lead on the one hand towards that unbelief in religion which in the
last reign had been fashionable, and on the other hand a series of
prescriptions for compromise; the monarchy all the while throwing
its weight against all innovation in doctrine and practice. In 1799
Fichte is found expressing the utmost alarm at the combination of the
European despotisms to "rout out freethought"; [1462] and so strong
did the official reaction become that in the opinion of Heine all
the German philosophers and their ideas would have been suppressed
by wheel and gallows but for Napoleon, [1463] who intervened in the
year 1805. The Prussian despotism being thus weakened, what actually
happened was an adaptation of Kant's teaching to the needs alike of
religion and of rationalism. The religious world was assured by it
that, though all previous arguments for theism were philosophically
worthless, theism was now safe on the fluid basis of feeling. On the
other hand, rationalism alike in ethics and in historical criticism
was visibly reinforced on all sides. Herder, as before noted, found
divinity students grounding their unbelief on Kant's teaching. Staüdlin
begins the preface to his History and Spirit of Skepticism (1794) with
the remark that "Skepticism begins to be a disease of the age"; and
Kant is the last in his list of skeptics. At the close of the century
"the number of Kantian theologians was legion," and it was through
the Kantian influence that "the various anti-orthodox tendencies
which flourished during the period of Illumination were concentrated
in Rationalism" [1464]--in the tendency, that is, to bring rational
criticism to bear alike on history, dogma, and philosophy. Borowski
in 1804 complains that "beardless youths and idle babblers" devoid of
knowledge "appeal to Kant's views respecting Christianity." [1465]
These views, as we have seen, were partly accommodating, partly
subversive in the extreme. Kant regards Jesus as an edifying ideal
of perfect manhood, "belief" in whom as such makes a man acceptable
to God, because of following a good model. "While he thus treats
the historical account of Jesus as of no significance, except as a
shell into which the practical reason puts the kernel, his whole
argument tends to destroy faith in the historic person of Jesus
as given in the gospel, treating the account itself as something
whose truthfulness it is not worth while to investigate." [1466]
In point of fact we find his devoted disciple Erhard declaring:
"I regard Christian morality as something which has been falsely
imputed to Christianity; and the existence of Christ does not at all
seem to me to be a probable historical fact"--this while declaring
that Kant had given him "the indescribable comfort of being able to
call himself openly, and with a good conscience, a Christian." [1467]
While therefore a multitude of preachers availed themselves of
Kant's philosophic licence to rationalize in the pulpit and out
of it as occasion offered, and yet others opposed them only on
the score that all divergence from orthodoxy should be avowed,
the dissolution of orthodoxy in Germany was rapid and general; and
the anti-supernaturalist handling of Scripture, prepared for as we
have seen, went on continuously. Even the positive disparagement
of Christianity was carried on by Kantian students; and Hamann,
dubbed "the Magician of the North" for his alluring exposition
of emotional theism, caused one of them, a tutor, to be brought
before a clerical consistory for having taught his pupil to throw all
specifically Christian doctrines aside. The tutor admitted the charge,
and with four others signed a declaration "that neither morality
nor sound reason nor public welfare could exist in connection with
Christianity." [1468] Hamann's own influence was too much a matter
of literary talent and caprice to be durable; and recent attempts to
re-establish his reputation have evoked the deliberate judgment that
he has no permanent importance. [1469]
Against the intellectual influence thus set up by Kant there was none
in contemporary Germany capable of resistance. Philosophy for the most
part went in Kant's direction, having indeed been so tending before
his day. Rationalism of a kind had already had a representative in
Chr. A. Crusius (1712-1775), who in treatises on logic and metaphysics
opposed alike Leibnitz and Wolff, and taught for his own part a kind
of Epicureanism, nominally Christianized. To his school belonged
Platner (much admired by Jean Paul Richter, his pupil) and Tetens,
"the German Locke," who attempted a common-sense answer to Hume. His
ideal was a philosophy "at once intelligible and religious, agreeable
to God and accessible to the people." [1470] Platner on the other hand,
leaning strongly towards a psychological and anthropological view of
human problems, [1471] opposed first to atheism [1472] and later to
Kantian theism [1473] a moderate Pyrrhonic skepticism; here following a
remarkable lead from the younger Beausobre, who in 1755 had published
in French, at Berlin, a treatise entitled Le Pyrrhonisme Raisonnable,
taking up the position, among others, that while it is hard to prove
the existence of God by reason it is impossible to disprove it. This
was virtually the position of Kant a generation later; and it is
clear that thus early the dogmatic position was discredited.