The Philosophical Correspondence and Unpublished Writings of Francois Hemsterhuis 1399525174, 9781399525176

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T h e P hi l o s o p hi cal C o r r e s p o n d e nce a nd Unp u b l i sh e d Wr i ti ngs of

françoiS Hemsterhuis

Edited and Translated by Jacob van Sluis and Daniel Whistler

The Philosophical Correspondence and Unpublished Writings of François Hemsterhuis

Volume 3 of The Edinburgh Edition of the Philosophical Works of François Hemsterhuis General Editors Jacob van Sluis and Daniel Whistler International Advisory Board Laure Cahen-Maurel Louis Hoffman Claudia Melica Peter Sonderen Gabriel Trop Volume 1  Early Writings, 1762–1773 Volume 2  The Dialogues, 1778–1787 Volume 3  The Philosophical Correspondence and Unpublished Writings

The Philosophical Correspondence and Unpublished Writings of François Hemsterhuis Edited and translated by Jacob van Sluis and Daniel Whistler

With introductions by Claudia Melica, Henri A. Krop, Peter Sonderen and Jonathan I. Israel

Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organisation, Jacob van Sluis and Daniel Whistler, 2023 © the text, Edinburgh University Press Cover image: La Mystérieuse, vase design by François Hemsterhuis Photo: © Royal Library, The Hague Cover design: riverdesignbooks.com Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun – Holyrood Road 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in Baskerville by R. J. Footring Ltd, Derby, UK, and printed and bound in Great Britain. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 3995 2517 6 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 3995 2519 0 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 3995 2520 6 (epub)

The right of Jacob van Sluis and Daniel Whistler to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Contents

Series Introduction ix Jacob van Sluis and Daniel Whistler xiii Hemsterhuis’s Life, Works and Reception Abbreviationsxx INTRODUCTIONS Atheism According to François Hemsterhuis: Convergences with and Divergences from the German Spinoza Controversy Claudia Melica Hemsterhuis and Newtonian Philosophy Henri A. Krop The Ubiquity of Vases in Hemsterhuis’s Sketches and Drawings: Making Art in Philosophy, Doing Philosophy in Art Peter C. Sonderen Hemsterhuis as a European and Trans-Atlantic Political Theorist Jonathan Israel PART ONE. SPINOZISM, ATHEISM AND RELIGION Letter on Fatalism On Prayer Letters on the History of Philosophy up to Spinoza (Gallitzin and Hemsterhuis) On Two Kinds of Theology Letters on Knowing, Believing and Doubting (Gallitzin and Hemsterhuis) Prelude to the Letter on Atheism Letter on Atheism from Diocles to Diotima Further Reflections on Spinoza and the Spinozism Controversy Supplement to the Letter on Fatalism PART TWO. EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE SCIENCES On the Reality of Appearances On the Relations of Matter and Soul Fragment on Physics On Divisibility to Infinity On the Incommensurable On Loss of Imagination An Analogy between the Formation of the Body and the Formation of the Soul Letter on the Rotation of the Planets

3 16 29 57

71 76 78 81 83 97 98 110 122 127 130 132 135 139 142 143 145

vi CONTENTS On Final Causes Prelude to the Letter on Optics Letter on Optics

151 153 155

PART THREE. ART AND STYLE Letters on Geometric Style (Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin) 163 On Geometric Education and Aesthetic Judgement 167 Letters on Hesiod and the Golden Age 170 On the Best Shape to Give to the Feet of Vases 173 Further Reflections on the Best Shape to Give to the Feet of Vases 175 On Plato’s Style in the Phaedrus and the Symposium (and Racine’s Phaedra)177 Letters on Diderot’s Style 179 Catechism for a Young Painter 182 On the Artworks of Central Germany 186 Letters on Plato and the Sublime (Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin) 190 On Architecture and Other Arts 200 On Reading Goethe’s Werther202 PART FOUR. ETHICS AND POLITICS Letter on Virtues and Vices 207 On Fürstenberg’s Character 212 On the Moral Organ 214 On Current Events in the Dutch Republic 216 Reflections on the Republic of the United Provinces, to Princess Gallitzin and Baron F. von Fürstenberg 218 Preliminary Observations on the Constitution of the Republic of United Provinces225 On the Political Situation of the Dutch Republic 233 Alexis II, or on the Military 235 250 Sketch of Advice to the Council of State On Patriotism 253 Letters on the French Revolution 255 APPENDIX On the Genesis of Alexis II: The Metaphysics of the Military Jacob van Sluis

261

Notes267 Index331

In memory of Marcel Franz Fresco (1925–2011)

Series Introduction Jacob van Sluis and Daniel Whistler

Born in Franeker in 1721, François Hemsterhuis was raised on Greek and mathematics by his father, the philologist Tiberius Hemsterhuis. After Tiberius’s appointment to the University of Leiden in 1740, Hemsterhuis found himself at the heart of Dutch Newtonianism and imbibed its experimental methodology, taking lessons with Willem ’s Gravesande, forging a lifelong friendship with Petrus Camper and developing a passion for the design of astronomical instruments. After brief stints as a military engineer and a tutor, Hemsterhuis relocated to The Hague to enter the Dutch civil service, rising to the post of First Secretary to the Council of State. Correspondence with an Amsterdam banker, Theodorus de Smeth, led to a series of four epistolary publications in French on art and philosophy during the 1760s and early 1770s: Letter on an Antique Gemstone, Letter on Sculpture, Letter on Desires and Letter on Man and his Relations. Then, in 1775, he began an intense philosophical collaboration with Amalie Gallitzin, with whom he would exchange over 2,000 letters as the ‘Socrates’ to her ‘Diotima’. Their joint work resulted in four dialogues written in French during a three-year creative burst, from 1778 to 1781: Sophylus, Aristaeus, Simon and Alexis. On Gallitzin’s relocation to Münster, Hemsterhuis became increasingly drawn into German philosophical circles, visiting J. G. Herder and J. W. Goethe in Weimar and forging an intellectual alliance with F. H. Jacobi during the latter’s battles over Spinoza. He died in 1790 at The Hague.1 To A. W. Schlegel, Hemsterhuis – ‘a Dutchman, who wrote in French but was only properly esteemed by Germans’ – was ‘a prophet of transcendental idealism’; to J. G. Herder, his was ‘an original philosophy, such as appears only once in a hundred years’; to C. M. Wieland, he was ‘the Plato of our times’; and to J. G. Hamann, he was the ‘Haagsche’ Socrates.2 And the influence of Hemsterhuis’s philosophy on German Classicisms, Romanticisms and Idealisms is elsewhere palpable in the writings of, among others, Goethe, Hegel, Hölderlin, Jacobi, Jean Paul, Kant, Lessing, Novalis, Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel and Schleiermacher. Such a legacy has gained Hemsterhuis the rank of the most influential modern Dutch philosopher after Spinoza. But his philosophy matters not just because of its German reception: it is also a monument to late Dutch Newtonianism, a key moment in the north European recovery of Plato and Socrates in the second half of the eighteenth century, a dialogue partner for many Enlightenment philosophies (not only Diderot’s, but d’Alembert’s and Mendelssohn’s too), a source for later definitions of beauty (from that of Tolstoy to that of Croce), and a product of advances in optics, astronomy and telescope design at the period; and it went on to influence nineteenth-century constructions of the categories of ‘Christian Platonism’ and modern ‘pantheism’. Hemsterhuis’s philosophical works – which range from empiricist arguments for metaphysical dualism to a history of art, from

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arguments for the existence of God to the priority of sentiment and enthusiasm, from the critique of private property to the role of imagination in constituting ethical character – are essential reference points for any proper understanding of late eighteenth-century thinking. The Edinburgh Edition of the Philosophical Works of François Hemsterhuis provides the first ever English translations of his oeuvre. Timed to coincide with the tricentenary of his birth in December 2021, its three volumes make Hemsterhuis’s philosophy as a whole accessible to Anglophone readers, building on the growing critical attention it has received: ever since Klaus Hammacher launched modern Hemsterhuis scholarship with his 1971 monograph Unmittelbarkeit und Kritik bei Hemsterhuis, it has been a domain charted in ever-increasing detail by, among many others, Marcel Fresco, Henri Krop, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, Elio Matassi, Claudia Melica, Heinz Moenkemeyer, Paul Pelckmans, Michael John Petry, Peter Sonderen, Wiep van Bunge, Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron and Michiel Wielema.3 Over the last twenty years alone, new editions of Hemsterhuis’s writings have appeared in French, Dutch and Italian.4 More recently still, Hemsterhuis’s political reflections have become important reference points for Jonathan Israel’s history of the Enlightenment and both Dalia Nassar and Leif Weatherby make much of Hemsterhuis’s conceptual influence on the German Romantics.5 This edition builds on the growing body of research, while demonstrating, in addition, Hemsterhuis’s significance for those interested in experiments with philosophical styles, Deism, art theory and the history of the physical sciences. Hemsterhuis’s writings matter not just to readers in philosophy departments, but also in modern languages departments, history departments, literature departments, art history departments, religion departments and politics departments. This is the first translated edition in any language to make use of the recently published critical edition of Hemsterhuis’s works and complete correspondence.6 It consists of three volumes: volume 1 (Early Writings, 1762–1773) comprises Hemster­ huis’s first series of publications, penned as letters to his acquaintances in The Hague, including the Letter on Sculpture, Letter on Desires and Letter on Man and his Relations; volume 2 (Dialogues, 1778–1787) presents translations of Hemsterhuis’s later series of published dialogues – Sophylus, Aristaeus, Simon and Alexis; and the third volume (Philosophical Correspondence and Unpublished Writings) supplements the earlier volumes with the Letter on Atheism, Letter on Optics and Letter on Fatalism, among other fragments, as well as selections from Hemsterhuis’s feted correspondence with Gallitzin, dubbed ‘the most significant European correspondence of the eighteenth century’.7 The texts used for this edition are based faithfully on the French critical edition established by van Sluis in 2015, with the exception of some texts in volume 3 which were not included in van Sluis’s Œuvres philosophiques and are instead based on Petry’s 2001 Wijsgerige werken, van Sluis’s recent Œuvres inédits, or van Sluis’s edition of the complete correspondence.8 As always, we have made a number of key translation decisions that inform what follows – including: 1. L’homme: Hemsterhuis uses ‘homme’ and the corresponding pronouns not just in the title Lettre sur l’Homme et ses rapports but throughout his writings to designate



SERIES INTRODUCTION

xi

the paradigmatic human subject. There is typically nothing particularly male about this subject and, indeed, a twenty-first-century (Anglophone) Hemsterhuis might well have decided upon the gender-neutral Letter on Humans and their Relations. Nevertheless, Hemsterhuis’s language is decisively marked by the eighteenth-century discourse on ‘man’ – with all the gendered logic this entails – and we have chosen not to disguise this fact, but rather to insist on Hemsterhuis’s part in a tradition that runs from Pope’s An Essay on Man to Reid’s Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. 2. Le rapport: ‘Rapport’ is the master-concept in Hemsterhuis’s philosophy, appropriated from debates in French aesthetics and metaphysics – particularly the philosophies of Diderot and Bonnet – but transformed into a figure of ontological interconnectivity. While ‘relation’ is in many ways a mistranslation of the underlying philosophical concept (‘affiliation’, ‘connection’, even ‘correspondence’ all get at its meaning more accurately), we have followed Hemsterhuis himself in employing this fairly neutral term (‘relation’) as an unobtrusive lexical marker for such a rich and fluid concept. 3. La relation: Hemsterhuis also uses the more precise ‘relation’ in two contexts: first, in the sense of a proportion when discussing order, symmetry or numerical series; secondly, in the sense of a personal relationship, particularly with the divinity. We translate ‘relation’ as ‘relationship’ in the latter case and ‘interrelation’ in the former case to distinguish it from translations of ‘rapport’. 4. Velléité and volonté: From Diderot onwards, Hemsterhuis’s readers have baulked at the obscure concept of ‘velléité’ and tried to determine the exact nature of the relation between it (as an indeterminate power that constitutes part of the individual’s essence) and ‘volonté’ (as a particular purposive effect). So as to replicate the alienating effect of Hemsterhuis’s terminology, we employ the similarly obscure English cognate ‘velleity’ and translate ‘volonté’ more standardly as ‘act of will’ or, on occasion, ‘will’. 5. Sentir: Few translations matter as much in determining Hemsterhuis’s place in the history of ideas as ‘sentir’. When translated as ‘to sense’, it places him firmly in eighteenth-century empiricist and Newtonian traditions; when translated as ‘to feel’, it both thematises his Rousseauian tendencies and anticipates his role in the Romantic movement. We have, where possible, opted for the former, despite it occasionally effacing the close link between ‘sentir’ and ‘sentiment’. 6. Le tact: Hemsterhuis is a great thinker of tact, but he also grounds his thinking firmly in a study of the five sense organs, where the French ‘tact’ refers to touch. He thereby implicitly plays on a continuity between ‘le tact’ as sensation and ‘le tact’ as judgement that is obscured by the English lexical distinction. Footnotes (denoted by an asterisk, *, then dagger, †, etc.) are Hemsterhuis’s own (or, in the case of Simon, contain additional material by Hemsterhuis) and often refer the reader to clarifications and explanations given at the end of each work. We provide information concerning the (sometimes) obscure erudite references that litter Hemsterhuis’s texts in the translators’ endnotes, indicated by an Arabic numeral. They follow at the end of the volume. We have, as far as possible, refrained from either providing interpretative material or making judgements on

xii

SERIES INTRODUCTION

Hemsterhuis’s sources within these endnotes. As van Bunge has recently emphasised, Hemsterhuis was ‘almost secretive’ about such sources9 and we have no wish to restrict the possible connotations of a conceptual armoury that draws variously on classical allusions, Dutch Newtonianism, the French Enlightenment and much more – often at the very same time. Hemsterhuis himself long held translation to be an impossible art and despaired when his own writings were first translated into German.10 Subsequently, Jacobi’s rendering of Alexis into German changed his mind on this point,11 and, while we have no desire at all to compete as translators with Jacobi, we do hope that this edition does some justice to the rigour and grace of Hemsterhuis’s ‘Socratic poetry’.12

Hemsterhuis’s Life, Works and Reception

Date

Chronology and Context

1717

Tiberius Hemsterhuis takes up position as Professor of Greek and Mathematics at the University of Franeker

27 December 1721

Hemsterhuis born in Franeker in the Dutch Republic to Tiberius and Cornelia, second daughter of Jacob de Wilde, a noted collector of antiquities, which the family inherits

1738

Tiberius additionally appointed Professor of Natural History at the University of Franeker

1740

Hemsterhuis moves to Leiden, where Tiberius is appointed Professor of Ancient Greek and History at the University of Leiden; informally attends private seminars given by Willem ’s Gravesande (Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy) and Pieter van Musschenbroek (his successor)

Summer 1740

Hemsterhuis begins lifelong friendships with Petrus Camper, J. N. S. Allamand (later Professor of Philosophy at Franeker and Leiden) and Hendrik Feyth, an enthusiast of optical instruments in Amsterdam

1741

Sale of Jacob de Wilde’s antique gemstone collection

28 February 1742

Death of ’s Gravesande

Early 1740s

Hemsterhuis participates in experimental natural history at Leiden, describing – through Abraham Trembley’s indirect influence – the freshwater polyp, as well as the visual anatomy of the dragonfly

1746

Camper completes his Dissertatio optica de visu; Condillac publishes Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge

24 June 1747

Hemsterhuis officially matriculates in mathematics at the University of Leiden and begins career in military engineering

Late 1747

As military engineer, Hemsterhuis draws plans of recently besieged Bergen op Zoom’s military defences

1748

La Mettrie publishes L’Homme machine

28 August 1748

Birth of Adelheid Amalie von Schmettau (later Gallitzin) in Berlin

1750

Diderot and d’Alembert begin publishing the Encyclopédie

1751

Death of William IV

xiv 1752

HEMSTERHUIS’S LIFE, WORKS AND RECEPTION

Around this time, Hemsterhuis works as tutor to the Van Aylva family and perhaps also the Fagel family Caylus begins publishing his Inventory of Antiquities

1755

Hemsterhuis nominated as Professor of Philosophy at the University of Franeker, but is passed over for the position

December 1755

Hemsterhuis accepts role as civil servant at The Hague, rising to First Secretary to the Council of State

1757

Hemsterhuis begins lifelong correspondence with Pieter van Damme on antique coins and gemstones

1760

Hemsterhuis observes the Great Comet and is commissioned to design a memorial for Boerhaave (later installed in the Pieterskerk, Leiden) Bonnet publishes his Analytic Essay on the Faculties of the Soul

1762

Letter on an Antique Gemstone is published in response to an enquiry by Amsterdam banker, Theodorus de Smeth Rousseau publishes Emile; Fürstenberg becomes ‘prime minister’ of the Bishopric of Münster

1763

Hemsterhuis successfully nominates Camper as Professor of Anatomy at University of Groningen

1764

Winckelmann publishes History of Art in Antiquity

January 1765

Hemsterhuis drafts Letter on Sculpture

1766

William V reaches maturity and assumes powers of Stadtholder

7 April 1766

Death of Tiberius Hemsterhuis

1767

Lessing publishes Laocoon

28 August 1768

Amalie von Schmettau marries Prince Dmitri Gallitzin, Russian ministre plenipotentiair to France, in Aachen

November 1768

Hemsterhuis drafts Letter on Desires

1769

Letter on Sculpture is published Gallitzins move to The Hague, where Dmitri is appointed Russian Ambassador to the Dutch Republic; Diderot writes D’Alembert’s Dream

August 1769

Jacobi reads Letter on Sculpture and attempts to arrange a visit to The Hague

1770

Letter on Desires is published; Hemsterhuis designs first ever a­ chromatic binocular telescope, which is manufactured over the next few years through the London firm John Dollond



1771

HEMSTERHUIS’S LIFE, WORKS AND RECEPTION

xv

Italian astronomer G. F. Fromond visits Hemsterhuis and borrows manuscript on optics Garve publishes review of Letter on Sculpture; Herder mentions Hemsterhuis in correspondence; early community of Hemsterhuis readers gathers around de la Roche, Merck and Wieland Dmitri Gallitzin publishes posthumous edition of Helvétius’s works

1772

Letter on Man and his Relations is published Short review of Letter on Man appears immediately in the Parisian Journal encyclopédique

1773

Philosophical Description of … Fagel is published, after Fagel’s death on 28 August Nieuhoff completes doctoral dissertation at Leiden, De sensu pulcri, influenced by Hemsterhuis; Herder familiarises Hamann with Hemsterhuis’s writings

June 1773

Hemsterhuis meets Diderot in The Hague, where the latter is staying with Dmitri Gallitzin on his way to Russia

August 1773

Diderot and Jacobi discuss Hemsterhuis when Diderot passes through Düsseldorf

1774

Diderot returns to The Hague and presents Hemsterhuis with annotated copy of Letter on Man

1775

Herder announces a translation of Letter on Sculpture, but it never appears

Spring 1775

Hemsterhuis forges an intense and lasting friendship with Gallitzin (the ‘Diotima’ to his ‘Socrates’), exchanging c. 2,000 letters over the next fifteen years

Late 1775

Gallitzin separates permanently from her husband and takes her children to the secluded country estate of Niethuis, near ­Scheveningen, where Hemsterhuis visits twice a week

1776

Sophie de la Roche visits The Hague US Declaration of Independence

January 1776

Hemsterhuis writes Letter on Fatalism

February 1776

Hemsterhuis finishes translation of Plato’s Symposium

July 1777

Hemsterhuis meets the Abbé Raynal

1778

Sophylus is published

2 July 1778

Rousseau dies

December 1778

Hemsterhuis meets the French sculptors E. M. Falconet and A. M. Collot

xvi 1779

HEMSTERHUIS’S LIFE, WORKS AND RECEPTION

Hemsterhuis works on a catechism of ‘true philosophy’ for educating children D’Alembert comments approvingly on two of Hemsterhuis’s published works

January 1779

Hemsterhuis begins correspondence with Fürstenberg in Münster on the latter’s Ordonnance on the Reform of Colleges

May 1779

Hemsterhuis travels with Gallitzin to Münster to meet Fürstenberg

Summer 1779

Aristaeus is published Gallitzin moves permanently to Münster

October 1779

Hemsterhuis forges lasting friendship with Anna Perrenot (later Meerman) (the ‘Daphne’ to his ‘Diocles’)

1780

Hemsterhuis finishes the first version of Simon (published in translation in 1782) Herder reproduces a long extract from the Letter on Man in his Letters Concerning the Study of Theolog y Lessing finishes The Education of the Human Race; the fourth AngloDutch War begins

June 1780

Jacobi visits Lessing in Wolfenbüttel and presents him with many of Hemsterhuis’s works

9 October 1780

Hemsterhuis retires from post as First Secretary to the Council of State

1781

Hemsterhuis starts to reflect on the political state of the Dutch Republic Herder publishes a translation of Letter on Desires in Der Teutsche Merkur, followed by a critical commentary (Love and Selfhood) Kant publishes Critique of Pure Reason; the Patriottenbeweging (Patriot Revolt) begins with a proliferation of democrat pamphlets; Herschel discovers Uranus

February 1781

Hemsterhuis begins a several-month stay in Münster and meets Jacobi at his estate outside Düsseldorf

Spring 1781

Hemsterhuis writes Alexis while in Münster (published in 1787 by Jacobi)

1782

Blankenburg translates Hemsterhuis’s works for a two-volume Vermischte philosophische Schriften Publication of Rousseau’s Confessions

1783

Hemsterhuis begins, but then puts aside, unfinished dialogue Alexis II



HEMSTERHUIS’S LIFE, WORKS AND RECEPTION

xvii

March 1783

Hemsterhuis completes second version of Simon

December 1783

Hemsterhuis is present at one of the first launches of an unmanned Montgolfier hot-air balloon

1784

Jacobi translates Alexis (published in 1787 alongside the French original) Fourth Anglo-Dutch War ends

31 July 1784

Diderot dies

7 August 1784

Jacobi sends Hemsterhuis a long letter on Spinoza which appears in full in the first edition of Jacobi’s On the Doctrine of Spinoza

November 1784

Jacobi presents Goethe with Hemsterhuis’s dialogues

1785

Hemsterhuis is recalled for secret meetings of the Council of State aimed at quashing the Patriot Revolt; he meets Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Gotha, who commissions a binocular telescope from him Jacobi publishes On the Doctrine of Spinoza; the Patriot Revolt reaches its climax in a series of riots and sieges

August 1785

Hemsterhuis embarks on a tour of Germany, lasting into the autumn, with Gallitzin and Fürstenberg, visiting Weimar, Dresden and Gotha

1786

Hemsterhuis is invited to design vases for the Wedgwood company, England; he begins an intense reading programme of contem­ porary German authors, including Goethe’s novels and plays

28 August 1786

Gallitzin formally re-enters the Catholic Church after a serious illness and corresponds with Hemsterhuis on the nature of ‘belief ’

1787

Hemsterhuis writes an instruction manual for the Duke of SaxeGotha’s binocular telescope; Hamann spends time in Münster, forging a rival friendship with Gallitzin

September 1787

Hemsterhuis pens the first version of the Letter on Atheism in response to Jacobi’s request Restoration of Stadtholder William V after an invasion of Prussian troops

June 1788

Hemsterhuis goes to Münster, where he stays until December; he receives J. F. H. Dalberg’s Reflections on Melody, Harmony and Rhythm

21 June 1788

Hamann dies in Münster; Hemsterhuis designs his gravestone

December 1788

Hemsterhuis completes Letter on Optics

January 1789

Hemsterhuis revises Letter on Atheism and submits it to Jacobi (who publishes it in the second edition of On the Doctrine of Spinoza, 1790)

7 April 1789

Camper dies

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14 July 1789

Storming of the Bastille and the start of the French Revolution

7 July 1790

Hemsterhuis dies

1791

Public auction of Hemsterhuis’s library C. G. Herrmann publishes Kant and Hemsterhuis in Respect to their Definition of Beauty; G. Forster calls Hemsterhuis ‘the Plato of our century’

1792

H. J. Jansen publishes a two-volume edition of Hemsterhuis’s works, Oeuvres philosophiques, in Paris; Goethe visits Gallitzin in Münster, discusses Hemsterhuis’s legacy and later receives Letter on Optics from her

January 1792

A. W. Schlegel meets Novalis, whose ‘favourite writers are Plato and Hemsterhuis’; the Schlegel brothers go on to correspond extensively on Hemsterhuis

December 1792

Goethe takes Hemsterhuis’s gem collection to Weimar

1793

Schleiermacher studies Hemsterhuis’s work in the context of a commentary on Jacobi’s On the Doctrine of Spinoza

April 1793

Herder and Jacobi discuss a memorial to Hemsterhuis

1794

Hegel and Hölderlin develop Vereinigungsphilosophie in Frankfurt with Hemsterhuis as a key source; the German Idealist C. G. Bardili publishes a dialogue entitled Sophylus

1795

Collapse of the Dutch Republic

1797

A third volume of the Vermischte philosophische Schriften is published, possibly by K. T. von Dalberg; it includes an essay comparing ­Hemsterhuis to Kant

September 1797

Novalis begins a three-month intensive reading of Hemsterhuis, resulting in his thirty-six-page ­Hemsterhuis-Studien

1802

Schelling discusses Alexis in his Further Presentations of the System of Philosophy

1803

Dmitri Gallitzin dies

1804

Jean Paul’s School of Aesthetics launches a critique of Hemsterhuis’s definition of beauty

27 April 1806

Gallitzin dies

1807

Stolberg sends Goethe Hemsterhuis’s unpublished Treatise on ­ ivisibility to Infinity from Münster D

1809

Jansen republishes his Paris edition of Hemsterhuis’s works in a second, extended edition



HEMSTERHUIS’S LIFE, WORKS AND RECEPTION

xix

1813

De Staël’s De l’Allemagne groups Hemsterhuis with Jacobi and Lessing as the three progenitors of transcendental idealism; Coleridge discusses Hemsterhuis’s definition of reason, alongside Jacobi, in volume 1 of The Friend

1814

J. Neeb publishes On Hemsterhuis and the Spirit of his Writings

1819

Jacobi dies

1825

S. vande Weyer publishes a new two-volume edition of Hemsterhuis’s Œuvres philosophiques in Louvain

1840

L. S. P. Meyboom devotes his doctoral dissertation at the University of Groningen to a ‘theological-philosophical’ reading of Hemsterhuis as a Christian Platonist

1846

Meyboom publishes the standard three-volume edition of Hemsterhuis’s Œuvres philosophiques; William Hamilton mentions Hemsterhuis in his survey of The Philosophy of Common Sense

Abbreviations

B

François Hemsterhuis and Adélaïde Amélie de Gallitzin, Briefwisseling (­Hemsterhuisiana), 16 vols, ed. Jacob van Sluis. Berltsum: van Sluis [Lulu print on demand], 2010–17. Digitally available at: https://www.rug.nl/library/ heritage/hemsterhuis/ and in print at: www.lulu.com. Citations by volume and numbered letter (e.g. B 2.45 – volume 2, letter 45).

EE

François Hemsterhuis, The Edinburgh Edition of the Philosophical Works of François Hemsterhuis, 3 vols, ed. and trans. Jacob van Sluis and Daniel Whistler. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022–. EE is used to cite other volumes in this series (e.g. EE 2.112 – volume 2, p. 112). Where citations are to the same volume, they take the form of, for example, ‘p. 45 below’.

IN

François Hemsterhuis, Œuvres inédits, ed. Jacob van Sluis. Berltsum: van Sluis [Lulu print on demand], 2021.

LSD François Hemsterhuis, Lettres de Socrate à Diotime. Cent cinquante lettes du ­philosophe néerlandais Frans Hemsterhuis à la princesse Gallitzin, ed. Marcel Fresco. Frankfurt am Main: Hänsel-Hohenhausen, 2007. OP

François Hemsterhuis, Œuvres philosophiques, ed. Jacob van Sluis. Leiden: Brill, 2015.

WW François Hemsterhuis, Wijsgerige werken, ed. Michael John Petry. Leeuwarden: Damon, 2001.

INTRODUCTIONS

Atheism According to François Hemsterhuis: Convergences with and Divergences from the German Spinoza Controversy Claudia Melica

Hemsterhuis and Germany François Hemsterhuis had an enormous influence in Germany during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and yet he was not German by birth. Although he detested nationalism – and even recommended that the borders of each individual nation be removed from maps and history books so as not to inspire a false idea of homeland in the education of young people (see p. 253 below) – he was proud to be Frisian by birth and to feel, ideally, Greek.1 However, his thinking was not particularly regional. On the contrary, the peculiar European context in which Hemsterhuis worked is one of the best examples of the fusion of different philosophical orientations at this period: his philosophy took shape in an environment which had felt the influence of Newtonianism, Cartesianism and Spinozism, had kept its intellectual borders open and received stimuli from a variety of European philosophies. Hemsterhuis dedicated himself privately to philosophy and felt called to it almost as a vocation, rather than an academic profession. He wrote in French and was not particularly familiar with German.2 This unfamiliarity with the German language was mocked by J. G. Hamann in a description of the Dutch philosopher after he met him in Weimar in 1785:3 in a letter to J. G. Scheffner from 17 November 1785, Hamann reported Hemsterhuis’s difficulty in expressing himself in German and his use of French in philosophical conversation.4 Hemsterhuis nevertheless took into account some of the criticism he received from German philosophers who had the opportunity to read his works in manuscript form. Hence, during the last decade of his life, when he undertook four trips (1779, 1781, 1785, 1788) to Germany, he had the opportunity to discuss directly with Jacobi, Herder,5 Goethe,6 Hamann and many others some of the theses found in his works and began to rethink and rewrite them in light of these discussions.7 In other words, his trips to Germany not only served to establish personal contacts and disseminate his thought, but were also useful for acquiring greater critical awareness of what was at stake in his philosophy. This immediately raises the question of how interest in Hemsterhuis’s thought – a Dutch philosopher who did not know German and who seemed at first glance to have little in common with German culture – could have been so pervasive in Germany during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This is the subject matter for this introduction. I am particularly interested in Hemsterhuis’s involvement in the German debate on Spinoza. If placing Hemsterhuis within the

4 INTRODUCTIONS German Spinozism controversy (Spinozismusstreit)8 has, on the one hand, ensured him an important place in the history of ideas, it has, on the other hand, tended to distort Hemsterhuis’s original position, which was not intended to criticise Spinoza’s atheism but, rather, intended to censure its derivative French form – materialism. By the end of the eighteenth century there was plenty of material on Baruch Spinoza and his German reception and, according to the sales catalogue of Hemster­huis’s family library9 – an important but not exhaustive source for tracing his readings – Hemsterhuis was familiar with much of it. Hemsterhuis owned a copy of Spinoza’s Opera posthuma from 1677, which had become very rare.10 With the exception of a translation of Spinoza’s work into German by Christian Wolff in 1744, no new translations of the Ethics would appear until the 1802–3 edition published by Gottlob Paulus. The Opera posthuma was, therefore, the means by which most European philosophers, and in particular German philosophers of the late eighteenth century, became acquainted with Spinoza’s thought – this was the edition that Herder gave to Goethe in 1784 and that was used by Jacobi, Lessing and Mendelssohn, among others. It is clear from his correspondence with Gallitzin that Hemsterhuis read and studied the Ethics several times, although we cannot establish precisely the date he first did so. In the sales catalogue, we also find some of the texts that sparked a revival of interest in Spinoza’s thought in Germany. Among them is Jacobi’s Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Mendelssohn, which Hemsterhuis had been given in its two different editions (1785, 1789) by Jacobi himself. There is also Jacobi’s 1786 response to Mendelssohn’s criticisms, Wider Mendelssohns Beschuldigungen in dessen Schreiben an die Freunde Lessing, as well as the first edition of Herder’s Gott, printed in Gotha in 1787. The aim of this introduction is to show how, in the light of new sources available today (discussed below), it is possible to rethink Hemsterhuis’s interpretation of Spinoza and Spinozism. The reception of Hemsterhuis in Germany takes place in private correspondence, as well as by way of Jacobi’s translation of some of his works. Most of all, however, it is Jacobi’s writings in the Spinozismusstreit that communicate a hugely influential image of Hemsterhuis to German philosophers, which did not always adhere to the letter of his thought (particularly when it comes to the emphasis Jacobi placed on the subject of atheism).11 The nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed the gradual discovery of a number of Hemsterhuis’s unpublished works, including the original versions of the Letter on Atheism and the Letter on Fatalism, which have revealed lesser-known aspects of his philosophical interest and changed the traditional interpretation of his thought. For example, when I edited the Italian edition and translation of Hemsterhuis’s works, published in 2001, I was able to include a version of the Letter on Atheism (the second one [pp. 99–109 below])12 that had never been in print before, as well as to reconstruct its complex genesis in correspondence between Jacobi, Gallitzin and Hemsterhuis.13 This has allowed us to discern far more accurately the intention of Hemsterhuis’s Letter prior to certain modifications made by Jacobi that occasionally distorted Hemsterhuis’s thinking. That is, a direct comparison with the three handwritten versions of the Letter on Atheism, sent by Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin between 1787 and 1789, has made it possible to reconstruct the version



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that Hemsterhuis perhaps intended. Similar things could be said about a short essay published posthumously in the original French language from Hemsterhuis’s earlier thought which bears the title Letter on Fatalism (pp. 71–5 below). It was first published in an Italian journal, before being included in the Italian edition of Hemsterhuis’s works.14 Its publication has allowed the interpreter to study more deeply the young Hemsterhuis’s philosophy and compare it with the mature Letter on Atheism, so as to reconstruct, within a broader chronological period, his evolving position on both Spinoza and Spinozism. Hemsterhuis’s Interpretation of Spinoza As soon as one compares Hemsterhuis’s philosophy to that of Spinoza’s, one notices one of the cardinal questions at stake concerns the problem of individual freedom. Hemsterhuis constantly argues against determinism in general and Spinoza’s determinism in particular, which, in his opinion, does not allow for individual freedom. What is particularly at stake for Hemsterhuis is a rejection of Spinoza’s notion of cause and, consequently, of effect and the supposedly necessary link between them. When conceived in the way Spinoza does, cause and effect lead, according to Hemsterhuis, to fatalism and problematise any talk of God. This is because, if one admits, as Spinoza claims, that God exists by absolute necessity and acts according to an intrinsic causality, then, for Hemsterhuis, it becomes difficult to understand how God can be free to act. Nevertheless, such a set of criticisms does not necessarily imply that Spinoza subscribes to atheism or whether atheism is really observable in Spinoza’s writings.15 This is a tricky interpretative problem, for Hemsterhuis’s attitude towards Spinoza’s thought constitutes, as has been noted, ‘the most complex and controversial aspect of his thought’, and ‘from a historical point of view, it is of considerable interest’.16 To begin, therefore, it is necessary to identify those passages in which Hemster­huis explicitly or sometimes implicitly refers to Spinoza and provides some interpretation of his philosophical position. Moreover, a chronological examination shows that the first work in which Spinoza’s name is explicitly mentioned is the Letter on Fatalism (28 January 1776), the aim of which is to show how Spinoza’s determinism leads not clearly to atheism but primarily to fatalism.17 Hemsterhuis focuses on the concept of necessity and, as Matassi points out, ‘The critical examination of necessity, and the particular interpretation of its temporal dimension, are two prerequisites for rejecting fatalism and saving the notion of freedom by emancipating it from a too close relationship with necessity’.18 Along these lines, what interests Hemsterhuis is to affirm the presence of finality in every human action in order to make room for freedom and, for this reason, he proposes to examine, in the Letter on Fatalism, two different conceptions that, in Parigi’s words, ‘tend to deny […] human freedom’. Parigi continues by noting that the first conception ‘found its formulation in Spinoza, who conceives the past, present and future as a necessary whole and identifies this whole with God’; and the second conception – ‘the system of the orthodox’ – emphasises the divine omnipotence that created the universe by assigning ‘laws from which derive past, present and future modifications of this universe’.19

6 INTRODUCTIONS Hemsterhuis’s major focus is, therefore, the definition of ‘fatalism’. In his view, ‘fatalism’ in general is the doctrine that a succession of events is held together by a necessary link. For example, we believe that events in the present necessarily follow events in the past. According to Hemsterhuis, this kind of view is then extended so that the same bond is considered to exist between present and future. However, while this claim might be understandable in terms of the relationship between past and present, it is not when addressed to the future, since the future is never predictable. The first conclusion Hemsterhuis reaches, therefore, is as follows: while, on the one hand, ‘fatalism’ could make sense in terms of the relationship between past and present, it is, on the other hand, totally incomprehensible in terms of the possible relationship between present and future. In so concluding, Hemsterhuis is provisionally able, as Parigi concludes, to ‘question the attribution of a character of necessity to future events and to secure, on the metaphysical level, a space for human freedom’.20 Hemsterhuis makes a similar criticism of the doctrine of ‘fatalism’ when analysing the concept of cause. That is, he objects to a vision of the unfolding of events according to a necessary concatenation of causes and effects. According to Hemsterhuis, the fatalist maintains: ‘There is no effect without a cause. The cause is a cause only by producing the effect. There is no cause without an effect; the effect is an effect only when the cause produces it, and it follows naturally from this that cause and effect coexist’ (p. 72 below). However, for Hemsterhuis this argument is utterly wrongheaded, because, in his opinion, effect and cause cannot coexist in the first place. And this is because the cause produces the effect on something other than itself and so it is impossible to hold the relationship between cause and effect to be one of coexistence. What is needed, therefore, is a rethinking of the concept of cause. According to Hemsterhuis, an entity can produce an effect on something else but not on itself. Hence, only when the effect has already been produced can the cause which produced it be identified. Hemsterhuis’s notion of cause turns on the relation between producer (or creator) and product; indeed, the notion of ‘relation’ itself constitutes the cornerstone of Hemsterhuis’s thinking (see pp. 151–2 below on final causes). Behind the formulations contained in the Letter on Fatalism there is also implicit reference to theses already formulated in an earlier work, the Letter on Man and his Relations, where Hemsterhuis conceptualises cause and effect in terms of distinctions between soul and matter, and activity and passivity. Accordingly, it is the soul as something active that can produce an effect, precisely because the latter is something passive, like inert matter. And so, once more, cause and effect cannot coexist, since, thought of in this way as soul and matter, one is active and the other receptive. In the Letter on Fatalism, Hemsterhuis’s critique of Spinoza’s fatalism arises as a significant argument: he opposes a so-called ‘fatalist’ conception of causality, that is, one that affirms that all actions develop according to a strict necessity between cause and effect, in the name of the affirmation of a complex thesis, which is central to his whole philosophy, that understands freedom as the power to act, that is, a free causality of the soul. These issues become more complex, however, when looking at Hemsterhuis’s published work and particularly his dialogue Aristaeus, or on the Divinity. Begun as



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early as 1776, and so broadly contemporaneous with the Letter on Fatalism, this dialogue takes up a contradictory position on the topic of Spinozism, and it is difficult to work out what Hemsterhuis here accepts of Spinoza’s philosophy and what he rejects. Moreover, it was precisely the arguments contained in this dialogue that, through the discussions between Jacobi, Lessing, Herder and Mendelssohn, were transposed to and transformed in the German context at the end of the eighteenth century, and went on to influence the Spinozismusstreit considerably. Their discussions revolved around Hemsterhuis’s precise position on Spinoza – whether he regarded Spinoza’s system as ‘atheism’ – and, consequently, his own development of a ‘theism’ opposed to such ‘atheism’.21 At the end of Aristaeus, Hemsterhuis assumes that, if there were disorder in the universe, it would follow that the existence of God could be questioned. Since it is impossible to deny God, it is necessary to investigate the question of order. His definition of the concept of order is quite complicated but can be roughly summarised as follows. If order (in relation both to our way of thinking and to the arrangement and relationship between things in a series) is similarity, proportion, regularity, analogy and succession, then this order might positively influence the soul. As Hemsterhuis had pointed out in the only two of his major works that were widely known in Germany at the time, the Letter on Sculpture and the Letter on Desires, the soul desires the greatest number of ideas in the shortest possible time and, when this occurs, pleasure and beauty are generated. The decisive point in Hemsterhuis’s argument is that the concept of order is, so to speak, relative: it concerns entities that appear to have some relationship with each other and are susceptible, therefore, to order, but solely for those subjects who know how to perceive them. And it is in this context that order is broadly defined as ‘the disposition of the parts which form some determinate whole’ (EE 2.69). At this point, Hemsterhuis formulates a very complex argument that led some, and in particular Jacobi, to believe him to be a convinced theist: one cannot start from the order of the universe to prove God;22 on the contrary, it is possible to demonstrate that order derives from God because it was created by God himself. Difficulties in interpreting Hemsterhuis’s thought rest on the possibility of understanding the definition of order in relation to the universe and the proof of the existence of a creative divinity. It is in this context that Hemsterhuis returns to Spinoza and the concept of necessity. Spinoza considers the universe’s parts eternal and necessary and, hence, also immutable. He also argues against the possibility of transformation in this context. By implicitly recalling the Letter on Fatalism, Hemsterhuis undertakes a critique of Spinoza’s doctrine. ‘Necessary’, according to Hemsterhuis, was used by Spinoza in a double sense: necessary is that which cannot but exist; and necessary is that entity whose essence is to exist and which exists by its own nature. For Hemsterhuis, the word ‘necessity’ has been abused, leading to the assumption of a necessitating and coexisting bond between cause and effect. In order to refute Spinozism, he shows that to think in this way is simply to duplicate the cause. What is wrongly asserted, according to Hemsterhuis, is a tautology by which it is said that the cause is cause because it is the cause that necessarily produces the effect, and it can only be so by producing it.

8 INTRODUCTIONS Although Hemsterhuis thereby criticises the core of Spinoza’s Ethics, namely the concept of necessity, his position becomes more complex when he affirms the existence of a being that exists in and of itself and for whose existence there is no end and no beginning. It is these doctrines that caused the German philosophers of his time to wonder not only what Hemsterhuis had rejected or accepted from Spinoza, but also whether he could, within the controversy, be counted among the Spinozists or the anti-Spinozists. But to seek to make sense of Hemsterhuis’s claims exclusively within the ambit of the German debate on Spinoza – in which he never took part – overlooks how his claims are strictly the result of an earlier French reception of Spinozism during the eighteenth century. That is, Hemsterhuis’s peculiar refutation of Spinozism should be set in a broader framework alongside Pierre Bayle’s and Denis Diderot’s treatment of some of the claims in Spinoza’s Ethics. The section of Aristaeus in which Hemsterhuis questions whether the universe can exist by itself or depends on God and in which he studies the universe from the point of view of the relations between parts recalls a certain image of Spinoza emanating out from the French Enlightenment that reverberated throughout Europe. For Hemsterhuis, the physical universe is an ‘aggregate of determinate and circumscribed parts’ (EE 2.73); the organised universe, on the other hand, is a set of parts with a determinate end. The existence of a single substance is implicitly denied, while the existence of several substances within a universe composed of parts is affirmed. This recalls one of Bayle’s claims in the ‘Spinoza’ entry to the Dictionaire historique et critique (1697).23 Here, as well as calling Spinoza a ‘systematic atheist’, Bayle demonstrates that it is ‘impossible for the universe to be a single substance, since everything that is extended necessarily has parts and everything that has parts is composed’.24 It follows that the universe, for Bayle as well as for Hemsterhuis, is composed of parts or multiple substances – a thesis which was warmly welcomed by Diderot too in the ‘Spinoza’ entry to the Encyclopaedia. Accepting Bayle’s criticism of Spinoza, Diderot also denied the existence of a single substance in order to affirm a living universe composed of a multiplicity of sub­stances.25 Although this might not be the best passage to assess Diderot’s actual attitude towards Spinoza26 owing to the dangers of censorship that hovered over the Encyclopaedia, what emerges here is how he enthusiastically takes up Bayle’s anti-Spinoza critique and reworks it in order to derive materialism from Spinozism. Diderot will ultimately regard materialism, not monism, as Spinoza’s most lasting eighteenth-century legacy. He does so by distinguishing between ancient Spinozists and modern Spinozists, placing himself among the latter, that is, among those who maintain that everything is sensible matter and that it alone can explain the universe.27 Hemsterhuis’s position is not only directed at some of Spinoza’s ideas, but is also aimed at what he considered a profound deformation of Spinozism, reborn under a new guise – materialism. So, while Hemsterhuis does take on board some of Bayle’s and Diderot’s criticisms of Spinoza, he does not accept the final materialist outcome that led Diderot (for example) to advocate a revived Spinozism. It is, then, precisely this modern neo-Spinozism advocated by Diderot that Hemsterhuis is really intent on criticising. To see this, it is worth returning to a few pages from the dialogue Aristaeus. According to Hemsterhuis, the material universe cannot exist in and for itself;



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moreover, movement cannot be considered a quality of matter since it is totally inert. This is a criticism of Diderot’s thesis on sentient matter’s vitality. In another part of the dialogue, when Hemsterhuis defines the universe as active, he takes up the argument set out in the Letter on Man concerning the difference between soul and body and the action of the soul on inert matter. For Hemsterhuis, there are isolated substances that do not communicate when they are within the physical universe and also within the organised universe. But the situation changes in relation to the moral universe. Only the moral universe is made up of parts that communicate with each other and, above all, of active parts and passive parts. And in the moral universe there is a distinctive principle of love which propels each being towards union with other beings. ‘Everything I love, I desire’, writes Hemsterhuis in Aristaeus and, therefore, wish to merge with it and ‘to possess it […] to admire it, to embrace it’ (EE 2.79). This principle or tendency towards ‘perfect union’ between beings, as elaborated in the Letter on Desires as well, is the only thing that makes the individual susceptible to virtue or vice, to happiness or unhappiness. What is more, Hemsterhuis goes even further, in Aristaeus, to admit also a God or world-soul, defined as the creative power of the universe (EE 2.85). However, one might wonder, at this point, how the presence of divinity is to be acknowledged. Hemsterhuis demonstrates God’s existence in Aristaeus and does so in two ways. On the one hand, the simplest demonstration of God’s existence is through an intuitive act linked to inner feeling. According to Hemsterhuis, it is through a ‘longing’ of the soul, which manifests itself from time to time towards the best, that the presence of divinity is felt. It is not surprising at this point to find in Aristaeus a passage that was to become one of the most discussed by Lessing and Mendelssohn and that was welcomed by Jacobi, as a means to affirm the superiority of the immediate feeling required for grasping the divine. Hemsterhuis writes that ‘in a well-constituted man’, this internal feeling takes the form of ‘a single sigh of the soul’. This ‘sigh’, which ‘manifests itself from time to time towards something better, towards the future and what is perfect, is a more-than-geometric demonstration of the nature of the Divinity’ (EE 2.92). What man can immediately perceive through this ‘sigh of the soul’ is not only the existence of God, but his essence, which, being homogeneous with human essence, is also spiritual. However, this peculiar theory, which appears in the work of 1779, would not be comprehensible without what has been said so far, including the argument from the 1770 Letter on Desires (EE 1.80).28 This ‘internal sentiment’, with which we immediately ‘sense’ God, Hemsterhuis writes in the earlier letter, seems to have been infused by God himself into our souls. Equally, the passage from Aristaeus above refers this notion of a ‘sigh’ back to the Greek noun pneuma (breath or spirit), connected to the ‘divine spirit’ by which God generated and animated things. If this is so, feeling seems to be innate in the human soul and immanent to God’s own actions; in fact, according to Hemsterhuis, feeling is born in the ‘heart of the essence’, that is, in the interior of man’s nature and, therefore, unlike the intellect, cannot be modified by language or anything else. Hemsterhuis’s second argument for the existence of God was very different, but much appreciated by Lessing and Herder. It is to be located in a geometric conviction of God’s immanence to the world – a conviction which occurs when space is rationally conceived as one and infinite and, above all, as a divine attribute

10 INTRODUCTIONS through which God’s omnipresence in the universe is made manifest. At this point, an oscillation in Hemsterhuis’s thought is evident. If, on the one hand, the absolute infinity of space constitutes for Hemsterhuis, as for Spinoza, the measure of the extension and presence of God in nature, on the other hand, the affirmation of the existence of something more perfect and superior to which ‘the single sigh of the soul’ looks upwards presupposes God’s transcendence of nature. Furthermore, Hemsterhuis also believes that a moral relationship can be established between man and God because the homogeneity of man’s nature with God’s is manifest in the moral faculty. The superiority of the moral universe over the intellectual one is the privileged position from which man concludes that there is a divine creator of the universe. Amid all these ambivalences, it becomes clear that Spinoza does not appear to be Hemsterhuis’s polemical target; that is, he is not considered the cause of contemporary atheism. And this becomes even clearer in Hemsterhuis’s last work on this subject: the Letter on Atheism. Urged by Jacobi to take up a position on the debate over Spinoza’s atheism, in 1787 Hemsterhuis wrote an initial version of the Letter on Atheism that was extensively revised two years later on the occasion of the second (1789) edition of Jacobi’s Spinoza-Letters. It was, in fact, Jacobi himself, as he describes in the Preface to that second edition, who asked Gallitzin whether Hemsterhuis might put pen to paper. Jacobi wrote that when ‘assertions were made about atheism […] of which I could not form a clear idea, I turned to some friends and asked [them] whether atheism is a meaningless word […] I begged Princess Gallitzin to persuade Hemsterhuis to state his thoughts on the subject’.29 Hence, the Letter on Atheism is written in the context of a debate in which Hemsterhuis found himself immersed despite himself, and only because of his personal and intellectual friendship with Gallitzin. In part, for this reason, the letter did not fulfil the task that many (above all, Jacobi) had hoped it would. Hemsterhuis realised this himself and wrote to Gallitzin: ‘You will mock me, my dear Diotima, for taking it upon myself to treat in so few pages a subject which would require a few hundred to be treated well. I fear that our friend Jacobi will form the same judgement, but this is something I have come to foresee only in hindsight’ (p. 108 below). Indeed, Hemsterhuis’s Letter on Atheism does not seem to make any specific contribution to the Spinozismusstreit, because Spinoza is not explicitly mentioned in the work. The Letter on Atheism presents a historical account of three intellectual currents that Hemsterhuis generically defines as ‘atheist’: ancient atomism, libertine scepticism and materialism. Among these currents, Spinoza is not clearly cited. Atheism is rejected by Hemsterhuis as a whole, not because the philosophies he examines do not admit an infinite substance, but because they deprive it of such essential attributes as will, intelligence and freedom. Moreover, Hemsterhuis’s criticism is once again directed at one of his ‘historical’ opponents: Diderot. Criticism of the latter’s atheist materialism recurs throughout Hemsterhuis’s philosophy from the Letter on Man onwards and culminates in the conclusion to the Letter on Atheism (1789) (second version, pp. 107, 109 below): Perhaps never have men expended so much wit completing a system and giving it the capacity to grow more and more than the materialists and the fibre-theorists



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have by working on the flimsy structure of their globules, their conoids, their fibres, their hooks, their eyelets, their affluent and effluent matter – all of which link physics, metaphysics and everything else […]. This is the third atheism […]. As you can see, it is fundamentally the same as the first, having matter likewise as its sole basis. But there is a prodigious difference between [on the one hand] a crude matter, no law or property of which is yet distinguished with any exactitude […] and [on the other hand] a matter that has been worked on for so many centuries by all of men’s industry, which tore it to pieces so as to perfect it in its details, which wrested the idea of a contour from it so as to construct a geometry and [wrested] the idea of number [from it] so as to construct an arithmetic, and which, joining everything back together, turned it into a perfect object for contemplation. […] But when it comes to the last [third atheism …], it will never be cured until man has familiarised himself with this incontestable truth – that matter is but a word which designates all real essences as they relate to our current organs; that matter cannot have more attributes than we have organs; and that if it is given to man’s nature to acquire more organs in his future existence, or if other organs thus develop, [then] matter (if we want to keep hold of this word […]) will increase its attributes proportionately.

