and fair ladies, and dreamed with St. Brandan of mystical Atlantides, who knows what it would produce in the domain of intellect, if it hardened itself to an entrance into the world, and subjected its rich and profound nature to the conditions of modern thought?  It appears to me that there would result from this combination, productions of high originality, a subtle and discreet manner of taking life, a singular union of strength and weakness, of rude simplicity and mildness.  Few races have had so complete a poetic childhood as the Celtic; mythology, lyric poetry, epic, romantic imagination, religious enthusiasm—­none of these failed them; why should reflection fail them?  Germany, which commenced with science and criticism, has come to poetry; why should not the Celtic races, which began with poetry, finish with criticism?  There is not so great a distance from one to the other as is supposed; the poetical races are the philosophic races, and at bottom philosophy is only a manner of poetry.  When one considers how Germany, less than a century ago, had her genius revealed to her, how a multitude of national individualities, to all appearance effaced, have suddenly risen again in our own days, more instinct with life than ever, one feels persuaded that it is a rash thing to lay down any law on the intermittence and awakening of nations; and that modern civilisation, which appeared to be made to absorb them, may perhaps be nothing more than their united fruition.

THE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE

BY

GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSINO

TRANSLATED BY

F. W. ROBERTSON

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Lessing’s life has been sketched in the introduction to his “Minna von Barnhelm” in the volume of Continental Dramas in The Harvard Classics.

“The Education of the Human Race” is the culmination of a bitter theological controversy which began with the publication by Lessing, in 1774-1778, of a series of fragments of a work on natural religion by the German deist, Reimarus.  This action brought upon Lessing the wrath of the orthodox German Protestants, led by J. M. Goeze, and in the battle that followed Lessing did his great work for the liberalising of religious thought in Germany.  The present treatise is an extraordinarily condensed statement of the author’s attitude towards the fundamental questions of religion, and gives his view of the signification of the previous religious history of mankind, along with his faith And hope for the future.

As originally issued, the essay purported to be merely edited by Lessing; but there is no longer any doubt as to his having been its author.  It is an admirable and characteristic expression of the serious and elevated spirit in which he dealt with matters that had then, as often, been degraded by the virulence of controversy.