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127 preface I have named my book after its occasion and the greatest portion of its content , for even the letter to Hemsterhuis must be counted here as a supplement to the letters to Mendelssohn. My simultaneously providing the history of these letters will justify this history itself. After the final letter I have briefly stated the purpose of this work, and I believe that thereafter, until the end, I made it known clearly enough. For the time being, I have nothing more to say to the attentive, inquisitive reader who is only concerned with the truth. It is contrary to my intentions if another type of reader gets hold of this book. Let him demand nothing of me, just as I demand nothing of him. Pempelfort, near Düsseldorf 28 August 1785 Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi [. . .] In February 1783, a close friend of Lessing, who through him became my friend as well, wrote to me that she was about to undertake a journey to Berlin, and asked me whether I had any errands for her to run there.163 My friend wrote to me again from Berlin. Her letter mainly treated Mendels­ sohn, “this sincere admirer and friend of our Lessing.” She reported to me that she had spoken with Mendelssohn a great deal about the deceased164 and about lowly me as well, and that Mendelssohn was about to begin his book about Lessing ’s character and writings.165 11 | From Jacobi’s On the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Mr. Moses Mendelssohn (1785) 163. [Jacobi is referring to Elise Reimarus. Her father was “the Fragmentist,” Hermann Samuel Reimarus, whose attacks on Christianity Lessing published between 1774 and 1778 (see note 50). Her brother, Dr. Johann Albert Reimarus (1729–1814) was a close friend of Mendelssohn. He appeared as a character in Mendelssohn’s Morning Hours, and Mendelssohn sent him the manuscript of that work for comments before its publication.] 164. [Lessing, who died 15 February 1781.] 165. [Mendelssohn mentioned this plan in a letter to Johann Gottfried Herder in May 1781.] 128 | p o l e m i c a l w r i t i n g s Various obstacles made it impossible for me to answer this letter immediately, and my friend’s stay in Berlin was only a few weeks long. When she was home again, I wrote to her inquiring how much or how little Mendelssohn had known about Lessing’s religious convictions, for Lessing had been a Spinozist. Lessing had spoken to me about this topic without any reticence, and since he was generally not inclined to conceal his opinions, I surmised that several other people had known what I knew about him. But that he had never distinctly explained himself to Mendelssohn regarding this matter became clear to me in the following way. IhadinvitedLessingtoaccompanymetoBerlinandreceivedtheresponsethat we should discuss the matter at Wolfenbüttel. When I arrived there, significant obstacles arose. Lessing tried to persuade me to travel to Berlin without him, and every day he became more insistent. His main motive was Mendelssohn, whom he esteemed most among his friends. He sincerely wished me to get to know Mendelssohn personally. In one such discussion I expressed my astonishment at the fact that a man of such clear and correct understanding as Mendelssohn could have defended the proof of God’s existence from its idea as zealously as he had done in his Treatise on Evidence.166 Lessing’s excuses immediately led me to the question of whether or not he had ever stated his own doctrine to Mendelssohn. “Never,” replied Lessing, “only once did I basically tell him just what you noticed in The Education of the Human Race (§73). We never settled the matter between us, and I let it go at that.”167 Therefore, the probability on the one hand that several people had been informed of Lessing’s Spinozism, and the certainty on the other hand that Mendelssohn had not known anything reliable about it, moved me to give [Mendels­ sohn] a hint about it. My friend grasped my intention completely. The matter seemed to her to be of great importance, and she immediately wrote to Mendelssohn in order to reveal to him what I had disclosed to her. Mendelssohn was astonished, and the first thing he did was to doubt the accuracy of my claim. He wished to know exactly how Lessing had expressed the convictions that I attributed to him, and whether 166. [“The proof of God’s...

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