The Letter on Atheism stands in continuity with ideas already expressed in the 1772 Letter on Man. Hemsterhuis had criticised Diderot for having denied freedom ‘as a transcendent value’ and for having argued in his Commentary to the Letter on Man that man, for Diderot, is the necessary effect ‘of causes that for the most part fall outside any possibility of control’.30 Hemsterhuis writes in the Letter on Man: ‘It appears to me that those who have challenged this freedom made serious errors’ (EE 1.99). Even if Diderot was not always explicitly quoted by Hemsterhuis, the latter still criticises ‘so-called philosophers’ considered materialist and, consequently, atheist. Hemsterhuis’s overall aim was, by means of this critique, to understand how free will could be compatible with causal determinism, for Diderot claimed that the word ‘freedom’ itself did not have any meaning. Hence, in one part of the Letter on Man, Hemsterhuis analyses how certain philosophers – as materialists – consider action solely within a necessary relationship between cause and effect. And he does so in order to affirm the importance of free will as a capacity of self-determining choice in each action. Freedom, for Hemsterhuis, is strictly linked with the will in general and, in particular, with the capacity to make free decisions grounded in intentions. In order to understand how the will can determine an action, he must clearly show the causal connection by which a subject is able to act. But how will it be possible for such a position to remain compatible with determinism, es­pecially once the metaphysical freedom that connects the will’s freedom to a subject’s capacity to act is affirmed? In the Letter on Man, Hemsterhuis seems to underline the autonomy of the subject within the causal process: At that moment I am free to such an extent that I can make the course I am going to take depend either on your will or that of a third party. Therefore, the course I will take does not depend on causes that will make you find it good, right or wise, but only on my will […]. If someone says that my submission to your will is necessary, then they are considering the case after the fact. (EE 1.99)

12 INTRODUCTIONS In light of this brief excursus on the relationship between the Letter on Atheism and the Letter on Man and his Relations, it has become clear how reductive it would be to interpret Hemsterhuis’s philosophy as either merely compatible with a resurgent Spinozism or even as merely opposed to Spinozism. In short, Hemsterhuis’s attitude to Spinoza is so diverse and rich that it must be placed within a broad European context which includes the different reception-traditions of Spinoza’s ideas in the Dutch Republic and in France, as well as in Germany. Jacobi’s Uses of Hemsterhuis Jacobi played a key role in the dissemination of many of Hemsterhuis’s works. In 1780 he introduced Lessing to the original French versions of Aristaeus, the Letter on Man and Sophylus. When they next met at Lessing’s estate in Wölfenbuttel, their conversations gave rise to the debate known in Germany as the Spinozismusstreit. Moreover, alongside Gallitzin, Jacobi also edited Hemsterhuis’s work that had the most influence on German Romanticism: Alexis, or the Golden Age. And, as described above, two years later, he translated and published, as part of the second edition of the Spinoza-Letters, a modified version of Hemsterhuis’s Letter on Atheism. While Jacobi deserves credit for having made some of Hemsterhuis’s unpublished works known in Germany, in some cases he was also responsible for a certain distortion of his thought. For example, he rendered some of Hemsterhuis’s theories in an anti-Spinozist key and inserted them into the Spinozismusstreit in a way which was alien to Hemsterhuis’s own Dutch philosophical environment. The key text within the Spinozismusstreit is Jacobi’s Spinoza-Letters (in its different editions), where one name is mentioned several times: Hemsterhuis. He seems to be useful to Jacobi, to demonstrate his main thesis that ‘Spinozism is atheism’,31 and this is not only due to Hemsterhuis’s text on atheism but also due to other works circulating in Germany at the time, via Gallitzin, Jacobi, Mendelssohn, Lessing, Herder and Goethe.32 Indeed, at the very origin of the discussion between Jacobi and Lessing stood some of Hemsterhuis’s ideas from Aristaeus. At stake in the argument between Lessing and Jacobi was, therefore, not only the concept of Spinozism,33 but also the question of whether Hemsterhuis could be considered a Spinozist or not, and whether his ideas could be used to support either Lessing, who considered him a Spinozist, or Jacobi, who saw him as an anti-Spinozist. Specific­ally, on the one hand, Lessing saw in Hemsterhuis’s treatment of space as an infinite divine attribute immanent to nature a reaffirmation of Spinoza’s claims; on the other hand, Jacobi saw Hemsterhuis’s affirmation of an active principle in the universe and an intelligent cause as a refutation of Spinoza. In the initial section of the first edition of the Spinoza-Letters, after a few pages in which Jacobi tells Mendelssohn about his meeting with Lessing in Wolfenbüttel in 1780, a large amount of space34 is devoted to a letter Jacobi sent to Mendelssohn on 5 September 1784 that, in turn, relates the contents of a letter Jacobi sent to Hemsterhuis on 7 August 1784 (B 12.135). It includes a fictional dialogue between a presumed anti-Spinozist faithful to the Hemsterhuis of the Aristaeus and an interlocutor acting as Spinoza. If, on the one hand, this Jacobian dialogue shows the



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extent to which Jacobi accepted some of Hemsterhuis’s claims, it also, on the other hand, functions as a provocation to the German public to read Hemsterhuis.35 For instance, the theme on which Jacobi insists most, to counter Spinozist determinism – finalism or the concept of activity – fits with the key Hemsterhuisian emphasis on the velleity or the faculty of being able to act.36 ‘Velleity’ for Hemsterhuis does not possess the negative connotation, as impotent will, that it had for Leibniz.37 Rather, as Jacobi rightly grasps, ‘velleity’ is instead a completely non-Spinozist rendering of the determination of the will to act according to an end. In this finalistic context, what Jacobi appreciates most in Aristaeus is the admission of the existence of an action of a superior intelligent will above every human act, which functions as a sort of active principle of the universe.38 In particular, Jacobi is enthusiastic about one facet of this Hemsterhuisian idea, as exemplified in the reference in the Aristaeus (quoted above) to ‘a single sigh of the soul, which manifests itself from time to time towards something better, toward the future and what is perfect, is a more-than-geometric demonstration of the nature of the Divinity’ (EE 2.92).39 Jacobi interprets it as, among other things, support from Hemsterhuis for the importance of faith (Glaube).40 Indeed, the importance for Jacobi of understanding Hemsterhuis’s work in the horizon of the concepts of faith and atheism can be further seen in his decision to publish Hemsterhuis’s Letter on Atheism. While Jacobi had urged Hemsterhuis to write it, in reality atheism (as Jacobi understood it, as pantheism, i.e., in relation to the Spinozian identification of God with nature) was not a subject that seemed to particularly interest Hemsterhuis (p. 119 below), nor had he considered Spinoza as an atheist from this perspective. The only work by Hemsterhuis in which Spinoza’s name is explicitly mentioned is the Letter on Fatalism, which had not been printed at the time but nevertheless might have circulated via Gallitzin in manuscript form. Moreover, Jacobi significantly takes up Hemsterhuis’s argument in this treatise in the Spinoza-Letters, accepting the idea that Spinozian determinism as well as Leibnizian determinism inevitably lead to fatalism and a purely causal mechanism.41 Even if there is no evidence that Jacobi read Hemsterhuis’s short manuscript work, the two authors agree on this point.42 Elsewhere, and particularly in a letter from March 1789 (p. 119 below), Hemsterhuis is explicit that he does not care to mention Spinoza’s name, since he considers even this system ‘a kind of theism’, affirming the existence of the whole from which modifications were then necessarily derived. Here, Hemsterhuis goes so far as to claim he does not care whether Spinoza called this ‘all’ by the name of ‘God’ or by another name. And, he continues, ultimately no one can be considered truly an atheist, since everyone has to admit a power infinitely superior to their own. This reference to Spinoza’s possible ‘theism’ in fact refers back to a very significant moment in earlier discussions between Jacobi and Hemsterhuis. In the second version of the Letter on Atheism (1789), Hemsterhuis had spoken of Spinoza’s system as ‘a theism that is very difficult to understand’ and not as ‘an atheism’ and this statement had triggered a critical reaction from Jacobi.43 Jacobi’s critique was communicated via Gallitzin and, as a result, Hemsterhuis was persuaded to completely change the passage. Jacobi suggests, via Gallitzin, that Hemsterhuis’s argument in Aristaeus concerning order in the universe and the existence of divine

14 INTRODUCTIONS providence was incompatible with an insistence on ‘Spinoza’s theism’. By the time Jacobi published the Letter on Atheism, this passage has disappeared completely.44 This is but one indication of the extent to which Jacobi was dissatisfied with his Letter on Atheism, to the point of asking for revisions of two or three additional passages.45 The key to understanding this disagreement between Jacobi and Hemsterhuis on the interpretation of Spinoza lies in the distinction between ‘Spinoza’ and ‘Spinozism’.46 That is, Hemsterhuis insists that ‘I have little desire to utter Spinoza’s name or that of his system’ (p. 119 below), because Spinoza is one thing and Spinozism quite another – and it is the latter against which he declares he has inflicted ‘mortal blows’ in some of his short works (p. 119 below).47 In order to get at what Hemsterhuis actually meant by ‘Spinozism’, however, it is worth analysing in detail his position with regard to the debate in Germany. It is, once more, by reading the correspondence between Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin between 1786 and 1789 that his opinion of the controversy becomes clear. His position seems to be twofold. On the one hand, as the editors of the German critical edition of the Schriften zum Spinozastreit argue, it is clear how aware he was of the discussions taking place during Germany in those years, such as in his detailed analysis of Wizenmann’s 1786 summary of the controversy, Resultate der J­ acobischen und Mendelssohnschen Philosophie (pp. 83–96 below).48 On the other hand, although Hemsterhuis was familiar with part of the ongoing debate, he was not particularly interested in entering into it. And this is because, to repeat, his polemical target was quite different from Jacobi’s. For example, in the Letter on Atheism, rather than Spinoza himself, it is the so-called ‘third atheism’ of French materialism that is subjected to severe criticism.49 Hemsterhuis considers contemporary materialist ideas atheist, since they affirm matter alone as existing and self-sufficient. This kind of criticism of d’Holbach, La Mettrie and Diderot is frequent and rests on the derivation of such materialism from Spinozism – a critique very different from one directed at Spinozism itself.50 It is also clear that Hemsterhuis initially wished to contest the changes that Jacobi demanded and, to this end, he wrote to Gallitzin to say that ‘changing a letter or a work a little according to the imagination of others, which is not at all in accordance with our own, is a job which is, as you can understand, both unpleasant and difficult’ (B 10.7). Ultimately, though, Hemsterhuis tired of Jacobi’s pressure and left the fate of the Letter on Atheism to Gallitzin51 (and indirectly to Jacobi) by permitting her to change the text however she desired. He wrote to her as follows: ‘For the Letter on Atheism, once again for all, my Diotima, you will do with it and with every other autograph writing, exactly what you judge appropriate without exception’ (B 10.22). For these reasons, the final version of the Letter on Atheism published by Jacobi is not really a text that reflects Hemsterhuis’s initial intentions. And, what is more, it did not even seem to make much in the way of a decisive contribution to the ongoing Spinozism controversy, even in its modified form, and it certainly does not seem to reinforce Jacobi’s own theses. Nevertheless, as described above, Jacobi’s publication of the Letter on Atheism in his Spinoza-Letters was the single most important event in the reception of Hemsterhuis’s thought – not just for the German Romantics, but during the nineteenth and



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twentieth centuries as well, since editions of Hemsterhuis’s works in French backtranslated Jacobi’s German rather than publishing the original French. Moreover, Jacobi’s fateful influence on Hemsterhuis interpretation is even more evident if one also looks at the whole collection of his works, the Schriften zum Spinozastreit, in their function of providing German readers insight into other works by Hemsterhuis.52 The Wider Mendelssohn Beschuldigungen (1786), published between the two editions of the Spinoza-Letters, opens with a foreword that includes a quotation taken from Hemsterhuis’s not-yet-published Alexis. This is followed by an explanatory footnote in which Jacobi declares his intention to provide the German translation of this work – a translation that appeared together with the French original a year later, in 1787. In addition, Jacobi proposes a new edition of Hemsterhuis’s Letter on Man and his Relations – including the later additions and clarifications Hemsterhuis made – although this was never printed.53 In sum, Jacobi’s Schriften zum Spinozastreit (which includes all his works on the debate on Spinoza and Spinozism from 1785 to 1819) makes clear the actual influence Hemsterhuis had on Jacobi and how the former’s works were received and transmitted in Germany. However, even more important is Hemsterhuis’s own position with respect to the German debate on Spinozism. First and foremost, it needs to be remembered how complex Hemsterhuis’s position on Spinoza and Spinozism was and how in his mature years he tended to combine a relatively positive opinion of Spinoza’s system with a highly critical opinion of Spinozism, which had, in his opinion, degenerated into materialism. Hemsterhuis’s allusion to ‘Spinoza’s theism’ in the Letter on Atheism is illustrative of this and also led, as his correspondence with Gallitzin testifies, to a clash with Jacobi, who transmitted Hemsterhuis’s letter only on pain of manipulating it, or at least modifying it at some points. The fact that there were differences of interpretation between Hemsterhuis and Jacobi on Spinoza and Spinozism did not come to light immediately, but has now become clear from the unpublished correspondence. In an important letter written to Gallitzin on 4 July 1786, Hemsterhuis turns his attention to the passage from the first edition of Jacobi’s Spinoza-Letters in which Goethe’s Prometheus is used to provoke Lessing.54 Hemsterhuis takes up a different position to Jacobi, criticising his use of the poem for ‘having failed to achieve its aim’, namely, to stimulate discussion on ‘modern Spinozism’ (B 7.53).55 Hemsterhuis is interested in analysing the verses of Prometheus quoted by Jacobi and concludes that, if Jacobi had quoted these verses without mentioning Prometheus’s name and put them forward as a dramatic work, no one would have considered the author (Goethe) to be an atheist. Instead, according to Hemsterhuis, Jacobi had quoted these verses so that they ‘appear as a monologue of Prometheus, an excerpt from some kind of theatrical work, which is absurd and casts ridicule on the poet, whoever he may be’ (B 7.53). In order to demonstrate the inaccuracy of Jacobi’s use and interpretation of Prometheus, Hemsterhuis goes on to provide an erudite lesson in the myth and history of Prometheus, thereby seeming to indirectly side with Goethe and Lessing.56 It is curious, or at least striking, therefore, that, only one year later, Hemsterhuis agreed to write about ‘atheism’ for Jacobi, and that Jacobi, in turn, retained belief that the publication of the Letter on Atheism would strengthen his argument against Spinozism.57 This indicates how much is yet to be brought to light concerning the complex connections between Hemsterhuis and Jacobi.

Hemsterhuis and Newtonian Philosophy Henri A. Krop

NEWTONIANISM, or Newtonian Philosophy, (Physics), is the theory of the mechanism of the universe and particularly of the movement of celestial bodies, their laws, their properties, as taught by Newton. This term ‘Newtonian philosophy’ has been applied variously and from this came many concepts of this word.1

Introduction: Hemsterhuis and Newton In Erflaters van onze beschaving (Testators to our Civilisation), an influential intellectual history of the Netherlands that appeared in print between 1947 and 1977, Hemsterhuis and Spinoza are the only philosophers discussed. The authors, Jan and Annie Romein, call Hemsterhuis a ‘philosopher of the soul’ and neither the name of Newton nor the philosopher’s mathematical and physical writings are mentioned. Although they recall his admiration for mathematics – ‘the queen of the sciences’ – and his studies in engineering, the Romeins forcefully underline the philological-humanist background of his thought (including the humanist culture transmitted by his father), which he combined into a distinctive form of ‘pre-Romanticism’, which broke away from the empiricism and materialism of the High Enlightenment.2 However, Michael J. Petry went on to argue repeatedly that Hemsterhuis is much more of an Enlightenment figure than the Romeins suggested. In 1985, he published a pioneering paper on Hemsterhuis’s works in the closely related fields of mathematics and optics.3 He argued that Hemsterhuis’s mathematical and physical works should not be neglected, as had been the case in previous scholar­ ship and the earlier editions of Hemsterhuis’s collected works. Those works were the result of ‘Newtonian philosophy’, which had dominated intellectual life in the Nether­lands and elsewhere in Europe during the Age of Enlightenment. In order to understand Hemsterhuis’s intellectual development, we should take Petry’s claims seriously: ‘Newtonianism’, and the Leiden School in particular, was the birthplace of Hemster­huis’s thought. To that end, a general outline of Dutch Newtonianism in this Introduction is required. However, as Petry also observed, the Leiden School already felt Newtonianism to be insufficient with respect to social and theological questions. Hemsterhuis’s intellectual predecessors – ’s  Gravesande and van Swinden – had already tried to develop Newtonianism further and create a philosophy that was more than merely a science of the external world.



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Enlightenment Perspectives on Newton The above-quoted entry on ‘Newtonianism’ in the famous Encyclopédie states that ‘Newtonianism, or Newtonian Philosophy,’ is a physical theory about the mechanism of the universe taught by Newton. However, it is applied in more than one sense and d’Alembert, the author of this entry, continues by listing four different meanings. The first meaning is a ‘corpuscular philosophy’ enriched by Newton’s discoveries, and in this sense of the term it refers, according to d’Alembert, to the Newtonianism of the Leiden scientist and philosopher Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande (1688–1742), which I discuss below. The second meaning is the method adopted by Newton, which consists of inferring arguments and conclusions directly from phenomena without adopting any previous hypothesis. Beginning from primary laws of nature, which rest on simple principles, we can explain other phenomena. ‘Newtonianism’ may, thirdly, also denote the mathematical consideration of physical bodies, that is to say, the use of mathematics to explain phenomena. In this sense Newtonian philosophy is equivalent to mechanical philosophy. Fourthly, ‘Newtonianism’ is the system of principles and explanations developed in Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis, principia mathematica ‘one of the most beautiful works the human mind has produced’.4 Its main principle is universal gravitation. It is established by natural phenomena, d’Alembert observes, and Newton used it in the Principia to account for natural phenomena. Other contemporary sources show the same awareness of the diversity of the idea of Newtonianism. Zedler’s Universal Lexicon does not deal with any doctrines in particular but focuses on the relationship between the empirical and the mathematical strains in Newtonian thought.5 Like the Encyclopédie it mentions ’s  Gravesande’s works, but also lists Henry Pemberton’s View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy, which left out the mathematics and in doing so attempted to make the book comprehensible ‘even for women’.6 However, the entry continues, it might be that such a move destroys the foundations of Newtonianism, since Newton was a geometer, who, after the examples of Archimedes and Galileo, dealt with physics in a mathematical way. It also refers to Voltaire’s Elémens de la philosophie de Neuton: with the help of Émilie du Châtelet, who later translated the Principia into French, Voltaire wanted to bring Newtonianism into the reach of all man, because it is ‘a good, which belongs to mankind’ and furthers enlightenment. Voltaire opposes Newtonianism to all previous philosophies, which are based upon sheer fantasy, whereas Newtonianism is founded in experience alone. The ancients, but also Descartes, are like ‘the blind trying to explain the nature of colours to the blind’.7 In its original, 1738 version, Voltaire’s book consisted of two parts: the first is based on Newton’s Optics, dealing with light and optics, and the second part deals with the world-system. From the 1741 edition onwards, the Elémens is preceded by a metaphysical part, which deals with God, natural religion, freedom and the active force given to the inert universe by an immaterial cause on the basis of Newton’s ideas.8 In this manner, Voltaire transformed Newton’s natural philosophy into a philosophy tout court. Although contemporary commentators often oppose Newton and Leibniz, and Voltaire reproduced Clarke’s criticism that ‘the principle of sufficient reason’ would lead to ‘absolute fatalism’,9 Voltaire’s work opened the way

18 INTRODUCTIONS to a more open and eclectic attitude towards Newtonianism. Samuel Koenig, who taught Du Châtelet mathematics and in 1746 became a professor of philosophy at Franeker University, framed Newtionianism – and all philosophy – in a historical perspective of mankind striving for truth, which can be reached only by free research on the basis of experience. For this reason, he denounced all ‘creators of heresy’, who, like chained dogs, bark without reason whenever they smell the scent of Spinoza’s impieties.10 By taking heed of experience, all philosophy proceeds by the via emendationis of error. Wolffian and Newtonian method are in harmony, Koenig observes, since both argued that the source of all knowledge about nature is experience in association with reason, that is, logic and mathematics.11 A third survey worth considering is Jacob Brucker’s Historia critica philosophiae.12 After giving an outline of Newton’s life, Brucker underlines the non-metaphysical nature of Newtonianism. His natural philosophy is described in terms of basic notions or definitions and principles (or laws of nature) which are to be derived from them. He lists these principles – two of which seem to transcend physics: the first, the existence of an almighty God, who is to be inferred from natural philosophy and whom we must venerate; and second, a number of moral precepts which all men accept because they are known by natural reason. In the last section, which deals with criticisms of Newton by Leibniz and others, Brucker underlines Newton’s ‘modesty’, in that he accepted as certain only what is established by experience. This epistemological modesty gave his thought a non-metaphysical tenor: for example, in making ‘attraction’ the basic principle of the system of nature, Brucker continued, Newton did not reintroduce the Scholastic notion of ‘occult qualities’, since ‘attraction is a merely geometrical or ideal principle. The force in itself is unknown, but we do know the effects and may calculate them’.13 Dutch Newtonianism The year 1715 is traditionally taken to be when Dutch Newtonianism originated. It is the year when ’s Gravesande participated in a diplomatic mission to London and met some members of the Royal Society, including Newton himself. Newton personally recommended ’s Gravesande to the president of the diplomatic mission, who used his network of acquaintances to obtain him a chair at Leiden University for the spread of Newtonianism.14 The same year, Herman Boerhaave delivered his famous rectoral address De comparando certo in physicis, which praised Newton as the prince of all philosophers and the miracle of our time.15 However, more recently it has become clear that this Newtonianism was developed on the basis of an already existing tradition of experimental research in Dutch universities, initiated by Burchardus De Volder, who in 1675 was permitted to establish a Theatrum physicum at Leiden University. Such a non-metaphysical attitude in natural philosophy helped put an end to the Cartesian controversies that raged in seventeenth-century Dutch intellectual life (as late as 1676, the professor of theology at Leiden, Abraham Heidanus, was fired on account of his Cartesianism), because purely empiricist natural philosophy seemed to respect the boundaries of orthodoxy.16 However, although De Volder received a copy of the first edition of the



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Principia, presented to him by the author himself, he continued to argue for a purely rational metaphysics based on Cartesian principles. In his farewell address (1705), De Volder still defended clear and distinct rational ideas, for example that thinking is infinite and that there is a Divinity who exists by itself and eternally,17 as well as the Cartesian principle of universal doubt.18 Not only metaphysical theology, but also mathematics rests on pure reason and, without mathematics, an understanding of nature and its mechanical laws is impossible. In this vein, De Volder refers to the ‘great luminaries of our time, Huygens, Newton [Nerwotonus] and Leibniz’, who established that ‘without the knowledge of mathematics all men will be only a guest in physics’.19 For De Volder, Newton comes to be depicted as a scientist among other eminent scientists, who all pleaded for the use of mathematics in the study of nature. This idea developed into a basic notion of Enlightenment philosophy, expressed in the famous phrase ‘the marriage of experience and reason’, and adopted by academic Newtonianism, as the following example makes obvious.20 The particular nature of Dutch academic Newtonianism is to be discerned from its estranged attitude towards physico-theology. With good reason, Jonathan Israel has observed that, contrary to the Newtonians researching outside the universities, ’s Gravesande ignored physico-theology, which attempted to prove God and His attributes from the order of nature that had been established in physics and observed by the senses.21 With the exception of Van Musschenbroek in his address De sapientia divina (1744), none of the major academic Newtonians ever dealt with this hybrid of both experimental physics and theology.22 Apparently, ’s  Gravesande and his school realised that empirical knowledge of God and the divine attributes cannot itself prove the reliability of the senses, of the empirical sciences and of the laws of nature. A justification of Newtonian physics in such a manner was ultimately a sophistic argument without any philosophical significance. Hence, ’s Gravesande and his Newtonian school attempted to justify physics by an alternative means – the a priori, rational science of metaphysics. As Rienk Vermij has recently established, Newton found his first Dutch admirers outside the academic world. He refers to a group of merchants (partly Mennonite) who were interested in mathematics and physics and which included Adriaan Verwer and Bernard Nieuwentijt. Both wrote against Spinoza and denounced his conception of God, which they opposed to Newton’s willing and intelligent God. They claimed Spinoza falsely adopted the geometrical method for the study of nature. Unlike academic Newtonianism, they propagated a Newtonian physico-­theology as an apologetic device.23 The apparent split between these two diverse forms of Newtonianism, popular and academic, confirms Jacob’s recent observation: ‘In the course of the eighteenth century, Newtonianism took a multitude of forms’.24 Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande The creator of academic Newtonianism in the Netherlands is without doubt the Leiden professor Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande, who in 1717 was appointed professor of astronomy and mathematics.25 Although Hemsterhuis’s father was appointed to Leiden University in 1740, it is improbable that the ageing luminary of the

20 INTRODUCTIONS university and the young professor’s son would have developed a particularly close personal relationship; however, the Newtonianism produced by the Leiden professor marked the starting point for Hemsterhuis’s intellectual trajectory. Hemster­huis refers to ’s Gravesande several times and adopted the notion of ‘moral evidence’ from his philosophy. In three university addresses, in the Preface to his manual of physics, entitled Physices elementa mathematica, experimentis confirmata, sive Introductio ad philosophiam Newtonianam (1720–1),26 and in his manual of philosophy, the Introductio ad philosophiam (1736), ’s Gravesande developed an open Newtonian philosophy, which his pupils spread to most other Dutch universities – to Utrecht by Petrus Musschenbroek (1692–1761), appointed in 1723;27 to Franeker by Johannes ­Oosterdijk Schacht (1704–92), appointed in 1727; and to Harderwijk by Johan Hendrik van Lom (1704–63), appointed in 173428 – where, as a rule, it replaced Cartesianism. In the Netherlands, the University of Groningen was an exception: it resisted the general eighteenth-century tendency towards Newtonian­ism and, instead, in German fashion adopted Wolffianism.29 The academic Newtonianism of the four other universities in the United Provinces was eclectic and open, because ’s Gravesande categorically rejected any slavish imitation of the British scientist.30 According to ’s Gravesande, philosophy clearly has a moral goal: it teaches man that nature is not produced by mere coincidence and that by using his intelligence he may become happy. It teaches man his social nature as well, because, without the help and continuous assistance of his fellow men, man will live a nasty and short life. However, neither ’s Gravesande nor any other Newtonian philosopher wrote a manual on morality, even if ’s  Gravesande’s biographer and successor, J. N. S. Allamand (1713–87), observed that, at the end of his life, ’s Gravesande was working on one.31 Philosophy, according to ’s Gravesande, provides the instruments man requires to attain the goal of his life, that is, to live well and to be happy.32 Our knowledge originates in metaphysics, which studies the perceptions or ideas of things immediately present to our mind. It studies abstract ideas and not concrete things.33 Metaphysics is divided into ontology, which studies being and the other concepts we use to denote reality as such – for ’s Gravesande, substance and modes, cause and effect, necessary and contingent being34 – and pneumatology, which studies finite and infinite minds. In metaphysics he develops an argument for the existence of God, which we may summarise as follows: Every effect has a cause. However, an infinite sequence of causes being impossible, such a sequence is inevitably provided with a first term. A being without a beginning is uncreated and exists of itself, that is, by its own essence. A being existing by itself is without limits, because, in essence, there is no reason for it to be limited by a cause. Such a being we call God.35 God’s attributes, which can be proved by reason, include intelligence, freedom, omnipotence and unity. Another argument starts from the cogito, which establishes that there is at least something in the universe provided with intellect. The notion of ourselves as an intelligent being leads to the idea of a first Creator existing from eternity and with an intellect infinitely surpassing the intellect He produced. ‘It forced my mind to attribute to Him a power, which surpasses all power of which I am capable of thinking.’36 All these things are simple and obvious, ’s Gravesande concludes. The study of these kinds of ideas about finite and infinite intelligent beings belongs to pneumatology. The last part of metaphysics is



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the study of the first principles of morality, which establishes the duties of rational beings towards each other and God. According to ’s Gravesande, intelligent beings are provided with will, that is, the capacity to act in harmony with their preferences. The will is free whenever it is provided with the power to act accordingly. He rejects the determinism of Hobbes and Spinoza, because they both assume that our actions are caused only by outward causes. So, they cannot distinguish between beings whose behaviour is caused by fever or fury and intelligent beings acting in accordance with reason.37 This point of view is ‘orthodox’, and ’s Gravesande refers to the Acts of the Synod of Dordt to prove this.38 Besides metaphysics, ’s Gravesande distinguishes the rational science of logic, which studies the rules we should adopt in combining ideas. He focuses on method, for example in deciphering coded letters. He puts logic on a par with mathematics, which also combines ideas, but ideas of quantity and magnitude alone.39 All these sciences result in knowledge that has mathematical certainty, that is, evidence due to the fact we cannot think otherwise. The opposite of a truth in these sciences involves a clear contradiction. Hence, in this domain, we do not need further criteria to refute scepticism. Moreover, metaphysics teaches us that reality is dualist: thought cannot be an attribute of extended matter and extension cannot be an attribute of the mind. However, observation establishes their coherence, which all existing theories (such as occasionalism and Leibniz’s pre-established harmony) cannot explain.40 Consequently, the origin of our ideas concerning objects in the outside world is a mystery philosophy is unable to solve. Those ideas are not self-evident and may acquire merely a moral certainty. When it comes to nature, our knowledge is very limited: we are ignorant of the origin of creation, and the materialist hypothesis concerning the development of all forms from primitive matter by the laws of motion is absurd.41 We are also ignorant of most properties of substance, which makes our knowledge of nature, in the first instance, ‘phenomenological’, and we know the universal laws of nature only a priori. This implies, according to ’s Gravesande, that we should adopt the rules or method of Newton in studying nature. The first rule is the use of an epistemological form of Ockham’s razor: when explaining natural phenomena, we should assume as few causes as are sufficient to explain them. Before presenting the second and third of Newton’s rules, he introduces the metaphysical principle of analogy, which rests on two further principles. The first is the so-called survival axiom: ‘we must look upon as true whatever being denied would destroy society and deprive us of the means of living’. ’s Gravesande gives three examples which show the validity of analogical argument across time and space. Of time: ‘A building that still stands today will not of itself run to ruin tomorrow’, because of the cohesion of its parts and gravity, and the same applies to food that has been taken before without fear; it can also be taken today without further experiment. However, if I see hemlock, I will conclude it to be poisonous without any further proof. Of place: one can use the timber and stones used to build a house in another country here. The second further principle by which ’s Gravesande also justifies this principle of analogy involves a reference to God’s wisdom, which led the Creator govern the universe by means of laws. By analogy we may infer Newton’s second rule – like effects have the same causes – as well as the third rule – ‘properties of bodies which cannot be enforced or weakened,

22 INTRODUCTIONS and we find in all bodies on which we can experiment, should be considered the properties of bodies in general’.42 Unlike the areas of philosophy discussed above, physics, geography and all sciences resting upon history, such as Christian theology, need our senses and the senses of others to acquire knowledge. Such sciences are provided with only moral certainty. Knowledge with moral certainty is, according to ’s  Gravesande, not problematic and is true as rational knowledge. As we have seen, he argues that in metaphysics we know God and His will with mathematical certainty; from His will we may infer that unchanging laws rule the universe and that He created man in order to live and hence provided him with the means needed for life. If we did not possess reliable empirical perception, we would be unable to survive; but we also need the help of our fellow man’s perceptions. Hence, God provided man with language to communicate his findings to others and we may in principle trust the perceptions of others and put our belief in their truth. Man may also put his faith in the principle of analogy – in London the principles of mathematics apply in the same manner as in Leiden – since by giving mankind a goal to strive for, God also necessarily provided humanity with the means to attain it.43 For these reasons, ’s Gravesande founded moral certainty and our sciences of the material world in metaphysics and his ‘Newtonian philosophy’ is ‘philosophy’ in the current meaning of the word (not merely a form of ‘natural philosophy’). The Newtonianism of the Dutch universities was, consequently, primarily understood as a philosophical system. Allamand reports that ’s  Gravesande was interested in creating machines to perform experiments. With the help of Jan Musschenbroek, the father of his later colleague Petrus Musschenbroek, he designed a set of instruments needed to confirm Newtonian physics – they are sketched in his manual. In 1721 and 1722, he also went to Kassel in order to examine a machine which seemingly estab­lished ‘eternal motion’. However, unlike his colleague Musschenbroek, he never performed experiments himself or recorded observations on phenomena such as electricity, weather and magnetism, or in fields such as chemistry and biology, which at that time did not lend themselves to mathematical treatment. There is only one exception – a study of tides in the River Merwede, near Dordrecht, commissioned by the States of Holland, which was to recommend measures to prevent flooding – which does record some observations and speculates about their causes.44 This study betrays a more pragmatic attitude towards science, which in the second part of the eighteenth century was developed by the various Dutch learned societies and their regular academic competitions. In this pragmatic sense it survived in Hemsterhuis’s work. Jan Hendrik van Swinden Jan Hendrik van Swinden (1746–1823) continued along the path marked out by ’s  Gravesande and remained interested in developing a ‘Newtonian’ philosophy that was more than just Newtonian science. Van Swinden was born in 1746 in The Hague.45 In 1763 he matriculated as a law student at Leiden University, but also attended the philosophy lectures of ’s Gravesande’s successor, Allamand, and the mathematical lessons of Johann Friedrich Hennert. On 12 June 1766 Van Swinden



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took his philosophy degree with a dissertation that dealt with the typical Newtonian topic of the force of attraction. However, the first three of the appended propositions in this dissertation summarise the basic principles of ’s Gravesande’s Newtonianism: the metaphysical proof of God (proposition 1), the moral necessity of the will (proposition 2) and his dualist epistemology (proposition 3).46 A year later he accepted a chair in Franeker, which covered philosophy, logic and metaphysics. In his inaugural address of 1766, Oratio inauguralis, de causis errorum in rebus philo­sophicis, and his rectoral lecture of 1779, Oratio de philosophia Newtoniana, he dealt with the notion of Newtonian philosophy. For eighteen years, until 1785, Van Swinden remained professor at Franeker. His Franeker years saw original work in the fields of electricity, magnetism, meteorology and the northern lights. His strength lay in his observational and experimental work. An impressive part of his activity was the series of meteorological observations made during the years 1771–84, performed (for the first six years) on an hourly basis. The results of these observations were published in the journals of several scientific academies, sometimes in Latin and Dutch, but mostly in French. In 1777 he, together with Coulomb, received a gold medal from the Paris Academy of the Science for his essay on magnetic needles. His teaching of physics resulted in a manual, Positiones physicae, and several disputations, dealing for example with the elasticity of water and air, fire, electricity and the Leyden jar. However, Van Swinden also taught philosophy as we understand it today. From 1767 to 1775 (the year a budget cut to the university precluded its continuation), eight disputations were published that together formed a manual of philosophy with the title Cogitationes de variis philosophiae capitibus. In 1785 the Amsterdam magistrate offered him a professorship at the Amsterdam Illustrious School. This chair covered not only mathematics, physics and astronomy but also metaphysics. Although the Amsterdam Athenaeum illustre was no university, Van Swinden accepted the post, since he would earn a salary double his Franeker wages. During his Amsterdam years, Van Swinden stopped publishing on philosophy. Seemingly, since the Amsterdam Athenaeum did not educate theologians, physicians and lawyers, there was no need to deal with the philosophical presuppositions of the sciences. In this respect he anticipated the legal emancipation of the sciences at the Dutch universities from philosophy in the new Dutch Kingdom. After the 1795 Batavian revolution, Van Swinden became a minister in the Batavian government for a short period. In 1808 he became president of the mathematical and physical department of the first Dutch national Academy of Sciences, established by the king of Holland, Louis Napoleon. After the Napoleonic era he became Councillor of State. He died in 1823. The next year his library was sold. His collection gives evidence of the broadness of his philosophical interests: he possessed books by Spinoza, Wolff, Kant – in Latin and the original German – and the Dutch Kantians, Van Hemert and Kinker.47 Newtonian Method Van Swinden began his rectoral address on Newtonian philosophy by observing that, after the renaissance of the sciences in the sixteenth century, many philosophers,

24 INTRODUCTIONS scientists and scholars flourished.48 Although many men deserve our praise and admiration on account of their teaching, ingenuity of mind and art of discovering new things, no man should be extolled more, he concludes, than Isaac Newton.49 As Van Swinden put it, the ‘Supreme Maker and Ruler’ Himself, in aiding man’s blessedness by removing the darkness and obscurity brought forth by scholasticism, sent Newton to restore natural philosophy.50 In his view, it was Newton who created the highway of philosophy by combining the two previous roads: while some followed Descartes’s path and practised the mathematical sciences, others, such as Galileo, Toricelli, Boyle and Mariotte, joined forces and created a complete ‘catalogue of the phenomena’.51 However, Newton combined the mathematics of the Cartesian tradition with an empiricist approach in natural philosophy, and so his greatness was due to his powers to transcend the limitations of rationalism and empiricism and establish a new method in philosophy.52 All his successors have combined mathematics and observation, reason and experience. In the second part of his address Van Swinden dealt with Newton’s achievements; however, he ultimately intended to ignore these accomplishments, since Newtonianism for him is primarily a method. According to Van Swinden, Newton summed up his methodology in Query 28 of the Principia: ‘the main business of natural philosophy is to argue from phenomena without feigning hypotheses and to deduce causes from effects till we come to the very first cause’.53 This observation implies three principles: first, in the natural sciences, the only claims which may be admitted are those substantiated by empirical observation; second, most hypotheses are to be rejected, although some should be examined and applied; and third, it is all-important to keep certain and uncertain things apart, after investigating the degrees of certainty of all our knowledge. The truth of the first methodological principle is evident and if we ignore it, Van Swinden states, we will – like Descartes – arrive at the study of a factitious universe, instead of the universe created by God.54 However, we are unable to investigate many things by means of the senses and they have to be examined by reason alone. The implication of this conclusion is that Newton did not attempt to reduce the whole of philosophy to mere experimental philosophy; experimental and rational philosophy should be combined and a real marriage of experience and reason aimed at.55 Newtonian Epistemology and Metaphysics Van Swinden began his inaugural oration by laying down the basic epistemological principle of Dutch Newtonianism: introspection.56 By contemplating our own mind we become aware that we are endowed with the powers to know the ultimate Truth and the means to attain our happiness.57 Moreover, we know that, within us, a ‘natural instinct’ exists aimed at our good, as well as a reason enabling us to know that good, although vice disturbs this natural order and installs itself by false education and the imitation of false examples.58 Moreover, Van Swinden insists on acknowledging all-embracing order in the universe, and this metaphysical notion of order forms part of his affinity to the tradition of natural law.



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The basic metaphysical principle advanced by Van Swinden is a Cartesian dualism between mind and body. By contemplating ourselves we know that, on the one hand, there are spiritual substances which exist eternally, unchangingly and freely, while, on the other hand, there are bodies which change, exist in time and are determined by necessary causes.59 From this metaphysical dualism Van Swinden infers two general epistemological notions. The first notion is a basic epistemological dualism: in a Cartesian manner, we assess the truth of our ideas about immaterial entities by means of their intrinsic attributes of clearness and distinctness alone. Hence, in the sciences dealing with immaterial substances, such as metaphysics and mathematics, we may rely on arguments which use the geometrical method alone.60 These rational sciences are therefore, in principle, devoid of error and dispute. For example, contrary to the physicists, all mathematicians readily accept each other’s inferences, and between the mathematics of the ancients and the moderns there is substantial harmony. On the other hand, knowledge of the corporeal world begins with observation of phenomena. Only by using our senses can we judge the truth of our ideas about bodies and their properties. Hence, application of the geometrical method alone in physics resulted in ‘the monstrous doctrines of Spinoza’s Ethics’.61 The second epistemological inference from this metaphysical principle is a limited scepticism.62 Our knowledge of the material world is of an a posteriori nature and does not transcend the limits of the senses. By contemplating ourselves, we know that we are beings with both a mind and a body. At the same time, introspection teaches us that, although body and mind interact, we do not know the manner by which this interaction is produced. More generally, we know bodies solely by the effects they produce on our senses – that is, we know them as phenomena, but of their substantial nature we have merely a partial insight. This scepticism may be derived from Locke; however, pace Locke, Van Swinden restricts his scepticism to material substances only; immaterial substances are in principle fully knowable by us. What is more, Van Swinden’s scepticism results in a discontinuity between metaphysics and physics, which undermines traditional belief in philosophy as the encyclopaedia of the sciences.63 According to Van Swinden, metaphysical prin­ciples applied in physics are regulative ideas (if I may use this Kantian notion here): for example, the so-called law of continuity, which apparently directly follows from the metaphysical notion of the order of nature and precludes the existence of perfectly solid bodies which suddenly lose their velocity; as well as the metaphysical law of simplicity, which was used with good reason by Leibniz and Descartes to elucidate the laws of light’s refraction by arguing that nature chooses the shortest way in the shortest time. Such hypotheses agree with all physical truths known to us, Van Swinden argues, and he, therefore, accepts the heuristic value of metaphysical principles. Van Swinden’s philosophical manual, Cogitationes de variis philosophiae capitibus, developed the principles he outlined in his inaugural oration. It consists of seven disputations, and it should be noted that of the seven students taking part, four were theologians, two physicians and only one is recorded as a student of ‘humanities and philosophy’.64 This fact reminds us of the propaedeutic character of the teaching of philosophy and physics at the Dutch universities even during the Enlightenment. Nearly all students ended their educational career not as philosophers or scientists,

26 INTRODUCTIONS but as lawyers, ministers and physicians. The basis of Van Swinden’s manual is ’s Gravensande’s Introductio ad philosophiam, with, however, several important modifications by Van Swinden.65 Unlike ’s Gravensande, Van Swinden began with natural theology and teleological order in the universe;66 from this metaphysical premise he infers the invariability of the laws of nature.67 However, owing to the limitations of our intellect, our knowledge of this metaphysical order is only partial.68 It is this scepticism which precluded Van Swinden from adopting a full-fledged Spinozism. The limits of our understanding force us to accept the fact that, for us, the universe will always possess a miraculous nature. The second disputation deals with logic. It focuses on the distinction between ideas that ’s Gravensande made in chapters 6 and 13 of the second book of his Introductio. On the one hand, we know ideas that originate in the mind itself. Such ideas concern the determinations of our will, our memory, the operations of our intellect and our passions. We may have an idea of a pain without knowing its cause in our body.69 On the other hand, there are ideas produced in the mind by means of the senses. Such ideas denote an object in the material world outside the mind. Judgements passed on the basis of such ideas possess moral certainty, which, contra Locke’s opinion, might well equal the certainty of mathematically evident judgements, but is nonetheless indirect.70 The mind perceives the link between combined ideas by using the senses – in observation or in experiment, in analogy or in the testimony of others. Van Swinden adopted ’s Gravesande’s distinctions between these methods, but he noted that in fact they all amounted to one thing: experience.71 Van Swinden also replaces ’s  Gravesande’s clear-cut dichotomy between the sciences with a more gradual sequence. On the one hand, there is mathematics, the only rational science with respect to both method and ideas; on the other hand, there are the historical sciences, which are empirical with respect to both method and ideas. In this schema, other sciences are placed in between these two extremes. Metaphysics, for example, is not a pure science, since the ideas of substance, mode, being and cause are learned by experience and only afterwards abstracted by the intellect.72 On the other hand, Van Swinden seems to insist on the rational element in the empirical sciences by arguing for the use of mathematics in all natural sciences, even in chemistry and biology. In sum, it might well be observed that Van Swinden’s example confirms the idea that Dutch academic Newtonianism was of an eclectic and philosophical nature. It was close to but distinct from a ‘Newtonianism’ which amounted to empirical science alone. Newtonianism in Hemsterhuis According to Petry: Newton’s physics determined the cultural climate of Hemsterhuis’s youth. Without comprehending the essential notions of Newton’s philosophy, we cannot understand Hemsterhuis’s philosophical development. As he repeated constantly Newton’s doctrine is the second basic principle of his thought.73



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Although Hemsterhuis matriculated from Leiden University as student of mathematics only in 1747, it is very likely that he had attended the lessons of ’s  Gravensande and Musschenbroek, the luminaries of the Leiden School, from the moment he arrived in Leiden with his family in 1740 (this is highly plausible since, as a rule, the sons of professors did not matriculate). In 1740, Hemsterhuis also befriended the future naturalist, anatomist and zoologist Petrus Camper (1722–89), who in his optical dissertation combined mathematics with observation and experiment. Camper also refers to a very accurately constructed artificial eye, which exemplifies the interdependence between science and technology in this tradition. In his correspondence with Gallitzin, Hemsterhuis often refers to the famous naturalist, although he hardly ever discusses Camper’s scientific research. Nevertheless, in April 1783 he did ask Camper ‘whether both a male and female sex are required to produce a being which is sensible and thinks. Moreover, what is the reason why there is in the chain of being a gap between the fish, quadrupeds and birds on the one hand and insects on the other?’ (B 4.30). Hemsterhuis himself undertook some scientific observations; for example, during his studies, he wrote three letters to Cornelius Nozeman (1722–86), who at that time was a candidate for the Arminian ministry, but also a well-known naturalist who helped to establish the first Dutch Scientific Society at Haarlem and became the first director of the Rotterdam branch of the Batavian Society of Experimental Philosophy. In these letters, Hemsterhuis ‘passes on information concerning the characteristics of freshwater polyps and he gave Nozeman an account of the observations he had made on the book-scorpion’.74 According to Hemsterhuis’s biographer, Brummel, the philosopher gradually lost interest in natural history.75 However, optics was clearly a science which continued to interest him and he acquired an acknowledged expertise on optical instruments.76 In 1787 he wrote to Gallitzin that he had worked ‘on theoretical and practical optics and their related sciences for more than half a century’ (B 8.83). This resulted in a little treatise, the Letter on Optics, in which Hemsterhuis partly resisted Newtonian theories of vision because they did not take the soul into account, even though it ‘plays without comparison the biggest role’ (p. 157 below). Hemsterhuis had already devised something similar in his definition of beauty (‘to acquire the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time’), which implies that an ill person will prefer a simple dot in judging the beautiful, whereas a ‘healthy, tranquil soul’ will prefer a more complex figure (EE 1.63). In 1755, Hemsterhuis was recommended for a chair in (experimental) philosophy at Franeker, but the board of governors preferred Antonius Brugmans (1732–89), who, like Koenig, combined his interest in Newton with Wolffianism. Perhaps as compensation Hemsterhuis became secretary to the Council of State and his ‘Newtonianism’ became limited to letters sent to Gallitzin. Hemsterhuis’s letters to Gallitzin contain seven ‘treatises’ that concern natural science. All of them are quite short: those on physics and on the motion of the sun are the shortest (a couple of pages); the longest are those on rotation (around six pages), which makes rudimental use of geometrical form, and on optics (about seven pages). Quoting Staël, Brummel glossed that Hemsterhuis’s ‘mathematical language’ was often ‘a very outward appearance’ which hid his lively imagination: ‘The factual

28 INTRODUCTIONS content did not correspond with the quasi-exact form’. This implies that Newton’s significance for Hemsterhuis’s work is, in the end, relatively small.77 Although the force of attraction plays an important part in his natural philosophy, it is completely spiritualised. And Staël argued that if Newtonian philosophy is dominated by ‘a spirit of unbelief ’ (as Hemsterhuis called it), what is needed is an age in which the ‘imaginative mind [l’esprit merveilleux] should overcome the geometric spirit’.78 The writings of Hemsterhuis seem to substantiate Staël’s intuition: Newton’s name is mentioned only six times in his major works, but he remains an important point of reference. The Letter on Atheism praises him alongside Kepler and Huygens as re-establishing the link between mathematics and physics (see p. 105 below). In the famous passage from the Sophylus, Hemsterhuis compares the philosophy of Newton with Socratic thought. Although they are the only consistent philosophies, which do not corrupt the soul, Newtonian philosophy is not really a philosophy at all, due to its limitations; in fact, it consists merely of mechanics (EE 2.47) – the third of the meanings established by d’Alembert in the Encyclopédie.79 In Hemsterhuis’s correspondence, Aristotle, Socrates and Newton are put on a par as scholars who, unlike the Sophists and Descartes, were able to keep their imagination in check, and, Euclid in hand, could discover ‘truths’ (see pp. 163–4 below). This last observation transforms Newton into a thinker with an essential role in the history of thought. Hence, the kind of evaluation of Hemsterhuis’s philosophy given by the Romeins (cited at the beginning of this Introduction) is certainly one-sided: Hemsterhuis was far from ignorant of the ‘Newtonian’ heritage of Enlightenment, even if Petry overstated his case. Ultimately, Hemsterhuis was to consider his own Socratic philosophy as superior to the Newtonian philosophies of ’s Gravesande and Van Swinden.

