I reconcile myself with my open enemies in order the
better to be on my guard against my secret ones."[157] At another time he
tells his brother that he has a wholly false notion of his (Lessing's)
relation to orthodoxy. "Do you suppose I grudge the world that anybody
should seek to enlighten it?--that I do not heartily wish that every one
should think rationally about religion? I should loathe myself if even in
my scribblings I had any other end than to help forward those great
views. But let me choose my own way, which I think best for this purpose.
And what is simpler than this way? I would not have the impure water,
which has long been unfit to use, preserved; but I would not have it
thrown away before we know whence to get purer.... Orthodoxy, thank God,
we were pretty well done with; a partition-wall had been built between it
and Philosophy, behind which each could go her own way without troubling
the other. But what are they doing now? They are tearing down this wall,
and, under the pretext of making us rational Christians, are making us
very irrational philosophers.... We are agreed that our old religious
system is false; but I cannot say with you that it is a patchwork of
bunglers and half-philosophers. I know nothing in the world in which
human acuteness has been more displayed or exercised than in that.
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