"[158]
Lessing was always for freedom, never for looseness, of thought, still
less for laxity of principle. But it must be a real freedom, and not that
vain struggle to become a majority, which, if it succeed, escapes from
heresy only to make heretics of the other side. _Abire ad plures_ would
with him have meant, not bodily but spiritual death. He did not love the
fanaticism of innovation a whit better than that of conservatism. To his
sane understanding, both were equally hateful, as different masks of the
same selfish bully. Coleridge said that toleration was impossible till
indifference made it worthless. Lessing did not wish for toleration,
because that implies authority, nor could his earnest temper have
conceived of indifference. But he thought it as absurd to regulate
opinion as the color of the hair. Here, too, he would have agreed with
Selden, that "it is a vain thing to talk of an heretic, for a man for his
heart cannot think any otherwise than he does think." Herr Stahr's
chapters on this point, bating a little exaltation of tone, are very
satisfactory; though, in his desire to make a leader of Lessing, he
almost represents him as being what he shunned,--the founder of a sect.
The fact is, that Lessing only formulated in his own way a general
movement of thought, and what mainly interests us is that in him we see a
layman, alike indifferent to clerisy and heresy, giving energetic and
pointed utterance to those opinions of his class which the clergy are
content to ignore so long as they remain esoteric.
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