The Ubiquity of Vases in Hemsterhuis’s Sketches and Drawings: Making Art in Philosophy, Doing Philosophy in Art Peter C. Sonderen

Visual translation … is becoming increasingly more important as the twenty-first century begins. Desired visual translation transports us beyond mere analyses and associated visuals to higher levels of visualization in terms of inspirations, decisions, or actions. We should aim to achieve Galileo’s ‘The wonderful becomes familiar and the familiar wonderful’ on the road to generating Hemsterhuis’s … ‘the greatest number of ideas in the shortest space of time’.1 Whatever styles and techniques he used, [Mel] Powell’s compositions tend to be economical; most are scored for solo performers or small ensembles and are of relatively short duration. He liked to quote Frans Hemsterhuis’ definition of the beautiful as ‘the greatest number of ideas in the shortest space of time’.2

Introduction: Drawing into Philosophy François Hemsterhuis is probably the only Western philosopher to have provided self-drawn images, vignettes and ornaments in all his philosophical works. His artistic activity also included the design of monuments, such as the monument for Boerhaave in the Leiden Pieterskerk (Figure 1.1), and medals such as the golden VOC design (see below, Figure 1.11) – all of them express, or, better, incorporate his philosophical ideas and insights. When it came to his carefully designed books, he also took care of the bindings of the printed copies he offered to friends and other important acquaintances – and they are now considered highlights of book collections across the world.3 The Letter on Sculpture contains remarkable fold-out drawings that give insight into the new philosophical narrative that characterises his work (see EE 1.62). It is for these reasons that Hemsterhuis’s name is known not only in the field of philosophy but also in that of art history.4 As I briefly suggested in my Introduction to volume 1 (The Early Writings) of this series (EE 1.3–22), Hemsterhuis connects the domains of the philosophical and the artistic in such an experimental and idiosyncratic way that we can easily connect his aesthetic drive – not only to write texts but also to design artworks that visually enquire into the what and the how of the human being – to the latetwentieth-century practice of research in and through the arts.5 This approach views artistic practice itself as a distinctive form of research activity, alongside research practices in the sciences. Art is called research – in contrast to regular art practice – when the artist explicitly and publicly enquires into certain problems

30 INTRODUCTIONS

Figure 1.1: Monument for Boerhaave (1762), Pieterskerk, Leiden, designed by Hemsterhuis (Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed)



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and thereby brings to the surface experiences and knowledge that otherwise would have remained hidden. Artistic research must therefore be transparent about the method, approach or methodology it uses, and should open up its process to public scrutiny and critical peer feedback. Nevertheless, artistic research also stays firmly connected to and situated within the idiosyncratic relationships an artist has with the subject of enquiry. That is, artistic research deliberately and actively entangles the personal and universal, and so displaces the conventional, detached position of the scientist. It is participative and subjective, while simultaneously attempting to attain universal validity while remaining art. An extraordinary combination. How do these attributes relate to Hemsterhuis’s practice of philosophy and art? They are all easily applicable to art, especially to his visual experiments referred to in the Letter on Sculpture, to which the drawings on the fold-out sheets of the book testify (EE 1.62). These drawings act, literally, both as eyewitnesses and as eye-proofs and are thus further evidence that Hemsterhuis thought through and by art, not only about art. He designed the experimental vase forms himself (in the actual experiment they were at least half a metre high) and connected them to his philosophical concepts – or, better, they formed the (repeatable) proof of one of his central philosophical theses, his famous definition of beauty. As I showed in my Introduction to volume 1 (EE 1.10–13), Hemsterhuis closely connects concepts (of philosophy) and affects (of art), almost as if he were Deleuze’s forerunner. That is, by way of this deliberate use of a work of art, namely the drawings of two vases in his Letter on Sculpture, he intended to reveal a distinctive force active within all human desire – longing for unity. Alongside these eye-catching fold-out sheets, the Letter on Sculpture also contains other drawings and vignettes which seem to testify to a relatively complex digression from the main aesthetic ideas of the texts by introducing a new, very personal iconography. They represent, I will argue, the threshold of a commencing modernity – a moment of transition to the invention of art in the modern sense of the word (see EE 1.13–17). That is, with the emergence of a personal, instead of a generally accepted iconography, Hemsterhuis opens the floodgates to an idiosyncrasy that became one of the hallmarks of modern art. The subject matter of this Introduction is, therefore, Hemsterhuis’s predilection for vase design throughout his oeuvre, particularly in light of a recently discovered collection of his drawings.6 What do all these pots and vases mean, what role do they play, and what philosophical work do they do? That is, how do they link philosophy and art? To answer these questions, I will begin by providing a few sustained analyses of individual drawings in the Letter on Sculpture, before concluding with a discussion of the short text ‘On the Best Shape to Give to the Feet of Vases’, which came to light only in 2015 and was published for the first time in 2021 (IN, pp. 123–5). Not Parergon, but Ergon Drawings and vignettes in books are often seen literally as an hors d’œuvre, that is, outside the work, an ornament, a parergon, and therefore as not strictly relevant to the main text. This is also the case with Hemsterhuis’s drawings if the reception

32 INTRODUCTIONS history of his work remains our reference point – drawings might be mentioned but they are hardly discussed. The vase drawings in the Letter on Sculpture are an obvious counterexample to this tendency: they perform an essential integrating function, as key elements of Hemsterhuis’s enquiry into sculpture, beauty and aesthetics (as well as within his philosophy in general). Hemsterhuis’s ideas here take visual form and supply more ways of encountering his ideas than his very concise text allows. These drawings teach us, as we shall see, that our gaze should not only focus on words – and thus on theory alone – but should also pay attention to the hidden narrative of forms and figures. Hemsterhuis’s drawings are not to be seen as meaningless pieces of tapestry (à la Immanuel Kant); rather, Hemsterhuis’s ideas appear simultaneously in discursive and visual form.7 And this, in part, announces the emergence of modern art. Into the Drawings When looking at the title page of the Letter on Sculpture, we encounter a vignette with a sculpted pedestal in the foreground that leans to the right and has partly sunk into the ground (Figure 1.2).8 It shows a large oval relief representing a seated sculptor in ancient attire carving a stone vase. The whole subject floats on a piece of earth. The drawing raises several questions. Why is the sculptor chiselling a stone vase and not a stone human figure, as one might expect in a book on sculpture?9 After all, do we not for the most part associate vases with ceramic or glass crafts rather than with sculpture? More specifically, why a stone vase and not the more famous ceramic antique vases in black or red? The answer to the last question is perhaps simplest:

Figure 1.2: Opening vignette to the Letter on Sculpture



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Figure 1.3: ‘Sculpteur travaillant à un vase’, in P. J. Mariette, Recueil des pierres gravées Du Cabinet du Roy (Paris, 1750)

Hemsterhuis was familiar with stone vases and had little acquaintance with the ancient ceramic ones found today in all archaeological museums,10 although Greek and Etruscan ceramic vases did start to become better known by the end of the 1760s owing to publications that contained colour images, like the famous one compiled by William Hamilton. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, stone vases were very common in gardens and were frequently used as ‘staffage’ in paintings.11 Moreover, a growing interest in vases culminated in the ‘vasemania’ of the eighteenth century, which coincided with Hemsterhuis’s publication of the Letter on Sculpture. From his correspondence, it is clear that Hemsterhuis was connected to a few of the famous vase manufacturers, including Wedgwood. Nevertheless, ultimately it was probably not his lack of familiarity with antique ceramic vases but something else that informed his choice of vignette:12 Hemsterhuis copied the vignette’s motif – almost exactly – from a scene that appears on an engraving of a Greek gemstone from the catalogue of the French King’s collection, published by Pierre-Jean Mariette in 1750 under the title Cabinet du Roy (Figure 1.3).13 Yet, while it is an imitation, Hemsterhuis does change both the status and the role of this scene. He transforms it from a very small (gem-)relief into a large basrelief on a pedestal, and so he not only amplifies it optically, like a microscopic magnification, but gives it a further meaning. By adding traces of decay – weeds grow on the pedestal, which slowly sinks into the earth – the pedestal now contrasts sharply with the sculptor making the final touches to his stone vase. Hemsterhuis thus shows the viewer a new-born antique sculpture just before its very secret might disappear into the earth.14 The advent of the new and its possible decay into the earth are exhibited at the same moment. Along with this vignette on the title page and the drawings of the two vases, there are a few other important designs in the book, such as the vignette that appears just

34 INTRODUCTIONS

Figure 1.4: Woman on a Cloud, in the Letter on Sculpture

above the opening of the letter and after the publisher’s foreword (Figure 1.4). This vignette (Woman on a Cloud), however, appeared only in the first printed edition of the Letter on Sculpture, prepared by Hemsterhuis himself, this vignette is lacking in all other editions, as well as in the manuscript which contains all the other vignettes.15 It is not clear why it was dropped, but since it is so prominent in the original version, its iconography is worth investigating. Like the sculptor vignette, Woman on a Cloud is situated on a floating piece of earth, allowing the viewer to see tree roots and a fragment of broken pedestal under the ground. In the sky, lying on clouds, a female figure appears half naked and with two small wings on her temples. On the right there appear two putti, one with a trumpet in its hand and a bird on its head: the bird belongs to a species similar to the one encountered in Aristaeus (EE 2.98); and the other floating with his right finger in front of his mouth, asking for silence. In his left hand, the second putto holds a piece of paper. In front of the cloud lies another small putto, who is seen from behind with a harp in hand, and next to him there is a kneeling putto looking attentively at the edge of and inside an empty fallen vase while sketching it on a sheet of paper. Between the woman lying on the clouds and this draughtsman, we see an almost finished statue of an upright nude woman; a sculptor-putto is finishing it off. Next to it there is a pedestal with a vase that contains small hanging garlands.



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Figure 1.5: Closing vignette to the Letter on Sculpture

The floating lump of earth on which the scene is situated looks to be purely functional. This is evident from the closing vignette of the Letter on Sculpture, which shows an unadorned vase on a small pedestal (Figure 1.5). Under the ground there appear a fragment of a column and a few tree roots. The earth is evidently not only meant to serve as a base for the image but functions as a symbol of the separation between the above and the below, as well as between the present and the past. While the opening vignette (Figure 1.2) is an elegy to classical sculpture, the closing vignette offers the reader a view of an unadorned ‘virgin’ vase that rises out from its classical past and from nature. Before the remains of the ancient world disappear forever, the end of the book offers us a chance to glimpse a new beginning: the bare vase. Between these two drawings, Woman on a Cloud functions in a slightly more complex manner and seems to address the subject of visual perception per se. The woman on the cloud points with her left index finger at the statue, while holding a compass in her right hand. She indicates the direction in which the observer should look: not to her half-naked body, which is turned towards us, but to the sculpted female body, which shows only its back. Why does this sculpture conceal what the pointing woman is seemingly indicating?16 Why is female nudity made visible and concealed at the same time? Depicting the scene in this way, Hemsterhuis introduces conscious interaction between viewer and image: perception is active,

36 INTRODUCTIONS

Figure 1.6: ‘The Judgement of Paris’, by an anonymous artist (photograph: National Archives, The Hague)

an event between object and subject, not a one-way passive event. Hemsterhuis’s visual lesson ‘starts’ with seduction by centralising the nude, a nude codified by Titian’s sleeping Venus; that is, after having caught our attention, Venus, by means of her arm gesture, distracts us away from her body. The motif of Venus also appears on a gem depicted in the Duke of Brunswick’s catalogue that represents the Judgement of Paris (Figure 1.6).17 Here, a partially clothed goddess is lying on a cloud. Hemsterhuis undoubtedly knew this engraving, which may well have played a role in his design, if only because of its subject matter: beauty, and how and what to choose on its basis. While the Brunswick gem represents Homer’s famous story of the three goddesses (the Judgement of Paris), Hemsterhuis’s image seems to introduce a new, more modern narrative that eschews this famous trio. Moreover, Hemsterhuis’s design also evokes Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia, in which we find the canonical personification of beauty under the lemma ‘Bellezza’ (‘Beauty’; in Dutch ‘Schoonheyt’) (Figure 1.7).18 A naked woman stands upright within a rectangular frame, while her head is placed in the clouds. The head disappears partly into these clouds, because, according to Ripa, the human mind is scarcely able to speak about or explain beauty. Consequently, her body not only represents pure beauty but also represents the viewer’s incomprehension of beauty. The female nude should be seen as one of



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Figure 1.7: ‘Bellezza’, in Cesare Ripa, Iconologia (Padua, 1603)

the most beautiful reflections of the true beauty of God, because ‘as the Platonists claim: … the first Beauty is a case of God’.19 Formally speaking, Ripa’s Beauty does not have much in common with Hemster­ huis’s version; yet Hemsterhuis, like Ripa, uses various traditional attributes and features like the clouds, the compass, the pointing arm and wings. However, these wings are placed in a very unusual position – above the ears of the woman reclining on the cloud. Ripa himself associates images of heads that possess wings with the passing of time and connects the compass with the proportion of time – and these attributes are very significant in Hemsterhuis’s philosophy, considering his central ideas of beauty, time and speed. Once again, Hemsterhuis does not slavishly follow Ripa’s canonical iconography, but starts to play a new visual game that plays with traditional and inherited attributes. He deconstructs them in the name of new inventions. In Ripa’s icon, in the Judgement of Paris and in Woman on a Cloud, clouds are used to separate domains. In the latter two, they serve to separate heaven from earth; in Ripa, they separate appearance and essence, since beauty, in its essence, is incomprehensible to man. However, in Hemsterhuis’s drawing, the clouds begin to touch the ground; and this seems to indicate that the two spheres are becoming less separate. It even suggests that beauty has become much better understood than Ripa could envision. The entire Letter on Sculpture serves as proof of this. Let us now return to the sculpture that the putto is completing in Woman on a Cloud. The sculpture refers unmistakably to the Medici Venus, the most famous

38 INTRODUCTIONS classical Venus figure. To present a rear view of her is rather unusual,20 as too is the veil over her arms.21 The Medici Venus had come to be regarded as the very symbol of beauty during the eighteenth century;22 for example, Edmund Burke viewed her as grace itself: ‘… in this ease, this roundness, this delicacy of attitude and motion, it is that all the magic of grace consists, and what is called its je ne sais quoi; as will be obvious to any observer who considers attentively the Venus de Medici.’23 Lambert Ten Kate confirmed this enthusiastically: ‘What charming nobility, what beauty, what grace, what tenderness, what slenderness in the Goddess of Love’.24 Many reactions of the time also showed awareness of her erotic and seductive power;25 for instance, in William Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty (1753), she stands in the middle of the composition, beckoning to her companion ‘pin-up’, the Apollo Belvedere.26 Hogarth portrays her in profile – and this choice negates her traditional chastity.27 The same posture returns in Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s depiction of Claude-Henri Watelet (the author of L’art de peindre, 1760): it depicts a small bronze copy of the Medici Venus, whose front is turned towards Watelet’s curious gaze.28 In his right hand he holds a compass and with his left he holds his L’art de peindre open on a page in which he describes the correct proportions of the sculpture accompanied by a schematic drawing.29 Greuze’s picture and Hogarth’s drawing show us what Hemsterhuis consciously decided against in his vignette. Hemsterhuis rejects both Greuze’s and Hogarth’s version, and, in fact (while it is unlikely that he directly knew Greuze’s painting), Watelet’s indifferent, scientific gaze is im­plicitly commented on. By turning Venus’s front away from the viewer, Hemsterhuis renders her sexuality invisible, while in Watelet’s case it is paradoxically denied in its total visibility; that is, Watelet seems to be more concerned with her precise, measurable proportions and untouched by her sexual appeal. He is, to use Michael Fried’s expression, fully absorbed in his scientific activities.30 A similar example is to be found in The Tribuna of the Uffizi, a painting by Johann Zoffany, in which Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538) is depicted alongside the Medici Venus.31 (Francesco Algarotti had called Titian’s Venus the ‘rival’ of the marble version.32) Moreover, in Zoffany’s painting, the attention of the – male – visitors to the Tribuna room is almost exclusively focused on paintings that concern either heavenly love or female sexuality. On the left we see a group of six men standing around a Madonna and Child, while two young men are looking at a Venus and Amor statue in front of them. In the foreground we see the Titian. The painting is surrounded by six men, but only one of them seems to be really looking at the painting. His face, mirroring that of Watelet, appears unaffected; he expresses no enthusiasm for the canvas. The other men are busy talking or looking at the viewer. This is also true of the six men standing around the Medici Venus: five of them are staring closely at her from the rear, one of whom even nearly touches her calf, and another of whom has taken out his lorgnette. No one, however, is looking at her from the front. Whatever else is going on in this painting, there seem to be different kinds of love or attraction at stake. From the heavenly love for the Madonna depicted in the small canvas to the left, the viewer is brought to the carnal, earthly Medici Venus. We cannot but conclude that Hemsterhuis also thematises this tension between heavenly and earthly love in his Woman on a Cloud. He omits, however, the heavenly, Christian love and – instead of focusing attention on the Uffizi Venus’s behind – he



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directs us, by a hand gesture, to the woman – the personification of a celestial Venus and the proportions of time – that is, to the contour of the image, to the outer shape and form of the earthly Venus. The rest of the drawing strips Venus of as many erotic connotations as possible. The putto in the foreground also performs this function. He is drawing the ornaments and inside of an empty vase that has fallen over. Again, attention is directed to ornament and form alone.33 On the basis of this visual clue, we can deduce that the drawing is intended to direct the viewer to shape and contour. That is, what matters is not the statue’s content (feminine beauty or sexuality) but her formal appearance. The vignette shows that form and content have to be divided from each other to be properly understood. Desire and form are separated. This idea of a proper separation between form and content is a major event in the history of art – a necessary step in the development of a modern concept of art that arose out of the realisation that the traditional connection between content and form was neither possible nor necessary anymore. Hemsterhuis’s philosophical and artistic practice makes this historical event visible. It thus becomes clear that sexuality, eroticism, form and beauty are under investigation in Hemsterhuis’s vignette in an unprecedented way. Vase shapes presuppose greater attention to form and to a disinterested – but not entirely desire-less – gaze. While desire is certainly thematised in the vignette, it is shape and contour that are defined as the essential characteristics of beauty. ‘Disinterested pleasure’, a concept that would, only a few years later, become so important in Kant’s aesthetics, is imbued with a suppressed erotic or sexual aspect34 – something that is necessary for experiencing beauty, but not the same as it. The opening vignettes to Letter on Sculpture thus tell the viewer an intriguing visual story about perception, about seduction, about sexuality, about decay, about sculpture, about classical antiquity, about beauty, about vision and about vases. And Hemsterhuis will always return to vases. The Two Vases One of the most important of Hemsterhuis’s ‘hors d’oeuvre’ compositions that has not yet been considered in this connection is his drawing of the two vases (Figure 1.8; see also EE 1.62). In the printed version of the Letter on Sculpture, it is clear that one of the vases, the Greek one, depicts a ram’s head and a heroic scene with naked Amazons waging war against Hercules. We know that the battle ended badly for the Amazons, and only one of them, Hippolyta, is still alive in the depiction. Depictions of this specific mythological moment are fairly rare in classical iconography, and so too is the complete nakedness of the Amazons, who – unlike the male warrior – were never depicted naked in antiquity.35 The ram is also watching this event. Rams were very common as ornaments on vases, mostly used to remind the viewer of Dionysus: they played an important role in celebrations in honour of the god of wine. In original tragedies (etymologically, goat-songs), the buck was himself a victim, but now he watches the Amazonian victims, suggesting his role is different from a traditional ornament. This becomes even clearer when

40 INTRODUCTIONS

Figure 1.8: The ‘Greek’ vase (left) and the ‘Dutch’ vase, in the Letter on Sculpture

we compare Hemsterhuis’s version with other vase designs that also allocate a non-ornamental role to this figure. In 1746, for example, the first French royal painter, Jacobus Saly, published his Suite de Vases, which consists of about thirty designs which are fantasy pieces or capriccios, rather than anything intended to be executed in three-dimensional form. They are busy, loosely engraved representations of dancing satyrs and bacchantes, scenes of conquest or rape, a naked woman as a handle and two rams’ heads with a pan flute. This kind of fantasy vase had earlier been made popular by Jacques Stella and Stephano della Bella, and we encounter the latter’s name several times in Hemsterhuis’s letters. The significance of these designs gradually increased during the eighteenth century and della Bella’s and Stella’s designs inspired, for instance, Josiah Wedgwood. The first French royal sculptor, Edme Bouchardon, also published two books of vase designs: one of his designs consists of a vase with its middle band left open (Figure 1.9), and this unspoiled empty space is enclosed by two old mermaids, who, with long hair, gaze away from the vase, with their mouths open. We can directly connect this design to Hemsterhuis’s final vignette in Letter on Sculpture (Figure 1.5), with its bare vase, which also emerges out of the classical past free from any representation on its ‘belly’.



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Figure 1.9: Vase with oyster-shell-shaped lower portion and mermaid handles, by Edme Bouchardon (National Galleries Scotland)

Hemsterhuis’s closing vignette is an exemplar of pure form, finally freed from any erotic content. Stripped of the Dionysian ram’s gaze, this naked vase represents – as the conclusion to his study on beauty and sculpture – the very basis of pure beauty. Beauty and Vases But why does Hemsterhuis take so much interest in (the form of) vases, entangled as they are in so many different narratives (as we have seen)? In a letter to Gallitzin, he proffers a new insight that was, in fact, already implied in his experiment in the Letter on Sculpture. He stipulates here the essential formalism of his aesthetic and visual ideas: Just as the first Geometer considered a square or a triangle as the simplest object which makes one perceive naked truths, in order to lead by it men to the knowledge of hidden and more complicated truths and even to that of the true; so we must consider the vases as the simplest object which makes one feel naked beauty, in order to lead by it men to the knowledge of hidden and more complicated beauties and even to that of the beautiful. (B 4.68)

42 INTRODUCTIONS Vases are (and not only represent) the simplest object that, by analogy with original discoveries in geometry, can make one feel the whole of unadorned beauty. They are the primary form that leads to knowledge of hidden and much more complex beauties, and even to that of beauty itself. The final, bare vignette in the Letter on Sculpture fulfils this very role. This letter again makes clear, therefore, that Hemsterhuis both connects and separates the idea of pure beauty from geometrical truth. As I suggested in my Introduction to volume 1 (EE 1.14), the experiment with the two vase drawings was explicit in refusing to assign geometry as the basis of beauty, although Hemsterhuis did play with this idea when admitting, ‘Does it not follow, Sir, in a rather geometrical manner, that the soul judges as the most beautiful what it can form an idea of in the smallest space of time?’ (EE 1.6; my emphasis). A helpful insight is provided by what Hemsterhuis’s beloved philosopher, the historical Socrates, thought of beauty and geometry. In Plato’s Philebus, we read: By ‘beauty of shape’ I don’t in this instance mean what most people would understand by it – I am not thinking of animals or certain pictures, but so the thesis goes – a straight line or a circle and resultant planes and solids produced on a lathe or with ruler and square. Do you see the sort of thing I mean? On my view these things are not, as other things are, beautiful in a relative way, but are always beautiful in themselves, and yield their own special pleasures quite unlike those of scratching. I include colours, too, that have the same characteristic.36

Geometrical forms are beautiful in themselves, absolutely and not relatively. Here we see a big difference, for Hemsterhuis moves, inspired by the Newtonian approach to experience, exactly in the opposite direction, towards the vases. Still, beauty and truth were once united: I believe … that we shall find that beauty and truth are much more closely related than has ever been thought, and what would be said if we were to prove one day, not by poetic and figurative nonsense, but strictly in the manner of Euclid, that these two charming creatures are but one and the same lovely girl under two different names? I would bet my life that before the moon she had but one name and perhaps that of essence. (B 4.68)

Before the earth was thrown out of equilibrium by the arrival of the moon, bringing about a kind of cosmological Fall, truth and beauty did not exist separately but were the – feminine – essence, the essence of things themselves. Truth and beauty are therefore derivatives or different names for an original female unity. Hence, Hemsterhuis does not judge them hierarchically but juxtaposes them as different ways in which essence becomes visible to man. What is more, in the so-called Joachim Maas collection (now in the Royal Library in the Hague) we come across a drawing by Hemsterhuis of a yellow female moon (the goddess Artemis – Figure 1.10). By juxtaposing geometrical forms with those of his vase forms, Hemsterhuis indicates that they are not the same but nevertheless have an analogous meaning across different domains. For him, vases represent the most basic forms of beauty. So, these basic forms are not ‘neutral’ geometrical forms but works of art. Basic beauty cannot be reduced any further than to these vase forms and, conversely, the



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Figure 1.10: Female moon (Artemis), drawn by Hemsterhuis (photograph: Royal Library, The Hague)

vases cannot be reduced any further to certain geometrical figures. Since only works of art evoke feelings of beauty, aesthetic experimentation is possible only with them. To prove this, Hemsterhuis was compelled to reduce them to abstractions, by seeing them as pure forms. This results in an abstraction that detaches itself (temporarily) from the content, the represented – or rather, something that completely abandons the illusion of representation. In so doing, Hemsterhuis separated two areas, which up until then had been inseparable in art history: the line as an autonomous agent and the line as an illusion or representation of something. Modern art is, once again, here getting underway.37 Drawing Ideal Beauty and Framing Man Yet, we can also see that Hemsterhuis does not abandon the meaning of the line, and pure ‘contour’ (as Hemsterhuis himself calls it) takes on other roles. This occurs, for instance, in his design of a medal for the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC) he was commissioned to produce in 1784 to commemorate a specific military action (Figure 1.11).38 The resulting gold medal (see B 5.47 and B 5.94),39 thanks to the finely chiselled stamp of Stadholder William V’s court engraver J. H. Schepp, shines in its (neo-)classical appearance.40

44 INTRODUCTIONS

Figure 1.11: Medal of Honour, designed for the VOC by Hemsterhuis (photograph: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

In an extremely grateful letter, the VOC board thanked Hemsterhuis enthusiastically for the design, which had given their illustrious company ‘a noble figure’ which it had never possessed before. To Hemsterhuis’s satisfaction, the medal was placed in a carefully and beautifully executed case, decorated with small diamonds and emeralds. He had to admit ‘that no College in this country is more like the great Seigneur than these gentlemen’. As thanks for his work, he received a supply of Cape wine, which he immediately sent to Gallitzin in Münster (B 6.24). What is this ‘noble figure’? On the image side of the medal, we see a very finely drawn head of a woman in profile, personifying the VOC, for which he made several sketches.41 On her forehead there appears the top of an elephant’s head with two tusks. Its trunk sticks up like an inverted S, while its head disappears into the woman’s hair, which is decorated with a small crown; her hair is held in place by strings of pearls. The same type of necklace adorns her neck. Below the head are the coat of arms of the VOC and the engraver’s name. Around the entire scene the name of the VOC is written in Latin in clear capitals and acts as a regular frame. The reverse bears a Latin text surrounded by a laurel wreath, which recalls the occasion of the medal.42 The open, serene and, at the same time, noble and abstractly classical face of the woman contrasts sharply with her more baroque and allegorical hairstyle. The jewellery and the crown signify the power, the wealth and the prestige of the VOC, while the elephant symbolises the region of its power, the East.43 The special feature of the design lies in its style: a strong contrast between the ornamental and expressive hairstyle and the abstract, stylised face.44 As a type, the woman’s head recalls Michelangelo’s Testa Divina.45 The medal is thus stamped by a simplicity and rigour



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of contour that is directly linked to an important passage in the Letter on Sculpture that immediately follows the final version of Hemsterhuis’s formulation of beauty: We have seen that the beautiful in all arts must give us the greatest possible number of ideas in the smallest possible space of time. It follows that the artist is able to achieve the beautiful by two different paths. By means of the finesse and fluency of the contour he can, in a split second, give me, for example, the idea of beauty, but [this is beauty] at rest, as in the Venus de Medici or in your Galatea. However, if he expressed with an equally fine and fluent contour an Andromeda with her hopes and fears visible in all her limbs, he would give me in the same second not only the idea of beauty, but also the idea of Andromeda’s being in danger – and this puts in motion not only my admiration, but also my com­ passion. I well believe that every passion expressed in some figure must decrease a little this fine quality of the contour, which makes our eyes’ passage so easy; but at least by adding some action and passion into a figure, there will be more means to concentrate a greater number of ideas into the same time. (EE 1.65)

The calm beauty that returns in the medal can therefore be achieved by fineness and smoothness of the contour. But this same medium can also be used to express a passion or an action, which, in addition to admiration, also arouses pity. With the VOC medal, however, Hemsterhuis concentrated on the simplicity and gracefulness of the face’s contour, Simple Beauty (as I will call this design), which is formally reinforced by the contrasting hairstyle and the surrounding text. In a letter to Gallitzin, he writes: I imagined representing this illustrious Company by a single head, to have an object large enough to make the simple beauty even more noticeable. I have certainly drawn more heads, of which the one I am sending to you here is without comparison the least bad. Perhaps you will be satisfied with the determinate and firm simplicity of the outline which is sufficiently Greek. (B 5.52)

In the same letter, he also describes the reaction of one of William V’s court artists, the history-painter Dirk van der Aa: I dare to praise this head since such things are only the effects of chance, not only with dabblers like myself but with the greatest Artists and because our sensitive van der Aa made such a fuss about it when he saw it yesterday at my place. Here are the words he said to me after having examined it for more than a quarter of an hour in silence. If I had made this head, I would not give it to anyone but the Pr[incess] Gallitzin, since I believe that she alone will be able to feel all that this head says; and believe me that it is not your work but that of chance. I have been thinking about this last truth, which seems to me to be susceptible of very profound research which will lead to something. (B 5.52)

That his design might be the result of chance is meant ironically, because in the Letter on Sculpture he had already understood chance in the context of the difference between nature and art.

46 INTRODUCTIONS After having established that works of art must be free from ambiguous contours, in terms of both their content and their form, Hemsterhuis states that nature could easily be surpassed as far as beauty is concerned: It seems to me that, from all I have just said, it is easy to understand it to be very possible, as far as beauty is concerned, to surpass nature; for it would be a very strange coincidence that would assemble a number of parts such that this optimum results, which I desire, and which is analogous – not to the essence of things – but to the effect of the relation that holds between things and the construction of my organs. Change things, [and] the nature of our ideas of the beautiful will remain the same; but if you change the essence of our organs, or the nature of their construction, all of our current ideas of beauty will immediately fall back into nothing. (EE 1.66)

Nature can therefore easily be surpassed because the aesthetic optimum that the soul longs for occurs in nature only by chance.46 Considering himself far from being a professional draughtsman, Hemsterhuis positions himself in this letter to Gallitzin on the side of nature; that is, he can only produce beauty by accident. One aspect of the shape of the head in the medal that does not immediately catch the eye but that is nevertheless significant is that the woman’s profile is drawn according to the ideal angle of the human face, which Hemsterhuis’s friend Petrus Camper had discovered and described, and which went on to have a considerable impact on nineteenth-century anthropology.47 By means of comparative anatomy, Camper had worked out that the faces of both the individual races of man and the apes exhibit a very specific angle, and determined this facial angle by drawing an imaginary line between the chin and the forehead in relation to an equally imaginary horizon. All human races show an angle of vision between 100° and 70°, which Camper called the maximum and minimum, respectively. Below 70° there is the monkey and above 100° the hydrocephalus. According to Camper, 100° corresponds to the ideal (antique) proportions: Now, what is a beautiful face? We answer: one where the essential line M G makes an angle of 100 degrees with the horizon. The ancient Greeks chose this angle of equality; whether they obtained this perfect proportion of the parts from the same basic principle as I do, I dare not determine.48 [See Figure 1.12]

The ideal form was indeed imaginary, for, Camper went on to say, this form did not occur in empirical reality because most heads showed an angle of between 70° and 80°. The interesting thing is that Camper, who repeatedly indicated that he wanted to work purely empirically, nevertheless included a cast of a classical head in his graphical scheme and did so at Hemsterhuis’s insistence.49 The ideal can thus only be realised in art and, therefore, does not form part of nature. Considered from this perspective, Simple Beauty is a realisation of ideal beauty that lies outside of what is empirically possible. It exists solely in the work of art.



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Figure 1.12: Facial angles drawn by Petrus Camper, with details below (photograph: Tresoar, Leeuwarden)

48 INTRODUCTIONS Vases and Contours The many examples provided of vases show that key to Hemsterhuis’s ideas is contour or outline. It is essential to our visual encounter with the world, and vase contours are basic to the articulation of (simple) beauty. It is, therefore, no surprise that Hemsterhuis also used the vase form for his extraordinary design of a funerary monument for one of his teachers, the well-known Dutch botanist, chemist and physician Herman Boerhaave – the ‘Dutch Hippocrates’ – in the Pieterskerk in Leiden (see above, Figure 1.1). The monument is a simple vase with heads of anonymous people bursting out of the surface of the vase belly, representing the past, the present and the future (although not Boerhaave himself).50 The heads refer to different stages of human life and include those of youngsters, women and men. According to Frits Scholten, the ‘funerary vase that Hemsterhuis designed for Boerhaave was not an existing classical or contemporary vase form but an original and meticulously proportioned model’. The ‘innovative, radical nature of the Boerhaave memorial’ sets him apart from mainstream neoclassicism.51 Hemsterhuis’s design of the memorial is indeed unparalleled: he places life in all its diversity onto the very contour of the vase. By way of contour, man discovers the world. In its austerity Hemsterhuis seems to follow Boerhaave’s famous motto: Simplex sigillum veri (Simplicity is the mark of the true).52 Although vases or urns are traditionally associated with the soul of the deceased, in this case it acts more like a threshold between life and death. Man can only touch the eternal world of ideas – the immaterial beyond – through experiencing beauty by way of the immediate internalisation of the material world. Vase-forms happen to be the simplest objects to provide this possibility in the visual sphere. Next to the vase, the notion of speed applies to all art forms and can also be reached by drawing simple contours of faces, as we saw with the Simple Beauty of the VOC medal. In all these sketches Hemsterhuis tried to reach the simplest lines to represent a face without them becoming abstract. He was not unique in this, for the contemporaneous British artist Alexander Cozens was also seeking the simple line and was more successful, as evidenced by Cozens’s own Simple Beauty, which Hemsterhuis probably knew.53 Nevertheless, Hemsterhuis’s ideas on simplicity expressed in the Letter on Sculpture functioned as an example of the international ‘linear purism’ (Robert Rosenblum’s term)54 dominant in his time. A. W. Schlegel used Hemsterhusian ideas to explain why many people found Flaxman’s ‘­Umrisszeichnungen’ (contour drawings) so difficult to understand: they were too abstract to be able to be seen properly.55 Hemsterhuis also made portrait drawings, such as the ones of Gallitzin, Franz von Fürstenberg and Jacobi: here, observation and idealistic purism go hand in hand – the inner idea and the observed world coincide in linear, purist drawings. Connected to these kinds of ‘translation difficulties’ (i.e., expressing immaterial ideas in real lines while generating as little dissonance as possible between the mental image and the physical image) are the experiments that Hemsterhuis proposes in the Letter on Sculpture when he suggests letting young artists make the first sketches of their ideas blindfolded, to prevent the imagination and the eyes from interfering with expression (EE 1.64). Idea and expression should be directly linked, so that



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Figure 1.13: ‘Writing with a slat’, drawn by Hemsterhuis in a letter to Gallitzin

the original idea will not be disturbed. Along with drawing blindfolded, Hemsterhuis also experimented with writing blindfolded. In one of his letters to Gallitzin he explains in detail how to perform this task, including a few sketches for instruction. The main goal was to transpose inner thoughts and ideas in as pure a state as possible onto paper and to correct them only afterwards. To avoid losing his place on the sheet of paper, he made sure there was a slat at the end of it that allowed him to move onto the next line (B 5.7, 5.10; Figure 1.13). Although his goal was different, the procedure closely resembles the method of automatic writing that the surrealists used to tap into the Freudian subconscious. Hemsterhuis, in turn, tapped into the immaterial world of ideas (Plato being the dominant reference point) and tried to express them as precisely as possible. The Energy of Transport and the Imagination To express (artistic) ideas they must be transferred, as ‘energy’, through the body and into the outside world. That this movement does not always take the right route comes to the fore in the case of Denis Diderot, who acts for Hemsterhuis as a crucial bodily confirmation of his aesthetic theory. This becomes clear when he pens to Gallitzin an analysis of Diderot’s ‘unstable’ imagination. The latter visited him a few times in The Hague and, during his trip to St Petersburg, when he commented extensively on Hemsterhuis’s Letter on Man. Hemsterhuis reports to Gallitzin that Diderot had once read him a piece he had just finished and asked for his opinion on its style: I told the truth by praising it in many parts, but I added that he could not be ignorant of the fact that his style was often judged a little obscure. (p. 180 below)

50 INTRODUCTIONS Diderot knew of this criticism but could not agree. In the subsequent conversation, Hemsterhuis tries to find an explanation for Diderot’s obscurity, and ends up informing Diderot that his obscurity was not the result of a desire to use as few words as possible in the shortest possible time (as was the case with the works of Thucydides, Tacitus or Lucian), but had a more idiosyncratic cause: Diderot was too good a mimic by nature. In the following passage, Hemsterhuis describes how an artistic idea is realised and explains what went wrong in Diderot’s case. Diderot’s vigorous will, he explains, when he had a beautiful and great idea which he wanted to express forcefully, … [lacks] that rare capacity of directing the great part of his energy towards the voice organ from which words arise, but that often many very essential parts of the idea were dispersed or diffused elsewhere, and acted on other organs from where arose other signs.

He explains this as follows: [I said] that the writing-hand can only render words that have been dictated by the organ of the voice, which has itself been filled with only part of the idea, and that this [meant that] other parts of this idea, which had acted on other organs, and produced other signs, like the acceleration of the pulse, movements determined by certain muscles, the augmentation of brightness in the eyes, etc. – all those signs which the mime makes as expressive as words – all of these [parts] were lost from his writing. (p. 180 below)

Consequently, since parts of the main idea are being rendered in ‘body language’ – the very language of the mimic – there is a loss of energy in what is actually written down. This loss is the cause of the fact that, in Diderot’s works, there develop real gaps, which … no mortal reader could fill, whereas it is still possible, with some success, to dig up the obscurities of Tacitus or Thucydides and more or less excavate their ideas from them. (p. 180 below)

The obscurity of those other writers is the result of concentrating as many ideas as possible in the fewest possible words – that is, the literary application of Hemsterhuis’s definition of beauty: in language, ‘the shortest possible time’ can be achieved only by reducing the number of words. In the concentration and reduction of the number of words that are employed, the whole of the original idea is thus represented, although, perhaps, not every reader can fully reconstruct that idea for lack of experience (reading must be learned, after all, is the argument). In Diderot’s case, however, complete parts of his original idea are really lost and never ‘arrive’ at the act of writing, so that a full reconstruction is essentially impossible; readers are simply left with a series of questions and are likely to give up, as his style is obscure. Hemsterhuis goes on to describe Diderot’s reaction, while introducing another aspect of his analysis:



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My dear Diotima, this passage is perhaps quite honestly itself obscure, but, in the end, I was quite as much astonished as charmed to hear our Diderot, with a truly respectable tranquillity and modesty, say: I have never thought of this but I believe that you are telling the truth. (p. 180 below)

Hemsterhuis expresses not only his astonishment at Diderot’s calmness and modesty – unusual for someone who gesticulates a lot when talking56 – but also his happiness at having the correctness of his argument approved in such a visible and bodily way. Diderot’s corporeal calmness and his voiced endorsement of Hemsterhuis’s analysis confirm his statement that there ought to be an analogous relation between the ideality of an artistic idea and its realisation. Diderot’s calmness in accepting the validity of Hemsterhuis’s judgement therefore appears to be a further proof of its validity. The true and distinct representation of a ‘beautiful and great’ artistic idea can only be expressed calmly, and written language can only express truth if all the elements, all the energy, of an artistic idea are correctly transposed.57 ‘On the Best Shape to Give to the Feet of Vases’ Having charted Hemsterhuis’s fascination with vases, at least to some extent, it has become clear that vase-forms determine our aesthetic connection to the world, and it is now worth turning to the fragment which Hemsterhuis devotes to vases – his ‘small work’ on vase feet, which was only recently published but which Hemsterhuis had announced in a letter from 1783.58 Along with the proportion of vases in general, the correct proportions for vase feet bothered him for a very long time.59 He shared his concerns with others, as evidenced, for instance, by a report of the Swedish orientalist and Greek philologist J. J. Björnstähl. During the latter’s visit in 1774, Hemsterhuis showed him many interesting vases and expressed himself critically on the shape of their feet, as Björnstähl reports: They were made in England in a factory where antiques are actually made, and which is under the protection of milord Besbury [Bessborough] and the Duke of Grafton. Judging by their outward appearance one would take them for Etruscan vases, but they are heavier. Mr. Hemsterhuis observed that he had never seen vases with really attractive feet, not even among the antiques, but that the Etruscan were the best in this respect.60

It is therefore necessary to develop a theory of vases, as Hemsterhuis noted ironically in a letter to Gallitzin: It seems to me that you do not yet believe that in the theory of vases lies the sacred germ of all psychology, all philosophy, all virtue, and all salvation. I admit that this language, however simple it may be, could appear to vulgar souls to have some appearance of enthusiasm. But you my Diotima, you will feel what it is, and you will at least see with pleasure that the one who speaks it has the right to aspire one day to pretty pots for his Diotima. (B 4.67)

52 INTRODUCTIONS A few months later Hemsterhuis announces that to complete such a theory of vases it is important ‘to know the size e.g., of a foot in proportion to its vase, or else, to know if this proportion is determined by the nature of things’. For the solution to this ‘singular problem’ we have to rely more on, he continues, ‘some lucky stroke of our tact than to analysis or synthesis. After the discovery, it will be up to these two to enlighten us further’ (B 4.81). And this is what he tries to do in his ‘On the Best Shape to Give to the Feet of Vases’. In this text, he first points out that modern vases derive from Roman clay urns that were put, with their lids, in semi-circular vaults (‘in such a manner that the body of the urn was concealed, up to its opening, within the thickness of the wall’ [p. 173 below]). Later, urns were moved to niches and made of more precious materials; at this point they received feet to round them off, distinguishing them from conventional pots and jugs. He then arrives at the question of the best form for them. As we saw above, he was not at all satisfied with either modern or classical solutions. He then suggests that the foot be round in plan, and analogous to the vase body (deviation from the body’s form is prohibited). Depending on our visual standpoint (above, perpendicular, below), the vase and foot have spheric figures (stretching from elongated to flattened). The height of the foot must accordingly ‘be in inverse ratio to that of the body’, which means ‘that the foot of an elongated vase will be proportionately lower than that of a flattened vase’. He deduces this from the nature of the vase itself and from classical examples. But he is not yet satisfied: … a geometric mind is not content with mere approximations; accustomed to mathematical procedures, it applies [these procedures] in all its investigations, and they provide it with the means to discover the relations between the different parts of a whole which is [then] used to generalise its operations. (p. 173 below)

Hemsterhuis therefore goes on to describe his method of giving each vase its deserved foot (‘a foot procreated, so to speak, by the vase itself ’), which leads to a perfect analogy between the two parts. He concludes by presenting a drawing of a large vase that has two smaller replicated ones which perfectly nestle into the foot of the vase (Figure 1.14). In a related letter (B 4.83), Hemsterhuis refers to two other drawings (though three are intended). The first of them (Figure 1.15) refers to the body of a vase: If you please recall one of my previous [vase drawings], you will easily see that these vases are of the species of the perfect, that is to say, of that species where the soul, having reached the edge of the vase, completes its task by finding, at the maximum, the coordinates ab (in fig. A and B) or, at the minimum, the coordinates ab (in fig. C). If the soul wishes to continue on its way, it loses the idea of vase to some extent, and by pushing onwards to some new perfection, this idea is totally destroyed – and these are axioms about which we psychologists are in perfect agreement. But what is to be noted here is that the body of this vase is of a singular class which admits of three different feet that are perfect. (p. 175 below)

After this description of the body, he continues with the vase foot (Figure 1.16):



VASES IN HEMSTERHUIS’S SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS

Figure 1.14: La Modeste, vase design with two smaller ‘Modestes’ at the foot, drawn by Hemsterhuis

Figure 1.15: Examples of vase outlines, drawn by Hemsterhuis

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54 INTRODUCTIONS

Figure 1.16: Examples of vase feet, drawn by Hemsterhuis

We know for certain that the foot of a vase must be completed by the same [curve] or by the same curves which complete the body of the vase. However, the body of the vase in question is composed of two different curves. In A, when forming the foot, I leave the two curves in the natural order they occupy in the body of the vase; thus, I only properly imitate the body by turning it [upside down]. In B, when forming the foot, I begin with the curve of the column and follow it with [the curve] which goes from the column towards the edges, solely changing the plus and minus signs, since here the curve of the column becomes minus and the other plus, whereas in the body of the vase the former is plus and the latter minus. In C, when forming the foot, I begin with the curve [moving] towards the edge and follow it with [the curve] of the column, retaining for both the same signs they possessed in the body of the vase. Here, my Diotima, are three feet that are perfect for a vase with the same body. (I haven’t drawn out the third [one], since I just didn’t have time, but it will come for sure.) (pp. 175–6 below)

All these odd, idiosyncratic letters and references to vases and vase feet show that Hemsterhuis was sincerely preoccupied with trying to prevent any reduction of beauty to geometrical forms – otherwise he would have just resorted to pure geometrical forms or projected geometrical grids onto these forms. He did not. His aim was to effectuate the simplest organised (human-made) matter in connection to the immaterial world. His hand- and eye-made material vases are based on the classical tradition, but they still function as criticisms of that tradition as not yet perfect. We cannot but conclude that his theory of vases was meant to supplement a failing among the ancients. A good vase foot would also give space for a human (artistic form of) desire, grounded in our longing for unification. Hemsterhuis therefore mused that his research on vase forms should be incorporated back into the Letter on Sculpture, because that would result ‘in a rather interesting work for it is the only



VASES IN HEMSTERHUIS’S SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS

Figure 1.17: La Modeste, vase design by ­Hemsterhuis (photograph: Royal Library, The Hague)

Figure 1.18: La Mystérieuse, vase design by Hemsterhuis (photograph: Royal Library, The Hague)

Figure 1.19: La Séraphique, vase design by Hemsterhuis (photograph: Royal Library, The Hague)

Figure 1.20: La Naïve, vase design by Hemsterhuis (photograph: Royal Library, The Hague)

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56 INTRODUCTIONS subject on which I have acquired some right to speak boldly by dint of having thought about it’. But, as he continues, the work needed to achieve this would be much greater than the value of such a ‘book, which would also require a large quantity of figures and passages from historians, poets, orators and philosophers, in order to put the principle in such a luminous light that it would be above all dispute’ (B 7.31). Examples of anticipated new vase-forms are called La Modeste, La Mystérieuse, La Séraphique and La Naïve (Figures 1.17–1.20). Hemsterhuis’s ‘second’ aesthetic book was never written. But in this Introduction, I have tried to place Hemsterhuis’s aesthetic activities in a broader context by indicating the many raw materials that he used to co-found art and artistic research by connecting philosophical theory and artistic practice with vases. Yes, vases. Quite an extraordinary aesthetic endeavour, born of a rich imagination.

