.
They kept their word. Their uncle D. P., a wealthy man of excellent character, wide-ranging knowledge, and refined taste, not only showed me great respect but also provided me with clean lodgings and invited me for a Sabbath meal. Other members of the family, too, sent food to my room on certain days. Among them was H., a brother of these young people and, in addition, an upstanding man of formidable erudition. He was an enthusiastic Talmudist and therefore dutifully asked if I was neglecting the Talmud because of my proclivity for scientific and philosophical scholarship. When he learned that I was so eager to become meimik [156] bechochma, he stopped sending me food.—
Since I now had permission to stay in Berlin, I could concentrate on putting my plan into practice. By sheer coincidence, I happened to walk into a store that sold butter and find the owner dissecting a very old book in order to repurpose the paper. I looked and saw, much to my astonishment, that the book was Wolff’s Metaphysics or the Doctrine of God, the World and the Human Soul.2 I couldn’t understand how, in a city as enlightened as Berlin, someone could treat such an important work so barbarically. I asked the owner whether he would perhaps be willing to sell me the book. He would be, for two cents. I gave him the sum without the slightest hesitation. As I took my treasure home, my heart was filled with happiness.
Reading the book for the first time, I was enthused. Not only [157] the exalted scholarship in its own right, but also the famous author’s organization and mathematical method, his precision in explaining, his rigor in demonstrating, and the systematic presentation—it all lit a completely new light in my mind.
The sections on ontology, cosmology, and psychology were quite easy to read. The parts on theology, however, caused me much trouble, for their teachings not only failed to cohere with what came before them but even seemed to contradict it. I could not accept Wolff’s proof for the existence of God a posteriori, or according to the principle of sufficient reason. And I observed that by Wolff’s own admission, the principle of sufficient reason is an abstraction, derived from individual empirical cases, which merely declares that every object of experience must be grounded in another object of experience, rather than in objects beyond all experience. I also compared [158] this new metaphysical doctrine with Maimonides’ and especially Aristotle’s—those which I already knew, that is—and I couldn’t make them all fit together.
I decided to write out these doubts in Hebrew and send them to Herr Mendelssohn, about whom I had heard so much. He was more than a little amazed to get such a letter. He answered at once that my doubts were, in fact, well founded, but that I should not be disheartened or put off. Instead, I should always pursue my studies with a beginner’s excitement.
Energized and emboldened by these words, I wrote a metaphysical disputation in Hebrew, in which I cast doubt on the foundations of both revealed and natural theology. Through a series of philosophical arguments, I attacked twelve of the thirteen articles of faith established by Maimonides, sparing only the one about rewards and punishment, which I accepted, in a purely philosophical sense, as natural consequences [159] of voluntary actions. I then sent my work to Mendelssohn, who was astonished. Here was a Polish Jew who had only just learned Wolff’s metaphysics, and yet he had been able to penetrate so deeply into it that he could supplant its arguments with a more correct ontology.
Mendelssohn invited me to join him for a conversation, and I accepted. But I was so shy, and the customs and living standards of people in Berlin were so new to me that I would enter their stylish homes in fear and bewilderment. When I opened the door to Mendelssohn’s house and saw him and the other elegant people present, as well as the beautiful, tastefully appointed rooms, I scurried back outside, shut the door, and wanted to flee. Mendelssohn, however, had seen me. He came out and spoke to me in the kindliest tones. Coaxing me back into his room, he steered me to a place near a window, effusively complimented my writing. He assured me that if I continued in this way, I would make great progress [160] in metaphysics. And he promised to help me overcome my philosophical skepticism.
But this excellent man didn’t simply stop there. He also wanted to help me in practical terms, and he thus recommended me to the best, most enlightened, and wealthiest Jews in Berlin, who looked after my board and other needs. Soon I had a standing invitation to eat with them and use their libraries.
Of these people, H., a man with great knowledge and a generous heart, was particularly noteworthy.3 He was a special friend and student of Mendelssohn’s and seemed to enjoy my conversation very much. We often discussed the most important issues in natural theology and morality. Our relationship came to be such that I revealed my thoughts to him with complete openness, without any dissembling at all.
In conversation with H., I laid out all the systems I had studied up until that point, defending them with the greatest tenacity. H. raised objections; I answered them and raised objections of my own. [161] At first, this friend regarded me as a kind of speaking animal. He found me delightful the way one would a starling or a dog that has learned to say a few words. More than his rational faculties being stirred by the content of our exchanges, his imagination was fired by the strange mix of animal qualities in my facial expressions and external bearing and the reason in my thoughts. But after a while, the amusement gave way to earnestness. He began to pay attention to the actual issues. Given that notwithstanding his abilities and knowledge, he didn’t have a philosophical mind, and also that the vitality of his imagination detracted from the maturity of his judgment, it should be easy to guess how our exchanges turned out.