Hemsterhuis as a European and Trans-Atlantic Political Theorist Jonathan Israel

One of the most interesting and important of eighteenth-century political theorists, François Hemsterhuis, devised an original – in some respects rather impressive – perspective on political theory that became widely relevant to the revolutionary world of his time. It stemmed, as one might expect, from a combination of his general philosophy, on the one hand, the most original produced in the Netherlands during the later Enlightenment era, and his own political and life experiences, on the other. Like the rest of his writing, his political-theoretical oeuvre was written in a clear, concise and emphatic style, and characterised by a complete lack of interest in seeking to reinforce his points of view by citing previous authorities, trying to impress through displays of erudition, or indeed discussing the political theories of others at all.1 Rarely one to promote his own fame and standing as a philosophe, Hemsterhuis made no effort whatsoever to diffuse his political ideas outside extremely restricted circles. Unsurprisingly, his political thought had much less impact than his aesthetics and moral theories in his own time because they remained unpublished until deep into the following century and exerted nothing like the influence that his style of Neoplatonism had on German critical thinking and philosophy, above all Lessing, Schlegel, Novalis and Hölderlin in the 1780s and 1790s.2 Neither did this aspect of his thought seize Diderot’s attention in the way that his dogged opposition to irreligion, materialism and atheism did. But, despite being entirely missing, or omitted, from all Anglo-American histories of political thought until today, his political thought remains, nevertheless, significant in the history of modern transAtlantic republicanism and basic freedoms, one of Hemsterhuis’s main concerns, due to his unusual perspective on the general context of the trans-Atlantic world of the 1770s and 1780s and his original approach to the problems of the Dutch Republic and its post-1780 instability following the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–4) and through the Patriottenbeweging, the Patriot movement that shook the United Provinces and brought its two-centuries old (since the Union of Utrecht of 1579), but now increasingly unsteady, structure close to its end in the years 1781–7. Besides Hemsterhuis’s Neoplatonist idea that everything we witness in observable nature shadows or symbolises some intelligible idea, and that truth and beauty are directly linked, the German philosophical world for a time felt drawn to another feature of Hemsterhuis’s thought, which had general philosophical but also political theoretical implications. What is best in human society and culture, held Hemsterhuis, the arts and sciences, represents a striving for union with the ultimate good, God, while our moral sense, or moral organ, guiding mankind in this cumulative

58 INTRODUCTIONS quest stands as the chief factor, the principal cement, holding together and directing forward society, morality and religion everywhere.3 Although both Hemsterhuis and his foremost contemporary Enlightenment critic, Diderot, rejected Christian revelation and theology, and he was openly contemptuous of most theologians and preachers of his time,4 along with this rejection of Christian theology and all revealed religion, Hemsterhuis combined his fervent commitment to a passionately anti-atheist philosophical deism which he called ‘religion’. It was an essential component of existing European societies and constitutions to designate atheists and freethinkers a malevolent factor and uphold the substance of existing moral codes, whereas Diderot was much more emphatic in declaring Christian morality ‘certainly the most anti-social morality that I know’.5 Another major point of interest on the German philosophical scene was the disagreement between Lessing and Jacobi as to Hemsterhuis’s true relationship to Spinoza. When Jacobi visited Lessing in Wolfenbüttel in July 1780, he introduced him to the philosophy of Hemsterhuis, whom Jacobi did not yet know personally (and would not do so until 1781) but greatly respected, and who, until then, was, in part, unfamiliar to Lessing. He presented Lessing with three of Hemsterhuis’s texts, the Letter on Man (1772), Sophylus (1778) and Aristaeus (1779). However, when they next met, after Lessing had perused these texts, Jacobi was much taken aback by his reaction. Hemsterhuis’s 1779 dialogue Aristaeus appealed to Lessing, but he interpreted it as ‘pure Spinozism’ – ‘es wäre der offenbare Spinozismus’ – under a ‘beautiful esoteric wrap’.6 Jacobi rejected this view and assured Lessing that Diderot too judged that Hemsterhuis was no ‘Spinozist’.7 Subsequently, Jacobi continued insisting, against Lessing, that Hemsterhuis was a valuable tool in the fight against atheism, materialism and Spinoza. Lessing was certainly justified in thinking that Hemsterhuis (who never mentions Spinoza in his published texts) does nevertheless demolish all theology, reduce Scripture to insignificance, and merges God and the world into a single unity in a powerfully synthetic manner, but Jacobi was right that Hemsterhuis preserves the idea of a refined teleology, envisaging a beneficent divine force with a conscious plan for the universe, and that, for him, ‘religion’ – that is, venerating this divinity – is crucial for the cultivation of morality and the proper development of society.8 In the discussions of the ‘Münster Circle’, the intimate group around Hemsterhuis’s ‘Platonic’ friend Amalie von Gallitzin, his ‘Diotima’, Hemsterhuis expressly rejects Spinoza’s system. Gallitzin, who was separated from her husband and had abandoned the social whirl of high society in The Hague, where he had been Russian ambassador, devoted herself entirely – notes Diderot (another of her admirers) – to higher thoughts, chiefly spending her time studying. She was Hemsterhuis’s principal discussion partner over many years, when this forceful, philosophising noble lady principally devoted her energies to their joint ideal of individual and group self-improvement by striving for the good joined to the beautiful without reference to any theology or faith. Accordingly, it came as something of a blow to Hemsterhuis – almost a rejection of his philosophy – when, following a serious illness, she converted to Catholicism, in 1786. She now devoted herself to strict piety and helped lay the path for the fashionable German Romantic Catholic revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.9



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To complicate matters, Hemsterhuis tended to qualify somewhat his repudiation of Spinoza and Spinozism in his later years and Jacobi worried to an extent (as Lessing continued to believe down to his death in 1781) that, beneath his veil of respectability and vocal anti-atheism, Hemsterhuis was in fact a ‘Spinozist’ (see p. 114 below). Certainly, Hemsterhuis was steeped in Spinoza as well as Plato and did share some important affinities with his thought, as he himself increasingly realised in his last years. But in general, and especially in his moral and political thought, he was no ‘Spinozist’.10 If his deep conviction that the whole of man’s efforts through history, the entire story of human progress, as he saw it, manifests an unending striving for union with the divine intellect can be construed in a Spinozist sense, the chief un-Spinozist feature of his philosophy was his Newtonian, even if slightly unorthodox, stress on the ‘argument from design’, which, to his mind, indicates divine intention behind the organisation of nature, a point connected to and especially relevant to, his political ideas. Hemsterhuis felt a deep conviction that no major expenditure of human effort, not even the Crusades, which had gained a particularly negative reputation among Enlightenment writers and which he cites as an example of his historical thinking, can have been entirely, or even principally, negative in its actual effects, or meaningless as a step towards human well-being. The Crusades, he argues, not only helped spread knowledge of peoples, languages, religions and artistic styles by spurring Europeans to travel across Europe and the Near East, but also helped promote liberty, la liberté, by causing numerous nobles and knights to sell large numbers of their serfs into freedom as a way of raising the money to finance the military expeditions on which their hearts were set (p. 229 below). So convinced was Hemsterhuis of the meaningfulness of all upheavals, struggles and stages of development that he believed the eighteenth-century constitutions of France, Germany, England, Italy and the Netherlands were the products of long and complex evolutions in which each stage contributed something new and added to the organic complexity of the whole (p. 229 below). Consequently, Hemsterhuis was fundamentally opposed to all humanly planned, generalised revolutionary visions for society’s future, the idea that any society or constitution needed to start afresh or could usefully discard its existing institutions and structures of authority in order to adopt some all-embracing new schema supposedly based on what Enlightenment contemporaries called ‘reason’. Hemsterhuis was not, though, necessarily opposed to a particular revolution occurring if he thought it grew out of specific circumstances in a country that had lurched too far in the direction of tyranny and repression. For Hemsterhuis, republics are potentially superior to monarchies but also, where not correctly managed and organised, seriously problematic and dangerous. In assigning the republican ideal a high status in principle – at any rate, where properly grounded – he was reflecting a general tendency of the age, but in a somewhat paradoxical fashion. It meant that he was by no means entirely opposed to revolution, in principle, if a particular country had moved too far in the direction of autocracy, abandoning the ancient feel for liberty that all primitive peoples, in Hemsterhuis’s view, share. France, to his mind, was an example of a country where monarchy and centralisation, the power of the state, had advanced too far and, for this reason, his

60 INTRODUCTIONS correspondence reveals, he was by no means unsympathetic to the early stirrings of the French Revolution.11 Detesting what he regarded as a vast ‘machine’ that had been continually expanding since the time of Louis XIV, and putting more and more officials and bureaucracy to work subjugating human freedom for over a century, he was briefly elated during the early summer of 1789 by the chaining in shackles of the French monarchy (p. 255 below). But after a few weeks, by mid- and late August 1789, he had already decided that the French had taken a disastrously wrong turn across the board and, as far as the new revolutionary ideas were concerned, was positively shocked by the intervention of the Abbé Sieyès (pp. 256–7 below). Hemsterhuis’s political thought obliges everyone to accept that tolerating and retaining considerable, even sometimes ridiculously illogical and antiquated, defects is worthwhile if a particular constitution broadly works in a durable fashion in terms of human liberty and restraining tyranny. At the same time, the most necessary and fundamental political shifts, like the Dutch Revolt against Spain that began in 1572 and that made the States-General sovereign in the Republic of the seven United Provinces, unexpectedly arise from particular combinations of circumstances – in this case, a change of religion combined with a surging excess of despicable tyranny on the part of the Spanish king, Philip II, ‘the yoke of the most unbearable tyranny’, without there being any grand concept or scheme justifying or laying plans for it (p. 250 below).12 If the seven Provinces eventually became sovereign, helped by the remoteness of the overmighty monarch seeking to oppress them, they could have reasonably expected, at the outset, only some concessions by the king on a few particular points: ‘it is difficult to believe that anyone foresaw then how far things could go’ – at least, beyond the ambitions of the Prince of Orange and two or three other leaders (p. 230 below). This fact, holds Hemsterhuis, should remind us all of the undesirability, indeed impossibility, of men suddenly adopting wholly different forms and institutions from those to which they are accustomed (p. 230 below). William the Silent and his two sons who successively held the stadholdership, Maurice of Nassau (1585–1625) and Frederick Henry (1625–47), possessed astounding political gifts, but they changed nothing in the basic organisation and forms of the Dutch state, which, however, achieved a new solidity and strength from the unforeseen pressures of a long, gruelling war (p. 250 below). Unfortunately, however, but perhaps inevitably, as soon as the United Provinces experienced peace and prosperity, argues Hemsterhuis, pointing to the Twelve Years’ Truce period (1609–21) when deep divisions appeared in the Dutch body politic and the opposition to Prince Maurice’s supporters was led by Jan van Olden­barnevelt, the people began to take their new-found ease, wealth and ‘a perfect liberty’ – the chief glory of the Republic – for granted (p. 250 below). Men began to regard ‘with repugnance and with envy’ the authority which the very exigencies of war had attached to certain persons as well as to particular bodies, councils and committees, without realising that the prevailing forms, laws and institutions were an emanation, as Hemsterhuis called it, of the actual circumstances that had previously applied, being all geared to a state of war without any relation to sustaining a republic during a time of peace (p. 250 below). That was the special character and beauty of the Republic. The proof of this was the



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almost unparalleled example of a people, the Dutch, formidable while at war and yet worthy only of contempt during times of peace, when their unity promptly fell apart (p. 250 below). The precious lesson to be learnt from this was that freeing the Dutch ‘from slavery’, and the ‘admirable’ capacity of the Dutch Republic to survive for over more than two centuries, owed nothing to any overarching conceptual framework supposedly based on ‘reason’ planned out by men. Moreover, the Dutch Republic, though having no internal stable foundations, had managed to survive for more than two centuries, and had indeed flourished, despite its tense, complex and sometimes hostile relations with neighbouring powers and their relations with each other (p. 251 below). In politics, nothing that works well in given circumstances can be abstracted or extracted from its specific circumstances and context; therefore, no part of the existing fabric should be lightly discarded. Indeed, rather than marking the start of something fundamentally new, held Hemsterhuis, the Dutch Revolt left the forms and institutions of Dutch governance much as they had been before 1572. Over the last two centuries, down to 1780, apart from the change of sovereignty, and the shift from being subject to the Spanish monarch to being sovereign, the States-General, and equally the provincial States, the government of the Dutch towns and much else remained closer to the forms, models and practices of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries than did those of Germany, which divided during that period into a small number of sovereign states under princes, France, which consolidated its absolute monarchy, or Britain, which, after 1688, ‘formed her constitutions such as we see it today’. So little did the glories of the Dutch Republic have to do with men’s envisaging new schemes that had Plato or Thomas More proposed ‘such a plan of government’ they would have been thought to be urgently in need of medical advice (p. 231 below).13 Despite its archaic and fragmented character, the early modern Dutch constitution had worked wonders and those who examine this nation from up close appreciate that it has lost none of the qualities to which it owes its existence and its glory. ‘This example seems to me to provide an important lesson to those who want to admit as institutions only those which accord with what they call reason’ (p. 231 below). It is indeed impossible not to acknowledge that there are major defects in the constitution of the United Provinces, he concedes, but it was under this regime that the provinces were organised to defend themselves, to avoid its inconveniences, to draw on its advantages, and under which men found themselves within a labyrinth the detours of which they were intimately familiar with. The exceptional love of liberty infusing the archaic and complex Dutch constitution was not something new; rather, it reached back throughout the stages of history, to the ancient Batavians, and the Barbaric Age, following the fall of the Roman empire, embodied in the complex processes of its history (p. 226 below). Thus, it was no abstract principle, or any Enlightenment innovation, that grounded and buttressed Dutch freedom of the press, one of the chief glories of their constitution, but, rather, the haphazard, untidy facts of Dutch history itself. In particular, both the proximity and the independence of the towns in relation to each other made it difficult or impossible for the regents of a Dutch town, like, say, Leiden, to oppress or to try to stifle critics because these could then with great ease simply move to a

62 INTRODUCTIONS nearby rival, like Utrecht or Haarlem, and publish their pamphlets and voice their criticism there (p. 232 below). In this way, Hemsterhuis consistently assigns priority to tendencies embodied in the facts of long-term evolution of societies over supposedly rational schema proposed by reforming planners, legislators or philosophers desirous of sweeping changes. This was the approach that assured his permanent tight linkage to moderate, pro-aristocratic Enlightenment attitudes, and close alignment with the English writer Edmund Burke (1729–97), against the sweeping reforms proposed by radical Enlightenment thinkers. The severely non-democratic character of the pre-1795 Dutch constitution, Hemsterhuis conceded, provided cause for resentment among many. People in the Dutch towns did not appear to have a sufficient role in the government. They did not elect their civic magistrates, who were usually co-opted from the same families, so that ‘every town has a kind of aristocracy’ (p. 232 below). But when one considers the ceaseless need of these regents to avoid causing discontent among the people, lest they transfer (with their belongings) from where they were to rival towns nearby, one realises there were powerful constraints, held in place by the populace, on their actions (p. 232 below). Besides, choosing the magistrates from among the same families was not, in the Dutch case (unlike in some other republics), a subject of state legislation, but merely a custom, and every wealthy family was fairly sure of ascending to the magistracy sooner or later (p. 232 below). In adopting this position, Hemsterhuis was flatly contradicting his greatest contemporary critic, Diderot, who made a point of stressing, in his Voyage de Hollande (1773–4) and his sections of the Histoire philosophique des deux Indes (1770; and likewise in new revised and expanded editions of 1774 and 1780), his conclusion that the Dutch citizenry of their time had betrayed the true democratic traditions of the Revolt and the Golden Age. In Diderot’s view, far from perpetuating the same model current in the seventeenth century, they had allowed their republic to degenerate into an ‘almost aristocratic’ form of government wholly unfitting for the kind of society that it had formerly been. Diderot deplored what he saw as the growing threat to Dutch liberty posed by the stadholderate and Orangist court intrigue, echoing the worries of Dutch republicans of the time about the marriage of Willem V, Prince of Orange, to a niece of Frederick the Great, Princess Wilhelmina of Prussia, a sister to the next-in-line to the Prussian throne. Highly critical of the pro-Orangist popular movements of 1747–8 in the Republic, Diderot accused the common people, in their ignorance, of supporting the Stadholder’s cause against the genuine republicans and helping lay the path of degeneration, whereby their country was shifting steadily towards monarchy, aristocracy and subservience to Britain and Prussia.14 Although there was much in political theory, no less than in moral and general philosophy, where Diderot and Hemsterhuis were totally at odds – Diderot especially deriding and ridiculing Hemsterhuis’s ‘moral organ’ – both thinkers largely shared the same loathing of tyranny and oppression and also the quintessentially Spinozist notion that there is no other legitimation of, or moral basis for, legislation, other than that a law ‘should reconcile the happiness of the individual with the happiness of all’.15 If Hemsterhuis argues for a metaphysical freedom of the will which Diderot, in the tradition of Spinoza, wholly rejects, both



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shared a loudly proclaimed love of political liberty in the context of society and the state.16 In forming a nation or state, contends Hemsterhuis, expounding his central political theoretical principle, the legislator faces the sad necessity of having to reconcile two positive tendencies that, as ideals, can be deemed ‘perfections’ in human life but are nevertheless in direct opposition to one another. ‘One is the absolute and individual freedom of each citizen’. The other is the need to encourage ‘the greatest possible strength of the body of the state’ (p. 251 below), by which Hemsterhuis meant the protective, stabilising and law-upholding power and capacity of the state. Left without check, the first leads ‘infallibly to absolute anarchy’, the other to absolute monarchy or autocracy, both of which he rejects as absurd in themselves. Thus, the legislator’s true task is limited to balancing and combining as much of these two opposed ‘perfections’ as the specific circumstances and character of his people permits, ‘so as to be able to seek out their most perfect optimum (p. 251 below). This, unfortunately, means that if a given republic, in Europe or America, is particularly good at ensuring and preserving individual liberty, its internal unity is constantly at risk. The Dutch, ‘so long accustomed to enjoy a freedom greater than any other civilised nation on earth’ (p. 251 below), will never abrogate their civil liberty in any way, even if cutting back in that respect should lead to greater individual security and a more effective state. It is therefore necessary that the existing framework should remain ‘inviolable and intact’, or at least be only modified by the sovereign provinces that forged it in 1579, with each remaining the unique and legal sovereign in its own jurisdiction as the judge requisite for the ‘greatest happiness’ of their province (p. 251 below). It was in 1784 that Hemsterhuis formulated this argument, echoing recent discussion within the Council of State in The Hague, after he had ceased serving formally as its secretary in the years 1755–80, although still acting as an informal adviser. This was just when the internal divisions within the Republic – due to the advent of the Patriot movement and inspiration of the American Revolution – were feeding mounting demands for reform and for a more democratic structure to the state. The Council of State and Hemsterhuis himself would have kept silent about this, he records, had they not judged it ‘absolutely essential’ for penetrating more deeply what duty required of the sovereign provinces to maintain their security (from France and other neighbouring powers) and the effectiveness of the confederation and thereby lessen the internal dissension menacing the Union (p. 251 below). Hemsterhuis considered this essential and urgent advice, but advice not for diffusion among the public; rather, it was advice for the small aristocratic circle he believed should be guiding the ship of state, no less than realising man’s highest ideals in philosophy and the arts.17 He was very much opposed to the Patriot movement in general and believed the Patriots were seriously damaging the Dutch body politic. Later, in 1787, he would warmly welcome the British-backed Prussian invasion of the Netherlands, which suppressed the Patriot movement, in order to secure the position (until 1794–5) of the Orangist, pro-British regime. During his brief period of elation with the French Revolution, in the early summer of 1789, he felt that nothing mattered more than to persuade ‘the true and worthy French

64 INTRODUCTIONS patriots’ of what he considered the utter unworthiness and baseness of those who called themselves ‘Patriots’ in the Dutch context and were opposing the Prince of Orange in the Dutch Republic, and of the importance of driving a firm wedge and divide between these two reforming factions (p. 256 below). The precarious and dangerous position in which the Republic found itself in the early and mid-1780s, deeply destabilised within and threatened from without, in Hemsterhuis’s view, demanded a strong leader, or executive figure, to shoulder responsibility and take the lead politically and militarily to resolve the internal splits. But this strong leader had to possess several essential qualifications for the role, namely, to be a native of the country, and not a foreigner, and also the person with the largest amount of landed wealth in the country. This was not because wealth as such would or should confer any preferential right, but rather because each inhabitant of the Republic could expect the highest degree of security from the man with the ‘greatest interest in the prosperity and preservation of the country’ (p. 252 below). Given that the ‘house of Nassau’, that is, the Orange dynasty, possessed more landed wealth in the United Provinces than any other family, the designated leader should therefore be elected from the ranks of that family under the express provision that that designated leader should have no part, directly or indirectly, in any commercial or industrial enterprise, a qualification presumably required lest such involvement entail a vested interest particular to one province, possibly linked to external or overseas parties. Hemsterhuis’s conclusion was that the stadholderate and the captaincy-general (responsible for military command) should be combined into one role and this position should be made hereditary in the house of OrangeNassau (p. 252 below). It was just at this time, in the midst of the turmoil of the Patriot movement, that Hemsterhuis renewed his acquaintance with a young member of the Dutch ruling elite, Gijsbert Karel van Hogendorp (1762–1834), after the latter returned from his trip to the new-born United States of America in 1783–4, in the entourage of the first Dutch ambassador to that country. A studious type, Gijsbert Karel would develop into one of the most discerning conservatives and advocates of monarchy and aristocracy of the revolutionary era. Hemsterhuis had known the young man previously and he was well known too to Gallitzin, who had taken him with her, as a boy, to Berlin ten years before. Van Hogendorp was distinctly less impressed with what he saw of the new United States than were many or even most contemporaries. His tea with George Washington, not yet first president of the new republic but certainly its leading political and military figure, at the latter’s Virginia residence, had been startlingly short and, socially, a disaster, marked by Washington’s awkwardness, ridiculous brevity and lack of formal European courtesy.18 Gijsbert Karel did not think much of Princeton college and, more generally, observed that, while the same rift between ‘gentlemen’ and ‘persons in lower life’ prevailed in society and politics in America as in Europe, the Americans had no formalised aristocracy but simply a cruder aristocracy of fact based on land and wealth, creating a certain fluidity that struck him as by no means an advantage.19 Still, this young guards officer, destined soon to be assigned to the Stadholder’s staff, was far from impervious to the Patriots’ insistence that the United Provinces were in dire need of thoroughgoing reform. He recognised the need for greater



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integration as a more coherent state, and perhaps even some democratisation. He was pondering too, briefly at least, the novel American idea, still very much at an embryonic stage, of devising an entire new constitution on the basis of high-level discussion and ‘reason’, although so far the United States had only its provisional first constitution, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, ratified in 1781. During their meeting, Hemsterhuis was much struck by the change America had exerted on the young man since their last meeting, three years before. The former arrogant tone that so ill-fitted his youth and hardly promised well for the future, he reported to Gallitzin, had ‘almost completely disappeared’. At the same time, that zeal for learning ‘which I always recognized in him’ had been reinforced (B 7.40).20 Over the next three years, in the Stadholder’s service, Gijsbert Karel must have improved further in Hemsterhuis’s estimation since, partly under the latter’s influence, he now jettisoned his earlier hesitant sympathy for the views of the radical democrats and opted for the uncompromising advocacy of aristocracy and aristocratic leadership of society, as well as monarchy, for which he is remembered. Fleetingly at least, Hemsterhuis also figured in the minds of several of the leading figures among the American founders. The first American ambassador to the Dutch Republic and later, second president, John Adams (1735–1826), had copies of Aristaeus and the Letter on Man in his library, and Benjamin Franklin too possessed several copies of Hemsterhuis’s works. Just as Hemsterhuis in Europe was pondering the new republic in North America, leading figures in the debate about how to shape and organise the new American reality and republic were reading and thinking, at this crucially formative time, about the Dutch Republic’s advantages and disadvantages as a model, and hence also about Hemsterhuis, whose clear conclusion continued to be that the American Revolution taught the Dutch nothing they needed to learn and, in fact, only caused serious and continuing damage to their unity and their constitution. Like Van Hogendorp (and quite unlike Spinoza), Hemsterhuis thought mon­ archy to be the most natural form of early human society and, by late 1789, thought that proper monarchy should be restored in France. The first leaders of primitive groups were the strongest, wisest or bravest among them. ‘But what despots were to succeed them?’ (p. 220 below). Their heirs frequently fell sadly short of the level, of the abilities, skill and standards of the founders. Sadly, corruption, de­generation and tyranny were constant threats at all times. It was this that gave birth to republics. But these proved no less vulnerable to one particular fundamental defect: the more freedom and power are assigned to society (as against the leadership) by the wise legislator devising these structures, the more unity unravels, splits develop and anarchy threatens. It was this that explained why the supreme task, and test, in politics is to steer as skilfully and adroitly as possible between the Scylla of tyranny and Charybdis of anarchy, or the type of state which tends to the well-being of the corps politique, that is, the state, on the one side, and ‘that tends to the well-being of the individual and which is almost entirely republican’, on the other (p. 222 below).21 Monarchy proffers the ease and personal liberty, the release from social tensions, that the progress of the arts and sciences require but whoever enjoys those benefits in a monarchy is dependent on a particular person, which unfortunately encourages

66 INTRODUCTIONS flattery and veneration of the benefactor, a subtle form of slavery based on courtly finesse and pretence (p. 223 below). By contrast, in a republic, the individual’s personal liberty flows from his status as an individual and a citizen. Nothing deter­ mines and guides the use of his abilities and talent other than his own will and pleasure (p. 223 below). This tension, so basic to Hemsterhuis’s political theory, he saw reflected in liberty of the press, one of the greatest benefits, he acknowledges, of republican freedom. That freedom was certainly greater in his day than it had been in earlier times and was responsible for important advances in the sciences and the arts, and yet, even though it would be prejudicial to both the latter to cut it back, it had to be acknowledged, he insisted, that the benefits were balanced, even outweighed, by the real evils a free press causes with regard to social unity and morality (EE 1.88). This is the first substantial point that Diderot objects to in his commentary on Hemsterhuis’s Letter on Man. He exclaims in his margin, here, that he has no idea what they were, these ‘evils which the freedom of press has done to morality’, which Hemsterhuis warns against in the existing Dutch (and British and Prussian) liberty of the press.22 Diderot, who viewed Hemsterhuis’s entire piece as being directed against the ‘Spinozists’ (like himself), refused to accept Hemsterhuis’s principle that atheism undermines morality and thereby damages society, except perhaps in the case of La Mettrie, a predecessor, immoral in his eyes, whom he reviled. But he also thought that Hemsterhuis, like Voltaire and Buffon, had dressed philosophy up in a ‘Harlequin’ dress.23 Combining aristocratic conservatism with republicanism and a modicum of anti-absolutism gave Hemsterhuis’s political philosophy an original stamp that sets it off from the thought of all other significant political commentators of the time. In lending both monarchy and aristocracy unwavering, automatic preference over republics, Van Hogendorp was a far more typical conservative of the age than was Hemsterhuis. Hemsterhuis’s problem in balancing his republicanism against monarchy was that the American republic had now displaced all the existing European republics – Venice, Genoa, the Swiss confederacy and the United Provinces – as the model case study and research laboratory. Part of the paradox of Hemsterhuis’s republicanism lies in a split that is nowhere more vividly reflected than in his thinking about the American case. In the emerging United States, two different versions of republicanism – aristocratic republicanism and democratic republicanism – were locked in a battle that would not be finally resolved in favour of the latter until the 1830s. At first sight, given their preference for severely restricted franchises and preference for the aristocratic principle, John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, two of the principal theorists of the elitest ‘aristocratic’ interpretation of the American Revolution, might appear to be Hemsterhuis’s natural allies, and those advocating a broader-based, more democratic approach, like Jefferson, Franklin and Tom Paine, his natural ideological foes.24 But in actuality, a very different set of considerations led Hemsterhuis to marginalise and look away from the American experience. Existing republics, he argues, are the outcome of profoundly complex, long and evolving histories, each with its own specific character inseparably tied to the circumstances of its birth, the fight for freedom and legislation. Republics



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are not an abstract category in the way the American founders seemed to think, making it possible to sensibly compare the advantages and disadvantages of one constitution with those of another. Each people experiences a different set of dangers and circumstances in its efforts to organise effectively, with the consequence that each people that succeeds in establishing a lasting body politic gains a ‘distinctive character’, forms a state very different from every other (p. 223 below). Hemsterhuis envisaged creating a viable and just society that takes responsibility for the well-being of society as a whole as the highest human task on this earth and also the most difficult to achieve. The guiding thread in Hemsterhuis’s political writings is a certain resentment that the Dutch Republic had lost the standing and prestige in the eyes of contemporaries that it had possessed a century before, its former glories and present high level of civic liberty now going largely unnoticed and unvalued, while all eyes were turned to the ideal of a more perfect republic that could be attained by philosophes and legislators proceeding on the basis of reason. Recent Enlightenment debates had led to the Dutch Republic, with its knotty complexity, numerous archaic features and clumsy functioning in peacetime, being sharply downgraded and cast aside, leaving what Hemsterhuis calls ‘one of the most illustrious and, without exception, the most singular ever to have existed’ (p. 216 below) disdained and overlooked out of ignorance and sheer lack of awareness of the true realities of politics and the unique qualities of Dutch civic liberty. The United States, a new society, without much history and without its own aristocratic tradition, was, he insisted, simply not the right direction to be looking in, any more than was the revolutionary France of late 1789–90 – let alone the republican France that emerged in 1792–4, shortly after his death.

PART ONE SPINOZISM, ATHEISM AND RELIGION

Letter on Fatalism

Madame,1 I have the honour of here communicating to you a few considerations concerning fatalism, as you have desired of me, and I plead with you not to show them to anyone else, since I propose to correct them by the insights you deign give me after having thought about them with the attention the subject merits. From where does the idea of fatality or fatalism come to us? It is [from the fact] that events follow each other, and since we see the link from the past to the present, they appear to follow each other necessarily, and we assume this same necessary link from the present to the future. It seems to me that one can consider fate or fatality in two different ways. 1° All that exists is a necessary whole, from the nature of which derives all past, present and future modifications, and thus all events that have happened, are happening and will happen forever – or rather, all these events are but one event. This whole is the God of Spinoza.2 2° A supreme being, necessary by its nature, has created, by means of its omnipotence, a universe, and it has given one or many laws to the individuals that compose this universe, from which derive necessarily all past, present and future modifications of this universe, and thus all events that have happened, are happening and will happen forever. This is the system of the Orthodox.3 As for what happens by chance, it must pertain by its nature to one or other of these two systems.4 Without relying on the clear and exact demonstration (if I’m not mistaken) that I have given in the Letter on Man and his Relations of the reality of the velleity or the will,5 there is no man on the surface of the earth, and there never has been, who does not sense that he has some influence over future events and that he is more or less, in proportion to his faculties, in a condition to modify [these future events] to his ends. In consequence, from the first moment of his life to the last, he acts accordingly, and this is an intimate sensation that the abuse of philosophy makes problematic.6 Let us now suppose a man who has this sensation and who acts accordingly: it is clear that he will not be able to form any distinct idea of fatality other than in relation to the past and present, and he does so through the single axiom that it is contradictory for what is to not be. But when it comes to the future, I can scarcely say to him that he will not have such a job, such a lover, such a triumph: the plan that he will have formed in his head to achieve what he desires will always be worth at least as much in hope than all I could say to him might be worth in fear. Thus, for men who have a conviction, either by clear demonstrations or by an ineffaceable sentiment, of the reality of a velleity, there can be no fatality, and there will be nothing to fear from those who have the folly to believe that the Iliad, the

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Aeneid and Voltaire’s La Pucelle7 derive from the nature of Spinoza’s God, or are predetermined by the God of the Orthodox. It is evident from this that good sense alone is enough to reject the system of fatalism. In giving much thought to your reflection that there must be other demonstrations against fatalism than those grounded on the velleity, I have found, I confess, that the demonstration from velleity, however exact it may be, cannot destroy fatalism. For by serving only as a counterweight, even one that, in truth, is powerful, it throws the mind into doubt and incertitude, a state unworthy of philosophy. One does not destroy a system by proving an opposing system, but one overturns it by removing the basis which sustains it. Here is the reasoning of the fatalist. There is no effect without a cause. The cause is a cause only by producing the effect. There is no cause without an effect; the effect is an effect only when the cause produces it, and it follows naturally from this that cause and effect coexist. I will not push this reasoning any further, because I think this will suffice for me. Moreover, there is nothing to be said against this reasoning, and the conclusion is valid. Yet, I am going to demonstrate equally well the complete opposite – that is, that cause and effect do not coexist, and afterwards I will show the flaw in the fatalist’s reasoning, from which ultimately derives the absurdity of necessity. When the simplest thing one can imagine becomes a cause, it produces an effect on something else, since, being simple, it is impossible for it to produce an effect on itself. A acts on B, and an effect results from this; but there is no action without passion and no passion without reaction.8 Thus, the action and the passion which produces the reaction cannot coexist, because, by acting on what is passive, what is active produces an effect in it, and from this results a cause, or this cause produces an effect on what is active, and, indeed, such an effect that what is active becomes passive in its turn. If these two things coexisted together, it would result from [the above] that in the action of what is active – an action which is necessarily determinate – there would be the principle of an action [that was] equally determinate, but diametrically opposed. It is as if one said that plus-A, which is a determinate positive, and minus-B, which is a determinate negative, could make one simple thing alone prior to subtracting B from A, or rather, that in the nature of the determinate positive plus-A there was the determinate negative minus-B, which is the grossest absurdity. I therefore conclude that the moment when what is active produces an effect on what is passive is necessarily a [moment] other than [the moment] when what is passive, by its reaction, produces an effect on what is active. For the effect or the passion is the cause of the reaction at the same moment as it is effect or passion and, consequently, action and passion, or cause and effect, cannot coexist together. You see, Madame, that these two contrary arguments,9 however subtle they appear to the masses, are [both] well formed as syllogisms, but you will have noted at the same time an obscure tone in both of them which prevents the conviction [that comes from] following [the reasoning] without effort. From this reflection, it follows that there must be a flaw in the meaning of the terms being used and, in truth, it seems to me that the most profound metaphysicians (at the head of which I place without hesitation the famous ’s Gravesande10) have all sinned in their



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reasoning about cause and effect, in a way people do not usually sin nowadays – that is, they have simplified things too much. They have taken the word cause as a sign of something perfectly simple, which it is not. Something produces an effect on another thing and not on itself; and when I say that an effect is produced, I suppose two things: first the producing [thing] and secondly that on which the effect is produced. Let us assume that ball A collides with ball B.11 The effect, or part of this effect, will be the movement of ball B. But what is the cause of it? They will tell me ball A or, at least, the impact of ball A – but this is not precise. The effect actually results neither from ball A nor from ball B, but from the relation between the state of ball A and the state of ball B at the moment of impact. Therefore, the cause of the effect is actually the relation between that which produces and that on which [it] is produced. And thus, action and reaction must coexist together, since the effect resulting from the mutual relation must be reciprocal. If, then, the cause actually consists in a relation between what is active and what is passive or reactive, it follows that what is passive or reactive plays as much part in the cause of the event or [the cause] of the effect as what is active, and that what is active plays as much part in the event or the effect of the reaction as what is passive or reactive. Moreover, if the true cause which produces an event or effect resides uniquely in the thing which is going to produce an effect, one could regard the event or effect as a necessary consequence [suite] of that thing. But since the genuine cause of the event resides as much in the thing on which the effect will be produced as in that which is commonly called its cause, there is no necessity, unless things were so constituted that the future proceeded backwards to meet the present or the past, just like the present or the past proceeds forwards to meet the future. Or to put it more clearly, if the present were the only cause of the future, it will follow, in truth, that there would absolutely be fatalism; but since the cause of a future event derives from the relation that holds between the present and the future, and since the future cannot exist (even for the omnipotent divine) as it is still future, it follows that a future event is not necessary, since it is the consequence [suite] of the relation that will hold between what is and what is not yet. If I go back [in time], events have followed each other one after another, and an event which occurred did so necessarily, for the sole reason that it is imposs­ ible that what has been has not been, since it is impossible that what is is not. But if one adds, ‘since it is equally impossible that what will be will not be’, the reasoning is no longer correct. In the first case, I am speaking of what has been, but I am not [merely] assuming it. In the second [case], I am speaking of what is, but I am not [merely] assuming it. But in the third [case], when I say: what will be will be as necessarily as what has been has been necessarily – I render the future gratuitously present, for I assume it to be so, and this is either false or problematic. If I go back [in time], fatality comes down to this: what has been has been necessarily, and [it] cannot have been otherwise. But it is a matter of demonstrating that it could not have been otherwise, and this would be a demonstration as difficult [to make] as predicting the future.

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Once again, Madame, I am sending you these completely rough ideas and it is up to you to correct them or to condemn them by your own lights. I would blush if your modesty suspected me of paying you a compliment. You have given me the right to speak to you sincerely, and since that moment I have spoken to you as I speak to God, without restriction. I would still be in doubt as to what is free and what is necessary if I had only considered them as motifs of the feelings of attraction,12 homogeneity, admiration and respect by which I am, Madame, Your Highness, your most humble and devoted servant. Hemsterhuis13 28th January 1776. PS. on my preceding [letter] on fatalism.14 What is it to be necessary? A thing is necessary when it is contradictory for it not to be. A thing is not necessary when it could not be, or [when it could] be otherwise. I cannot affirm or deny anything of the necessity or the contingency of a thing of which I necessarily know nothing, that is, of a thing which does not exist. What has been has necessarily been, because it is contradictory that what has been has not been. I say the same thing of what is, for the same reason, and when the future will have been, [then] I will again say the same of it and for the same reason. Let’s posit what has been as A (that is, a determinate thing) and what is as –B (that is, a determinate thing); it is clear that what will be is X, that is, an unknown value or an indeterminate thing. Now, A has necessarily been A, because it has been A; B is necessarily B because it is B; therefore, A and B are necessary only because they are determinate things or values, and thus X, an indeterminate value, can be necessary only when it has become A or B, that is, a determinate value. Let’s posit the impossible, that everything is necessary. It is therefore at least certain that we could never affirm or prove the necessity or the contingency of the non-determinate, of what is not, or of the absolute nothing. When A and B were still X, they were in the same situation: they were absolute nothings, and therefore one could neither affirm nor negate anything of A or B, [since they were] still X or unknown or indeterminate values. So, the word necessary is only the sign of an idea that we have of past or present existence, of a thing or an event. When I say that a ball will necessarily fall when it is not held up, it is owing to an infinity of experiences that I identify the idea of a future fall with that of the existing ball which I wish to drop and so, in consequence, I already consider it as fallen. However, someone will say to me: [on the contrary,] I15 am taking the past in general, I am taking the present in general, I am taking the future in general. The past has necessarily been, the present necessarily is, [thus] the future will necessarily be. I respond, as I have said before, that the first two are necessary only as determinate and that the third cannot be necessary, [for] it is not determinate. Here is the proposition as it should be. The present necessarily is, since the past has been. The future will necessarily be since the present is. If one takes things in



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this way, it is a matter of nothing more than duration, and I have proven elsewhere that duration is one and indivisible.16 The idea of the succession [succession] of events (without entering into the curious enquiry of whether this holds to the nature of our organs or to something else) has given birth to the idea of time, which is by its nature in duration and which is necessarily divisible into past, present and future. But even when this proposition is simplified in this way, there can still be no necessity.

In line AB, I can truly say that [line] CD, as the middle section of AB, is the middle section of AB because AC forms the beginning section [of the line] and DB forms the end section [of line AB]. But I cannot say that CD, as CD, is CD, because AC is AC, and DB is DB. I cannot even say that CD is CD because AB is AB. This would be to say that such a present is such a present because duration is duration, or because time is time. It is clear from what I have just said that the principal origin of the idea of fatality consists in [the fact] that philosophers have confused the concatenation [suite] of events17 with the cause of events, as the early Egyptians confused cause and coexistence.18 Those who wish to take the trouble to attend to this fully will, I am sure, be convinced that if there were not free beings who could act on 100 atoms, on 1,000, on 10,000, in proportion to their spheres of activity as free beings – [free beings], I say, whose freedom is homologous in some way to the freedom with which God acts on the whole universe – there could be no events. Everything would be one event. Everything would coexist, there would be no duration and, consequently, there would be nothing; and this whole, or this nothing, is the God of the profound and unfortunate Spinoza.19 But again, they will say, does God not know everything? Does He not know everything that is past, present, future? Yes, most definitely. He is the author of all individuals and He knows all the possible relations which could ever derive from their coexistences, and it is from these relations that result the qualities of events. Therefore, God’s intuitive science sees all events, not only those which exist, have existed or will exist in the future, but also all possible events which might have existed. And since these two kinds of events also result from all the possible relations which derive from the coexistence of things, it follows that all possible events and all [actual] events which exist for us are but events of the same kind for God. God created free and active beings with all of their possible [relations] and free and active beings create for themselves their [current] state of possible [relations].

On Prayer

The Hague, Monday 17th Nov[ember] 1783.1 My very dear Diotima […] You express yourself better on the subject of Mitri,2 or rather I understand you better. Indifference to religion is an evil that brings further evils after it. We see millions of examples of this in our age, and it won’t diminish – at least, not until religion has been better modified. The only remedy against this evil is the following. It is indubitable that the only essential part of all religion is prayer. Prayer is so singularly innate, so to speak, in man that, when he is found in agony and in pain, he will pray to anything: to an animal, to a tree, to a stone and even to the dust which he treads with his feet. We must not conclude from this, as modern philosophers do, that it is a mark of the smallness of man and that he has less courage than most other animals. We must conclude from it with more certainty that it is [man] alone who senses that there is something outside him which could aid him – and this is remarkable. Moreover, no man who has gazed on misfortunates attentively will deny to me that every man who believes in a God finds, in the act of prayer, an effective consolation for the most extreme misfortunes, and sometimes [does so] to an eminent and astonishing degree – either [because] the cause is a hope mixed with confidence, or [because] it is something else I will speak of one day in another place. (I pray you, in the meantime, read Man and his Relations from page 168 to page 191.3) I will not speak here of the possibility or the impossibility of a prayer that is addressed to the Divinity being granted or not – this is not what is in question here.4 What is certain is that the two facts I have just related – that prayer is natural to man and that it consoles infinitely more than anything else – are incontestable, and you have no need to tell a man who is in distress to pray to God. This is self-evident. Prayer is an act which occurs between the individual and God.5 The individual voluntarily places himself in a relationship closer to the Divinity than [the one in which] he ordinarily speaks to him. He asks him [for something] or gives him thanks (I confess that [man] speaks to him as to an infinitely greater man, more perfect and more powerful than him, but he can scarcely do better). I further assert that, in this act, no man on the surface of the earth is aware of wanting to deceive God. In this moment, he is absolutely open. He is true. He is perfect and incapable of any vicious idea. He is what he ought to be. He laments the evil that he has done and he thanks God for the good he has done. It is with all necessity that this act occurs without any witness, for I am speaking of praying in thoughts, not the utterance [of it] which can deceive. If what I have said about prayer is of the most exact truth, it must absolutely be taught to all children after they have acquired true and elevated ideas of the



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Supreme Being – that is, of its necessary existence, of its immensity and of its omnipresence – and never to fall asleep without recalling these ideas. It will not take four days before he prays to himself. He should be told generally what prayer is and what are and can be its effects, but it must not be prescribed to him, or it will soon become an affair of memory, and not one of all the faculties together. Besides, the learned can teach me how to speak to soldiers, to the people, to the assembly, but to speak to God! – this a language each person knows for himself. I don’t like prayers for individuals.6 In church they have to be given from time to time for good reason, but the oratory, the music and the imposition of dazzling ceremonies weaken my moral organ – but it is not I who weaken it. I am passive. I am what is called edified, and the result of this can be either that I become fanatical or that my important business in the evening falls into oblivion. This, my very dear friend, is the only remedy I know. We will speak afterwards concerning the rest, but this seems very true to me. When the child is habituated to this procedure, he will, during the day, respect the bedtime which awaits him every evening.7

Letters on the History of Philosophy up to Spinoza (Gallitzin and Hemsterhuis)

Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis Angelmodde, 21st November 1783.1 My dear Socrates, I am so furiously dazed today that you will have nothing from me – absolutely nothing except wishes that God may preserve you forever from this state. I believe that it resulted from a fairly long manuscript which talks throughout of Spinozism and Leibniz’s pre-established harmony2 and which I was obliged to devour for the love of someone who had begged me to do so – and it is this which has so strongly upset me. Good God, to what abuse of abstraction are even geniuses led! Goodbye, dear Socrates. […]

Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Tuesday 24th November 1783.3 My very dear Diotima. I just received your [letter] from the 21st, and I learnt with infinite pain that you were dazed. After having gone through Spinoza and Leibniz, you must still [undertake] some Malebranche, some Berkeley, some Wolff, etc., etc.,4 and you will be what I dare not name. When I think concertedly of all these things, it seems to me that I am on my way straight to the asylum.5 You are entirely right to call out, once more, the abuse of abstraction, even among geniuses; but if we wanted to delve a little deeper into the matter, it’s very simple. Socrates created the only good and true philosophy founded on what each of us senses himself to be. It was quite bare and simple, and each individual had it at his side at any moment he wanted it. The prodigious Plato, who turned everything he touched into gold, embellished it and enriched it to make it analogous to the elevation of his extraordinary soul, but his successors – nearly all of them utterly inferior beings to this divine Plato – misrecognised [this philosophy] through the splendours in which he had enveloped it. They saw only the brilliance of all its ornaments, and soon each of them got hold of some plaything which they fixed up as best they could according to the manner of Plato. Aristotle – with the most powerful intellect ever to appear on earth – took on this philosophy; but instead of teaching it to live and rendering it popular like Socrates, or ornamenting it and embellishing it like Plato, he pulled it into pieces, by dissecting it with an infinite art. After these two great masters, simple and natural names and terms, which for



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Socrates had designated the graces and the beauty of that beautiful [philosophy], disappeared, and there remained only the barbarous names which designated either flimsy ornaments attached to the body often without taste,6 or some nerve, tendon or muscle that often owed its existence solely to the subtle scalpel of the too-curious Aristotle. The absolute and despotic empire by which the genius of Plato and Aristotle subjugated the entire world obliged a fledgling Christianity to throw itself into the arms of [this philosophy] and amalgamate itself quite peaceably with it. This absurd mixture [went on to] reign with an iron sceptre, and living philosophy, the benefactor of men, was transformed into a sacred idol and was now nothing but an evil.7 With the fall of the Byzantine Empire some precious remains of the Ancients reappeared, and it was only from the light [of these remains] that man came to perceive himself, while shuddering at the frightful shadows from which he had just emerged – shadows that had clouded our knowledge like the Bologna phosphorus soaks the daylight into itself.8 Descartes, the most beautiful spirit in the century of spirit, aimed to topple the idol; but he found no other means [to do so] than that of erecting from it something similar which would be more to the taste of his century. He built a philosophy entirely forged in his rich imagination and founded on the light foundation of spirit. Not only was it immediately adopted, but many glimpsed with pleasure how easy it was to construct similar [philosophies] or to embellish [philosophy] according to their fantasy. Although Descartes was persecuted a little at the beginning, he soon clutched the sceptre in his own hands and reigned for 30 years with such authority that all-powerful Christianity had to bend before him. Descartes, the greatest geometer in the world since Archimedes, laughed to himself at his phantom evils and his successes.9 Finally, philosophy, which had previously been the director of all human activity and the assemblage of all human knowledge – [this knowledge] forming mere branches out from [philosophy’s] illustrious trunk – came to just appear separately in each branch, [and each branch] appropriated for itself the beautiful name of the entire tree. Two great geniuses appeared, Spinoza and Newton. They sensed the necessity of transporting some geometrical ray into philosophy but executed it differently and with very different success. The former – a mediocre geometer in comparison to the latter – applied geometrical jargon10 to metaphysics, which could lead to nothing but what has been born from that abuse of abstractions you mentioned. The latter, the most powerful geometer ever to exist, applied entirely raw geometry to mechanical physics and to all the sciences that depend on it and, if he did not carry this branch [of knowledge] to absolute perfection, he at least allowed us to glimpse that perfection from a distance. Ultimately, both of them saw for the first time that some marriage of philosophy with geometry was necessary. By jargon one can attain nothing; by entirely raw geometry one ends up with particulars alone; but whoever finds a true application of the geometrical spirit to the whole of philosophy will have the glory of achieving with philosophy what Jupiter did with little Pelops.11 Goodbye, my very dear and unique Diotima. I began this letter too late. If ever I return to this matter, I will be clearer. If your intelligence is unable to supplement

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it with the common sense it needs, you can burn this sheet. Goodbye, my very dear Diotima, may God bless you along with your dear children and your Great Friend.12 Σωκρατης13

On Two Kinds of Theology

The Hague, 6th Dec[ember] 1784.1 My very dear Diotima, my friend, at the end of your last letter there is a passage2 to which I did not have the time to respond to you in a way that was analogous to the dignity of the subject. You say that you’re occupied with theology, and this makes me very curious to know what theology you are talking about, and so I ask you to satisfy me. To make you understand my question, here in a few words is what I think concerning theology. It seems to me that theology is a word to which the idea of two completely different sciences has been attached. First, knowledge of God or of the Divinity and of our relations to this Great Being. [It is] a sublime and important science, of which we are capable [only] up to a certain point within this present category [of existence] and to which all our faculties lead us with sufficient ease, without even accounting for tact,3 the momentary effect of a rapid operation of all our faculties together – concerning which we will probably never know here below whether it is produced by or is able to be produced by either a mechanism or an act of an external cause. [It is] an infinitely consoling science without which all life would seem and be agony for every moral being.4 [It is] ultimately a science within which all men relatively easily achieve the point of perfection they are capable of on this earth and which, when well conducted, does not lead to an idea, but to a sensation, a sentiment, which is worth much more than an idea.5 The other [science] is properly a historical knowledge of the opinions men have had concerning everything that they called Demons or other beings of a nature superior to theirs. The primitive source of all these opinions is to be found in the simple and indestructible sentiment of a Divinity. But the particular need man believes himself to have for the Divinity – in the particular circumstances in which he finds himself that pertain almost entirely to the physical and to the imagination – soon renders the sentiment, the sensation of God ideal. This infinitely simple sentiment becomes an idea, therefore subject to the imagination and thus complicated to infinity; and from this [arise] that innumerable number of religions and cults which, at bottom, all have only the same Supreme God and Creator as their end. When men transform a sentiment into an idea, there is no type of stupidities that fails to result. Think how many men there are for whom the simple sentiment of love or friendship is an idea, either because of a mistake or because of wanting to submit everything to the imagination. If you cannot sense the beautiful results of this, a million people could teach you. Finally, this science or this knowledge is infinitely interesting when it comes to knowing man, who is, through it, shown in both his grandeur and his smallness. If

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you were to let me know which of these two theologies occupies you, I would be able to say much more on the latter at your request. Do not think, my dear Diotima, that I treat all men’s religious opinions as fantastic errors. It is far from being so, for 1° all cult, whatever it is, is at bottom respectable; and 2° all religious sects in which you see men do the opposite of what I’ve just said above and in which they try to transform ideas back into sensations or into sentiments, are likewise [respectable] – and I declare myself more or less [in favour] of all these sects. Why have men enveloped pure and simple religion which God dictated to us Himself within so many mysteries of all kinds of guises that good sense does not always adopt? Finding the reasons for this is not very difficult. Finally on this matter, I swear to you that until now I have been able to add nothing essential to what Man and his Relations says between page 160 and 190.6 […]7

Letters on Knowing, Believing and Doubting (Gallitzin and Hemsterhuis)

Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, 14th July 1786.1 My very dear Diotima. I have read the book you sent me2 scarcely once, and this is nowhere near enough. However, I dare to bravely pronounce it an excellent book, in which there is a number of things profoundly thought and set out clearly (to the extent they can be). I pity Mendelssohn that his cause is so horribly bad, but I congratulate him on having been saved from the sallies of two adversaries against whom nature had not armed him sufficiently.3 I am not familiar enough yet with the German language to dare speak of the style of this work. I found in it a number of motifs attributable to Herder, as well as others that make me doubt this [attribution].4 I beg you to let me know the author who has the right to my respect. You will ask me if I have made any remark on certain passages during my reading. Yes, certainly in works of this nature it is impossible for me to do otherwise, but these are all trifles which evaporate from view on a second reading. But let’s even suppose that I had more serious reflections, for all the world I would not want, for the sake of some opinion I had, to contradict books which very certainly do ten thousand times more good in the present world than all that could be said against them. And in truth, these recent books by Jacobi and that of the unknown author appear to me the most useful works one could offer men in present circumstances. You sense better than anyone in the world, my Diotima, that, when it comes to foundations and the most genuinely important parts of these authors’ system, no one could be more completely in agreement with them than I am; but this does not yet prevent me from proposing to put before you for your amusement and for my own utility, at the first opportunity my head feels better, a very serious enquiry into: 1° what a fact is, and its value for us, considered merely as some fact, 2° what history is, its nature and its value for us, 3° whether believing is not the shadow of sensing, and the nature and value of all belief for us. Not that I want to imitate Craig,5 the English geometer, who subjected the tradition to calculus, a method which in my opinion is completely ridiculous and with very little philosophy to it; but I will ask Alexis what his ideas are when, seeing Diotima’s shadow, he believes himself [to be] in the presence of Diotima, whereas seeing [the shadow] of the Centaur, he finds it difficult [to believe this].6 4° Although a fact is in general an object for history, whether, when I have the most perfect conviction of a fact by means of an internal organ, it can or must be treated historically. And if after this investigation, there remains some time left, I will talk a little on a thing which does not strictly pertain to everything which precedes it, but which

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appears to me to provide some quite curious reflections; it is a manner of speaking of many philosophers of all kinds who often treat fata of the whole race of humans en bloc as if it were one sole individual, without reflecting at the same time on the individuals who successively compose it. […] Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis 17th July 1786.7 My dear Socrates. The book in question is not by Herder; I am extremely charmed, my dear S., by the three enquiries you promise me, assuredly you could not write to me on a matter of more interest;8 hence, I beg of you to keep your word in this regard. Certainly, I am of your opinion that, despite the excellence of the good things contained in [Wizenmann’s] book, there are things to say and, among others, the author offers, it appears to me, three sorts of different meaning for the word believing, and this cannot but make the reading more difficult than it would otherwise be, considering the nobility and simplicity of the style which strikes me, particularly in the last part of this work. […] Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, 27th/28th July 1786.9 My dear Diotima, my friend – having a bit of time at present I am going to begin on a subject on which you have desired to know my ideas. Do not expect, however, that this letter has the requisite volume to contain everything that I would propose to say to you in regard to faith, adopted by our dear authors as the principle which must serve as the basis of knowledge of the most important truths. You must expect some other, longer letter which will be, at least, more ordered and more detailed. It is for you to judge whether this is burnable or readable and for whom. Let us get into the matter. Something exists. Its existence is a truth. It is a perfect truth for, or in, the existing thing. But is it equally a perfect truth for a limited being other than this thing? A limited being can have more or less perfect knowledge of a thing outside it solely by way of media.10 And it is the multiplicity, the simplicity, the bounty, the energy of these media from which is born the different degrees of conviction of this truth, and which is expressed by the words knowing, believing, doubting. This truth is present, past or future. All conviction of whatever degree of perfection it takes on is born from a relatively strong or distinct sensation. Let’s look at present truths. I know that there is a mountain when I see it and when I climb it. I believe that there is a mountain when I see it through a mist. I doubt that there is a mountain when seeing it from far away through clouds which resemble [the mountain] in their shape, colour, etc. Let us generalise. Hence, I know when I have complete sensations of this truth by all the media by which it can act on me.



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I believe when I have complete sensations by some of these media. I doubt when I have incomplete sensations by some of these media or when they are confused with other sensations. Note that, by way of media, all these sensations are direct. In composing and comparing these direct sensations with the help of the intellect, I attain the knowing, the believing, or the doubting of truths of which I do not have direct sensations. Let’s look at past truths. It’s evident that I have knowledge of them only by way of those [people] who have previously known, believed or doubted direct sensations in the way I have just described, or worked on these sensations with their intellect; and [it is evident] that for these truths, knowing is properly eliminated and there remain only believing and doubting. It is here that a serious dissertation is needed on history and its value. For the present, I limit myself to a few reflections. The value of history is measured by three things. 1° By the historian. 2° By the path the history11 has taken from the historian to us. 3° By the nature of the facts it contains. If the historian were perfect, that is, knowledgeable, virtuous, without passions, without interest, simple, clear; if the path of the history from the historian to us was such that it could have suffered no alteration; if the facts it contains were all among the classes of things that we know in nature; the value of believing which would follow from this history would very much approach that of knowing. But how to know the historian except by other histories and by other combinations of the intellect? How has this history been denied the possibility of being altered over the course of its path to us? How could Alexis believe in the Centaur as he did Diotima?12 Weigh his case. My dearest friend, the Ancients knew of all these difficulties as perfectly as we do, and they sensed them with the same invincible force. In order to undo this embarrassment, they imagined and supposed a Being who had the faculty of giving us Faith.13 Certainly then, all these difficulties evaporate and, since God is AllPowerful, there is no absurdity in this supposition, although man would appear strangely altered in nature because of it. Nevertheless, in this case: 1° believing would cease and would become knowing or sensing, 2° we would have no need of historians or histories, and 3° we would have a direct and individual Revelation, the only one I could admit and desire. I confess to you frankly that I do not understand those who say to man: pray to God that he will make you believe as true what by the nature of your organ of intellect (to which believing uniquely belongs) you do not believe as true. For I do not think that we wish to place believing in the imagination. This would totally change the matter and would lead to a very common kind of Faith that is not very respectable and that the maddest could develop the best.14 If believing also pertains to the moral organ, as it indubitably pertains to the intellect, I could understand it, since I know with certain science the prodigious effects that prayer can produce on this organ,15 although I know to the same extent that none of these effects, when they are pure, lead to believing, but rather to sensing and to a certain grand manner of knowing – a description of which appears impossible to me.

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Let’s look at future truths. We know them in astronomy, physics, agriculture, etc., where the intellect leads us by a wise analogy, and where believing much resembles knowing.16 That man is capable still of sensations of future truths, accompanied, not by belief, but by the most intimate conviction, I do not doubt; but how it is so, and from where, seems above our conceptions. My very dear Diotima, this letter which is too long, or rather much too short, is really only for you, for another reader could suspect me of wanting [to talk] about the Christian Religion – and this is very far from my ideas. 1° Adoring the Divinity, under whatever shape or symbol, is an act which demands the most profound respect from all limited beings. 2°  Convinced as I am of the reality of so many faces of the universe, of so many orders of things towards which I have no yet-open organs,17 I would be very absurd to deny revelations that others could have received or that they respect. And 3° wanting to destroy the Christian Religion appears to me a crime of lese-majesty18 – [a crime] that is not divine, but human, by attacking the sole principle which remains to us for still maintaining a circulation of mores [that is] sufficient for the languishing and weak body of our current society. Another reader could believe me a sceptic, Pyrrhonean19 and admitting no truth. This is false, although it’s true in my opinion that limited beings, who must make use of media to have sensations of things outside them, are not able to see the past, the present or the future. Not the past, since it is past. Not the present, since [it] is already past, manifest only by the [temporal] succession of media. Not the future, since it does not yet occur. But man has perfect and very present truths. All geometric truths. But these pertain to the intellect and are entirely sterile for the happiness of his essence. Not all are sterile. There are also two moral truths,20 and this is everything. The first, I am; the second, that by which I am is. There are solely these two, but their riches efface the entire rest of the stock, and without them all real or possible truths of the whole universe disappear. My dear Diotima, I am going to end. [I will do so], however, by saying a word on the subject of our books.21 But let it be said between ourselves. I do not know who would make me laugh most – the person who would say to me: You should know by faith and by history that you are; or the person who would say to me: You must know by faith and by history that the being by which you are is. The philosophers have demonstrated the existence of the Divinity. [This demonstration] has given me sleepless nights and will do so again, perhaps. It is good for amusement and for exercise, and even useful for some individuals; but when Euclid said the first time to Mlle Mimi:22 I taught you by reasoning that, when a straight [line] falls obliquely on another straight [line], the angles of the two sides are equal to two right [angles],23 she apparently found this very pretty, but already saw the truth by means of seeing the figure, without it being a matter of knowing it, believing it or doubting it. […]



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Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis Angelmodde, 1st August 1786.24 My dear Socrates! I am infinitely obliged to you for the trouble you have taken, but, not having said all that you have to say on this subject, I beg you to straightaway not keep me from the rest. According to what you say of the truth of history, I would have some small exceptions to make in relation to myself, for whom the measure of the true is much less in the consideration of the three points you mentioned25 than in its internal character, and it is an article upon which I believe I already spoke to you a while ago. When I read Herodotus26 for example, it matters to me little to know who this man was, what path his history took to reach me and finally that it contains some unlikely facts, some others which seem absurd, etc. I sense with as much evidence that he existed, that he wrote the history book in question and that he wrote the exact truth (that is, that he actually saw what he said he saw and actually heard tell of the facts of which he says he heard) as I sense the truth of your existence and that you wrote the letter containing the dissertation in question without, however, being able to demonstrate it to someone else if they didn’t believe me. I would willingly compare this way of sensing the truth of a fact, of a man, of a character, to the manner one senses whether a drawing, a painting is a copy or an original, and even better to the manner one senses whether a painting representing a head is the portrait of an individual who does or did exist, or whether it is an ideal. And this applies to many other things as well. There are still in man faculties which … in part because there are too few men who have studied themselves, from which results [the fact] that thousands of properties and modifications in [the individual] have not yet been able to receive their characteristic name in general language,27 and in part also because all the faculties which are in sublunary man28 are not equally developed among all men. I am convinced that there are many [faculties] which among thousands of men remain confused for them for the whole of their lives in a shadowy mass of obscure sensations and modifications without acquiring even the degree of force necessary to distinguish them from each other; [I am convinced], I say, I am persuaded that there does not exist one sole man on earth who does not possess within this spindle of obscure sensations and modifications (which I have oddly respected for some time and for good reason) treasures of new discoveries to make about man, even though our philosophical century believes it has discovered the top and bottom of the entire sack.29 And [this is] one of the reasons for which I respect the faculty of believing. It is the unique means of attaining those communicated facts which can lead to experiences by means of which this believing, in those who are capable of it, becomes knowing. I do not know whether you understand me. Say that I ask you, my dear S[ocrates], to try to dig yourself into the earth of your garden up to your chin and remain in that position for 24 hours. By this means you will make a discovery in yourself you would not otherwise have made. Since being in such an uncomfortable position for 24 hours is not agreeable, since (what is often infinitely worse for man) this experience seems to depart from the ordinary order of actions to expose [us] to some ridicule, you will make nothing of it if you do not possess vis-à-vis the self the faculty that Alexander had vis-à-vis his doctor (in which respect, to

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mention in passing, he appears more beautiful to me than when I consider him as the conqueror of Asia).30 But if you believe me, certainly in the name of the Socratic philosophy, you will pass over the inconvenience and the ridicule and you will make the attempt you promise so as to enrich yourself. My dear Socrates, faith as the necessary basis of all truth, on the one hand, and faith absolutely deplored or adored, on the other, work equally to discredit one of the most fruitful means to develop the soul. Goodbye dear Socrates. […] PS. I am not speaking to you of the three significations that you give to knowing, believing and doubting,31 because my letter would be too long, but, in passing, I will remark here that when I see the mountain through a mist I do not believe, but it appears to me that it is a mountain. Believing or faith seems to me to imply uniquely the assent that one gives to one fact in relation to someone else: an assent which differs too much from what I experience when it appears to me that I see a mountain to be able to comprehend it under the same term, for here, whether there is one or not, I always have a direct sensation which resembles that of a mountain. Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Friday 4th August 1786.32 My very dear Diotima […] Here is your [letter] from the 1st August, my dear Diotima, which I have taken the time to read sufficiently, not to understand it, but to fix your ideas in my mind – which must absolutely be done in these sorts of matters if one wishes to respond well. Moreover, I think that the subject in question must be treated in a more detailed way and then one can arrange it in all the order and with all the clarity of which it appears to me to be perfectly capable. I propose to try to do so during the first moments of leisure I have, and I pray you then to forget all that I will have been able to say before on this matter; not that I fear that I will contradict myself, but so that my arguments, arranged to form a whole, will make a better impression in the shape of a correct totality. I will make this prayer to you, although I know perfectly well that forgetting depends equally little on our will as believing. Why then demand it, you say; but in these sorts of things, one must demand much to obtain little. You say, my Diotima, that the measure of the true in history is much less in the three points than in another principle,33 about which I recall perfectly that you have spoken to me, but which very few people would be in a condition to understand. You sense easily that no one can be more in agreement with you on the reality of this principle than I am. This principle is the tact which animates sublime critiques and even something more.34 This principle consists in an infinitely rapid movement of the intellect, or rather in a faculty it has to be able to act without succession (which I pride myself on being able to prove along with you). But whether I am wrong or right, what I want to respond with respect to the two authors35 is that



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they confuse the effect of this principle. [They confuse] the degree of conviction which results from [this principle], which is often infinite, which is often equal to the most perfect knowing, whose unshakeable basis is a present, actual and intimate sensation,36 with believing which designates merely some fraction of conviction, often so small that one wouldn’t dare express it. Moreover, when one wants to express this fraction, or determine quite precisely the degree of conviction which results from some believing, one must employ the successive and ordinary work of the intellect, which makes manifest the prodigious distance between believing and your sacred principle, which is divine like great poetry.37 My dear Diotima, the original word that one translates by faith, croyance, derives directly from the verb to convince, to persuade, and therefore signifies originally conviction, persuasion;38 and so praying to God that he gives us conviction and illumination is as reasonable as it is natural. This is the meaning of Euripides’ sublime prayer,39 or perhaps that of his friend Socrates himself. The Lord’s Prayer is the language of a man who senses, who knows, not of a man who believes. Later, when time had passed [and] when politics had need of believing for its interests,40 the idea attached to this word was strangely altered. Not very translucent in itself, it was obscured once more. Strictly, it can pertain solely to the intellect, but we have made it pertain as much as possible to the imagination and to the moral organ, and this precarious mixture of the three faculties gave birth to a faith, something so composite and obscure that even the philosophers could no longer disentangle such a confusion. Now, believing is neither measured nor expressed by anything but the depth of the imprint that the object of belief has been able to make in the imagination. And you will easily conceive how much and in what ways this imprint can occur and does occur. Regarding the faculties that have until now been hidden in man and the manner of trying to develop them,41 you and I owe the world a dissertation on the above. I am perfectly convinced with you that the science of man, psychology, far from having acquired a certain perfection, is scarcely begun, and that we have made far more progress in electricity – a doctrine which is very probably totally outside the progress of the nature of man (to judge it at least on [man’s] faculties [that have been] known up to now) – than in this great science, the knowledge of which we necessarily should, nonetheless, attain. When we distinctly see the limits of our nature, we will begin to perfect it successfully. My very dear Diotima, you respect believing as a means of knowing. Agreed, but then believing becomes the same thing as true or false assertions in mathematics or algebra. Moreover, believing does not lead by itself to knowing what one believes by this believing, but to the knowing of something else. Towards the end of your letter, I find [the phrase]: faith as the necessary basis of all truth, etc.42 I agree, if believing becomes sensing and faith, conviction or intimate sensing. If believing is supposing, and [if] faith [is] hypothesis, I agree that much believing – that is, believing several things – can lead very closely to knowing another thing. My dear Diotima, I am somewhat angry about having to speak to you in such a way of these things without having enough time, and therefore in a language unintelligible perhaps even to you. One more thing. I do not believe that the three angles [of a triangle] = 180°, I know it. If you or I have a conviction by your great

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principle, this species of conviction is as much above intellectual knowing as knowing is above believing. If a martyr in his right mind said to me on the pyre: I believe, I would say to him: my friend, you speak badly, you sense the truth; if you want to call your conviction believing or knowing, great!, but, if you are in your right mind and you are true as I believe, your conviction is of an infinitely superior order. Goodbye, my very dear and unique friend, let God bless you with all that is dear to us in the world. Σωκράτης

PS. Might it not be possible that we are merely disputing over words and that at bottom we are perfectly in agreement? Not only is it possible, but I could prove that this must be the case, although I do not yet distinctly sense how. Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis 7th August [1786].43 I am very much of your opinion, my dear Socrates, when you suggest that, really, we are disputing merely over words, provided that you allow me [the fact] that it appears to me is not the same thing as I believe. What I cannot view with a tranquil eye, no more than if one took what is necessary from me, [is that] language (French, above all) is already too poor to want to impoverish it further by placing two dissimilar things under the same denomination. This is above all what I find myself saying once more about the book Die Resultate,44 which (if one swallows this pill) cannot fail to be right concerning the source or fulcrum of all truth, since, among other things, it places under the denomination of believing all evidence that comes from direct sensations. […] Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Tuesday 8th August 1786.45 My dear Diotima […] In one of your last [letters]46 you appear to want to make some reflections on knowing, believing and doubting. I beg you to tell me if you know in which language there are other determinate expressions with different degrees, or different nuances of conviction, in relation to a thing or a fact, than the following seven [propositions]: 1° sensing or knowing a fact = + ∞ the infinite 2° believing in a fact = x 3° doubting a fact in the positive = x – y 4° being ignorant of a fact = 0 or rather 5° doubting a fact in the negative = – (x + y) 6° believing a false fact = – 7° knowing a false fact = – ∞

=a = a / x = a / (x + y) = 0 = (Δ – a) = – a / (x + y) = – a / x = – a



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My dear Diotima, ask Mimi and Mitri whether these algebraic expressions seem good to them, and which of the two [sets] appear the best, or the most rational. For intellects trained like theirs, such exercises seem excellent to me. […] Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, 10th and 11th August 1786.47 My very dear Diotima […] Here is your [letter] from the 7th. We are very much agreed, my dear Diotima. There is no more important word which has been subject to so many different meanings in every language than that of appearing. In its principle it is confused with the sensing or the knowing of my last [letter].48 It appears to me strictly means it is for me. Appearing that is confused with the doubting in + of my last [letter], for example it appears that it is. Appearing but is confused with the doubting in – of my preceding [letter], for example he appears well, but however, etc. Appearing is confused with the false knowing of my preceding [letter]: it is confused with not being, for in the case of the proverb ου δοκεῖν αλλ᾿ειναι49 not appearing but being, we use it as the contrary of being. There would be no end if I wanted to indicate to you all the nuances with which we make this word appear which we nevertheless adopt in philosophy without undertaking to clean it up beforehand, no more than [with] the word believing, which has uniforms of all colours. The amiable author of Die Resultate has dressed it in many of them, as you have remarked;50 but I swear to you, my Diotima, that this is not out of clumsiness or thoughtlessness. Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis 11th August [1786].51 […] My dear Socrates, the characteristic of the nuances of [believing]52 is both completely well imagined and completely adequate it seems to me with the exception of sensing and knowing = + ∞ = 0.53 It seems to me that knowing is a genre, of which sensing is an entirely particular species, very different from knowing a priori and from knowing a posteriori,54 and that confusing these two things so as to divide them under the formula of ‘a by x believing’55 [still] participates in the obscure confusion which this [failure to discriminate] causes, instead of the different species of the value of believing (even if each species of knowing mentioned above had its [own] sign) thereby becoming more determinate. Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis 13th August 1786.56 […] Permit me, my dear Socrates, to believe that you were able only to leaf through the book of Die Resultate, or that you do not understand German that well (which

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would astonish me less than the contrary, seeing as [the book] does not have an easy style for someone who does not possess every perfection in the German language), if you really imagine that the author did not write in good faith.57 I must in truth tell you again to reread it a second time; I have clearly seen that I was wrong on my first slightly fleeting reading to attribute to it three different definitions of the word believing.58 What is still true is that it nowhere takes the word believing or glauben59 in its common acceptation, that is, adopting a fact on the word of another. [The author] has thoroughly understood the meaning of it, for he explains it in one passage in his book: being able to adopt the testimony of our internal and external senses, and, in another passage, it is experience and in another still the evidence of the senses. But these three explanations which appeared to me different at first sight because of the different expressions with which he adorned them, are, as you can see, one and the same thing – that is, adopting as true the testimony of our internal and external senses, or the unanimous testimony of the senses of others, when he speaks of a kind of conviction grounded on facts collected within the annals of the world. In a word, he has here taken the adoption of testimonies in an abstract and collective sense to oppose it to the a priori demonstration which Mendelssohn boasts (although, of course, we unfortunately no longer know) of having grounded his conviction on, and that of his disciples, concerning the existence of God – for which the author of Die Resultate says that there cannot be an a priori demonstration, because an a priori demonstration can have as its object solely relations, and because to demonstrate something on the basis of relations requires knowing the things that are in relation or their existence beforehand. The very existence of a thing cannot then be demonstrated a priori. Hence, the existence of God must be recognised by another route, and this route is the route of believing, of Glauben, in the extended sense in which he takes it. If you have the good will, my dear Socrates, to reread this book with this clarification, I believe that you will find it consistent from the first page to the last. […] Here, my dear Socrates, is a letter which would have been shorter if I had more time. You will not be much surprised to find obscurities in it, since it deals with things which – even with all possible leisure – are difficult to communicate clearly. I eagerly hope that you will follow my example with regard to length. When I write eight pages to you at present, in order to make things equal, you owe me the square [of this amount]. Therefore, I hope I will receive no less from you. Farewell, my dearest Socrates. Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, 14th and 15th August 1786.60 My very dear Diotima, I have just received your [letter] from the 11th. […] Regarding the two species of characteristics for the degrees of conviction, here are some remarks which could perhaps serve to clarify my ideas. The first [characteristic], where knowing is = ∞,61 is strictly a formula for the individual alone, for yourself, for myself. In ourselves, knowing is sensing, is an intimate, perfect conviction, that is, when I say: I know this, I perceive no idea, no sensation in



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my essence which is contradictory to this, or which does not conform to this, insofar as my ideas or my sensations can be relative to this. But again, this truth, the this, results from the relation that holds between the object of this truth and me, such as I am. Thus, this truth or the conviction I have of it strictly exists only relatively to me. If God changes me, this truth does not become a lie, but ceases, and is replaced with other truths which are born from my new relations. The second characteristic, where knowing is = A, is strictly a formula for other individuals. As I cannot have a perfect conviction in the other, I evaluate his as A, a determinate value, which he alone has the right and the power to reduce to a finite or infinite number. Regarding believing, and doubting, they are strictly and must be matters of the intellect, and the x’s and the y’s express only the different quantities of probability found between A or ∞ and zero, between knowing a fact and being ignorant of a fact, two fixed terms. N.B. There is in everything, for example in geometry, presentiments of truths that I afterwards obtain by combinations of axioms. This having a presentiment is something completely different from believing, and evidently pertains to a higher principle, which has been the object of my investigations for a long time. I have no need to ask Diotima whether she is in agreement with me on this. Regarding a priori knowing and a posteriori knowing, they merely indicate to me different means or different operations, which lead to knowing as such, which coincides with sensing, or is the same thing [as it]. As simplifying in all investigations seems the surest means for me to prevent or avoid errors, I have considered only knowing as such, which in all cases is sensing. […] Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, 17th and 18th August 1786.62 My very dear Diotima […] I have this instant received your benediction.63 You correctly judge that scarcely having time to read it, I do not have [the time] to reread it as many times as required to respond to you as I should. In general, I respond […] 2° that I will reread the book of Die Resultate with care; 3° that it appears impossible to me to suspect the book’s author,64 whoever he is, of bad faith, but he does seem to me to wish to attribute the same force, the same degree of conviction to the glauben which follows from the sensation of my own existence or that of the Divinity (believing which in this case becomes knowing insofar as we are capable of it) as [he does] to the glauben which could follow from the reading or handing down [tradition] of a purely natural history of the Peloponnesian War,65 for example – and, what is an even stronger [claim], as [he does] to the glauben which could follow from the reading or the handing down [tradition] of some revelation, in which the more bizarre things are often found! Three kinds of glauben which in my opinion differ as the sun, the candle and the night.66 If I, such as I am, made use of this same confusion, I could have done it only by skill and with the most excellent goal, for whoever tampers with a religion

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(whichever one it is) established and founded on morality and on order, commits a crime of lese-society, of human lese-majesty,67 which men ought to punish by death; as for the criminal, he will find his individual correction in the principles which God has placed in his essence for this purpose. Here are my ideas and, if I’m not mistaken, yours too, but I conceive that people who are otherwise well constituted do confuse these three species of glauben quite naturally, and [still] reach the same goal [as ourselves], which is the greatest good of man and men. Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, 21st/22nd August 1786.68 My very dear Diotima, my friend. If you know the art of rendering letters such as yours of the 13th much shorter, as you say, I beg you to teach me it, but by means of some kind of theory, please, and not by examples.69 This does not mean it is obscure. It is not, and I pride myself that there is no phrase in it that I do not understand or have understood badly. What I mean is that there is too much subject matter for eight pages, and what subject matter it is! To respond to it in the manner I wish to, I would really need the square [of its eight pages] as you say: it needs a detailed and complete inventory of everything I can think concerning this subject matter – which takes time. I well know that something like all of it is to be found dispersed across my small works,70 but it would cost me more trouble to draw it from them than to work afresh, and to form a simple whole that uniquely treats your concern, without mixing in anything else. I will do this since I imagine that it will give you great pleasure, but it costs me a lot of time. I adopt completely the acceptation that the author gives to believing, in accordance with your commentary, which seems to me spot on. If we give to the word believing a less rich acceptation, believing is for me only a calculation of probability: an object of arithmetic which can have nothing in common with those branches of philosophy which concern my essence or my happiness; or rather, believing is a vague thing, very useful in society and in the affairs of the world, but which would be a ridiculous tool in the great philosophy which concerns God, eternity, infinity, etc. When believing is taken as a synonym for supposing, which is a species of believing, it is, as you know, an instrument from which one often draws the greatest part of all sciences. In parenthesis, I must say to you here, my dear Diotima, that, on rereading many of your letters, I have noted that you have really extraordinary and really interesting ideas on the subject of history and its value, and that you have a way of judging it which until now has not seemed to me different from that tact of the great critics which is at the same time the sacred source of the sublime and the beautiful. You would give me more than pleasure if you wanted one day to communicate to me your ideas on this subject separately and without adulterating them – a subject that is interesting and so delicate that many great men have felt repugnance at treating it without daring to tell us of it. I confess that this subject has often tormented me in a strange way, and I have only managed to fully shelter myself from its frequent



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attacks after having convinced myself that man (not man as a member of artificial society), that man basically has no need of example. My dear Diotima, until now I could not agree with the author71 of Die Resultate when he says that a priori demonstration of the existence of a thing is impossible; and much less still for the reason that this excellent man gives. It is true that a demonstration turns on relations, but not on relations with the unknown thing. The relations employed in the demonstration, or rather in the operation of enquiry, end in the conclusion which leads to the existence of the unknown thing. It occurs after I find the relations of the thing, located in all the known [relations] I’ve employed. I must take my time here; but suppose that I did not know that there was a sun, but that the movements of planets and the relations between them were known to me with the physical laws of the world; it seems to me that I would easily attain proof of the existence of this unknown sun, in its quality as mass, and in its matter of being in relation to these planets insofar as I know them. In pure geometry, every demonstration is of this kind: it searches and finds an unknown truth, for it is indifferent to whether I have foreseen or divined this truth by tact or by chance, or neither. I will not give any geometric examples, since most of them would not be applicable, leading only to knowledge of relations; yet there are some which would be applicable. But let’s take back up, my Diotima, [the case] in which I do not know the sun, and that by tact or by chance I suppose that there is a sun. Because I then search for what must be the effects of this sun on my planets and because I find out that these effects are precisely phenomena that I see, can I not conclude to the true existence of this sun? And suppose that this proof was not exactly of the same worth than the first (which it nevertheless is at bottom), I can easily reduce it to the first by starting from the planets to arrive at the sun. How many great truths are due to this latter operation! Do you believe that a demonstration of the existence of God, even by this latter method, would be impossible? It would be infinitely less so than [the demonstration] of the sun by the same method, since the supposition of the existence of a god which I sense with thousands of other men is a little less fragile than that of the sun. Let’s once more take our sun, which is now true, for a supposed sun. From where comes the fact that its calculated effects on the planets conform so closely to the phenomena? It is that I have supposed it to be powerful, stable, acting on everything that surrounds it. If I had attributed my limbs, my caprices, my instability to it, no phenomena would have corresponded to my theory. My Diotima! Let a man suppose a God, such as he senses him in his sacred moments of fervour, when, without suffering, his tears fall, when all of his system is shaken, when the intellect and the imagination fall silent, when his ears are closed to the words of demonstration, of doubt or of believing, when he feels himself being in all the force of the term. I assure myself that he will see the phenomena conform to his theory and he will no longer doubt the reality of the most powerful of his organs. But let’s return for one more moment to your gracious commentary in which you attribute to the author his only orthodox opinion, in my view, on glauben, by determining it to be fundamentally not capable of a more or a less. Do you really

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believe, after mature examination, that this author gives the same degree of conviction to that glauben which follows from perceiving light, from sensing his existence [and] from [sensing] the divinity, etc., as [he does] to glauben which follows the acquisition of some dogma that is incomprehensible in itself and that he has received from tradition through thirty fathers and thirty sets of eyes which he knows little and often still too much? If he told me [this dogma], I esteem him such that I would not hesitate for an instant to believe it, since it appears to me completely incomprehensible but not at all absurd; yet I would say to him: my friend, if I can assume in you the same composition of faculties, of intellect, of imagination, etc., that I sense in myself, I assure you that you do not owe your conviction to these traditions, but to a particular act of the divinity. When an honest man tells me: I believe, I am convinced, I keep my mouth shut and if I wanted to refute him by showing off the nature of my intellect, of my moral [organ], of my faculties, I would appear mad to him and rightly so, for if it pleased God tomorrow to place me under the same operation for my own happiness, I would believe as much as anyone else and would not give it up for any of our saints or martyrs. In the meantime, I see no reason to be worried on this issue. My axiom is and will always be that religion derives from the relation of the individual to God and that the modification of this religion depends on the manner by which each individual senses his relation. God can change this relation, but solely by means of changing me. The experience of so many centuries proves this truth, for social, political, etc., interests have indeed tried, for the good of artificial society, to make collective religions, so to speak, but despite this, there are as many opinions on this side as men, and there are fewer words in our languages than subdivisions of religious sects. You sense the truth of what I am saying, my Diotima, for you yourself know little of -isms. There are so many theologians, even learned people, who would be embarrassed to express their own -ism without employing its proper name. When it comes to a public, collective, wise, respectful, etc., cult, with ceremony, I approve of it very strongly for a quantity of reasons.72 But that an individual wants to judge the relation that another senses with God as common to all beings which exist, this I find as useless as it is unjust and absurd. You will perhaps say: but – with your universal tolerance – why do you want to put to death atheists and enemies of religion? I would put to death any that there were (which I doubt73) for the same reason I would kill Caligula’s horse to prevent it from becoming consul,74 for I cannot stomach being treated on the same level as beasts.75 Finally, my Diotima, all that I think on these subjects is to be found quite exactly in Man and his Relations, Aristaeus and Alexis.76 I profoundly respect all that is religion and could deny no revelation. […]

Prelude to the Letter on Atheism

The Hague, 15th June 1787.1 My very dear Diotima, my friend, I have just received your [letter] from the 11th. […] You have requested from me a philosophical definition of atheism.2 [Atheism] is the opinion that the physical or non-physical universe resembles a republic; [the opinion] that each of its parts exists by itself, by its own nature; [the opinion] that each contains in itself that luminous nisus of our Diderot, that is to say, a principle of movement without direction;3 [the opinion] that everything exists in a great sack which chance shakes by chance. Where is this chance to be found? You ask. But in the sack. And where is the sack? But everything is in the sack, I tell you. My Diotima, we must believe people when they are honest and speak reasonably. Do you admit that this system surpasses all others 1° by its simplicity, which requires solely belief in it; and 2° since it perfectly explains every event in the universe without exception and with an ease worthy of an enlightened century such as ours; and even then, I am not yet taking into account that it speaks at everyone’s level, since even the most stunted child is at least able to believe. I recommend Alexis to your wisdom.4 Goodbye, my dear Diotima, let the one God enlighten us and bless us with all that is dear to us. Σωκρατης

Letter on Atheism from Diocles to Diotima

The Hague, Friday 7th September 1787.1 My dear Diotima, my friend, All that we know from the history of man and men teaches us that atheism occurs much later than worship or religion and that it was thus born from reflection. By the nature of his composition, by an additional or, at least, much more perfect organ within him than in any other kind of species of agent we know, man has a vague sensation of the Divinity, of a dependence on something more perfect [and] of an attraction towards this being. I admit that remorse for some hero, sage, [or] benefactor who has just quit this life can bring me to hope, and therefore imagine, that he is still alive; but, at most, this leads only to Fingal’s blessed ancestors.2 I admit that fear makes me implore the help of everything that surrounds me; but this only leads to those bushes of which a Demosthenes requested asylum.3 The sensation of a Divinity, of a Higher Being, [who is] different from man or animal, certainly manifests itself either in conscience when it repents, does justice, and forgives, or by the vigour of reciprocal attraction. It is true that this sensation is more or less vivid or obscure according to the perfection or the richness of each individual.



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The Hague, Friday 7th September 1787.8 My dear Diotima! All that we know from the history of man and men teaches us that atheism occurs much later than worship or religion and that it was thus born from reflection, which already presupposes a certain amount of light. It is man’s very nature that shows him the way to a God, to worship, or to some religion. I admit that remorse for some hero, sage, [or] benefactor who has just quit this life can bring me to hope, and therefore imagine, that he is still alive; but, at most, this leads only to Fingal’s blessed ancestors or to those Lares of the ancient Persians and Etruscans.9 I admit that fear [that is] either natural to man owing to the weakness of his physical weapons, or accidental to man as a result of having lost some of his faculties,10 makes me implore the help of everything that surrounds me; but this only leads to those bushes of which a Demosthenes requested asylum. But the magnificence of the spectacle of the universe, the imposing aspect of the sun,11 of a starry sky, [or] of a rainbow; the infinite varieties of nature, acting all at once, through the organs, on the immense vacuum of the imagination, fill it completely. And the first thing to result from this is merely a vague and indeterminate perception – one which is violent, [but] lacking any idea. Time untangles this chaos. Objects acquire contours, become isolated, become separate, and ideas of number and magnitude begin to be manifest. That vague and indeterminate perception, that universal trembling of the soul, is transformed into stupid astonishment; the next moment, man heaves a sigh of admiration, and, without fully understanding himself, already feels in it that he desires and adores. This is the first moment when the moral organ blossoms.12 As soon as he begins to distinguish objects, their quantity is too vast, so his attention fixes on the one that appears to him the brightest, the most beautiful, the largest; and this object quite naturally becomes to his eyes something superlative in comparison to all the rest. It does not seem at all absurd to me that, from then on, this inclination towards what most affects [us] produces, in some animals as well as in men, actions which appear to us to denote worship; just as every vehement affection produces in all animals actions or analogous expressions that indicate joy, sadness, despair, and from which we have drawn the first elements of language.

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Man proliferated his signs, enriched and regulated his imagination, and exercised his intellect to transform this vague sensation into a distinct idea. He gave this thing which he called God a certain figure, a certain contour, a certain determination; and this God became an object that purely his imagination and intellect could treat. As his moral [organ] increasingly developed and became practised owing to the continual increase in the number of relations between men, he gave customs to this God; and the result of these two operations was that he had created a God in his own image – and this soon had to produce a plurality of gods.4 Fear, either natural to man owing to the weakness of his physical weapons, or accidental to man having lost some faculties, made him see his God, his Protector, his Saviour in everything different from himself, as we have seen, and he prostrated himself before a star, an animal, a stone – and this is the source of most of the absurd cults. At the birth of philosophy and of reflection – that is, when man had acquired enough ideas and signs to contemplate, compare, compose and reflect – the first objects which presented themselves to his intellect all pertained to the physical. Everything was determinate, everything had contour, and finding it much easier to handle things [that were] as precise and as analogous to his crudest organs, he neglected internal sensations so as to occupy himself with nothing anymore except ideas. Man, or rather every intelligent being, has an extremely curious property that merits analysis. It is that, from the first moments of his activity, he runs after causes [in one of two ways]. Either, since, at any moment, he senses within himself the cause that his velleity determines and acts on, he seeks the self, the agent, what is homogeneous to him in all that he sees [outside him]. Or his inclination towards the beautiful, the rich, the simple, and the perfect leads him to this link between cause and effect which makes one whole. So, man resolved to seek the cause of the entire universe, and finally came to the general idea of matter, which his external organs distinctly indicated to him. From this, it is only one natural and necessary step to atoms. The atom – small, but determinate and palpable – is the ultimatum of all visible and tangible essence.



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I will not further pursue this natural and simple progress of man towards the obscure knowledge of something above him upon which he feels dependent. It is enough for us to have seen with evidence, if I am not mistaken, that no germ of atheism can be born in the cradle of humanity. I am not speaking of the moral organ, nor of the sensations which derive from it in relation to knowledge of the Divinity; for this organ differs so prodigiously in different individuals, and has been so little analysed until now, that it is still very far from being universally adopted.13 Affected by this vague and crude sensation of a power above his own, man proliferated his signs, enriched and regulated his imagination, and exercised his intellect, so as to turn this power to good account [and] try to transform this vague sensation into a distinct idea. He gave this thing which he called God a certain figure, a certain contour, a certain determination; and this God became an object to which his imagination and intellect could attach themselves.14 As his moral [organ] increasingly developed and became practised owing to the continual increase in the number of relations between men, he gave customs to this God; and the result of these two operations was that he had created a God in his own image – and this soon had to produce a plurality of Gods.

At the birth of philosophy and of reflection – that is, when man had acquired enough ideas and signs to contemplate, compare, compose and reflect – the first objects which presented themselves to his intellect all pertained to the physical. Everything was determinate, everything had contour, and finding it much easier to handle things [that were] as precise and as analogous to his crudest organs, he neglected internal sensations so as to occupy himself with nothing anymore except ideas. Man, or rather every intelligent being, has an extremely curious property that merits analysis. It is that, from the first moments of his activity, he runs after causes [in one of three ways]. Either, since, at any moment, he senses within himself the cause that his velleity determines and acts on, he seeks the self, the agent, what is homogeneous to him in all that he sees [outside him]. Or his inclination towards the beautiful, the rich, the simple and the perfect leads him to this link between cause and effect which makes one whole. Or, finally, he flatters himself that, by ascending towards the cause, he will find something to illuminate his descent towards the future which calls out to him. So, man resolved to seek the cause of the entire universe. But since (in order to be even very imperfectly expressed) this cause required not only the whole mass of signs of our physical ideas but also all those that might be used to articulate the infinity of our sensations, it is evident

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Very early on, the mind granted [matter] some principle of intrinsic movement pertaining to its nature, an occult quality, which is only a word; in truth, [man] did not find the cause he had sought, but rested content to see with his eyes, so to speak, the principle, the development, and the eternity of the universe. The Divinity became superfluous, and the fabricated Gods were fantastic and ridiculous beings. The universe is and is such because it is and it is such. This opinion was not absurd, and suppose that, by a hundred more organs, man had seen the Universe in a hundred more, different, equally determinate, and distinct ways, it would have been the same. Here is simple and complete atheism. It is true that philosophers might have indeed reasoned as follows. Every atom is an active being, or it is not. If it is, then there are as many beings or Gods as there are atoms which collide with and impact on each other endlessly and incessantly. If [the atom] is not [an active being], it must be the case that a pile of inert stones could make a sensitive, thinking, willing and active being. But it is hard to say which of these two [options] is the most ridiculous. However, some people noticed a type of regularity in the sequence of phenomena, until Socrates, that prodigious being, appeared and he resolved to be the first to truly enter into himself.5 He found there a world quite differently abundant from that which his physical organs conveyed to him, through which one merely sees what is produced passively; whereas in the other [internal world], man senses a little what it is to produce. He perceived laws in their regularity; and by this means his intellect raised itself to the Supreme Lawgiver, who simultaneously creates both things and their laws, and of whom the physical world allows us only a glimpse.

Finally, true knowledge of the Divinity, insofar as man is capable of it here [below], as well as the only reasonable form of worship [culte], resided solely in the inner self of those men who, following Socrates’ example, noted the finitude of the physical world and the indefiniteness of the other [world], to which they sensed that they pertained by essence. Among the rest of men, politics had taken possession of all kinds of revelations, religions and cults; and ultimately forced them to mix in some philosophy, so as to give them a more or less permanent authority. This resulted in those bizarre mixtures visible at all times – mixtures which often make the Divinity into a monster so absurd that it destroys itself, and this gave birth to a second atheism based on a very natural incredulity.



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that man, in this state of immaturity, had to be content with knowing the structure of the universe [alone]. To achieve knowledge of this structure, he formed the general idea of matter, which his external organs distinctly indicated to him. From this it is only one natural and necessary step to atoms. The atom – small, but determinate and palpable – is the ultimatum of all visible and tangible essence. All atoms together compose the universe.15 The only thing which the perfect solution to the problem lacked was easily added by the mind by granting to matter some principle of intrinsic movement pertaining to its nature; and by means of this occult quality, he believed he could discover with his own eyes, so to speak, the principle,16 the development and the eternity of the universe; and the wisemen of that time adopted, as a complete solution, [the idea] that the universe is and that it is such because it is and it is such. Here is simple and complete atheism.17 The Divinity became superfluous, and the fabricated Gods, fantastic and ridiculous beings, for a time retained their authority among the people only in the way that monarchs and despots do – that is, by means of the ministers who surround them. However, some people noticed a type of regularity in the sequence of phenomena. They perceived an internal principle which could modify matter, and which was called soul. And from this, it was only one step to the infinite probability of a Modifier of the universe. At last Socrates, that prodigious being, appeared and he resolved to be the first to truly enter into himself. He found there a world quite differently abundant from that which his physical organs conveyed to him, through which one merely sees what is produced passively; whereas in the other [internal world], man senses a little what it is to produce. He perceived laws in the regularity of nature;18 and by this means his intellect raised itself to the Supreme Lawgiver, who simultaneously creates both things and their laws, and of whom the physical world allows us only a glimpse, without being able to give us a distinct idea. Finally, true knowledge of the Divinity, insofar as man is capable of it in this category, as well as the only reasonable form of worship [culte], resided solely in the inner self of those men who, following Socrates’ example, noted the finitude of the physical world and the indefiniteness19 of the other [world], to which they sensed that they pertained by essence. Among the rest of men, politics which is always in the vanguard, and which tends constantly towards the goal it itself proposes20 – a goal which modifies gods, oracles, virtues, vices, wisdom and folly according to its views – had taken possession of all kinds of religion and cult; and ultimately forced them to mix in some philosophy, so as to give them a more or less permanent authority. This resulted in those bizarre mixtures visible at all times – mixtures which often make the Divinity into a monster so absurd that it destroys itself, and this gave birth to a second atheism based on a very natural incredulity. The state of philosophy and religion was21 so pitiful in the most recent barbarous centuries, and the infinite abuses which stupidity had for so long committed with the admirable ideas of Plato and

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Finally, great, if inactive minds gathered that precious germ of geometry which the profound ancients had been able to abstract from the physical world. They cultivated this germ with care and brought forth from it an intellectual world almost as rich in appearance as the world of genuine feeling and morality which Socrates had discovered. Plato had thought of applying the end of geometry, which he possessed, to morality and had promised from it the greatest benefits. (I certainly will not enter here into the profound investigation how and to what degree this great exalted man was able to succeed at this.) But the Moderns – perhaps more correct on this issue – applied their prodigiously enriched geometry to the physics from which it had emerged. It ennobled this physics by multiplying its contours and making them sharper. It discovered and proved laws in matter, [and] the succession of material phenomena demonstrated their truth. The proud intellect believed it could see God and the All in that Idol which it had embellished and perfected with so much care. Inert matter rose once more to its throne and reigned with more brilliance than ever. Materialists, fibretheorists,6 etc. came into being, and the third Atheism, born out of the vanity of the triumphant intellect, raised its haughty head.7



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Aristotle had reached such a pitch, that it would have been absurd to wish to untangle this appalling chaos, and restore order.22 Descartes was one of those most keenly struck by [this truth]. He judged that, before anything else, it was necessary to destroy this monstrous despotic philosophy: an audacious project that he nevertheless carried out with much dexterity and skill. He did the only thing he could. He created a new philosophy, which at bottom was not much better; but he rendered it so perfectly analogous to the tone of his century, which was [a tone] of the mind,23 that he pleased everyone and won them over by propagating an imagination which was as lively as it was disordered. [As a result] everyone took pride in being able to philosophise as they wished, and [so] the monster was struck down. But this ardent imagination – so newly liberated from its chains, still untamed and unbridled – found nothing [to be] obscure or impossible. The same effort which had previously been able to compose a universe out of matter could now make a God from it.24 And this gave birth to that equivocal and protean atheism, which, lending itself to anything, causes us to see either a chaos or a God arbitrarily in the very same figure.25 In the meantime, great, if inactive minds gathered that precious germ of geometry which the profound ancients had been able to abstract from the physical world. They cultivated this germ with care and brought forth from it an intellectual world almost as rich in appearance as the world of genuine feeling and morality which Socrates had discovered. However, everything that was gained by such hard labour can be boiled down to two, very important things: the first, that the intellect had been given the best possible practice; the second, that the truth had become so familiar that people sought it everywhere. Yet, at bottom, this ornate geometry was merely a spectre without body, or rather it was just a simple tool. We can compare it to the lyre of Orpheus, which attracted animals and plants only [when] accompanied by the sublime tones of its master. Finally, great geniuses seized hold of geometry. The Keplers, the Newtons, the Huygens restored it once more to physics, from which it had departed and to which it communicated all the beauty that it had acquired while [physics] remained forgotten.26 [Geometry] also gave [physics] sharper contours; dressed it in the livery of truth; uncovered and demonstrated its laws in matter, for the succession of [material] phenomena constituted reality. Up until that point, man had something to glorify his labours. He had come to understand what he saw, what he touched. He had illuminated the faces that the universe unfolds to his external senses. He had created a mechanism which modifies matter for his needs, and he had, in a certain way, subjected physics to his dominion. He was still ignorant as a limited being, but he knew as a wise being [as long as] he never abandoned this divine geometry.