A few instances will suffice to convey a sense of how I comported myself in such discussions, of the holes in my arguments caused by my deficient command of the German language, and of my practice of explaining everything [162] through examples.
I tried to explain Spinoza’s system and more specifically, that all objects are manifestations of a single substance. H. interrupted me: “My God! You and I are different people, aren’t we? Doesn’t each of us have his own existence?”
“Close the shutters!” I exclaimed in response. He was surprised by this bizarre reaction, until I told him what I meant by it: “Look,” I said, “the sun is shining through the windows. The rectangular window creates a rectangle of reflected light and the round window creates a circle. Are they therefore different things, or are they one and the same sunshine? If you close the shutters, all the light will disappear completely.”
On another occasion, I defended Helvétius’ system of self-love. H. objected, maintaining that we love other people, too. “For example, I love my wife,” [163] he said, and to confirm it, he gave her a kiss. “That does not disprove my point,” I replied. “For why did you kiss your wife? Because you get pleasure from doing so.”4
A. M., a very courteous and, at the time, very rich man, also gave me free access to his home. Here I found a German translation of Locke. In a cursory first reading, I enjoyed him a great deal, and I recognized him as being the first modern philosopher whose sole concern was truth. I therefore suggested to A. M.’s private tutor that he should let me help him understand this excellent work. At first, the tutor smiled at my proposal and at my ingenuousness—I, who had barely even looked at Locke, would teach him, someone born into and raised in the German language and German scholarship. Nonetheless, he acted as though he saw nothing odd about my suggestion. He accepted it and set up a time for us to study Locke together.
I arrived at the appointed time and began to read the text aloud. But since I couldn’t read a word of German properly, [164] I told my student that he should do the reading; my task would be to explain each part of the text. Pretending to be sincerely eager to learn from me, my student agreed, just for the fun of it. His astonishment was therefore great when he realized that this wasn’t a joke. Not only had I comprehended Locke correctly, but my explanations and commentary, when presented in my native language, also revealed a genuinely philosophical mind.
I became a familiar figure in the house of the widow L., and when I suggested to her son, young S. L. (who is still my patron), that he should take German lessons from me, there was even greater cause for amusement. However, my reputation had made the bright young man keen to have me as his teacher, and he asked me to give him lessons on Adelung’s German Grammar. It was a book I had never laid eyes on, [165] but I didn’t let that stop me.(a) My student read the German Grammar aloud, piece by piece, and I not only explained what Adelung meant, but also added my own commentary. I found Adelung’s philosophical discussion of the partes orationis especially objectionable. In response, I communicated my own construction of this principle, which my intellectually ambitious pupil has retained to this day.
But as someone with no experience of the world, I sometimes went too far with my candor and wound up in difficult situations.
I had read Spinoza, whose deep thinking and love of truth I was particularly drawn to. And because back in Poland, I had, through my reading of Kabbalistic writings, [166] chanced upon the same ideas that underlie his system, I began in effect to contemplate the system again, and I became so convinced of its truth that all Mendelssohn’s attempts to steer me away from it failed.
I countered all the objections to Spinoza that the Wolffians raised, raised objections of my own to their system, and demonstrated that when one changed the definitiones nominales of Wolff’s ontology into definitiones reales, the results went against their conclusions. The only way I could understand Mendelssohn’s and the Wolffians’ attachment to their system was by seeing it as a political trick and as an act of hypocrisy, too, through which they assiduously tried to approximate the thinking of the common man.5 I expressed this opinion openly and without reservations.
For the most part, my friends and patrons had never thought about philosophy. They blindly accepted the conclusions of the dominant system as definitive [167] truths, and thus they couldn’t understand my resistance, nor of course share it. Mendelssohn took a different sort of tack. He didn’t want to block my drive to explore; in fact, he secretly rather liked it, and he said that even though I was on the wrong path at the moment, I should not curtail my thinking. For as Descartes correctly remarked, “doubt is the beginning of all real philosophizing.” [168]
1 The edition with Mendelssohn’s commentary of Millot Hahigayon was published in Hamburg in 1761. L. M. was, of course, objecting to it as a product and symbol of Jewish Enlightenment rather than to its content.
2 Christian Wolff, Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt (Halle, 1719).
3 This was the distinguished physician Markus Herz (1747–1803), who was a friend of Mendelssohn’s and a student of Kant’s.
4 Henriette Herz (1764–1847) was twenty years younger than her husband and famous for her beauty as well as her wit. She presided over the most famous intellectual salon in Berlin. See Deborah Hertz, Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).
a [Maimon] My method of reading and comprehending books without any prior knowledge, which I have already described in early chapters of my autobiography, and which was born out of a lack of books in Poland, became so advanced that, before I would begin to read, I was confident I would understand everything.
5 That is, the opposite of the “theological politics” Maimon attributed to Maimonides.