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This is the condition to which the Newtons brought our knowledge in physics. Everything in it was true. [The Newtonians] penetrated the works of God up to a certain point. They demonstrated, by [their] visible and palpable effects, the laws and reality of motion, of attraction, of gravity, and of so many other forces, or different modifications of the same force which are manifest in nature. And these great men were never ashamed to profess ignorance of causes. What mattered to them was that this prodigious growth of their real science, as well as of their real ignorance, had led them to see and adore the great engine more intimately. If, during this period, men had undertaken similar efforts in the metaphysical world with similar success, the whole quantity of illumination, and, I dare say, of happiness of which man is capable on earth would have become visible.27 Of course, Newton had been astonished at his discoveries, but his great sense had glimpsed their limits. His successors were astonished and proud to have learned so much, but jealous of his glory, they wanted to know everything of which this great man had professed ignorance. They saw the prodigious effects [Newton’s] sublime mechanics had on the matter that was to hand. And then they made the following argument. If the causes of attraction, of gravity, of motion, of thought and of all that belongs to the so-called metaphysical world were matter, even if a much finer and more intricate [matter] than what we see with our imperfect eyes, then it must be possible to apply our mechanics to this intricate matter – such that this matter should produce the visible effects of gravity, of attraction, of thought, etc. And, if our imagination is fortunate enough28 to make out the mechanisms or modifications which must necessarily produce the same effects, then it is evident that everything we see in nature is matter, modified in a certain way – and this is all the more [true] since we cannot see anything, touch anything, smell anything that is not matter. Such are the outpourings of our magnificent imaginations, just as [there were] in Descartes’s time; [however] with this difference – in our days [these imaginations] are supplied with ideas very differently, in the wake of the most fertile century for ideas of all kinds that there ever was. And it can readily be believed that Descartes, who was compelled to compose his bizarre philosophy29 to achieve his goal, would have felt afraid to set in motion imaginations that are as robust as ours. Perhaps never have men expended so much wit30 completing a system and giving it the capacity to grow more and more than the materialists and the fibre-theorists have by working on the flimsy structure of their globules, their conoids, their fibres, their hooks, their eyelets, their affluent and effluent matter – all of which link physics, metaphysics and everything else, and give the universe as a whole a charming homogeneity, the simplicity of which renders any

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The first atheism, born out of a yet unenlightened reason, was soon destroyed by serious contemplation of a moral world. The second, which is properly just a frequently reasonable [form of] incredulity and which easily degenerates into indifference, can only be cured in the bosom of true philosophy. But when it comes to the last [atheism], this gigantic son of our mad pride, it will never be cured until man has familiarised himself with this incontestable truth – that the richness of what he calls matter in any category is only analogous to the small number of his current organs, and that this matter, in which his imagination believes it can see the Whole, is only an infinitely small [part] of the Universe.

You will mock me, my dear Diotima, for taking it upon myself to treat in six pages a subject which would require a few hundred to be treated well, but this is something I have come to foresee only in hindsight. […] Goodbye, my dearest Diotima, my friend. May the sole God bless us along with all who are dear to us.



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principle other than autonomous matter useless and redundant. One can judge the invincible attractions of this system by way of a glance at the philosopher-theologians, who, however fervent they may otherwise be in their orthodoxy, nevertheless often quite carelessly risk the authority of their current defence of the existence of the God they serve, so as to conserve their piquant reputation for also knowing how to make, or rather to compose, a small universe. This is the third atheism, born from the vanity of the triumphant intellect. As you can see, it is fundamentally the same as the first, having matter likewise as its sole basis. But there is a prodigious difference between [on the one hand] a crude matter, no law or property of which is yet distinguished with any exactitude, and which forms but a mass in the imagination, and [on the other hand] a matter that has been worked on for so many centuries by all of men’s industry, which tore it to pieces so as to perfect it in its details, which wrested the idea of a contour from it so as to construct a geometry and [wrested] the idea of number [from it] so as to construct an arithmetic, and which, joining everything back together, turned it into a perfect object for contemplation. The first atheism, born out of a yet unenlightened reason, was soon destroyed by serious contemplation of a moral world. The second, which is properly just a frequently reasonable [form of] incredulity and which easily degenerates into indifference, can only be cured in the bosom of true philosophy. But when it comes to the last [atheism], this gigantic son of our mad pride, it will never be cured until man has familiarised himself with this incontestable truth – that matter is but a word which designates all real essences as they relate to our current organs; that matter cannot have more attributes than we have organs; and that if it is given to man’s nature to acquire more organs in his future existence, or if other organs thus develop, [then] matter (if we want to keep hold of this word as a sign for essences as known) will increase its attributes proportionately.31 You will mock me, my dear Diotima, for taking it upon myself to treat in so few pages a subject which would require a few hundred to be treated well. I fear that our friend Jacobi will form the same judgement, but this is something I have come to foresee only in hindsight. Goodbye, my dearest Diotima, my friend. May the sole God bless us with all that is dear to us. Diocles32

Further Reflections on Spinoza and the Spinozism Controversy1

Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Tuesday 24th June 1783.2 My dear Diotima […] I’m burning with desire to see once more that most excellent Jacobi, who seemed to me one of the kindest and wisest men I’ve ever met, although he doesn’t seem happy to me. Tell me, when it suits you, whether he at all welcomed our remonstrances for geometry,3 the only thing missing from this elevated soul. […] Hemsterhuis to Jacobi The Hague, Monday 26th April 1784.4 Sir, If I were dealing with someone who had less profound knowledge of man and a less precise appreciation of the indulgence which the humanity around you demands and deserves, I certainly would not have the effrontery to write to you. But as I can gauge my indiscretion by the admiration I have for the excellence of your character, it is boundless. I take the liberty of presenting to you Mr Adrian Gilles Camper, bailiff of Eindhoven, and son of Mr Camper, famous for his excellent works of anatomy, physiology, etc., and his great conduct in the States of his province during our troubles.5 […] If Mr [Adrian] Camper had left from here, I would have charged him with a book you have desired, namely the Principles of Pantosophy by Mr de Kuffler,6 a disciple and admirer of Spinoza. I will take care to send it to you as soon as possible and, if possible, accompanied by a portrait of Spinoza copied from an original design. I cannot think of this illustrious man without lamenting that he did not live thirty years later.7 He would have seen with his own eyes, by the very progress of physics, that the direct application of geometry can be undertaken with physics alone, and so, that he had confused the geometers’ formulaic method with the geometric spirit, which, applied to metaphysics, would have led him to produce things more worthy of his beautiful genius. […]8



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Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, 5th July 1784.9 My very dear Diotima […] What you tell me about Jacobi completely surprised me and never in my life would I have guessed that his sorrow derives from seeking truths in vain.10 If our current [political] circumstances11 allow me to get away from here, I will certainly go to Dusseldorf12 to talk to him. I pity from the bottom of my heart any man who suffers from seeking some truth without finding it, and I am astonished that [these men] do not understand that a truth which they seek in vain is not a truth for them in their present situation, and, in particular, that a truth they fail to know after having sought it with tranquillity can in no possible way have any relation whatsoever to their present and essential happiness. Suppose the absurd, and that knowledge of the planets of Sirius is essential to my happiness at this moment I am speaking to you, how could I persuade myself that the Author of all things, and so of me, hides from me a truth which would make me happier in that very moment I was capable of that happiness? I conclude from this that none of the truths I cannot find or I do not find when seeking [them] can essentially be in my interests at the moment I am seeking them in vain; and that there are only a few truths of those I have found after looking, or of those which God has wanted in some way to place an intimate conviction in the depths of my soul, that can matter essentially to me. [Jacobi’s] sorrow, my dear Diotima, is once again the bitter fruit of having neglected geometry in his youth, or of having lacked that strong dose of willpower [vouloir] which alone is able to overcome in advanced age the awful disgust [felt] at the first elements of geometry; for, it must be admitted, [geometry] looks like a man born with a grim expression.13 Among the ancients and even until the century of Newton, the necessity of learning mathematics was infinitely less than [it is] today. Not Socrates, nor Plato, nor Aristotle, nor Grotius,14 nor Bacon15 really had any need for mathematics, except insofar as they might have wanted to be geometers, for beautiful geniuses carry from birth a fairly large quantity of that native geometry to perfectly exploit the great philosophy – and this is what Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and even Locke16 sufficiently prove to us. But it does not follow from this that our own beautiful geniuses can equally do without geometry. As soon as Newton appeared, this science was applied in the most felicitous way to all sensible objects, and, although this application has even been pushed into metaphysics and the immaterial with incomparably less felicity, it was nevertheless believed to be the case that it brought a precision to these sciences which they did not have before – but this is perhaps false. However, it at least resulted from this that the beautiful ancient language of great philosophy was entirely lost and replaced by this new geometric language, so much so that I challenge you to write a work on your psychology that would be genuinely intelligible to people who have no tincture of mathematics. I know this truth a little from experience, and when a man who is absolute destitute of geometry reads some recent work of philosophy in general which has nothing to do with this science, I guarantee you that he does not understand it; for, could you believe that this man has clear and precise ideas of the words Relation, Relationship, Proportion, Finite,

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Infinite, Indefinite, and a thousand others besides? I don’t believe it, but, before I decide on the above, I am asking it of you, particularly since you can still recall the times when you were already reading before you had any idea of our exact sciences. I would be very charmed, my dear Diotima, to know your thoughts on this, of which I am in need. To return to our dear Jacobi, I do not doubt for a moment that he knows how to write excellent works of philosophy in which geometry is not a factor, but I cannot conceive of him being able to understand well works of philosophy composed by today’s mathematicians. But could we not yet convince him of the need to learn this modern geometric language, not only to understand contemporary authors well, but to draw from it a multitude of energetic signs which are to be used both to express ideas, not with as much nobility [as his existing style] but with more precision, and also to seek the truth perhaps a little more fruitfully, and more certainly? I will see if I can send you a readable letter for this excellent man, but for that, my head must be incomparably better disposed than it is at present. […] Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Friday 13th August 1784.17 My dear Diotima, my friend. […] Yesterday evening I received a 28-page letter from the excellent Jacobi,18 the receipt of which I must, at least, acknowledge to him today. It is very interesting and will give me a lot of work. If you know nothing of it, I’ll have it copied by Schultz19 and send it to you; for it is absolutely necessary that you know what it is about. I hope it is not in vain that I trust in your help in case of need, and this is such a case. With the best grace in the world, our philosophy is subjected [in this letter] to the most succulent gusts of hot air – not those that warm the skin a little, but [those] that scorch it. He who sends forth [these gusts] bears the dreadful name of the illustrious Spinoza,20 whose gigantic forces I have always recognised and revered, and our philosophy, my dear Diotima, might have to seriously consider the quickest and least shameful retreat, if the strength of our arms did not leave us a little hope. […] Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Tuesday 15th February 1785.21 My very dear Diotima. […] In the parcel you will find the writing of the excellent Jacobi, with a book and the true portrait of Spinoza for him.22 I swear to you that, during the first days of leisure I have, I will try to satisfy him on the subject of Spinoza,23 but please tell me how we are on that issue of geometry, for you sense that I must know that. I can’t imagine that men of our day don’t make this simple reflection. That one can bet infinity × [multiplied] by infinity against 1, that a man born before the establishment of true physics24 cannot, by impossibility, possess a system of general



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philosophy that is true. I am not speaking of Spinoza alone, but of Aristotle, the vastest intellect that men have seen. In the latter case, however, we see amidst the strangest nonsense he utters about the Universe that, with two or three of our physical truths, he might have thought like us. So powerful was this man. Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Monday 19th December 1785.25 My very dear Diotima, […] Yesterday, I read our dear Jacobi’s book in its entirety for the first time with the requisite attention.26 And it’s only from this moment that I have got to know him. I love him more. He is an excellent soul; he is a genius. His imagination is incomparably better furnished than I had believed, but, when he was young, his intellect was not trained in the exact sciences. It is a fault without remedy, unless one was born, like you and a very few others, with the nerves in the intellect as they must be for these sciences. If Newton had read Euclid only when he turned 60 years old, he would [still] have been what he was. Why didn’t Locke have this tone?27 This is a curious problem that could be solved. Finally, I have sensed the truth of all that you told me about our friend, including the source and nature of his hypochondria. His dialogue addressed to me28 seems to me the worst part of his book. I will answer him without fail but let us first speak about our ongoing discussions.29 I find that Jacobi’s conduct in all this is good and wise, and I don’t even think that Lessing’s shade could justly complain.30 Farewell, my very dear Diotima, my friend, may God bless you along with all who are dear to you. Σωκρατης

Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Friday 6th January 1786.31 […] My dear Diotima, the cold is so excessive that you must not expect a long letter, not even a [proper] letter from me today. Two [further] ills are joined to this ill to render them almost unbearable – the first is that I do not have a stove, the second that I have begun to reread32 Spinoza’s Ethica, which is certainly not warming and has given me, I believe, the headache that torments me. I wish you could read this strange book so as to know a mind strange enough to have been spoiled by geometry. I still believe, as I’ve always believed, that the Orthodox33 do this man the greatest injustice by taking him for an impostor, for a rogue who wanted to make others believe things he considered false.34 This is impossible, and I confess that, if I had spent so many years building myself such a system on such scaffolding, I would be persuaded for life. The singularity of the [Ethics] consists in the fact that it is so dressed up that those who do not understand it at all admire the apparent majesty of this work

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which imposes [itself] on them, and they doubt [themselves]; those who half understand it, and who make up the greatest number, believe for the most part in the gravity of its form; and those for whom the book contains nothing but its form so strangely abused by its author despise it, since good minds have no need for it to be refuted; or [they] are annoyed [by the fact] that it would take an infinite time to refute it – completely uselessly perhaps in the eyes of those who consider every system almost equally good. Spinoza possessed an admirably robust and nervous intellect for labouring, but he lacked the least shadow of tact. A tact of the least extraordinary [kind] would have been enough for him to sense the difference in tone between his axioms and Euclid’s axioms. Farewell my very dear Diotima, my friend, may God bless you along with yours. I haven’t yet heard from you. Σωκρατης

Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Tuesday 11th April 1786.35 My very dear Diotima, […] I shall be delighted to receive polemical works concerning Lessing.36 I fear that this affair will cause pain and even harm to our dear Jacobi, [who is] subject to a very overwhelming hypochondria.37 If, after having read these pieces, I found that I could be of use to him in this matter, I would doubtless do something, but I will certainly do nothing without your advice. I am very glad that Jacobi approves of me in regard to a few articles concerning the Divinity; however, if he believes me to be a Spinozist on any article whatsoever, it does not pain me, but certainly one of us is mistaken.38 Spinoza’s philosophy, and I dare say the same of my poor, small [philosophy], is a totality, an edifice from which one cannot remove a stone without the whole thing collapsing. Now, if I know Spinoza, it seems to me that there are not two philosophies in the world that are more diametrically opposed. For him the Divinity is identified with the Universe and for me the distance between the two is infinite. […] Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Friday 25th August 1786.39 My very dear and only Diotima, for some time past I have been composing something to you on a very interesting subject, almost as freely as I would have spoken to you [about it], although I knew that the Great Man40 reads my letters. I did so with some reluctance, but it was you who demanded it. I beg you to tell me what effect it has produced on him; since, if you give me the man who unites in himself all the perfections of which humanity is capable [and who] in his most tender youth received such seeds, it is forever perfectly impossible for him to get rid



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of them and to see this whole history from a bird’s eye view with the tranquillity needed to judge it. Not that I believe that such a man who spent a large part of his life giving these ideas the most reasonable tone possible could be shaken; for then I would be guilty to the highest degree in my own eyes, since this idea, embellished and enriched by so much work, forms a very essential ingredient in his happiness during this life. However, I know mankind well enough to assure you that [everyone is] upset on seeing a preponderant idea of this importance attacked, and that we discern with painful repugnance how men with similar faculties think about things most essential to us in a completely opposed way.41 Would you believe, my Diotima, that it is to these seeds sown in young minds that we owe this prodigious number of Spinozists and Atheists? I am not speaking of the vicious man, but the mediocre and, more than that, [how] the mediocre [man] is easily shaken by someone who is a little stronger than him. So, what happens then? He becomes indignant, his mind is clouded in mist, he takes the bit between his teeth, he no longer possesses the ability to climb to that point of tranquillity and repose from which he sees it all afresh; [rather,] he throws himself into the opposite extremity. Let’s not talk about mediocre people. One of the most excellent minds and the most excellent souls I’ve seen42 (it’s the one to whom the Letters on Sculpture and on Desires are addressed ουκ ανεῦ σκῶπου, not without purpose), after incredible strain and half a year of a disorderly brain, went through the same process, and you should have seen how strangely he interpreted the latter of those letters.43 Between ourselves, [this is] a sure sign that those who thought they saw Spinozism in my works are not absurd, but preoccupied. He died quietly as a Spinozist as well as something worse. One of the greatest sorrows I’ve experienced is that my Letter on Man appeared a few days too late for him to read it.44 Besides, this process is very natural. The idea one receives of the Divinity by the education I’ve spoken of is so humanised, so circumscribed, so distinct, so deeply engraved on the imagination, that, when Nature speaks to us day after day in a more elevated and clearer way – insofar as great discoveries are made [of it] – it is infinitely difficult to replace this idea by [the idea] given us by the simple and true language of Nature, which is less polished, without contour, absolutely infinite, and resembles a lot more a moral sensation than an idea. My dear Diotima, I stop here, because at this moment I can only repeat [the Letter on] Man and his Relations, at least, from pages 185 to 191.45 If a child were familiarised from infancy onwards with the Universe insofar as we see it – and this would be much easier than familiarising [a child] with a particle of this earth and its history – a so-called atheist would seem to us to be a cripple, a madman or an invalid who should be put in hospital, and they would be much rarer than a blind person, a deaf person or a monster. With all this I would not want for anything in the world to interfere in the religion of any good man, being perfectly convinced that whatever change I could make him undergo, I would not add one iota, not the slightest thing to his essential happiness, whereas I do run the risk of poisoning his life and the sweet moment of death. Whatever name, whatever figure he gives to the Creator Divinity of All, if he prays, he is perfectly understood.

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Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin Tuesday, 12th June 1787.46 My very dear Diotima! […] I am as much delighted that the translation of Alexis is finished and in your hands, as I am hardly surprised that you find it admirably well done.47 It seemed to me that the excellent Jacobi has the infinitely rare faculty of being able to adjust his style to whatever tone he pleases, and from then on a translation is but play. I would like to see something by Lucian from his pen,48 which would almost realise the impossible. For what concerns his latest work,49 I will write to you in full as soon as our ills are at their peak or their end and allow us to think once more. I recently read his two previous works again50 and I never cease to admire how he has been able to articulate Spinozism without comparison more clearly than Spinoza himself. It is true that the latter was subjected to his century’s yoke. […] Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, 27th July 1787.51 My very dear Diotima, […] Despite the trivial occupations that damage my head, I found some moments of leisure to read a little book by Herder called Gott.52 If you have it, I beg you to tell me your opinion of it, as well as that of the Great Man.53 It perfectly recalled to me this interesting man and his talk.54 Within it there are admirable ideas and expressions. I congratulate Spinoza for having found, after a century of suffering, a Jacobi to depict him and a Herder to embellish him. In more propitious times I will hopefully speak to you about this book in a little more detail. […] Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, this Tuesday, 7th August 1787.55 My very dear Diotima, […] What you tell me about Herder’s little book56 strikes me as admirably true. Jacobi is the first of men, in my opinion, to have completely developed Spinoza’s system, less complicated in [its] ground than in [its] form. Herder has embroidered Spinoza with great art and skill, and what results from it, if I am not mistaken, is that philosophy which he often called in Weimar ‘his Spinozism’ and which he tried then to make intelligible to us – in vain, at least to me.57 As soon as I have his third volume, I will see it even more clearly. […]



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Hemsterhuis to Jacobi The Hague, 22th Febr[uary] 1788.58 Sir! I am reduced to the necessity of beginning my letter with an apparent paradox which even sounds a bit like an insult. Is there an assignable degree of gratitude that a man owes another man who overwhelms him with his kindness? It is a question which, even without witnesses, makes me blush and which I dare not begin to answer for fear that the perversity of human nature will make me resort to some unworthy sophism to try to discharge [my debt] before you. […] All those who have read your translation of Alexis here admire it, in all the force of the word, and oblige me [also] to wish that the original might appear a translation of your work. It is not only fame that I owe to you,59 but what is worth far more, insight. Up to now, I had believed that all translation was absolutely impossible,60 except for those pieces which directly concern the exact sciences or those which recount history insofar as it relates to facts. You have just convinced me of the opposite by proving to me that it is possible to produce exactly the same effects by means of completely different brushes, colours, shades and touches. This would be impossible if a whole were not composed of an infinity of parts, a finite number of which are enough to compel the reader or the spectator to imagine this whole as an entirety. Twentyodd true points placed exactly where they should be are enough to compel me to recall my friend’s face. Twenty-odd very different points, equally true and equally in the right place, will have the same effect. From this results the possibility of an apparently absurd phenomenon, namely, of two portraits of the same original, each of which, in the judgement of most men, will bear a perfect resemblance, even though, when placed alongside one another, these portraits will totally differ from each other. This example, so true in painting, applies to the translations of works whose authors have been more eager to make [themselves] felt than to make [themselves] understood. Over the last two and a half years, the horrors of our situation61 have furnished me with occupations very different from my favourite ones. However, I can assure you, Sir, that, in moments of leisure, I took up my pen twenty times to write to you on the subject of Spinoza; but twenty times interrupted or in thrall to circumstances, I was left with solely a few incoherent thoughts, unworthy of being offered to you.62 What I have gained during my fruitless efforts to write to you is an assiduous reading of your excellent works, and what I saw there, perfectly demonstrated, is that you are the first to give the true picture of Spinozism and its author, so that if, from now on, any trained athlete wishes to measure up against this formidable giant, he will do well to look hard at [Spinoza’s] size and his arms according to your description.

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Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, 23rd December 1788.63 My very dear Diotima, my friend, I have just received your [letter] with the additions that I needed to read to understand them a little. […] Regarding the letter of our friend which concerns me,64 his reflection is spot on that my [piece] on Atheism is too short, not well-thought-out enough, and is too lightly expressed for the importance of the subject. It seems to me that, when you asked me for it, I was in too much of a hurry to satisfy you. I will correct it without fail and will send it back to you immediately with the other [version], of which I have no copy. If it proves worth the trouble, I shall be very glad for it to appear in what­ever way you like, provided that it keeps its quality of [being a] Letter to Diotima. My Diotima is the sovereign and absolute mistress of all the letters and papers that she possesses or will ever possess from me, [and can], at all times and in all places, make any use [of them] that her wisdom, her will, or her fancy will dictate to her, without any restriction or reservation whatsoever. But let’s talk frankly, the three of us, face to face. Our friend loves polemical writings, he loves to fly away,65 he loves alliances in philosophy and, in fact, for those with the same desires, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to rally to his flag, because, for a few years now, he has made himself extremely battle-ready and trained. I have thought a hundred times of writing to him out of pleasure and out of duty, but I’ve always been afraid – and this fear would give all that I would write to him such a stiff and impertinent style – that I would be ashamed of it.66 I don’t want to seem to adopt opinions or systems that I haven’t had the time or the opportunity to delve into and get to know. And I swear to you that I don’t know Spinozism very well at all – or Malebranchism, or Leibnizianism, or Wolffianism, etc. – to dare to adopt any part of it. If I got into wars of this kind, I would be beaten a hundred times with habitual ease, and sometimes by people not worthy of me. Let me be attacked on my own ground, said Achilles,67 then we shall see. It is not, my Diotima, that I want to insult these dreadful -isms that so many modern philosophers adore each in their own way. There are two heroes in -isms, for which I declare myself [as] a sectarian and outright defender; they are Socrates in real philosophy, and Newton in all that concerns physics;68 and the reason is that these two philosophers lend themselves exactly to the mediocrity of my forces, since they do not impel the mind to leap at random, but [to move] with that crude common sense that nevertheless – with its tortoise steps – proceeds ever forward. […]69 Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, 10th March 1789.70 My very dear Diotima, my friend, I have just received your [letter] from the 3rd with a pleasure you [can] judge.71 I will try to answer it as accurately as I can and as time permits me.



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You make two distinct observations on my little writing,72 one concerns Spinoza, the other concerns Descartes. Regarding the first, you have noticed astutely, as I expected, that the passage on page 8 concerning Spinoza,73 without him being named, is a little meagre, or dubious, or too vague in a writing whose limited length requires even greater precision. (You will find attached on a separate page the change that I ask you to make in the manuscript. I have depicted Spinozism in a few words, and since, for the moment, I cannot waste my time justifying the accuracy of this description to you, I pray you in the meantime to believe a Dutchman by reminding you that, just as you have to excavate in Greater Greece and Sicily to gain an idea of Pythagoras’s sacred system,74 so too you have to excavate in Holland to get a somewhat complete idea of the system of this too-famous Spinoza. The Dutch lived with him, were his disciples, his protectors, his admirers, and undoubtedly provided the most learned, the most refined and the most determinate Spinozists to have existed. On what you say of Herder, I doubt whether he will be too edified by my description.75) What gave rise to the sloppy appearance of this passage is that I have little desire to utter Spinoza’s name or that of his system.76 I remember that, six or seven years ago, you warned me in two of your letters that there were people in Germany who accused me of Spinozism, and, sometime later, I saw with my own eyes that a man such as a Lessing held this opinion, and even a Jacobi seemed to have some doubts.77 Now, after having had the foolish vanity to believe that, in more than one of my little works, I had given mortal blows to Spinozism, I found myself so strongly put out that I made some very deep reflections, on the one hand, on what it is to read and [to be a] reader, and, on the other, on what it is to claim to have spoken intelligibly to the public. The result was that I returned to my previous opinion that the talent of reading is infinitely rarer than that of writing, and, for better or worse, I could no longer think of Spinoza or his philosophy than with a sovereign disgust. As for what I think about Spinoza’s system, I have the right to pride myself that my Diotima knows this as perfectly as I do. Regarding me calling Spinozism a kind of theism,78 first, I have known Spinozists from the old school79 who would have been scandalised by the name of Atheists. We have books in our language, written with infinite art, in which Spinozism is deduced from the gospel.80 But secondly, when a man says that there is nothing but a Whole, all the modifications of which necessarily flow from its eternal nature, he is entirely indifferent as to whether he calls this Whole a block or a God. Besides, I maintain that there is not a thinking being in the world who is properly atheist, that is, who does not recognise some power infinitely superior to his own. I appeal to Epicurus and Lucretius.81 They want to destroy religion, since they believe it to be harmful to society and, therefore, must reject the active influence of the Divinity on men. But how do they speak of the Divinity? Lucretius speaks from the heart and as someone inspired in those inimitable verses: Omnis enim per se divum natura necesse est Immortali oeve summa cum pace fruatur Semata a nostris rebus, sejunctaque longe.

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Nam privata dolore omni, privata periclis, Ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indiga nostris Nic bene promeritis capitus nec tangitur ira.82

Note83 that, when it comes to the art of versification, the whole of Latinity fails to offer anything similar to these verses. Let someone who has the tact and the ear for that language explain that to you. You see here a man upset at not being able to participate in this sublime Divinity, of which he senses something, but from too far away. I go even further between ourselves. I think Epicurus sensed the existence of Divinity much more richly and strongly than a million Orthodox people today. Here is one of my proofs. The excellence, the purity, the disinterestedness of his morals, which did not even have a future reward for their goal and which were at all times [held] constant by the marvellous simplicity of his conduct in public, proves to me the excellence of his moral organ. Now, according to our system, the superiority of this organ indicates the perfection of these sensations of the existence of a God. However, lacking insight, his intellect could not grasp a relation between Creator and creature [that was] rich enough to fill the vastness of the hiatus he sensed between God and himself. Therefore, what was left to him was only the horror of a religion, administered by scoundrels or beasts, which, so to speak, offended his God and reduced mankind to a state of brutes. The famous Diagoras,84 whose head had a price put on it, who was persecuted throughout the whole of Greece as an atheist and who declared himself to be one, was not [an atheist]. Endowed with the greatest talents according to the report of Democritus himself, his protector and his friend, Diagoras had written an admirable poem. Someone else stole his manuscript, legally appropriated it by means of a false oath, published it under his name, and enjoyed the most brilliant success. Diagoras was enraged and renounced the Gods for having tolerated and blessed this forger’s oath. This is [a matter of] his temper, but not of atheism. Regarding La Mettrie, whom I knew intimately,85 yes if you like he was an atheist, he was a monster, he hated virtue, morals and all decency, but you would have [also] seen him cry hot tears with a pauper and give him not only everything that was in his pocket, [but also] his coat and his shirt. He was not a thinking being. He was mad in the full sense of the word. I appeal on this point to every man who knew him, and Frederick the Great gave him food only on the basis of this quality, as you would feed a dog or a cat with exceptional fur. Regarding our late Diderot, the so-called king of the Atheists,86 you can analyse him better than me. But let us come to the end of the article which concerns my dear Descartes. In this letter, my Diotima, I will speak of him only insofar as it concerns our little writing87 in question. Afterwards, there will be some small difficulties to smooth away between us. Pag. 12 who apparently laughed in secret at the grotesque philosophy he had been obliged to form to achieve his goal.88 I said apparently since this fact – although quite famous – has not yet been sufficiently proven to me. It has been claimed that the proofs for this are to be found in his own letters to his Princess,



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which are to be found either at the Palatine Court or in Berlin.89 Nevertheless, there is nothing surprising [in this claim], because how can one imagine that the greatest geometer to have appeared in the world would have seriously swallowed the motion and the plenum, the vortices of the planets and comets, and so many other such things which were already scandalising the physics he knew? Be that as it may, my Diotima, if these underlined lines displease you in the slightest, I advise you to cross them out – and this will not alter the meaning of the rest. As for the true aim which I ascribe to Descartes, I deduced it from all I’ve ever known of this great man. What remains now for us to dispute – and what we will easily settle with a little vivacity, because it must take a little in my opinion, otherwise we do not pronounce anything, but yawn at the argument – is whether such a goal, whether it be true or false, or doubtful, or purported, can nest in a great soul along with consciousness of the uncertainty, the falsity of the system that [this soul] disseminates, so as to make a feint necessary for the salvation of all. Tell me, my Diotima, if you adopt this way of putting the question, which seems to me right. Laughter has nothing to do with it, for the doctor can laugh even while deceiving his invalid whom he is thereby saving. Farewell, my very dear divine Diotima, my friend, may the only God look upon us with your dear children and our Great Friend. Σωκρατης

[PS.] Between ourselves, tell me whether Jacobi is really happy with the letter [on atheism]. […]

Supplement to the Letter on Fatalism

The Hague, 29th April 1788.1 […] My dear Diotima, ever since you reminded me of my Letter on Fatality [sic] from 27th Jan[uary] 1776,2 I have read and reread that piece in [the style of] Aristarchus3 and, as I said to you last time,4 I discovered no sophism, but it and its subject matter seem to me so interesting and so integral for distinctly indicating the limits of metaphysics that I have resolved to speak a little on it – and this requires time, but, above all, a very focused attention. I have resolved to apply my method to it, a method which I’ve always used with success – that is, pushing all reasoning, all demonstration, all implication as far as they can go, until I arrive at the absurd whatever it may be, and then retrace my steps and seek the causes of these absurdities, which can only be superficial if there are no faults in the reasoning. Once discovered, these causes infallibly indicate to me the point at which I passed the limits of intelligence and of the human faculties.5 You will sense well, my Diotima, that in a letter of this volume I’m not going to undertake such work; however, here is a raptim [hasty] and fairly disorderly sample of it. The Letter [on Fatalism] says that a cause produces its effects on something other than itself6 – and this is true. It is evident that nothing present can act on anything but what is present and that, therefore, nothing future is able to be considered the effect of something past. Hence, there is no succession of causes and effects. There must only be a cause and an effect that coexist, according to the demonstration of the fatalists and this author.7 It’s easy to push this to the absurd. It’s already so (in appearance). Thus, there must be some hidden fault, for the reasoning is good. We must thus examine, first of all, these three expressions cause, effect and concatenation [suite] of events.8 A cause is what produces an effect, and I am not able to add anything to what is said about it in the Letter [on Fatalism].9 A cause derives from a relation between two things. An effect is not what follows [la suite] its cause, it coexists with it. A concatenation [suite] of events is merely a phenomenon which derives from the nature of man’s current composition. It’s here that the greatest difficulty of all metaphysics begins to be revealed, and this is something we cannot completely overcome in this life, but we must know its source. When I have reasoned as a pure metaphysician on cause and effect, simply as cause and effect, without applying them to events or to sensible things, this has necessarily resulted in the coexistence of all cause and all effect. This reasoning and



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conclusion must appear very absurd to us, but its truth is, nevertheless, palpable to a practised intellect: I have attained a real truth, but one I cannot conceive. But why does this conclusion appear absurd to us without being so? It’s because, when reasoning about such perfectly simple matters, it did not occur to me that it concerns only eternal duration or infinite space, which are unities, rather than distance or time, which are numbers.10 Moreover, the expression coexistence – whether [coexistence] in space or temporal [coexistence] – belongs solely to time and to place, rather than to the unities of infinite space or eternal duration, and it cannot be employed in these cases. The word coexistence belongs to our present category alone and says nothing in [relation to] other categories that we do not know at present. This word presupposes non-coexistences which are absurd relative to the one and eternal duration that derives from the omnipresent God’s nature. Every limited being in the universe pertains, by its essence, to eternal duration, but by means of its way of being, of sensing, of taking pleasure, of acquiring ideas, knowledge, etc., it pertains to succession, precisely because it is limited by everything that is not itself, and because it only receives its perceptions, sensations and ideas by way of media.11 There is only the inconceivable and unlimited being for whom everything exists, and this is one of those truths which man must not tamper with on pain of being declared mad. It’s from man’s manner of being amphibious, according to which he swims in duration and crawls in time, that derives this confusion of cause and concatenation [suite] of events, and so many other things. Goodbye, dearest Diotima, may the omnipresent God bless you along with your dear children and our Great Friend.12 Σωκρατης

Please reflect a little on the enormous difference that exists between the false or absurd [on the one hand] and an inconceivable truth [on the other] to which a healthy and well-exercised intellect very often leads us, even in geometry. Yet, these two things have been confused, even many times by metaphysicians, who often discard as absurdities very essential truths which are inconceivable for us and from out of which a great advantage could perhaps have been drawn. One day, when I have the mind for it and the time, I will examine this matter.13 I will make a complete catalogue of these inconceivable truths and will try [to see] whether, by putting them together, I cannot reach new conceivable but yet unknown truths. At the very least, I will see that, in high analysis, this can be done very successfully. Let me know if you’ve understood all my gibberish. […]

PART TWO EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE SCIENCES

On the Reality of Appearances1

Let us suppose two things, which are either simple or composite, and which can act on one another in some way. What results from this active coexistence – what alone can be this result – is drawn from the nature, or the mode of being, of the first of these two things and from the nature or the mode of being of the other one. Let A be one of these two things and B be the other. I call AB the result of the active coexistence of A and B, not since AB is the product of A and B multiplied together, but solely because AB is a thing which pertains to the nature of A and to the nature of B. Let A be a cube and let B be a man who enjoys all that is needed to see, i.e., is endowed with an eye furnished by light, etc. – then I call AB one of the results of the coexistence of A and B or of this cube and this man who is constituted as I’ve just described, or rather [AB is] the determinate way the cube appears to this man and which pertains to the determinate way of being of the cube and to the determinate way of being of the man.2 If A changes into C, AB becomes AC3 – that is, if the cube becomes a sphere, the appearance of the cube is destroyed, and it becomes [the appearance] of a sphere.4 If B changes into D, AB becomes AD – that is, if the man changes the direction of the rays of light, or the shape of his eye, the appearance of the cube is destroyed, and it becomes analogous to the coexistence of the cube and the man [who has been] changed in the manner I’ve just assumed. Let B be constant and A variable, that is, becoming either x, or y, or z – the appearances will be Bx, By, Bz. Now, Bx . x :: By . y :: Bz . z5 and I conclude 1° that the appearance of a thing is to the essence of that thing as the appearance of something else is to the essence of that other thing – that is, [I conclude] that differences in the appearances of things are analogous to differences in the essences of things. And 2° [I conclude] that if B were not such as it in fact is or if x y z were not such as they in fact are, the appearances could not possibly be Bx, By, Bz; but the appearances are Bx, By, Bx as a consequence of the things being x, y, z – that is, what they appear [to be] in relation to us. But once more, a thing is what it is: for a thing to appear, it must be. For it to appear in a determinate way, it must be in a determinate way. Determinate appearance thus depends on determinate being. It might be concluded from this, even provisionally, either that the determinate way of appearing of an object is to its determinate way of being as the determinate way of appearing of another object is to the determinate way of being of this other object, or, in other words, that a thing is what it appears [to be].6 But we have seen above that A, AB and B, or the object, the way of appearing of the object, and that to which it appears are things which have constant relations

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to each other. Hence, since, when the knowledge of the determinate way of being of an object and [the knowledge] of the determinate way of being of that which perceives are given, there results the knowledge of the determinate way of appearing of this object, then, when the determinate way of being of that which perceives and the determinate way of appearing of the object are given, there must result the knowledge of the determinate way of being of the object. Furthermore, it follows that I conclude from the appearing to the being of the object with the same degree of certainty as I conclude from my perception to my way of being. Again, let us suppose that the globe or circle B has the faculty of sensing, of touching, or rather the organ of touch, and, in addition, it has consciousness of its own roundness, that is, knowledge of what it is [as] round (among other things), in [terms of] what is called round.

Let B approach the mass or body C as far as possible. It will sense itself touching at every point from m to n, [and] will conclude with certainty that, if C is one single thing, whatever else might be its essence, [this essence7 ] is also genuinely a concave curve, which to [B] is a convex curve; and if C is a composite, [it will conclude] that this composite, as composite, surely possesses the same quality. Therefore, [B] concludes perfectly from the appearance to that part of the essence of C of which it can have a sensation. Let us suppose that B approaches A as far as is possible.

It will feel itself touching at two points y and z, and it will conclude from this that A is two things, y and z, even though A can in fact only be one single thing. Yet, its conclusion is correct, since in relation to it, A is only y and z.



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Let us suppose that surrounding B there is some kind of atmosphere. This atmosphere presses at R and at S. B feels this impression at y and z, and it likewise concludes that A is two things at y and at z, and its conclusion is of the most exact truth. From this it is clear that, whether a sensible being judges an object by immediate touch or judges it by some other organ that has need of media, the object is necessarily for it, through its organs and its media, what it appears [to be], and therefore that, whatever else its essence might be, it contains among all its ways of being this way of being which appears.8 After these demonstrations, I must confess that all the reasoning which derives from them leads to nothing, if the existence of things outside us is a chimera. It is not so much due to the shame of the century as due to [the shame] of some so-called philosophers who dishonour it9 that such a truth is treated as a gratuitous assumption or, rather, it is rejected as a falsity. Yet, let’s clear up this matter once more. I sense, therefore I am.10 But are there things outside me? Let’s suppose that there aren’t. It follows that I am one, alone and everything. But being one, alone and everything, I have no organs and no media outside me whose modifications could give birth to appearances; therefore, appearances are modifications of my essence. But an essence that is modified in such a way that it appears to see a beautiful starry sky is another essence than one which is modified in such a way that it appears to see a stormy sea. Now, I have been an essence modified in the first way and I have been an essence modified in the second way; consequently, I am not one, hence I am not alone, and therefore I am not everything, and therefore there have been, or there are, other things than my current self. But, once more, can a being that is so simple that it is one, alone and everything have modifications? Let’s suppose that this is so, but these modifications change. This change is an effect. Therefore, it has a cause. But cause and effect are two different things.11 And these different things must be within this being; therefore, it is not simple, but composite, hence not one, not alone, not everything. Moreover, a being that is simple, one, alone and everything could not change its own modifications. It would be necessary, eternal, existing by its own nature. In the end, this simple being [just] is. Therefore, it is such as it is. And as it is necessary, it is necessarily what it is, and necessarily such as it is at every moment, since one moment has no other influence on its essence than any other moment – hence, it is immutable. But it is conscious of certain appearances, and of a change in these appearances, therefore its cause lies outside it. Hence, the absurd man of these idealist philosophers is a God [who would be] the most absolute within the infinitely small, without creation and without power, or rather, a perfect nothing.

On the Relations of Matter and Soul

Sunday 12th Jan[uary] 1777.1 My very dear Diotima […] I will put down on paper here the way in which one can clearly conceive the immaterial soul’s action on the body, and the body’s [action] on the immaterial soul, so as to serve as a codicil to the small treatise on the immaterial.2 A nerve (the optic nerve, for example), which is an essence, possesses, among other [faculties], faculties by which it is visible, tangible, etc., or by which we are accustomed to call it matter. But it has other faculties than those which render it visible, tangible, etc. that we cannot perceive by our few organs which are analogous to what we call the physical or the material. I call these other faculties A, B or C. If now the soul, which is also an essence, possesses, among other faculties, the faculties A or B or C, etc., it is evident that this rich essence, which we call soul, can – by means of these faculties A or B or C that it holds in common with that nerve – act on the nerve such that the nerve will produce effects on its visible, tangible, etc., side, just as the hammer and the bell, being both tangible, impenetrable or solid, and acting reciprocally on each other, manifest the sound of the bell, just as two crystals, in their impenetrability, make each other visible, just as the visible and tangible hammer, when acting on a visible and tangible pure crystal, renders it visible,3 just as the magnet’s invisible emanations produce visible effects on a visible body, etc.4 The nerve, on its side, acts reciprocally on the soul itself by means of its faculties A or B or C that it holds in common with the soul. But let us make another observation which is intelligible only to those who reflect at the moment they receive sensations. My soul is, among other things, moral. Diotima is, among other things, visible. Supposing Diotima gay and happy, my moral organ is affected by her, and my soul feels happiness beneath all its coverings. How does this happen? Diotima, as visible, acts on my organ which is turned towards the visible face [of the universe]. My optic nerve (in truth, visible and tangible) possesses, among other things, a faculty A in common with the organ of the intellect, and acts on it by means of this faculty. The organ of the intellect, which is not moral, possesses, among other things, a faculty B in common with the moral organ, which is affected by it in all its essence. And, since this organ evidently pertains to the same face [of the universe] as the soul itself, at this beautiful spectacle which nevertheless acts solely in its quality as visible the soul becomes all sentiment. You see from this, my friend, that the action of the physical on the metaphysical, when sensations are not violent, is achieved by a slow and successive movement from organ to organ, and that the soul, that rich essence, appears [as] a precious core, enveloped by a number of coverings, from which it disengages itself one at



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a time until, finally uncovered, it shows itself entirely pure, entirely beautiful, and forever attached without media.5 But let’s see once more what happens when the sensations are excessively strong and lively. Then, the vehicle by which a soul is able to act on the moral organ of another soul receives such energy or such velocity that it pierces the coverings, that it can only brush in passing against the organs of vision, of hearing, of the intellect, and [instead] directly impacts the moral organ and the soul itself. Recall, I pray you, my house on the 26th Nov[ember] last [year]. Recall, Diotima, Lysis and Socrates.6 Were they agitated, lively, full of sensibility, happy? We know that. Yet, no object has been clearly painted before their eyes, no sound struck their ears distinctly. Ears blocked, eyes obscured, touch annihilated. They were all that they could wish to be, and from this follows, it seems to me, that, even in this life, this vehicle exists and can act through the coverings without need of that slow movement along the organs of vision, of intellect, etc., which always more or less falsifies or degrades the simplicity of the primitive action and does so to the extent that these intermediary organs are agile, rich and even overexercised. My dear friend, I don’t know whether, on the surface of the earth, there are any beings who have as many ideas in common with me as Diotima does, and therefore I pride myself on being intelligible to her. Among everyone else, I will pass for mad with a truly stoic patience, but, as bad poets do, I will call on [these ideas] for a just posterity, persuading myself, with a little bit of vanity no doubt, that the metaphysical-moral theory lives on in some of my trifles and, legitimated by my Diotima, is one step in advance of what men have until now judged to be worth creating. […] Goodbye my dear Diotima, I believe that my soul is to yours as the tail of a comet is to the comet. I kiss your hand with heartfelt contrition. Your Socrates. […]

Fragment on Physics1

Physics is the science or knowledge of the nature of bodies considered as totalities,2 of the relations which these bodies have to each other, of the laws which derive from these relations and of the effects which these laws must produce. Chemistry is the science or knowledge of bodies considered as composite, of the parts which compose them, of the relations which these parts have to each other, and of the effects which result from the composition of parts. But, since, when decomposing a totality into its parts, each part becomes [in turn] a totality, it follows that chemistry and physics are properly but one and the same science. We call a body or matter every essence which affects sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch – that is, what has a relation to the construction of these organs, such that there results from it an idea in the imagination. When a body affects sight, its extension, its figurability and therefore its limits are manifest; when it affects touch, its impenetrability or its solidity is expressed. In general, therefore, the simple and essential attributes of a body or matter considered as such are extension, figurability and solidity. The qualities of being sonorous, of having taste, of having a smell, etc. do not derive simply from the nature of a body or of matter but from changes a body undergoes, as we shall see. An existent essence will be throughout all eternity, and will always be such as it is, if it does not undergo change. In extension, figurability and solidity, considered uniquely as such, there is no principle of change. Therefore, an essence which is merely extended, capable of figure and solid must endure throughout all eternity, and always be in the same manner, since it will remain by its own nature in the most perfect rest, and therefore this essence or this body is inert by its nature. If there is no change, there will be neither effect nor event; but there are effects and events in nature; therefore, there is change. There are no changes without motion, or rather change and motion are one and the same thing. Nothing can have two contradictory essential qualities. We have seen that a body, by three of its essential attributes, is inert by nature; therefore, by its nature a body cannot be in motion; therefore, when a body moves, it moves either by another or by a faculty which does not pertain to its nature such as I’ve just defined it.3 Movement or change is a relation of place; therefore, the extension and solidity of a body are not infinite; therefore, a body has limits, is capable of figure and [is in fact] figured; therefore, there is a space or an extension where no body is to be found, that is, where there are to be found no essences which affect the eye or touch, etc., and which can be called void in relation to the bodies or the essences which do affect the eye, touch, etc.



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The nature of an existent essence is to be – and to be such as it is. Therefore, an existent essence will be eternally, and eternally such as it is, if it does not undergo change. It is subject to change either by an internal cause which pertains to its nature, or by an external cause which acts on it. But matter, considered uniquely as extended and impenetrable, contains in neither of these two essential attributes an intrinsic cause of change; therefore, an existent body or matter will always be, and always in the same manner, in perfect rest and inert by nature. But a body or matter is mobile. Mobility is a passive attribute, not an essential attribute which constitutes its nature. This attribute is nothing other than the possibility of being transported from one place in extension – space – to another place.4 Suppose that all extended, solid and, by nature, finite matter was one – space being an infinity of the first order – one place in space would have no other relation to matter than all other places in space. Another attribute of matter or a body consists in the attraction by which two or more bodies tend to reciprocally approach each other and unite with each other. It is an effect that is observed in all known bodies in the universe, but whose cause has no relations to our senses by which it can be made manifest to our senses.5 If I suppose that one sole atom constituted all that we call matter in the universe and that this one sole atom was placed in the middle of an immense void, I might ask whether this atom has the principle of attraction within it? If it does, attraction is an essential attribute of matter. But if it does, this principle will be null, being without effect; or rather this principle will be reduced uniquely to the force of being or existing. We easily see that, if this simple and isolated atom really contains within itself the principle of attraction, it would probably be for pure metaphysics to answer my question. But suppose that, at some distance around my atom, many other atoms are created. I would see straightaway the effects of attraction and of a reciprocal attraction. Atoms approach each other and unite with each other as much as they can. Thus, it seems probable (unless the most profound metaphysics decides otherwise) that attraction or the attractive force is an essential attribute of matter only in its quality as an aggregate or collection of atoms or parts. In regard to the laws according to which this attraction must necessarily act, they are the same as those all simple action must follow. Suppose A, an atom, a point endowed with a certain energy upon everything that surrounds it: a sonorous point, a luminous point, an odorous point, etc.

Its action or its energy, whatever it is, acts by way of everything around it, and we can perfectly compare this action to rays emitted from a centre. It is evident, by the divergence of these rays, that the intensity of the light, of the sound, of the

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smell and, in sum, of the energy of A will be greater at a small distance from A than at a larger distance. Let P be a luminous point, PA a foot in length, and PB two feet. Place within A a square board AC and within B a square board BD.

We see that the same quantity of rays which fall on AC will fall on BD. But PA . PB :: 1 . 2;6 therefore, AC . BD :: 1 . 2; therefore, □ AC . □ BD :: 1 . 4, and thus the density of rays in AC to that in BC :: 4 . 1 – that is, the intensity of the light, or the energy of point P on the board AC [is] four times greater than this force or this energy on board BD; and therefore, the force of this energy [or] this light [or] this sound [or] this attraction [or] this action is in inverse proportion to the squares of the distances of the bodies on which point P acts by its energy.7

On Divisibility to Infinity1

What is it to divide a thing? It is to dissolve it into its parts. What is a divisible thing? Everything composed of parts. Therefore, a thing which has no parts is indivisible. A unit2 has no parts, therefore a unit is not divisible. Infinite extension, which I call space, is absolute-infinite by its nature. One half of the absolute-infinite is absurd. The absolute-infinite has no limits. That which separates one half from another is a limit. Therefore, space is indivisible. Moreover, a line that would separate space into two must pass through some middle. And there is no middle where there are no limits. Therefore, space has no parts; it is one, therefore it is not divisible. Duration has no parts for similar reasons; therefore, duration is not divisible. Number is composed of parts.3 Therefore, number is divisible. The magnitude of an extension, which is in space, is composed of parts, and therefore divisible. For something to be really part of something larger, this first thing must be of the same nature as the second of which it will form a part; therefore, divisible things are divisible only insofar as they are composed of homogeneous parts. A tree, insofar as it is an agglomerate or a piece of wood, is divisible, because each of its parts is a particle of a large or small [piece of] wood and because, consequently, these parts – considered as particles of wood – are homogeneous. The tree, as tree, is indivisible, because it is one, or because its parts are extremely heterogeneous, like the root, stem, branch, leaf. An arm, a leg, a head are not the quarter, the 1/8, or the 1/16 of a man, because man, as man, is one, but the arm, the leg, the head, as certain quantities of matter, or as certain finite extensions, are the quarter, 1/8, or the 1/16 of a man, also considered as a quantity of matter, or as a thing of a certain extension. The infinite is what has no limits. A thing is divisible to infinity when its parts, to whatever smallness one supposes them reduced, remain equally divisible for all eternity. There are some things that are divisible to infinity and other things that are not. The first [group] are time and extension and everything to which I can apply the ideas of time and extension, insofar as they can be applied.4 The second [group] are number and everything to which I can apply the idea of number, insofar as it can be applied. Just as we owe our greatest progress in the sciences to the application of certain ideas to certain other ideas, we also owe its greatest absurdities, from which it is due time to disengage human knowledge.5 It is possible to prescribe laws to follow so as to prevent the bad effects of these arbitrary applications of one idea to another, but we will still see a sample of these effects in the subject I am treating. People have wanted to divide number to infinity – which is impossible, since the unit is the atom of number.6 Yet, so as to divide to infinity, they have applied the

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ideas of duration and extension to it. They have said: one can divide the atom of number, or the unit, to infinity, for the unit is a magnitude and this magnitude is precisely equal to its half, plus 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/M, etc., so long as I continue this operation for all of duration and all of eternity. But this does not take into account two things: 1°. that we have made this first unit that we must divide into a number 2, 4, 8, 16, M, and ultimately an infinite number of units; and 2°. that this so-called unit is divisible to infinity only because we have really transformed it into extension and into duration: into extension, because we have turned it into a geometrical magnitude; into duration, because we pursue this subdivision for all of eternity. A body, or matter, is figurable, figured, and therefore finite by its nature. It occupies a certain extension in space. If I apply to a body or to matter the natural and primitive idea of number, matter will be divisible into its units or its atoms, but if I apply the idea of number after having transformed it into [the ideas] of extension and duration, matter will be divisible to infinity, since it will have become pure extension. It is clear to see that the first application is good and reasonable, because I apply what is finite by nature to something else finite by nature, and that the other application of what is infinite by nature to what is finite by nature is absurd, and that, therefore, the results which derive from it must be so too. Moreover, it would be a very bad conclusion that something whose nature is, among other things, to be in extension has all the properties of extension; it is as if one said that a century which is by nature in duration has all the properties of duration – which would be manifestly false, since duration is infinite by its nature and the century is finite by its. Here, once more, are some apparent difficulties born from a lack of clarity surrounding the ideas of divisibility and infinity. It is claimed to be absurd that there is something infinite which is bigger or smaller than something else infinite of the same nature. But let’s see. By applying the idea of duration or extension to every finite thing I can add to it augmentations or increases to infinity, but I am also in charge of giving any laws I like to these augmentations or to these increases. Let’s suppose two lines, each of a foot long; let’s suppose that one of these lines is being extended by a foot per second and the other by a half-foot per second for the rest of eternity; the two lines that result from this will necessarily both be two infinities, because duration is infinite, but one will necessarily be roughly twice as long as the other. It will be said, once more, that it is absurd for the infinite space between a curve and its asymptote to be equal to some square or some finite circle; yet, it is an incontestable truth on which we do not reflect that, when evaluating this finite space [in the square or circle], we apply to it the idea of infinity and of duration just as much as when evaluating the infinite space between the curve and its asymptote. For example, when I demonstrate that the infinite space between the cissoid7 and its asymptote is precisely equal to three times the semicircle from which this curve draws its origin, I always demonstrate that such a finite portion of this infinite space is equal to three times such a sector, and this sector becomes a semicircle only when the cissoid touches its asymptote – that is, at the absurd limit of all duration and of all eternity.



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Again. Let’s suppose that from the common centre of two circles are drawn straight lines on all the mathematical points of the inner circle which are found between A and B; and let’s suppose that all these lines are extended to the outer circle.

It is clear that there are more mathematical points between C and D than between A and B and, since the lines already intersect with AB, there must be in CD an infinity of points for which it is impossible to draw lines to the common centre [of the circles]8 – and this is absurd. But why do we not say that, since the lines intersect AB, it is impossible for them to come from one sole point or one common centre? It is shameful that in our century [there are] people who lay claim to the title of philosopher who seriously make such difficulties, but it must nevertheless be avowed that Euclid could have defined the point and the line with a little more skill. By saying that the point is what is indivisible,9 he gave rise to the impression of the point as a being, a real object. The imagination paints it so. As soon as one tries to determine whether it is divisible or not, one finds it divisible to infinity because it is extended, and it is extended because the imagination could only paint a real object by making use of the idea of extension. Properly, the word mathematical point is only the sign for some determinate place in space. The word straight line is only the sign for the shortest distance between two places.10 The word curved line is only the sign for the distance between two places modified in some fashion. There are no two determinate places between which there is no distance, and a distance between two points is not measured by drawing a line, but by opening the compass. From the common centre to every mathematical point – whether in the inner circle or in the outer circle – there is a distance, and this is sufficient to respond to that gross sophism. It is again said that, assuming CF or DF is infinite, it is absurd that the finite parallelogram ABCD is equal to the infinite AEFD.

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But the supposition is false, since CF is not infinite, since it is the sine of an angle CDF which is less than 90°. For CF to be infinite, it would require CDF to be 90°. But if CDF were equal to 90°, the parallelogram AEFD would be absurd, since AB and CD or the distance between the two parallel lines is constant. Moreover, we do not think that a right-angled triangle whose base is finite and determinate could ever have an infinite perpendicular or hypotenuse. To be infinite, the top angle CFD would have to be 0° – and this is impossible, since its sine is the determinate magnitude CD.

On the Incommensurable1

What I’ve just said on divisibility2 naturally leads me to an even more curious in­ vesti­gation into incommensurability. What is commensurability? Two or more things composed of parts will be commensurable when they have one or many divisors in common. It follows from this that, in order to be commensurable, two things must be homogeneous, and that, therefore, the parts of each of these two things must be of the same nature. Therefore, two things that are heterogeneous or of a different nature are in­commensurable.3 Any two numbers, divisible to their units (as we’ve just seen) and composed of units, or rather parts of the same nature, will be commensurable, and will have at least one divisor in common – that is, the unit. Two lines – that is, two lengths of extension, two distances divisible to infinity (as we’ve just seen4) and composed of infinitely small [points], or rather of parts of the same nature, will truly be commensurable, and will have at least one divisor in common, that is, the infinitely small, but they will be incommensurable for us.5 The length of a measuring gauge and the capacity6 of a cube, as composed of parts that are heterogeneous [to each other] and of a different nature, are in­ commensurable, having no divisor in common. A straight line, which I have just defined as the shortest distance between two deter­min­ate places in space, and a curved line, which I have just defined as a distance between two determinate places in space, modified differently to the shortest distance – will be incommensurable, even though both [lines] will be divisible to infinity, as extensions. [This is] because the parts of the straight line and the parts of the curve – however small one wishes to make them – will be heterogeneous and of a different nature, and so, consequently, except for the absolute[ly] infinitely small, these two lines cannot have any divisor in common. But before proceeding further, let me remark here once more what results from pushing too far the application of an idea of one thing to the idea of another thing that is really very close to it, but still of a different nature. We can compare a length, a line of 10 inches [corresponding] to the number 10. We can place this line perpendicularly at one of the ends of another line of the same length, and, by thus moving the first line along the second, there results a geometric squared space. In a similar way, we can multiply the number 10 by the number 10 to make 100 and we can say that 100 is the square of 10. The result of this operation is entirely to the benefit of geometry, since I learn by this truth that the square of the 10-inch-long line genuinely contained 100 small squares of an inch. But why is this result exactly true? Because we have not considered the line as an extension divisible to infinity, but we have made it a number of 10 units which we call inches – invented measures – and from this

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[results] the perfect application of the idea of the number 10 to [the idea] of the line which is 10.7 Arithmetic has taken these ideas of squares and cubes from geometry, given them back to it and perfected them by pushing them to the highest dimensions. It says a4, a5, a6, am, and these perfected ideas are related once more into geometry, teaching it to likewise say AB4, AB5, AB6, ABm. In all these cases, the two sciences benefit reciprocally without losing the least bit of their exactitude, since geometry becomes arithmetic, and every geometrical object becomes a number, and all this [occurs] notwithstanding the manifest truth that the nature of the essence of a line has nothing in common with [the nature] of the essence of a square, whereas the nature of the essence of the number 10 is precisely the same as [the nature] of the essence of the number 100. It must be confessed that arithmetic is, of all the sciences, the supplest and easiest to handle, and therefore it is [this science] that will always best and most fruitfully be applied to the others. It is a real shame that we are completely ignorant of Pythagoras’s plans for the applications of this science to many other [sciences].8 But let us return to our subject. We have seen that lines are properly commensurable only by means of their one common divisor, the infinitely small, and that they are commensurable for us only insofar as we assign some unit to them – that is, insofar as they become numbers. As soon as we find it impossible to assign units to them, they return to their nature and are just pure extensions, and therefore incommensurable for us. For example, in the right-angled triangle 2, 4, √20,9 the two sides and the hypotenuse will be incommensurable. No matter how many millions of units I give to these sides, the result will always remain the same, and, although I approach the true measure of the hypotenuse, I will never reach the infinitely small which is the sole common divisor that remains. If I roll a wheel on a flat surface, it is very true that, by counting from the first point at which this wheel touches the surface to the last point at which this wheel touches this surface, the base of the cycloid will result, and [this has] precisely the same length as the circumference of this wheel, because there is in this straight line exactly as many infinitely small [points] as there are in the circumference of the circle. During the movement of the wheel, each infinitely small [point] of the straight [line] has corresponded to an infinitely small [point] of the circle. Thus, the circumference of the circle and this straight line will be truly commensurable, having two divisors in common – first, their totality; secondly, their infinitely small [points]. But, when I want to compare the radius or diameter of the circle to this straight line that is equal to the circumference, I discover that this radius and this straight [line], as extensions, are truly commensurable having one divisor in common, that is, the infinitely small, but are not commensurable for us, since it is impossible for me to apply any finite number of units, no matter how big they are, to the base of the cycloid, as a measure of the circumference, except these infinitely small [points]. It is by these infinitely small [points] that it in some way becomes something homogeneous to the circle. For example, let’s suppose a base composed of a thousand units, [yet] its thousandth part is not homogeneous to the thousandth part of the circle – the former is a straight [line], the latter is a



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curve. Therefore, these thousandth parts of the straight [line] and the circle are commensurable only as extensions, that is, to repeat, their sole common divisor [is] the infinitely small.* If, then, I want to compare the radius or the diameter of the wheel or the circle to the base of the cycloid as a measure of the circumference of the circle, it is evident that I cannot make use of the application of numbers, no matter how big they might be, and therefore I am reduced to the sole common divisor, that is, the infinitely small. And this is the reason why the investigation into a determinate relation between the diameter and the circumference is necessarily unfruitful and absurd.10

* Let us suppose that, in place of the circle, I roll a hexagon over the flat surface.

It is evident that the line AB will be as long as the circumference of the hexagon. In this case, I can apply a number to the line AB as a measure of this circumference, since the six parts of the line AB are perfectly homogeneous to the six parts of the circumference, whereas in the case of the circle there are only infinitely small parts of the line which are homogeneous to the infinitely small parts of the circle.

On Loss of Imagination

The Hague, Monday 17th April 1780.1 My very dear Diotima […] I know a little of what it is to meditate,2 and, on this matter, I have performed some extremely curious experiments3 that have cost me a little too much. Two, above all, I won’t forget. On the first [occasion], I was extremely disconcerted to find myself – after a meditation that was too long, too deep and too contrived – deprived of memory and imagination; but on the second [occasion], when the same phenomenon occurred, I perfectly retained my presence of mind and my faculty of reflecting. And ever since I’ve known from where this misfortune arose and what it was. The imagination is an organ of the same nature as [the organs] of vision and hearing, although it is yet finer and more intricate. It is for the most part composed of fibres and particles which we call matter, just as [the organ] of vision is for the most part composed of transparent bodies, of nerves, etc., and these organs must be half material, since they are formed to transport the actions of material vehicles.4 The intellect, which is equally an organ, possesses nothing material. It is enough that it possesses some side that is homogeneous with the most delicate fibres of the brain. And I am convinced of this, because, in the experiments I am speaking of, provided one is not disconcerted, the intellect remains absolutely intact and capable of reflection. Yet, I do not counsel anyone to perform these sorts of experiments with too much curiosity. When good minds (who alone are those who meditate) think for too long or too deeply, the material parts of the organ of the imagination lose their tone and their energy for a time, just as the eye and the optic nerve lose their energy when they are applied too much to painting a miniature or to the anatomy of insects, and just as the tympan of the ear loses its tone from excessive noise, or from sounds that are too shrill. But if, as soon as one perceives this type of failure in these organs, we immediately give them a rather long rest, then not only will all these parts perfectly recover, but they will further gain in elasticity. […]

An Analogy between the Formation of the Body and the Formation of the Soul

The Hague, Monday 9th Feb[ruary] 1784.1 My very dear Diotima. […] We now come to my hypothesis which will clarify all this a little, and comes, above all, at a time when we are both equally insane,2 my dear Diotima, and therefore will not blush too much at stupidities between ourselves. I assert that the germ of the soul is born in the body of the mother at the moment of conception.3 In my small works and perhaps to you as well, I have spoken obscurely of how this happens,4 but one day I will see whether I cannot make it clearer. This germ is rich or poor – I don’t doubt it and you don’t either. This germ is found in that place [where exist] those particles of matter which most possess that face [of the universe] which is homogeneous with the faces of the germ or of the soul, whose reality has been demonstrated in Sophylus.5 These particles first form a cerebellum,6 a principle of the nervous system, analogous to the richness or poverty of the soul or germ that they encounter. Finally, the brain is formed, as well as the heart and other parts. Communication with the mother becomes more and more physical and the foetus attaches to the flesh behind it or to the placenta, draws its nutrition and its growth from the mother’s blood which the placenta purifies and modifies for that purpose. Next, the infant comes out into the world, quits the placenta and seeks, with its body on the breast of its mother, for a food more analogous to its state in this new phase. Then it eats, its body grows, becomes old and dies. It has not been remarked, my dear Diotima, that in the economy of the soul’s development or growth there is something very analogous to one of the articles of the economy of the formation and nutrition of the child’s body. Although the cerebellum serves as a universal tool for the soul to think, act and execute its deeds [volontés] on many parts of its body, it is no less true that this cerebellum is properly the placenta of the soul, from which it draws its nutrition and its growth by means of sensations and ideas. When it comes to healthy, rich and robust souls, they are nourished so well that they acquire the force to be able to penetrate into their own essence, to develop their faculties, to truly have a presentiment of a future phase [of existence], and to sow and cultivate, even in this life, food which pertains to another state. You sense well that, by means of these crude processes, they wear out that umbilical cord which attaches to their placenta, and this often alters the communication [between them], which is still so necessary. If the cerebellum was not at the same time an organ, [healthy souls] would disdain it by breaking the cord and, imitating the child who throws itself onto its mother’s breast, they

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would prematurely seek in the breast of the Supreme Perfection, that precious drink which returned Psyche to Love and to eternity.7 This, my dear Diotima, is the case for those souls who sense themselves to be animal with too much impatience. Those who are animal and do not sense it are happy, but, since the cord is ruptured, I do not dare claim too much for their fate. What you’ve just read, my dear Diotima, is without argument divinely beautiful relative to our current indisposition and [relative] to those moments of safety when there are few eyes on us to prevent us from doing wrong. But, in the beautiful midst of our malady, we are sometimes capable of pronouncing the truth, which properly pertains as little to an outburst of wisdom as it does [to an outburst] of folly. Here is an example: I, such as I am now, can assure you that, when we find ourselves in this state of inertia, of stupidity and of nothingness, which lasts sometimes (as it did for the great Leibniz and Pascal) entire weeks, if we are able to capture some idea – it doesn’t matter whether it’s mad or wise – and take a momentary resolution to contemplate and pursue this idea, we will achieve with our cerebellum, relative to this idea, things so astonishing that our most beautiful fits of wisdom would blush with shame afterwards. This often makes me reflect on whether madness is not really a compact and condensed wisdom. I admit that this idea flatters me far too much, because I see in it a limpid source from which we can draw consolations for our ills. Goodbye, my dear Diotima, until tomorrow. […]

Letter on the Rotation of the Planets

The Hague, Monday 29th March 1784.1 My very dear Diotima, I am going to talk to you for a moment about something which is a trifle in its great simplicity, but which is not so at bottom. I am obliged to treat this trifle as a book and to decorate it with a preface. Kepler and Newton taught us the cause of why a body, attracted by another body and with, at the same time, a movement of translation or projection in some direction, must proceed around this other body in a determinate elliptical orbit. Their purely geometric demonstrations have been proven by the revolutions of all planets and comets to appear before our eyes.2 When observed, the earth’s diurnal movement exhibits a movement of rotation around an axis within this planet. Scheiner, Galileo3 and others discovered moving spots on the sun’s disc, and, by following the paths [of these spots], they were persuaded that this star itself had a movement of rotation. Soon after, moving spots were perceived on the discs of Jupiter, Mars and Venus, and, after having followed their visible paths across these bodies’ surfaces, a movement of rotation around their axis was attributed to these planets, as was manifestly seen with respect to the Earth. This even led as far as determining the speed of these rotations, or the length of their days, and even the inclination of the axis of each of these planets along the plane of its orbit. I have seen these spots as much as, more than and perhaps even better than many other astronomers,4 and I can assure you that until now these observations have been too precarious, for more than one reason, to deduce with any certainty the inclinations of these planets’ axes and the length of their days; and you will understand this when I tell you that Bianchini and Dominique Cassini,5 very illustrious astronomers no doubt, having both observed the spots on Venus with extreme assiduity, gave the planet a day lasting 23 of our hours, in the latter case, and 24 of our days, in the former. But finally, by taking all these observations together, it became convincing that these four planets, Jupiter, Mars, Earth and Venus, are endowed with a rotational motion on an axis. As no one had seen any moving spot on the discs of Saturn and Mercury, [astronomers] were reduced to attributing a rotational movement to these two planets merely by analogy, and this is still the situation today. The great physicists and astronomers, who had so admirably developed the causes and laws of the motion of the planets’ revolutions around their sun, found no cause for this strange movement of rotation. The Huygens, the Jean Bernoullis, the Mairans,6 and others, searched for it without success and found their imaginary causes merely by resorting to subtle matters and vortexes,7 which exist nowhere but in Swiss philosophers’ minds8 and not at all in nature. Finally, all the physicists and astronomers, the Gregori, the ’s Gravesandes, the Lalandes, etc., etc., declared that

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rotational movement had nothing in common with [the movement] of the planets’ revolution around their celestial bodies – one was absolutely independent of the other, and a body could turn, or not turn, on an axis when making its revolution around its sun.9

Their arguments are quite simple. When a body is attracted towards a point or towards the centre of a star, all the parts of this body are equally attracted in the direction of this centre, and there can be no rotation since equilibrium is retained (see Fig. 1, where points a and b are equally attracted to c). When a body receives an impulse in some direction, all the parts which compose it receive the same direction and there can be no rotation since equilibrium is retained (see Fig.  2, where the points a and b move in parallel directions towards area C). This is the end of my preface, my dear Diotima, and this is the beginning of the book which will not be long. Imbued from my youth with the principles detailed in the preface, I recently came across the dialogue of Alexis and particularly Hypsicles’s tale and its commentary.10



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Whatever respect I may have for this good priest of Adonis and his commentator, I sadly felt that, in order to grant him [my] full conviction, the matter of the rotation of the planets had to be clarified, and, retreating entirely into my placenta,11 I discovered the following with little cost. The cause of the rotational motion of any sphere, which describes an orbit around any star, derives solely from the two causes of the revolution of this sphere around this star. The velocity of this rotation and the inclination of its direction in relation to the plane of this sphere’s orbit are likewise derived from it. Or: Every spherical body which is attracted towards a point or towards the centre of any other body, with some attractive force or gravity, and which has received some impulse in a direction other than that which would lead it directly to this attracting centre, or which would directly drive it out from it, will necessarily have a determinate movement of rotation. I am assuming that the sphere is perfectly homogeneous, and space perfectly empty. Demonstration 1° Fig. 3. If globe C is attracted towards point S with some force, an accelerated motion will bring it to point S according to familiar laws. If this body further receives an impulse in a direction that is contrary to this attraction, towards D, or in conformity to this attraction towards S – an impulse which is stronger or weaker than this attraction – it will move towards D, or towards S, with an accelerated or retarded speed according to the combination of the forces from its attraction and its impulse; and in these two cases no rotational motion can arise, since, in both cases, the parts which compose this body perfectly conserve their equilibrium. 2° Fig. 4. Let globe C be attracted towards the centre of a star or towards some point S, it will approach S in direction CS. But suppose that it receives an impulse, a movement by some projection or translation in direction CE, it is evident that all the points of this globe will tend towards the area E in the same direction; that is, that points B, D and A will tend towards area E according to the parallel lines Be, De, Ae. Moreover, since AS is equal to BS, points B and A must be attracted towards S with an equally attractive force. But as angle SAe is larger than angle SBe, it follows that point A, in its direction Ae, acts more directly against the direction of attraction AS, than B, in its direction Be, does against [the direction] of attraction BS. Therefore, the effect of attraction must be greater in B than in A. Thus, the equilibrium is broken, and the globe must acquire a rotational motion from B through D towards A. And it is also evident that one of the poles of the axis around which the globe must turn must be point C, and the other [pole] an opposite point which is postulated to be below the paper;12 that is, [it is evident] that this axis must be perpendicular to the plane which passes through point S and through the lines of direction Be, De, Ae, which is the plane of the paper, or of the orbit. From this I draw the conclusion that every possible planet which has a motion of projection in another direction than the line drawn from its centre to that of another attracting body must necessarily have a movement of rotation, the rapidity of which (i.e., the length of its day) will be determinate.

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Corollary I It follows from the preceding theorem that, strictly speaking, any bomb or bullet fired in any direction whatsoever, except towards the centre of the earth or towards its zenith, must naturally have a rotational motion other than that of rotation caused by some obstacle, or by friction in the barrel of the gun, and [it follows] that this bullet will also take on some [rotational motion] when passing close to a vast mountain or to a vast building.13 Corollary II It also follows that, for every planet, given the sine of ∠ SCe (this being the tangent of its orbit), the sine ASB, and the density of the planet, it will not be difficult to calculate the length of its day. My very dear Diotima, I will not abuse your precious time here by investigating whether the application of this theory could lead to some interesting or essential truth in astronomy or in mechanics; it will suffice to undertake the following reasoning once more. From what I have just proven, it evidently follows that, let a sun and an earth be formed and, before joining with this sun by the laws of attraction, let this earth receive an impulse in any direction, it must not only necessarily describe an elliptical orbit around its sun, but must also revolve around an axis perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. This, then, is the natural state of a planet or an earth: a state which derives directly from its nature and its interrelations with its principal star, and it is evident that no alteration can occur to this state, except by some foreign force. The axis of our earth is inclined in its orbit at an angle of 66° 31’. Consequently, this irregularity has as its cause a foreign force. Where should we look for this foreign force, if not in the only body which is to be found in our vicinity, namely the moon, which acts so prodigiously on us, on our winds, and on our seas? But, it will be objected, the moon was formed the very instant the earth was formed. And this is what is perfectly impossible, principally for the following reason. All the planets are visibly flattened towards their poles and swell towards their equators, and they owe this quality solely to their motions around their axes.14

This is because any mass of a heterogeneous composition, into which fluids enter voluminously, when isolated in a vacuum, is necessarily a sphere by the law of attraction that adheres to its nature. If the moon had been created at the same instant as the earth, the earth would not at that time have undergone the effects of the centrifugal force of rotation, and its shape would have been spherical.



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However, the moon could only have made the axis of the earth tilt or cause the ills that Hypsicles attributes to it in a flattened state. For were the earth to be a sphere, whatever position or modification one attributes to the moon, it would have had to either merge with [the moon] or circle it. But [since] the earth had already oriented on its axis and thereby [had become] flattened and swollen, the moon was able to elevate it, as you see in the figure in which the pointedness of the earth marks its state since that golden age. I conclude that the moon either was created or arrived [in proximity to the earth] after the flattening of the earth. But was it created [as something] calcinated, vitrified, a deadhead, without air, without atmosphere, without water?15 For at the distance of thirty diameters from the earth it is close enough to see a little of these beautiful things. Let us prefer to believe that it acquired these sad modifications in its quality as a comet while passing through its perihelion.16 The Clairauts, the Eulers, the Mayers, the d’Alemberts17 have indeed, by the most astonishing works, subjected to their proud calculations the greater part of the prodigious irregularities found in the moon’s movement and in the earth’s [movement] in relation to it. But there is still enough left to show us that all these anomalies are merely remnants of greater disorders from which the earth is seemingly trying to recover, because since Hipparchus,18 we have seen that it has been attempting to reorient its inclined axis. My dear Diotima, to tell you everything I think and am able to think about Hypsicles’ tale, I will suppose that Clairaut had returned to the world and spoke to me thus: I admit that your hypothesis has a very high probability, but perhaps it is possible to weigh your system according to an immense calculation, by examining whether the moon, whose body is forty times smaller than the earth, could have produced the great changes which you attribute to it, [but] what would you say if, after this examination, it is found that it could not? I would say to him: Sir, the examination has not yet been undertaken, and, in the meantime, allow me to believe this moon powerful enough; but suppose you do find that it was not [so powerful], the earth has certainly undergone these changes. It certainly reacted in proportion to what it has undergone. There was certainly an agent analogous to this reaction, so all that remains for me to believe is that the moon is a part, a particle of a more powerful body, from which [the moon] has been detached in its transit and which abandoned [the moon] while proceeding on its way, after having been the principal cause of the alteration of this globe’s natural state and our temporal misfortunes. As for this cause of the rotation, I find it so simple that if you had told me three years ago that Mimi or Mitri19 had discovered it, I would not have raised an

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eyebrow, so [please] judge how surprised I must be to find it absolutely unknown even in the most recent authors I have seen – Lalande, for example, [whose book] you can consult on the chapter on the rotation of the planets and elsewhere. We can conclude from this corollary that we fare very badly when, from either indolence or false modesty, we do not seek out what the great masters have not discovered. The great masters often possess a great fault: they are tacitly prouder of the act of skilfully searching into the inaccessible than charmed to have discovered [things] with ease. It reminds me of an architect from Amsterdam: he planned and executed an immense well, which I saw, to supply the city with fresh water. Enthused by his project, he began by digging to the depth of more than 300 feet, where he found the water to be more bituminous and saltier than ever; and, in the ardour of his work, he failed to notice that, when he was at 150 feet, he had pierced the precious sandbank, whose filtration could alone remove the salt and bitumen from the water.20 Here, my very dear Diotima, is a quite crazy letter, which I would not, however, want to use to enrich the commentary in Alexis. 1° This commentary suffices for this dialogue and is analogous to it. And 2° if ever I decide to treat the matter of the moon in a serious and scientific tone, I would believe myself obligated to simultaneously prevent, in the most effective way, the enormous abuses which our illustrious modern philosophers21 could make of my hypothesis. They would see in it, presented rigorously and with the most perfect truth, the birth of great catastrophes from absolute necessity, and since they increasingly confuse the economy of the physical and the inanimate with that of the animate and the active (the difference between which is [actually] so prodigious), they would soon discover in the hypothesis something to further extend the despotism of their necessity. Thus, it would be necessary to prove to them geometrically that a God created everything, that to everything we will ever give a name, in every category whatsoever – whether material or physical – he has given indestructible and eternal laws, since they are necessarily derived from the nature he wished to give these things, and from them are born what we call accidents. But even these accidents cannot destroy anything in nature, since it is through these [laws] that they occur. Let’s suppose that this were not the case and that the physical and the inanimate had no other laws than the particular and present activity of the Supreme Will – do you believe that the existence of subordinate active velleities would be possible? What would be their domain in each life over things which they could neither handle nor know with the slightest foresight? Willing and acting beings also have their own laws which derive from their nature, but they make use of them, whereas the inanimate [object] obeys its own [laws] like a slave. Farewell, my very dear Diotima, my friend, may God protect you along with your dear children and your Great Friend.22 Σωκρατης

On Final Causes

The Hague, Friday 10th August 1787.1 My very dear Diotima, at this very moment I received your [letter] from the 10th.2 Not for one moment was I in doubt over your perseverance to write to me by every post, if you could. It is necessary and reciprocal, and it has become for us what eating and drinking are to others. But the horrors of the age3 make [me] tremble at the idea of a lost letter. I have no less trembled at the thought of all those things you’ve told me I have begun, abandoned, forgotten, promised, etc.4 Outside of animals5 and Alexis II,6 I remember none of them. It is true that I wanted to think again about final causes, which very much merit [such reflection] and which I recommend to your care. I believe that the following were my ideas for beginning this investigation. A cause is what produces an effect. A progression or a series of positive things without a first term is absurd. Therefore, there is a first cause. This first cause is either what is called God or a universe existing by itself. A final cause is a cause which exists so as to produce a certain effect. Therefore, a final cause can solely be a secondary or middle cause, but never a first cause; since, [for] a cause that necessarily produces its effect, the effect must have been predicted by an anterior cause or rather by the first cause. Thus, if we really perceive final causes, which is possible because they are not the first cause, the real, necessary existence of a Providence would be precisely demonstrated. We see an infinity of causes and effects. We see the moon cause the flux and reflux of the tides, but is it the accidental or final cause [of this]? We easily sense the absolute impossibility of pronouncing on the above solely by contemplating this simple cause and its effect, which is the same, and it is thus for all simple causes which produce its effect. Therefore, we must look for some [other] means of distinguishing accidental causes from final causes, if there is one. A cause, an agent, an active principle can produce some effect solely on or with other things than it.7 Hence, let’s suppose it acting on itself; it acts on itself only inasmuch as this concerns those faculties or parts of it that do not constitute the agent in it. (And this truth, in parenthesis, proves the necessity of a creation, as incomprehensible as it seems to appear to us, in the case that there is a God.) You sense well, my Diotima, that it would honestly be absurd for me to doubt for an instant the real existence of the Divinity; but at stake is an examination of the value of final causes insofar as we might be able to perceive them. If it is true that we do perceive them, I confess that this will be an argument without reply, but, prior to it being proven, the philosophers have made too much of their argument, or so it seems to me. We have seen that, when it comes to simple causes and effects, no final causes are perceptible to us.

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Let’s now consider the case in which a complication of two or more causes produces solely one simple effect.8 At the very least, I notice in this case 1° the coexistence of two determinate and different causes, 2° [causes] which must be capable of complication, from which 3° necessarily results this determinate, simple effect. I confess that, when seeing just once this coexistence [of causes], this determinate modification – [that is,] this complication of two causes and this determinate effect – all these things together presented to me solely a simple and perhaps even an accidental cause, as in the case of the moon’s production of flux and reflux. And it is evident from this that, in the case of two causes or a plurality of causes, the certitude with which I pronounce on whether these causes are accidental or final will depend on two things – first, the number of times I observe the same phenomenon, and secondly, the importance of the effect. In terms of the first: since the world is the world, I see in every species of active and sensible beings, without exception, two different sexes which together produce their like. These [lead to] a number of observations which cannot be grander. In terms of the second: I see that the effect which results from it is the possibility of an eternal propagation of all species. This is the importance of the effect: it cannot be more important. For the cause or action to produce an effect, it is necessary to suppose a reaction; thus, some two [causes] are inescapably necessary to produce an effect; and since every effect is analogous to its cause, and since here the cause of the effect resides in the two active [elements] or else in the active and the reactive, it is necessary that this effect or this product be analogous to these two active [elements]. Thus, to produce any substance, two substances are needed. But following this reasoning, two sexes ought to produce a sterile mix of the two sexes: hermaphrodites, malesfemales – but this is not the case. They produce either male or female, therefore we here see a law which derives from the nature of things [which are] compelled to achieve the greatest goal men can imagine. Here is the final cause I know of which is most perceptible to us. My Diotima, I sense that all this is not detailed enough, except for you. Besides, I do not have the time; perhaps I will return to it. Goodbye my very dear Diotima, my friend, may the Cause of all final causes bless us along with all that is dear to us in the world. Σωκρατης

[…]

Prelude to the Letter on Optics

The Hague, Monday 11th Nov[ember] 1788.1 My very dear Diotima, my friend. […] Let’s speak of Landriani2 who you will see first. He’s a man in the prime of life and with an interesting figure. He’s one of the most famous mathematicians and physicists. Owing to this beautiful title of celebrity, I have had the occasion to learn to appreciate him, and so I leave it to you and to the Great Man3 to evaluate the amount and the nature of his knowledge. […] He is [currently] thinking about and labouring on a work on the metaphysics of optics. You can judge whether we found each other in intellectual agreement. I was charmed to be able to give this man some ideas about light and vision which he had never had. He had heard much of my binocular [telescope]4 in Italy from the late Mr. Fourmont,5 but you would have been delighted to see his astonishment when, looking through it, he experienced for himself that the ideas he had of a visible object could be rendered far more saturated, fuller and richer than they were naturally by his eyes. And in fact, my Diotima, the contemplation of this phenomenon has the means to place us outside ourselves. Permit me to provide you with the path for pursuing [this enquiry]. If I am not mistaken, you perfectly sense what I mean by seeing in a more saturated, more compact, denser, fuller manner. And I can completely prove, by means of my anatomy of the organ of sight and of the brain of insects (a work I quit too early!),6 that there are a number of these animals which see the same object as we do, not multiplied, not larger, but 3,000 to 4,000 times richer, more saturated, more compact, denser than we see it.7 That is, when seeing the sun, for example, they do not see many suns nor a larger sun, but a sun 3,000 to 4,000 times more luminous than ours. Now, consider that the principal part of the organ, in which sensation necessarily resides, pertains to the soul and that its external part, its extremity, its tube, pertains to what we call the physical, to matter. Consider further than just one different modification of this external part produces such a prodigious richness in sensation. Consider that the modification of this part can be imagined in an infinite number of possible ways. Then, it follows from this that the faculty of seeing in the soul is capable by nature of a richness and a perfection far beyond all our current conceptions. Suppose [that] at some point there just [existed] a very great, but still finite perfection. What would we see then? Would we see into the interior of things? Would we see into their essences? Good Gods, what would we see? I well know, my Diotima, that the object of these contemplations is infinitely beyond our range, but you will admit with me that these contemplations themselves are extremely interesting and curious, and perhaps instructive.

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When I have raised myself to the level of optics, my babbling is without end, and I insensibly become a kind of old rambler who enrages myself and bores others. Bacchylides said that we must grow old like the rose which, already completely dry, conserves the odour of its spring.8 Goodbye, my dear Diotima. […]

Letter on Optics

The Hague1 My dear Diotima If these reflections on optics, which I’ve tried to express as succinctly as possible, only concerned the physical part of that science, it would have been sufficient to address myself to the theorists and practitioners of optics in order to be well understood and [well] judged; but, since what is essential to this little piece falls under the jurisdiction of psychology, it is only right and natural that I expose it to the full glare of your illumination. One of man’s most beautiful achievements in improving his composition has undoubtedly been that by which he has amplified and perfected the organ of sight. It seems to me quite interesting to precisely determine the present state of the science of optics, so as to consider, first, what paths have been taken to reach this present perfection; 2° what chances there are of further developments being made by continuing down these paths; and 3° whether there are not any other paths that could yet be taken to attain a perfection of a completely new kind. Optics is properly the science of the effects of the organ of sight in its natural state, but, when there is added to this organ means to achieve more considerable effects, it becomes the science of dioptrics, which more or less coincides with catoptrics; but, since the first of these has until now been treated with the most art and from it the most is to be expected, I will speak mostly of [dioptrics]. The greatest effect to be obtained from the organ [of sight] by means of this science is that of approaching or enlarging distant objects. This is achieved by means of a convex objective lens, which paints the image of the object in focus, but, since the diameter or aperture of this lens is larger than the aperture of the eye, the light of this image will be more compact and denser, and therefore more susceptible to magnification by means of eyepieces. Moreover, the size of this image depends on the length of the focus of the objective lens. It follows that the larger the diameter and the larger the focus of the objective lens, the larger the effects produced. But, since mechanics does not allow us to create convex or concave lenses and mirrors in any other shape except circular, we must examine this shape. From its nature combined with [the nature] of the laws of refraction, it results that the rays which fall on the peripheral surface of the lens towards its circumference have a different focus than those which fall closer to its centre – and this makes the overall focus much less compact and less dense. To overcome this unfortunate effect to a small extent, there is no other means but to reduce the diameter or the aperture of the objective lens or to lengthen its focus, so as to expose only the smallest possible arc of the circle to the rays which

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fall on its surface. However, it is evident that, in so doing, while making the focus more distinct, I decrease the aperture, and therefore [reduce] its clarity or quantity of light far too much. On the other hand, it results from the nature of light that at the moment when a ray, falling obliquely on a diaphanous surface, diffuses on contact, the primitive colours that compose it are separated and dispersed. And from this it follows that different colours require different foci, and this defect is in fact much greater than the other one derived from the nature of the circle, and, united with it, makes the overall focus all the more confused, less clear and less pure. Huygens and Newton already glimpsed the means to rectify these two defects – Huygens the first of them, Newton the second.2 From the ideas of the latter was born the prodigious theory of the achromatic [which is], without comparison, the most daring operation by which the human mind can attain glory. By this theory, there has been success in reducing the complicated effects of these two defects to an astonishing extent, and I know from experience that we might attain an almost absolute perfection by differently making use of the rectifications engendered by this theory within either a rarefied or a condensed atmosphere. I dare to add that, besides this, there is still advantage to be had in using many more lenses in dioptric instruments than have been used [until now], especially for eyepieces, because light, like everything else in nature, repels an effort that is too violent and too sudden. Let’s now suppose that man succeeds in adding to all these rectifications of which I’ve just spoken (even though this is impossible by the nature of mechanics) a means of giving the surfaces of lenses and mirrors the shape of curves that are more favourable than the circle, so as to produce an absolutely perfect focus. It must not be concluded from this that, even in theory, dioptric and catoptrics are brought to absolute perfection, or that the size of the effects would be proportional to that of the instruments being used. It is not [explicitly] said that light has a nature that might permit itself to be tormented, broken up, bent, and mixed much more than has [already] been done, or that, ultimately, too distorted, it becomes so spongy, porous, intricate, delicate and inert that it can no longer act on our coarse retinas. So, let’s suppose that this is not so, and that its activity on our organs is infinite, as well as the delicacy of our nerves and our sensations; there are still, however, two absolutely insuperable difficulties. The first is that there is not in nature [or] our categories a perfectly hard body, and consequently, when lenses or the mirrors are of a very considerable size, they will collapse into themselves by their own gravity, and, at every inclination, destroy their shape, on which everything depends.3 Some might say that there will still be a way of overcoming this horrible difficulty, by leaving this lens or this mirror in its vertical or horizontal position and using plane mirrors [instead]. To say nothing more of this, they don’t consider a plane mirror to be something impossible. The other [difficulty] is that the achromatic objective lens of the best kind for fairly long foci is composed of three parts, either lenses or menisci, which have six spherical surfaces, [and this is true] not only for [lenses with] rather unequal



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foci but also for [those with] foci whose length [is] in proportion to the size of the proposed instrument. So, those who have handled lenses with a focal length of 100 feet, of 300 feet, of 600 feet, are easily convinced, if not of the absolute impossibility, at least of the infinite difficulty that there would be installing six circular arcs, whose aperture or width would be a few inches or a few feet, if one wanted, and whose concavities or convexities would pertain to spheres of 1,200, 800, 600 feet, etc., with each one [placed] in such a way in front of the other that, if the different concave or convex spheres were finished, the centres of these spheres would all exist in a single straight line forming the axis of the instrument. Without considering for the present the impossibility of finding pieces of glass that would simultaneously have the required size, refrangibility and homogeneity, it is easy to be convinced by what I’ve just said that the perfection of practical dioptrics has its limits and that a telescope perfected in the above way, with a ten-feet focus and an aperture of as many inches would be the limit of our achievements and would lead to an enlargement of the surface of objects at the very most of four million times, because it is a question not of seeing, but of seeing well. It follows from these considerations that, unless we discover other laws of light than those we [already] know, it will not be possible to reach by these paths effects that are much more considerable than those we see now. This truth has made me consider whether there might not yet be another path to take, in order to perfect one of the most beautiful of our faculties. Until now this matter has only been pursued from the side of the organ [of sight] as it is absolutely what is called physical, and, through the most prodigious efforts of the human mind, the last or the most inner parts of this organ have successfully been modified, so that the desired effects result from it. But vision has not been considered from the side of the soul, which plays, without comparison, the biggest role.4 We would, to all appearances, be greatly astonished if we could see the imperfection of utterly crude images and ideas, such as they are received by the soul after all our labours, all our skill and all our industry. And were there no more to it than [this] appearance, then our embellished dioptrics would end in very little, if the soul did not have the faculty of perfecting and completing these sensations and ideas from its side. When the most skilful musicians, who are using the most perfect instruments, perform a concert, if we could see and measure the vibrations of all these instruments, is it to be believed [that] they would all be visibly in that perfect harmony which geometric theory requires?5 If we could see the complicated paths of the rays of light which pass through a well-made achromatic telescope, is it to be believed [that] they would all be exactly in the reciprocal situation demanded by this haughty geometry which admits nothing to its domain but the absolutely perfect? It would require a lot. Crude physics can only give the imperfect, but the soul has the admirable faculty of correcting it, completing it and finalising this work. It is this same faculty, this same operation of the soul, which has been able to abstract geometry from physical objects.

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But let’s continue. Man is born with two eyes and, from the first days of his life, he becomes so familiar with this composition that, afterwards, it is very difficult for him to reflect on two of the most important phenomena which result from [this fact]. First, that he sees just one object with his two eyes, and secondly, that he sees objects in a larger, fuller, richer, and more powerful way with two eyes than with one eye. Very rarely is it possible to lead man back to his infancy, so that he can notice and sense native and pure truths, which education, routine, and prejudices have gone on to completely obscure to his eyes. Fortunately, in the case I am talking about, we can in some way rejuvenate man and give him back that precious tone of innocence, which only sees the true.6 By means of the binocular,7 [man] can be brought to see with two eyes, which, by the strange spectacle of enlargement, appear totally new to him. The binocular is an instrument that has been known about for nearly two centuries, but, within the then limited state of dioptrics, was soon rejected for good reasons. Even today, if we asked of geometric theory whether such an instrument were possible, it would justifiably deny it, with the assurance that all human industry, together with the greatest perfection of which our subject is capable, would be insufficient to [attain] the almost infinite exactitude that the execution of such a tool would demand. It would insist, among many other things, on the most scrupulous parallelism between the axes of the two glasses, or rather that these two axes should coincide in a mathematical point on the object under observation. It would insist that the two glasses had precisely the same strength and the same composition. Nevertheless, by means of this instrument (made as perfect as possible), practical [optics] is in a position to measure the great imperfections which remain for it, to make them grow at will, and to prove to theory with compelling evidence that all these imperfections and inaccuracies, even [when] increased by art to an astonishing degree, vanish entirely before one single act of the soul, which can form a single perfect idea out of two ideas that are imperfect in every sense.8 Finally, by the binocular, it can be proven to all eyes that are a little practised, 1° that two images of one and the same object [which are] visibly far distant from each other to the point of being of unequal size, [as well as being] in a position in relation to each other that is not parallel – [that even these two images] are combined together, in a blink of the eye, by a single act of the soul, such that they form a single perfect image of this object; and 2° that this perfect image, formed by the union of two imperfect ones, is incomparably clearer, larger, richer, more saturated than each of the other two, seen separately. To remark once more on the first of these phenomena, experienced opticians can be reminded [of the fact] that there are seemingly no two men on the surface of the earth who have eyes perfectly alike and that there are even many of them for whom the magnifying force of one of their eyes stands to the other, as 2 does to 3, and even [as] 1 to 2. I must add one more case which I take from the greatest anatomist in the world.9 A man skating under a bridge hit his eye against a piece of iron he did not see. The piece of iron completely severed the abductor muscle in one of his eyes, [and] consequently the eyeball was pulled from the side of the nose, such that the axis



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of this eye met the axis of the other one with an angle greater than 45°. While the wound healed, the eye had to remain in this position, so this man saw two images with his two eyes, and two images that were distanced from each other by an arc of more than 45°. In just a few months, he managed to see one object alone. What is more, people who squint, as well as children who learn to squint out of bad habits, are in the same situation. Convinced of these two indisputable truths – that the soul can combine many images of the same object, and that these combined images represent the object with much more force – I have thought about what the ideas must be like of those insects who are, to all appearances, often endowed with four thousand eyes or more.10 The sole end of every organ, and even more so [the organ] of vision, is to impart to the animal’s soul individual sensations or ideas of things which are outside it, in order to distinguish them from each other; and not only the uselessness, but also the disorder of many distinct and coexisting ideas of the same object [existing] next to one another is beyond doubt, since every object would appear jumbled together without any contour or proper determination. Taking the largest of these insects (which we call dragonflies), I charted their organ of vision into their cerebellum. Here is the cross-section of a part of this animal’s head, as it traverses the head, i.e., the eye and a part of the brain.

I here consider the curved exterior part of the eye only from the side of its perceptible shape – for its shape [is] well known to entomologists under the name of the cornea and it alone would merit a dissertation on the astonishing dioptric singularities to be discovered in it. Seen from the outside on its surface, this cornea represents a net of which each mesh is a hexagon. A perfectly transparent lens is deeply embedded in each of these meshes. Each of these lenses is placed on the base of a hexagonal pyramid

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with a truncated [upper] point, and [the pyramid’s] hollow is filled with a slightly yellowish but transparent aqueous humour. Each base of the pyramid is placed on a membrane that resembles our retina, and on the other side of this retina there corresponds to each trunk a small bundle of nerves, which – together composing the increasingly narrow optic nerve – passes through a rigid ring of bone, and ultimately seems to lose itself in the cerebellum. This is roughly the general description of the eyes of all animals, with the difference that the soul of this insect must unify hundreds or thousands of images, whereas [the soul] of man and other animals produces [a unity] out of just two. I must not forget [to mention] that there is a very curious peculiarity in these insects, which could well facilitate in them this act of the soul which composes and combines images. The bundles of nerves of which I have spoken that together compose the optic nerve are intertwined with each other from the retina to the ring of bone through which they pass, [and] each communicates with its closest [bundle] by three, four, or five branches of nerves that emerge out of one [bundle] and unite with the other. From all this it evidently results that these insects endowed with so many eyes possess only a single, unique idea like us, but it is equally evident how rich, compact and saturated this idea must be, composed out of the union of such a large number of distinct images. My dear Diotima, after having long meditated with all the attention of which I have been capable on the incontestable facts I’ve just related to you, I believe myself fully authorised to propose the following experiment, namely, for several consecutive months to attach a polished glass with several flat facets in front of the eye of a child or a fully formed man, so that he constantly receives twenty or thirty images of the same objects through this eye, in order to see in the long run what the effects of the soul’s efforts will be in forming a single idea out of these isolated images. It is after having carefully weighed the only specious objection that the most profound theory could make against this new experiment that I dare to hope for its success, and it would be the best opportunity to teach to theory [which has become] too proud that in everything there is a point where it is proper to remain silent. Diocles11

PART THREE ART AND STYLE

Letters on Geometric Style (Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin)

Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin [16th December 1775]1 Madame, I give you my very humble thanks for the book you had the good will to lend to me.2 I had already read it when it first appeared,3 and I must confess that I was affected differently by the second reading than the first. I had the mortification to note that the delicacy of my taste, such as it is, such as I have ever possessed it, is furiously diminished, since on the first reading I still had the faculty of sensing many excellent things in this book, and now I no longer have this faculty. I sought the cause of this sad phenomenon and I believe to have found it in the ideas, apparently false and erroneous, that I formed for myself in philosophy. Allow me, Madame, to submit them to your tribunal so that, corrected again, perhaps in time I can return to the great beaten path which leads to assured celebrity. I do not here consider philosophy as it is, nor as it could be, nor in terms of what it must produce – this would assuredly be an enquiry a little more worthy of being addressed to you. But I take philosophy here in terms of the way of treating it. It seems to me that there are properly two types [of treatment] – one could be called poetic and narrative philosophy and the other persuasive or geometric philosophy. The first was that of most of the ancient poet-philosophers, the Sophists, Descartes even and a great number of illustrious moderns. The other was that of Socrates, Aristotle, Newton and a few people of that kind. The first [group] – after having shaken up a certain number of ideas in their exalted imagination – recount to us with a striking elegance what beautiful whole resulted from this procedure: it is normally a small universe which closely resembles Lucretius’s, born from the fortuitous play of atoms.4 The others – with the help of an imagination that has been tamed a little more and a reason that is well practised in sizeable, rather than small, methodological procedures – proceed straight to the simple and, from it, Euclid in hand, ascending by a few degrees [at a time], they tell us in humble prose that there are at least some truths. The first have a great advantage over the others: to refute them a book must be as fat as theirs and recount exactly the opposite, whereas the latter are refuted in a few phrases, since the basis of their edifices5 is of the most austere simplicity. If you knew, Madame, the lively pleasure that I feel in being true before you, you would easily pardon me for putting the author,6 either by error or correctly, into the class of the illustrious moderns.7

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With the most profound respect, Your Highness, I am your very humble and very obedient servant, Hemsterhuis May I dare pray you, Madame, to leave Mr Dentan8 ignorant of the judgement that I have given on the writings of his master and his friend. He promised he would pass the evening at mine. Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis [17th?] December 1775.9 The truth, Sir, has from all time been (even when I walked without a guide through the thickest shadows) the object of my worship [culte]. It is the attraction and the eternal basis of philosophy, and when you speak its language to me, it offers me proof of your worth. I assure you, Sir, that this appears to me still more precious, even when it ends up destroying my cherished idol. However, I would be unworthy of hearing it from the mouth of such a being as I consider you to be, if the fear of appearing presumptuous had prevented me from telling you my true feelings. Only I want to assure you, to begin, that when we differ between ourselves, I am always almost convinced that it is I who am in error. And if I still dare to air my doubts, it is only to attain some clarification from the torch of your genius, since you have not judged me unworthy of sometimes seeing it burn. After this short preamble, I will tell you, Sir, that I sense perfectly the excellence of your distinction in the definition you give of the two different manners of treating philosophy.10 Only, owing to a perhaps slightly blind affection that I still feel for what you so accurately call the poet-philosophers, I would like to ask you as a favour to distinguish the Sophists from Socrates and to put them into a third category. Here is the difference that I perceive between Hippias and his like and what I know of Descartes, of Bonnet and their like, who you place alongside [the Sophists].11 It is that the philosophy of the former seems to me a two-edged dagger in their hands which they use relative to the interest of the moment, or rather, it would be to degrade philosophy to include the Sophists in it; they studied the dangerous art of eloquence in order to defend and teach errors and lies while knowing the [true] cause, unlike the other poet philosophers (to express myself like you) who were driven to seek the truth in good faith by the ardour of their genius [and] perhaps [they] sometimes [sought it] beyond the true – although they grasped the truth occasionally and, when it escaped them, I dare think that their error was involuntary and that they taught only what they believed to be incontestable truths. I beg you to remember Mr Diderot.12 He is, more than anyone (in my opinion), in the category of these poet-philosophers who doubt in good faith. Besides, I have always had the greatest respect for Socrates whom I read with delight every day, for Aristotle in the little I know of him, and for the sublime Newton, when my humble genius, [which has been] accustomed to crawling on the ground, can follow him in his bold flight. But permit me to observe that in the genre which Bonnet treats there are almost solely hypotheses; and this is a problem concerning so many unknowns.13 [Despite



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my] lively and complete sensibility, [as well as] the degree of abstraction and of personal detachment which has contributed much to the internal happiness I enjoy, I confess, I tell you, that [thirst for] recognition and egotism – of which we each have a small, often imperceptible dose – can, when seducing my heart, seduce my judgement. This is why I dare beg you immediately, Sir, to enlighten me in this regard and to communicate to me as soon as I have the honour of seeing you what your objections against Bonnet really are. I would be worried if I thought I had been nourished on errors or chimeras, and you will really and perceptibly oblige me by communicating your ideas before mine take root too deeply and become prejudiced. What is more, to tell you in a few words what I think of your two well-defined categories of philosophers, I consider the first as the nourishing bread which preserves life and our forces and the poet-philosophers as those delicate specialties which are delicious to taste, but less necessary and easily abused. As for the Sophists, I can only place them in a category of the most pernicious poisons. I am, Sir, with the sentiments that you inspire concerning the two first [categories] and your very humble servant, Adelaïde de Gallitzin Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin [17th December 1775].14 Madame, You have made it so necessary for me to respond to you that there would be some absurdity in imploring your indulgence on the liberties I am taking. After having read and reread the admirable letter you had the grace to write me, I recalled my own and found it lacking in a number of essentials. First of all, the false ironic tone, born perhaps of being ill-at-ease at not being able to say a few words to you about everything I had in mind, was out of place; but since it is this fault to which I owe, in large part, the response with which you have deigned to honour me, I congratulate myself on having fallen into [this fault]. Then, I have used expressions to which it is probable that you do not attach the same ideas as me. In speaking of the poet-philosophers, I had in mind the Parmenideses, Xenophoneses, Epicharmuses, Solons and Euripideses,15 all spirits who seem to me as admirable within their centuries as you appear to me in yours. Concerning the Sophists, I beg you, Madame, not to attach to this word the bad ideas that we commonly attach to it today, and to not judge the Gorgiases and the Protagorases on the basis of Plato’s biting satires,16 often based on the truth, but more often dictated by personal vendettas, for the most profound and most eloquent of all men was not the most virtuous, and there was such a sophist who, from the point of view of probity, was as worthy as the divine philosopher.17 Moreover, these sophists were, for the most part, dialecticians, and therefore taught an art that was sometimes useful, but at least highly sought after in the small republics of Greece, where one had to know how to persuade.

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Concerning Descartes, one of the great geniuses of the modern age, he, like Leibniz, must not be judged on the novel [roman] he published.18 These two great men were too sane not to be slyly laughing at their own reveries that shocked the people.19 Hence, Madame, these are people who are not entirely unworthy of being placed besides the author in question [i.e., Bonnet]. When I say that all these men have mostly treated philosophy in the narrative genre, it is to say that they have recounted their opinions without proving their truth. But this is not all that I would say against the method of the author [Bonnet] and many other moderns. They rely too much on matter.20 They always wish to explain by its modifications phenomena which obviously pertain to other principles, by presupposing properties within this matter [which are] often contradictory to all healthy physics. The more ground they gain by means of their purported material explanations, the less need there is for the influence of a soul, of a God, etc.; and they often perceive very acutely that their method must lead straight to the most perfect materialism and that – sometimes in good faith and sometimes with a fanatical pusillanimity – they employ palliatives to render their systems, in my opinion, still more grotesque. The people of good will among these philosophers create an illusion: they believe in good faith that they are seeking the truth, but they really seek the glory of having dissected the universe. Here, Madame, is egoism. I am a very poor philosopher, but I congratulate myself on my small philosophy whose nature obliges me to seek the truth and forbids me from ever aspiring to decipher the universe. I endeavour to do this as little as [I endeavour] to decipher the sentiments of admiration and respect with which, Madame, Your Highness, I am your very humble and very obedient servant, Hemsterhuis

On Geometric Education and Aesthetic Judgement

The Hague, 24th [–27th] September 1779.1 My very dear Diotima! I passed an hour this morning with the man to whom I handed over your letter.2 He made me read yours and I said to him what first came to mind in order to apply your advice. He told me that it was the first time that you had seriously spoken to him on this matter, and he went on to detail to me the state in which he found himself and that, in truth, his fortune has improved a little, but that he has to do a lot more to put himself in a position to implement the education for his children he believes necessary. […] He said something else which concerned me personally: he absolutely wants to teach his children mathematics, and, since his current tutor has no idea of it and since the future is uncertain, he told me that he presumed too much of my ardour for doing good to believe that I would meanwhile refuse to induct his children into this science.3 You can well judge, my dear Diotima, that I did not distinctly articulate a response to this proposition. Yet, it got me thinking. When you or Mr Fürstenberg4 or me (permit me to add) preach a geometric education, we are scarcely understood, my Diotima. People believe in geometry like people believe in astrology, ghosts and the Devil. They are scared of it but respect it. If they were asked what geometry or algebra is, if they could express their ideas, they would say that it is the art of wisdom, and, if they were asked what it is to be wise, they would say that it is to know more than other people. They believe that the properties of triangles, of curved lines and of series hide mysteries that produce peculiar effects which, nevertheless, are useful in society and nothing bad [has come from them] until now. The mathematician appears to them as an honest sorcerer. I want to teach people, and above all [teach] the father in question,5 that teaching mathematics to a child who is going to be a surveyor, an optical instrument-maker [or] a mechanic is to teach him the job by which he will earn his bread; that teaching mathematics to a child destined to lead or to enlighten men is really to teach him nothing, if all the other parts of his education do not conform to it. If we take care that the application of each step of his progress in mathematics – each step, each movement he makes – is continuous, if we train his intellect, in every case, to know and to follow the path of analogy,6 then the child learns to pass from one idea to another idea by intermediary ideas without hesitation. He gains the habit of doing it quickly.7 He acquires the knowledge of directing [others] and, if he is born a genius, he will make leaps more daring than Neptune’s horses, and he will owe it to his geometric education to never leap into the false. The habit of leaping teaches him to fly, to maintain himself in the air, to survey, from a bird’s eye view, the vast regions of all his ideas, of all his sensations and of

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all his passions. Here is his Olympus, here he sees his universe by its groupings, by its wholes, just as Jupiter sees heroes before Troy, the depths of hell and the limits of creation in one glance.8 When [his] spirit has attained this elevation, do you doubt whether he will have tact in all the arts, whether he will have the creative faculty in all the sciences, whether he will be able to grasp the reins of his own passions and direct [the passions] of others, do you doubt whether he will be pleased to exist. I know too well, my Diotima, that, in the condition in which we find ourselves on the earth, this magnificent description is too often just the description of a moment, that the best acrobat is still far from flying, that, in order to manage to eternalise this moment, the jump must be such that it makes us pass beyond and pierce the atmosphere of passions and thus deliver us from all the inconvenient gravitation pulling [us] towards the lower regions,9 and I believe that the only mortal who, as a mortal, occupied this position was the divine son of Sophroniscus.10 However, it is at least evident that geometric education is the only path leading to this true and real Olympus. How closely the child or the individual approaches it depends uniquely on the richness of their composition. When we teach a child of good mind who does not possess genius in merely mathematics alone, there results something curious – the dumbest man that it is possible to imagine. I have seen some examples. I knew well Mr Struyk of Amsterdam, one of the most famous mathematicians in Europe.11 There are few branches of mathematics that do not owe something to him. He died aged 78. He was a small man with a slim figure, and he was very vain about it, as he told me himself. His ability to do things in daily life, in the arts, in the sciences did not exceed the abilities of a 5-year-old. He was afraid of everything. He only ever left the house accompanied by a friend. A naughty child in the street made him flee at the slightest hint of menace. His servant could make him turn white and tremble in an instant by a tale of ghosts or spectres. He wrote many good works. His great work is a Geography or Universal Cosmology.12 It should contain the description of the universe; [but] the book contains two excellent treatises on comets, two others on life annuities and on luck and magic squares, a natural history of five butterflies that he possessed, a catalogue of all the eclipses, and another of all the volcanoes. It is thus evident, my Diotima, that geometry is nothing by itself and that it resembles light which in itself is only light, but which, throwing its rays onto the surrounding universe, makes it manifest, defines it, colours it, brings it to life and embellishes it. The beautiful universe is nothing without it; and a science, what am I saying?, an art, a virtue, a great action is a science, an art, a virtue and a great action only in proportion to the quantity of rays of geometry that it reflects. My very dear friend, I believe that it will be much easier for me to obtain from you a pardon for this apotheosis of geometry than it would be to make it comprehensible to the good Mr …13 who would surely see nothing but gibberish. Yet, this gibberish is the best commentary that I can give on the [proper] way of thinking about geometry, and [it would also be] Socrates’, Plato’s, yours and Mr Fürstenberg’s, if I am not mistaken. […] Mr. Campill, Professor of Mathematics at Marienfelt in your bishopric14 – creator of heroes – dined and passed the evening at my house and will do so again



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tomorrow. When I see someone from Münster, my heart quivers. It seems to me that I see the golden age,15 nature blooms and embellishes itself and is still ignorant of the little it will gain and the much it will lose by the ornaments that the hand of man imposes on it. This man has pleased me a lot and will please you, for you will permit him, I hope, to offer you his respects entwined with mine. All these gentlemen have minds made to know, and to know in that grand fashion of which we have so often spoken. They lack nothing except the knowledge of a number of excellent books and good editions. The greatest present that can be made to the city of Münster is a caravan of good books. There is no territory in the world where [such books] would so fully bear fruit. As I am only on the 13th page [of my letter], my Diotima, I can say one word more. Something happened with Mr Campill which has pleased me infinitely and has shown me a kind of lack of tact in the arts of which I had no idea.16 In the morning, I made him look at my collection of sculptures, which he greatly praised, and when I tried to find out the reason, he told me that they were perfect imitations of nature.17 I noticed that he had no sensation of the group or the ensemble. In the evening, after having spoken of mathematics, etc., I took my Letter on Sculpture and showed him the two vases that you know, asking him which was the most beautiful.18 He looked at them for a long time and finally said to me that the ugly vase was the most beautiful.19 Surprised, I tried to put him back on track. He looked once more with all possible attention, and he persisted. I closed my book, and I performed for him my geometric demonstration of the beautiful which you know and concerning which he was perfectly content.20 I brought the vases back into play. He looked. He persisted, and told me that my demonstration was perfect, since, within the same timeframe, he saw in the ugly vase many more determinate heterogeneous things than in the other one. You see that his soul did not have the faculty of seeing the parts of the totality as composing the totality, but that it counted [separately] the distinct and isolated parts which enter into the totality; and, therefore, the more a thing is baroque,21 the more it appears beautiful to him – and in this resides the cause of gothic order or anti-order,22 about which I will one day speak at length, after the Catechism.23 And yet my professor still has excellent judgement. Tomorrow, if I have the time, I will try him on other arts and I will perform experiments on the composition of his eyes, which seem extraordinary to me. I presume that I will make some more discoveries.24 Goodbye, my dear Diotima […] Σωκρατισκος25

Letters on Hesiod and the Golden Age

The Hague, Thursday 23rd Nov[ember] 1780.1 My very dear Diotima, my friend. […] The dark ideas which sometimes obsess me are forcing me to seek out solitude more than ever. It is there that I lament, rediscover myself and manufacture weapons to protect me from almost all worldly events. Do not fear, my Diotima, that I am seeking material from the school of Zeno.2 I do not like the Stoics, who render themselves insensible3 and turn themselves into stone out of fear of being human, of sensing and of knowing evil, and who still have the vanity to try to pass off as intrepidity what is at bottom only pusillanimous fear. (You will sense well that, when speaking thus, I am not thinking of Marcus Aurelius4 and other heroes who ennobled this sect with their names, but who ultimately belong to Socrates and Pythagoras.) I seek my weapons in the contemplation of man, and in what he should one day be, and I persuade myself that, by continually practising this great operation, we do change what are called the ills of humanity, both in appearance and in nature. The other day I read in Hesiod’s magnificent poem, entitled Works and Days, the description he provides of the golden age,5 which struck me more than ever. I had always believed that this state was merely a poetic fiction, but although the poets did ornament it considerably, when examining it more closely we will see that this state must necessarily have existed. When man is considered in his beginning in the first condition of society, he appears scarcely different from the animal.6 He has no more property on the earth than the least of the other animals; the right he employs for food, for sex, for [the territory of] some parts of this earth derives from his nature in its quality as animal, which must nourish itself, propagate its species and live with those who resemble it. He holds this right in common with all the animals, and that animal which is strongest has the most of it. But when we cast our eyes on the current state of man’s knowledge, his arts, his sciences, his delicacy in sensing morality, the difference is nearly infinite. It follows that there is, in the nature of man, a principle of perfectibility which seems to have no limit, and of which all other animals on the earth are absolutely destitute. If you now consider the progress of this principle, which proceeds always in advance (although its movements, the laws of which I will one day describe, are not uniform), you will see that at the very moment that this perfectibility achieved some knowledge of the seasons and agriculture, the effects of this principle were precisely analogous and proportionate to the state of man in his quality as inhabitant of this world – and this is the golden age. But as soon as this principle, which always proceeds further, taught men to measure the heavens, to cross seas, to draw



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metals from the heart of the earth to embellish his figure, to destroy his compatriots or to use signs for his so-called possessions, when he formed states, prescribed laws, waged wars, when he could make one man alone the proprietor of millions of other men, it is evident that these effects of perfectibility no longer have any analogy or proportion to the primitive state of man in his quality as animal or as inhabitant of this world.7 Here is what follows, my Diotima. If man, who is only an animal on this globe, has within him a principle which, by its nature, has already led him infinitely beyond the golden age, that is, beyond his happiness and his perfection in his quality as inhabitant of the earth – and even already to an absurd state, if one compares it to the state which is suitable to man as animal – [then] it is very obvious that the existence of man on this globe is only transitory and that, by nature, he pertains to something completely different. I will make three small reflections here. 1° that it is impossible for man ever to return to Hesiod’s golden age; 2° that, from the time of this golden age onwards, if man had been able to reflect on what we’ve just said, he would have been able to give a constant direction to the vagabond progress of his perfectibility; and 3°  that, when the perfectibility of man, which has no limits within its nature, is finally discovered in the imperfection and small number of his organs as inhabitant of the earth,8 man will return backwards, he will correct the absurd faults of his disordered progress and we will see again on this same planet a golden age infinitely superior to that of the poets.9 Might you believe, my Diotima, that man’s retrograde movement is already commencing to manifest itself to attentive eyes? My very dear Diotima, my friend, I have just spoken to you of the state of humanity on this earth. Another time perhaps I will continue this [train of thought] into the worlds a little more analogous to its genuine essence. Let it please God that these contemplations can comfort you in your troubles10 and render more bearable [to you] this life through which we must pass, like the seed passes into the earth before shining through its flowers and its fruits. Goodbye, my Diotima, I embrace you along with your children and your Great Friend.11 Σωκρατης12

The Hague, 30th Nov[ember] 1780.13 My very dear Diotima. I am infinitely obliged to you for your letter.14 The path I see you taking to soften as much as possible your affliction is the only true one and the only one worthy of you, and it is the only one that can be prescribed to rich souls. I am charmed that you find some good in my reflection on the golden age, but I nevertheless believe that I have not expressed my idea very well. A fluxion in the eyes prevents me at present from developing it as I would eagerly wish. Hence, this will be for another time. For the rest, you congratulate me on already seeing the progress of human perfectibility turn back towards the earth so as to produce a golden age more precious than Hesiod’s. You should know, my Diotima, that I see this phenomenon only very far off in the distance, but I will undertake to describe to you how I see it. Moreover, it is something that approaches pure speculation; for it

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is certain that the nephews of our nephews will already have passed through many other ways of being than this life before my golden age will appear on this globe. You say that, when it comes to the state of man in future worlds, you do not believe that we could go further than we have done, since we lack the data.15 I agree with you, but I am persuaded that we carry in our breast much data that is capable of being revealed by some happy chance or assiduous work. I tell you truly, my Diotima, I have moments when I sense this data completely ready to appear, as you feel a geometric truth long before you possess the conviction of it given by the intellect.16 Man, who has made so much progress in physics, is still a child in psychology and metaphysics. Let him enter into himself, let him – in tranquillity – perform thousands of experiments on what occurs within him, on his own sensations, let him combine them, and you will see whether the data does not come forth all at once.17 This is the path that one takes in physics and astronomy. What child would now doubt the data that can be given concerning the movement of the earth? And yet, if we were to place ourselves some thousands of years into the past, we must confess that this incontestable truth would have appeared to us, to you and to me, as the most pitiable absurdity. Pythagoras sensed this truth, but he never had that kind of conviction which the intellect gives, lacking the data that the ensuing centuries and assiduous work have given us.18 You can see how much of a child the admirable Aristotle is when he speaks of the soul and yet we see in his book Problems19 of which he had sensed the truth [and] concerning which his prodigious intellect could not convince him in its own fashion – for it lacked the data – but which are geometry for us. If my eyes did not forbid me from it, I would perhaps amuse you by tracing for you the ideas which the Ancients had concerning vision and optics.20 You would clearly see that it is not only on what we see and what we touch that the perfectibility of human knowledge extends its empire. […]

On the Best Shape to Give to the Feet of Vases1

The vases which the Moderns make use of to decorate works of architecture derive their origin from the urns the Romans used to preserve the ashes of their dead, who, for a certain period, they were accustomed to burn instead of bury, as they subsequently did.2 These urns, which were initially made of clay, were placed individually or in pairs under small semicircular vaults, placed along the circumference of the sepulchral chambers, in such a manner that the body of the urn was concealed, up to its opening, within the thickness of the wall, and such that only the lid was visible, so as to be able to take it off and put in the ashes. Later, when they thought of placing their urns in plain sight within niches, they used precious materials for them, such as marble, porphyry, granite, etc., and by rounding their lower part, which had initially been flat, a foot was added to it, in order to prevent the elevation and depth of the niche from hiding part of it. As a result, the foot became an essential part of the vase, without which it would have no grace, and would no longer warrant the name [vase] but rather pot or jug. Therefore, the foot necessarily became part of the composition of a vase [and thus] one needs to examine what its shape should be. First of all, it is essential that it should be round in layout, in order to relate to the body of the vase, which itself cannot be of a different shape; for a square vase or [a vase] with flat sides is a monster, even though a taste for novelty, however poorly understood, has led to some occasionally being produced. It only remains, therefore, to seek the height of this foot, and, in order to determine it, one must take into account the position and the figure of the vase. It can be positioned in three different ways: at the viewer’s eye-level, above the [viewer’s] eyeline, or below it. The first is undoubtedly the most favourable situation, where it is only a question of properly proportioning the foot to the body it must carry so that it corresponds to the intended goal. In the other two cases, one must also consult the rules of optics and pay attention to the different effects of the visual rays produced by such dissimilar situations. Since the vase, as mentioned, must always be circular in layout, its figure can therefore only be a relatively elongated or flattened spheroid, and the height of the foot must then be in inverse ratio to that of the body it is intended to carry,3 so that the foot of an elongated vase will be proportionally less high than that of a flattened vase – and this corresponds both to the nature of the thing and to the examples provided by Antiquity. By applying these rules to the different cases which may arise, it seems that they might suffice to determine in a satisfactory manner the foot of any vase whatsoever. But a geometric mind is not content with mere approximations; accustomed to mathematical procedures, it applies [these procedures] in all its investigations, and they provide it with the means to discover the relations between the different parts of a whole which is [then] used to generalise its operations. It is this taste which is

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responsible for the following method of giving each vase a foot [that has been] procreated, so to speak, by the vase itself, so as to produce a perfect analogy between these two parts. This method proceeds as follows. After having drawn the body of some vase, divide its height – not including the lid – into two equal parts. From this centre, measure 22½ degrees on each side of the perpendicular to form an angle of 45 degrees, whose opening is turned downwards. By extending the lines of this angle beyond the vase, they serve as new perpendiculars, to draw two other vases similar to the first, except that their height will be only a third [that of the first vase], and they will be inverted so that their lower part touches that of the large vase. The space between these two vases simultaneously gives the size, the height, and the shape of the foot that is sought, with the result that everything is now determined by one single operation, without it being necessary to be distracted by any of the considerations set out above. This is a method [which is] as simple as it seems easy to execute, and which would consequently be preferable to all others, if it were not beset by several drawbacks. First, it lacks uniformity in all given cases. In flattened vases, for example, the centre of the angle, instead of being in the middle as prescribed, should be raised to threequarters of the perpendicular, or even higher, depending on whether the diameter of the vase exceeds its height. The opposite is the case for elongated vases, and this means that we can find this centre only by trial and error. On the other hand, the different positions of the vases do not affect the construction of this foot, and, if it is necessary to pay attention to them, as there is reason to believe, the regulative principle must [still] be sought elsewhere. Moreover, the ratio between the height of the vase and that of its foot is determined, by this operation, contrary to what has been practised so far – that is, that the height of the foot is relative to [the height of] the vase – and, in this way, the slender or massive proportions of the vase are further increased by the shape of its foot, instead of [the foot] serving as a corrective according to the other manner [of reasoning]. But what makes this method diametrically opposed to the usage [which has been] consistently followed until now is that it so confuses the body of the vase with its foot that one cannot say where the former ends and the latter begins. This destroys not only the origin but the very idea of the vase, by substituting for it that of a cup or a jar – and this is not really suitable for architectural works of any kind. For further clarification on what has just been said, here are three vases copied from antiquity, which will provide proof of the principles set out above, and, after adding feet to these bodies of vases formed according to the new construction, they can serve for comparison and provide a means of judging the respective merits of the two methods.4

Further Reflections on the Best Shape to Give to the Feet of Vases

The Hague, 18th November 1783.1 My dear Diotima, It is a century since I wrote to you about vases. Although I have little time, I must say a word about it, both to remind you of this important subject and because I can never remain silent about it for very long. Here are two whose difference you will recognise and about which I could write a book.

If you please recall one of my previous [vase drawings],2 you will easily see that these vases are of the species of the perfect, that is to say, of that species where the soul, having reached the edge of the vase, completes its task by finding, at the maximum, the coordinates ab (in fig. A and B) or, at the minimum, the coordinates ab (in fig. C). If the soul wishes to continue on its way, it loses the idea of vase to some extent, and by pushing onwards to some new perfection, this idea is totally destroyed – and these are axioms about which we psychologists are in perfect agreement. But what is to be noted here is that the body of this vase is of a singular class which admits of three different feet that are perfect. We know for certain that the foot of a vase must be completed by the same [curve] or by the same curves which complete the body of the vase. However, the body of the vase in question is composed of two different curves.

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In A, when forming the foot, I leave the two curves in the natural order they occupy in the body of the vase; thus, I properly imitate the body only by turning it [upside down]. In B, when forming the foot, I begin with the curve of the column and follow it with [the curve] which goes from the column towards the edges, solely changing the plus and minus signs, since here the curve of the column becomes minus and the other plus, whereas in the body of the vase the former is plus and the latter minus. In C, when forming the foot, I begin with the curve [moving] towards the edge and follow it with [the curve] of the column, retaining for both the same signs they possessed in the body of the vase. Here, my Diotima, are three feet that are perfect for a vase with the same body. (I haven’t drawn out the third [one], since I just didn’t have time, but it will come for sure.) But here is what I want to ask you. Whether you do not initially notice that the foot in A, which is the complete repetition of the body [although upside down], seems the best of the three, but then whether you do not receive [from it] an idea of duplicity that inconveniences you and makes you judge this foot to be the least of the three? My very dear Diotima, I recommend two things to you. The first [is] to instil these great truths in all your children, so that one day as many attractions of the beautiful Minerva will be revealed to their eyes as is permitted to those who still see Argos.3 The second is to seek alleviation from your ills in the arts; they love you so much, they are so gracious, and I promise you that one smile on your part will make them do anything for you. Farewell, my very dear Diotima, my friend, may the true God bless you along with your dear children and your Great Friend.4 Σωκρατης

On Plato’s Style in the Phaedrus and the Symposium (and Racine’s Phaedra)

The Hague, 29th Dec[ember] 1783.1 My very dear Diotima […] I have reread the Phaedrus while muttering a thousand imprecations against the indiscrete translator who revealed this sublime work to you2 and while crying bitterly at the sad fate of poor Alexis, who is going to return into nothing.3 If he had for rivals solely Plato’s Nyctologues,4 perhaps I would not fear for it, as you will soon judge. The Phaedrus is admirable. There is that native sublime which Plato and Homer alone have known. There is an infinite art which is in Plato alone and is exactly the same thing as what is dubbed, in works of the most illustrious sculptors, ‘the underside of the epidermis’.5 Perhaps I will say more to you another time, but if it were permitted to man to judge the works of the divine Plato, I would prefer the Symposium. There, all the characters are first rate. Never have I seen majestic philosophy decorated with so much elegance and taste, and [so much] moon at the same time.6 And, as a tableau, no author, painter or artist has ever approached a similar perfection. In Man and his Relations, I speak of a general spirit, a universal tone, which reigns in all the sciences and all the arts in each perihelion of the human spirit.7 There is no piece in the world save this Symposium where one sees distinctly, in all its vigour, this tone, this royal spirit of the Greek perihelion; that is to say, with eyes like yours. It is scarcely probable that we will ever see on earth, in any such perihelion, the tone which reigns in this Symposium, since there is no chance that, after a perihelion administered by the mathematical spirit or [spirit] of symmetry, there will be born once more a perihelion of sentiment, for the reason that, although this spirit of sentiment, so to speak, works marvellously to ennoble and embellish individuals, the spirit of symmetry is nevertheless much more useful for the artificial society of men; and, over the course of many centuries, the interests of this artificial society will continue to prevail over those of the individual, unless a second moon8 can rectify the follies of the first by reducing the perfection of society to that of individuals. On Saturday I finally saw the famous Saint Val9 represent Racine’s Phaedra.10 To examine it11 properly, I read the tragedy and those by Euripides and Seneca the night before. Four years ago, I reread the Henriade,12 after an interval of 20 years, to search there for some sublime traits of which I had need, but I found this Henriade so mediocre and so insipid that I would certainly no longer bother with it. Many French poets suffer the same fate, and I feared for Racine. But I was enchanted with his Phaedra much more than ever. As he himself says, he translated and copied

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from Euripides’ Hippolytus everything that he could, for in Euripides’ piece there are astonishing beauties which pertain to the nature of Greek customs and language that Racine could not use. Despite all this, Racine’s tragedy is truly excellent, and although inferior and quite different from Euripides’, it is infinitely wiser and better in every sense than Seneca’s. I note here that the moderns made a great error in rejecting the choruses which the Greeks often use with so much success. As for St. Val, she is certainly a very great actress. She is quite ugly, but somewhat small; her figure is nimble and well proportioned. All her limbs are in perfect harmony with her moral sensibility, except her tongue. She often pronounces a word a little too early or a little too late, and in another tone than it should be [said]. Her eloquence is in her gestures, and she gesticulates a lot. She is an admirable pantomime. She must have studied beautiful tableaus deeply, or perhaps it is an effect of the prodigious harmony between her limbs and the morality that she manifests, but, in the last act alone, when she dies, I saw her in five or six different attitudes, which, in addition to the excellence of their expression, offered so nobly assembled totalities that the first sculptors or painters could have taken her for their model. I wished to make her acquaintance, but, on the one hand, she is very difficult and, on the other, those who have seen her letters told me that she writes pitiably – and this led me to believe that she could express her ideas well only in gestures, a language in which she cannot tell me what I desire to know. […]

Letters on Diderot’s Style

The Hague, Monday 20th Dec[ember] 1784.1 My very dear Diotima. […] Yesterday the Prince helped me pass a very amusing evening. He sent me a manuscript by Diderot, with the title D’Alembert’s Dream.2 There are 4 dialogues: the first three between d’Alembert, Mlle l’Espinasse and the doctor Bordeu, and the fourth between the lady and the doctor.3 If someone desires to know Diderot’s entire composition, they can be satisfied with this [work], for, in this respect, it’s absolutely perfect, and so much so that the features of his face, the shape of his hands, of his feet, the folds of his robe came back to me exactly as if he had been in front of me. You will easily believe me when I tell you it’s the most perfect dialogue, that it contains traits of genius, but much more spirit and little judgement. The tone is serious, sad even, although it affects a gaiety that will never dwell within this sombre soul.4 Alembert says few things. The lady has spirit and sense, and the doctor is the author. It’s the most pernicious work I’ve seen, either among the Ancients or among the Moderns. And yet it is very interesting for a philosopher to read, and moreover our cynical friend does not say what he says in order to do evil, but because he believes it to be true and because he wants to be singular.5 But this last faculty had no need of being affected, for I’m sure this will never be disputed about him. In the first three dialogues, he preaches materialism with all the force of an eloquent man, who has finesse in spirit, who has a deep knowledge of what one calls the human heart, who is a pitiable psychologist, a metaphysician as superficial as it is possible to be and who entirely lacks the geometric spirit and therefore true and sure tact.6 In the final [dialogue], he converses with the lady alone on the physics of what they call love,7 and on the wildest natural or [rather] non-natural excesses that the Ancients or Moderns have imagined on this topic. He admits that this would not be good to preach, but that, at bottom, it is not bad, and it’s even useful. All this is treated in such a serious tone that the grotesque idea with which he ends is insufficient to soften it or to mix in a bantering tone, even though this idea is quite risible in itself. It is so much so, my dear Diotima, that I cannot refuse myself the pleasure of communicating it to you, all the more so since it will provide much illumination on everything which precedes it. He says that we must somehow bring it about for goats to produce satyrs to serve us as lackies and domestics.8 This pleases the lady who straightaway places a couple of them behind the coaches of duchesses. Judge the tone when such an idea cannot relieve the serious gloom. You remember perhaps that, in a writing Diderot addressed to me on the subject of the Letter on Man,9 he said that all philosophers were guided by fear of the

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Sorbonne. That I had given truth the habit of a harlequin to make it pass muster. That Buffon was saved by his facility in retracting claims. That Voltaire had hidden behind his infinite inconsistencies and that, for [Diderot himself], he had always hidden behind the finest irony that he could discover. But I ask you whether this man ever knew what irony was? That irony so charming in Socrates’ mouth or on Lucian’s pen,10 that irony which is ultimately unknown in France and which they always confuse with the two extremes between which it holds the correct middle ground – that is, [between] piercing or bitter satire and tasteless pleasantry. […] The Hague, Monday 9th May 1785.11 My very dear Diotima. […] I am charmed that you have read Diderot’s Dialogues. I assume this was through the Prince.12 Certainly, these pieces are dialogued perfectly,13 and on this matter our friend not only much surpasses the moderns, but he is equal to Plato, Menander14 and Lucian himself, the greatest master of all. He owed this advantage to that of being born an admirable mime or pantomime, and it is this latter faculty which prevented Diderot from being placed among the greatest writers. I said this to him one day and will never forget it.15 He had read me something he’d just finished. He asked me what I thought of his style. I told the truth by praising it in many parts, but I added that he could not be ignorant of the fact that his style was often judged a little obscure. He said to me that he did know this, but that he did not feel its truth. Then I said to him that his obscurity was not of that kind which derives from wanting to utter ideas in the fewest possible words, and in the smallest space of time, as one sees in Thucydides, Tacitus or Lucian, but of a more really harmful kind; that he was too good a mime by nature; that when he had a beautiful and great idea which he wanted to express forcefully, his vigorous act of will did not have that rare faculty of directing the greatest part of his energy towards the voice organ out of which words arise, but that often many very essential parts of the idea were dispersed or diffused elsewhere, and acted on other organs from where arose other signs. And [I said] that the writing-hand can only render words that have been dictated by the organ of the voice, which has itself been filled with only part of the idea, and that this [meant that] other parts of this idea, which had acted on other organs and produced other signs, like the acceleration of the pulse, movements determined by certain muscles, the augmentation of brightness in the eyes, etc. – all those signs which the mime makes as expressive as words – all of these [parts] were lost from his writing. From this [process] there had sometimes resulted in his written expressions some real hiatuses that no mortal reader could fill, whereas it is still possible, with some success, to dig up the obscurities of Tacitus or Thucydides and more or less excavate their ideas from them. My dear Diotima, this passage is perhaps quite honestly itself obscure, but, in the end, I was quite as much astonished as charmed to hear our dear Diderot, with a truly respectable tranquillity and modesty, say: I have never thought of this but I believe that you are telling the truth.



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The famous man did not think at this moment how many articles of our system he agreed with by means of this response. With respect to d’Alembert, I doubt that he wanted to quit the company of Homer, of Socrates and of Plato to take the time on this earth to make a defence.16 I prefer to believe that he sees, with some pain, his illustrious compatriot err far from him into those arid plains where Diogenes and his cynics amuse and divert each other bitterly. D’Alembert knew Diderot. He loved him like a great spirit and a prodigiously rich imagination, and he could evaluate [Diderot’s] judgement. Diderot never knew d’Alembert. He always tacitly sensed him his eternal superior, which is yet, in truth, a painful and dolorous sensation, above all for a man who is somewhat vain. Dear Diotima, pardon me for speaking so much of Diderot. He always interests me as a composition as singularly bizarre as he is singularly rich; moreover, he had the fault – that is perhaps quite rare – that, instead of his faculties mixing together in approaching each other, they curdled like milk and wine. […]

Catechism for a Young Painter

The Hague, Monday 27th Dec[ember] 1784.1 My very dear Diotima, […] Permit me to make some reflections on your claim that large figures are best when learning how to draw or paint. I admit that all great and minor artists say and repeat the same thing, and I have heard them repeat it a hundred times; however, when I asked myself why both they and I were of this opinion, I found that it was solely because faults are more noticeable in what is large than in what is small. This truth is incontestable, I admit, but it is much too general to serve as a guide in a case that is as determinate and circumscribed as that of learning to paint and draw. I remarked on this only when reading your letter and the interest that I irresistibly have in all that concerns my Diotima and her children has made me go further into the matter, so as to [acquire] more certainty and clarity. Imagine, for an instant, that a philosopher is catechising a young painter in the following way: Philosopher. What is painting or drawing? Painter. It is to render as visible as one can an idea that has been received [by the senses] or composed in the imagination. Philosopher. Great; but what are the proper means to produce this effect? Painter. The organ of sight and the hand. Philosopher. At what distance does the eye judge an object well? Painter. An eye [can] get used to all distances, it seems to me. Philosopher. If you stood six feet away from a painted head whose shape was thirty feet high, would you see this head very well? Painter. No. Philosopher. What should you do to see it well? Painter. I should step backwards. Philosopher. How far? Painter. 60 feet perhaps. Philosopher. Sure. But since you draw quite prettily, are you able to draw for me on a neighbouring canvas another head of the same size copied from the first? Painter. Yes, certainly. Philosopher. That is, with a pencil or a brush fifty-seven or fifty-eight feet long, presumably? Painter. No. I will place myself in front of the canvas, as usual, two or three feet away.



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Philosopher. But tell me, I pray you, when someone wants to learn to practise an art well, should they judge their work while working? Or is it enough to work solely at random so as to judge afterward whether this randomness has been fortuitous or not? Painter. One should judge while working – this goes without saying. Philosopher. But to judge the head well, you must be 60 feet away, and to work you must be two or three. How will we deal with that? Painter. On this point you’re right. – But did not Phidias make his Jupiter and his Minerva more than 60 feet tall,2 and did not Michelangelo paint extremely huge figures? Philosopher. I am charmed, my dear, that you choose these heroes as role models, but when they did what you say, they had transcended the ordinary class [of painters], and they must be judged according to other laws than those of painting and optics. Their method was completely different. An incredible habit of utter abstractions, and deep reflections, taught them to see in what they did not those things that they did [in themselves] but [rather] their effect from an entirely different viewpoint. They worked like astronomers who trace figures on paper and calculate without thinking of what results from these figures in relation to the figures themselves, but [only of these results] in relation to the movement or the distance of that star which forms the object of their investigations. Or rather [they worked] like practitioners in optics who, sometimes requiring a small arc from a circle with a thousand-foot radius, construct this arc in tracing its chord,3 without having need of a compass whose arms open a thousand feet or a string of this length. The great mathematicians do not see or treat anything but the results, without paying the slightest bit of attention to the formulae which give rise to them.4 Tell me, my child, does that make sense? Painter. Not too much. Those final sentences confuse me. They are beyond my capacity; but clarify for me what I sense that I am able to understand about the size in which things should be drawn. Philosopher. Well, I conclude from what we’ve just said that for every painter and draughtsman – whoever they are – if they want to produce, with as much ease as possible, what their faculties could produce the most perfectly, the size of the things they draw can be determined. That is, the size of the drawn figures must never surpass what the real object of that figure requires, so that the eye judges well from the ordinary distance between the hand, pencil or brush [on the one hand] and the painter’s eye [on the other]. And this means about 1½, 2 or 3 feet. And this means that [a drawing of] a man’s head, for example, should not be much more than a third or half its natural size. Painter. What, are you then saying that figures [which are] of natural size or [are] bigger are badly drawn? Philosopher. I’m not saying that, my dear, but I am saying that, if you want to draw, with as much ease and certainty as possible, in the most perfect manner that can be expected with your talents, then you must follow this law; and I would say as much to the Van der Helsts, to the Raphaels, to the Guidos and to the Carraccis,5 as well as to children. Painter. I sense it a little, but could you not show me it with figures?

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Philosopher. I am going to try. Here is a marble head of natural size. I am going to put it at F, 5 or 6 inches away from your eye, A. – Do you see all its proportions at all well?

Painter. You’re joking. I can’t see anything. I need to step backwards. Philosopher. Well, I will move it backwards. How far do you think? Painter. There! Hold on – a little more – there is good. Oh! That’s charming. It is as clear as it should be. I see the relations between all its parts with facility. I see the entire whole with ease. – Now I can judge its beauties and its faults marvellously well. – I pray you affix it there. Philosopher. Here at B. Painter. Perfect! I take AB to be around seven feet. Philosopher. Yes, something like that. But at what angle do you see this head? Painter. According to the angle CAD. Philosopher. If you could now conveniently work with your arms and your tools seven feet away, that’d be great. Painter. Why? Philosopher. Since then you could draw this head according to its natural size. Painter. Why then? Philosopher. Since then you would judge, with as much facility, the proportions, relations and the whole of your drawn head as you now judge the proportions, the relations and the whole of the genuine head; and then you could do what we just spoke about: judging your work while working. Painter. That’s true. Philosopher. But tell me, when you are in your normal attitude, when you draw with as much ease as possible, what is the typical distance between your paper or your canvas and your eye? Painter. The typical distance? – something like that – around [the length of] AE. Philosopher. But if you wanted to draw this head on your paper in cd, so as judge as perfectly the proportions, relations and whole of your drawn head as you’re now doing with the genuine head, at what angle should you look at your drawing? Painter. But, according to the same angle CAD. Philosopher. Therefore, my dear, your drawing will not be of the natural size. It should be cd and not CD. Painter. My word, you’re right. Philosopher. Hence, this is an incontestable law: When we want to paint or draw as easily and as well as possible, the size of the drawn figures should [relate] to the [figures’] natural size just as the eye’s distance from the canvas or paper



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[relates] to the eye’s distance from the natural object, which has been positioned to be seen and judged, as a whole and in its parts, with as much precision as possible. That is, it should be

cd : CD = AE : AB.

Painter. Goodbye, thank you. It must be admitted that philosophy holds all the answers. My very dear Diotima, the pure Dutch School,6 which, as far as I know, never made this reflection, owes to it alone all its reputation and the charm of its truth, of its value and of its precision – something I could easily show if it did not require too many details. I am annoyed that it would take a lot less to clearly show all the reasons why large compositions seen from a great distance please a beautiful soul much more than the truest and most perfect Dutch compositions. But you will easily understand the main principle: it is that the large composition becomes a sketch from a great distance, and forces you to create a whole in yourself, whereas the Dutch [painter] forces you to see solely what he has achieved and admirably achieved, without allowing you to create. By means of his truth, the Dutch [painter] subjugates you, renders you a slave and purely passive, whereas the Italian [painter] renders you free, active and a creator. After all that, my dear Diotima, if I have expressed myself well, I don’t doubt that you will agree with me that young painters should work for a long time according to the law indicated by the philosopher and that it should be a long time before they think of huge figures whose execution requires abstractions and effort which pertain at bottom to principles much higher than those of mere painting. If you approve of my reasoning, I will first give this lesson to my Camper and Van der Aa,7 the eternal apostles of huge figures, even for children. I myself preached the same error with zeal until last Friday – an error which now seems to me a manifest absurdity. This is [an example] of letting general truths nest in one’s head without taking the trouble to get to the bottom of their real value in particular cases. […]

On the Artworks of Central Germany

Your Honour, esteemed friend,1 Returning home three weeks ago, I found myself honoured by – among many others – your letter from 16th August this year. Dear friend, Your Honour will be surprised to have remained without an answer for so many months. I feel obliged to briefly explain the reasons for this. On 14th August, I travelled from here to Hofgeismar2 to take the baths there to improve my health and to exchange some unpleasant ideas for other ones. There I found Diotima,3 whom you know, as well as Count Fürstenberg. After spending three weeks there – not without fruit – we decided, for different reasons, to make a journey through the middle of Germany. Primarily love of art, and the memory of pleasures in Düsseldorf three years ago,4 prompted us to visit all that concerns sculpture and painting. In Kassel, which promises to become a very beautiful city, the museum deserves to be visited attentively because of its architecture, its library, and a multitude of fine antiquities. The gallery and the other paintings in the court5 surpassed my expectations: in terms of size, quantity and value, I estimate that they make up a third of the [collection] in Düsseldorf.6 I have never seen better pictures by J. Jordaens nor the Teniers; the two large Rembrandts and the large Potter are remarkable.7 The four paintings by Claude Lorrain, one of which representing dawn is rather famous, are beautiful;8 but I have seen them surpassed here by the hand of Pijnacker9 and in Dresden by that of Ruysdael.10 There is a pretty good portrait by Titian and a Madonna by Carlo Dolci; a very beautiful Lairesse, representing the Death of Germanicus;11 and, moreover, many fine pieces by Dutch masters. At the Academy, I met two very promising young people. From Kassel we travelled through Eisenach, Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar, etc. to Leipzig, a very beautiful city, and during the trade fair incredibly busy. Here we visited, among others, Mr Oeser;12 he is very famous in Germany, certainly understands the art of painting thoroughly, with a lot of poetry, and is often extraordinarily apposite in allegorical [depictions]. I have seen beautiful pieces by him, mainly landscapes, in Weimar and elsewhere. From here we left for Dresden. It is by far the most beautiful city I have ever seen; the treasures it contains will far exceed the expectations of anyone who studies them closely for the first time; but they become comprehensible when you consider the enormous sums that have been invested here by King Augustus and the five electors – all connoisseurs and enthusiasts – over a century and a half.13 I will not bother Your Honour with an account of the architecture of the buildings, the very great treasures, precious stones and jewels contained in the five gilded halls of the so-called treasury, nor of the impressive arrangement of the natural-history collection. Sculpture and painting are our main subjects.



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As for the first: just outside the city is a beautiful palace, around which are placed four buildings or pavilions, all crammed with the finest marble statues, groups, busts and altars, which remain to us from antiquity. These suffered a lot from the Prussian occupation14 but have been patched up and mended at great expense by modern masters, but with a happy [outcome], so that no one will ever worry to distinguish between the patches and what is patched up. The treasury and the gallery did not suffer in the least because of the immense sums invested there, borrowed from many princes and nations, such that the great Frederick15 was obliged to respect them. In this gallery16 I got my first impression of Raphael, Correggio, Titian, Carracci,17 and other Italian heroes in the arts; for if one excludes from Düsseldorf the Ascension of Mary by Guido Reni,18 the same by Carlo Cignani,19 the Infanticide by Annibal Carracci,20 the Susanna by Domenichino,21 and a few others, then there is nothing of that kind that would be presentable in Dresden. If I possessed ten Holy Families by Raphael like the one in Düsseldorf,22 I would gladly give them all for the red chalk drawing in Your Honour’s possession representing the seated Madonna.23 The large Raphael with Mary, Pope Sixtus and Saint Barbara cannot be described.24 The Correggios amazed me. The colouring of the Saint Sebastian surpasses nature by far.25 Although I have studied the celebrated [Holy] Night ten times,26 I cannot remember the main theme of that piece anymore, because my eyes were irresistibly drawn to the top left corner, where a group of angels is depicted in an astonishing manner. However, it seems to me that concerning chiaroscuro, Rembrandt possessed secrets unknown to Correggio. The Saint George is possibly the best of all and the nicest in design.27 The small Magdalene cannot but be felt [strongly].28 I say the same of Titian’s so-called Venus;29 the colouring of the whole body cannot be compared to that of Correggio and is far below nature’s beauty; but to perform so much with so few visible means, with hardly any shadow, is beyond my comprehension. If I had drawn the head of this Venus and the Moor standing next to her, I would be ashamed to show it to Your Honour. That particular feature of this marvel certainly contains a mystery that has not been handed down to us. I believe that some prosperous man exchanged his girl’s head for that of the Venus and had the Moorish servant painted by her side; for Titian was in other cases certainly a man who knew how to draw heads. The Genius of the Fame by Annibale Carracci30 is outstanding. But if I were permitted to choose from this rich treasury a piece for my own enjoyment, it would surely be an octagonal scene by Carlo Cignani, depicting Joseph and Potiphar’s wife.31 All the perfections of which the subject matter is capable are depicted in this piece to the highest degree. This gallery is certainly no less rich in Dutch masters than in Italian ones. I have seen more than fifty by Wouwerman, twenty by Potter and Berchem, Ruysdael, and others in corresponding numbers.32 It is solely the ones by Van der Werff33 that are here all bad excepting one, and this master must be judged and even admired in Düsseldorf alone. The French are not sufficiently represented here, except for some by Poussin and some good portraits by Largillière and Rigaud.34 On this journey, I had the pleasure of being able to judge Mengs and Batoni with my own eyes, and chose, on the one hand, the great Ascension altarpiece in the Great Church in Dresden, and the sleeping prophet in the same church, both by Mengs; and, on the other hand, the large Magdalene in the gallery, and the

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ceiling depicting Ganymede in Wörlitz (the beautiful palace near Dessau), both by Batoni.35 I have found my late friend Fagel’s36 sentiment to be true, and I place Batoni far above Mengs, without however wanting to say that Mengs was not a very great painter. Batoni has a lot in common with Carlo Cignani, whom I particularly like in some of his pieces I saw and in which I believe I discover a mixture of some of the virtues of Raphael and others of Correggio. Back in Leipzig, I saw the collection of Mr Winkler, a renowned banker there.37 This collection is very large for a private person and contains beautiful Italian and Dutch masters. In Gotha, the Duke38 showed me a piece by young Tischbein, who is currently in Italy, which depicts Conradin and Frederick.39 If this painter continues in this vein, he will surpass Mengs in many ways. In Dessau, I met a young painter named Rehberg,40 who has already been to Italy; he showed me some of his drawings, which were very beautiful, and besides that, he had a solid and extensive knowledge of all the sciences that are in some way required for his art. One thing has astonished me in Germany and particularly in Dresden, namely, to encounter almost all the paintings without varnish, or merely covered with the artist’s original varnish. When I asked the premier professor in Dresden, a very skilled man, the reason for this, adding that varnishing some of his pieces would create more effect, he replied with the question whether there was any good varnish in the world, and he reproached me further that all the cleaning and varnishing of paintings by the Dutch and the French will lead, within fifty years, to their most precious pieces showing nothing more of the original master than the bare panel. I here found most of the pieces by the Dutch masters so fresh, painted as if they had just come from the artist’s hands, and I admit that it does produce a completely different effect from the pieces by the same masters, purchased later, which had undergone several varnishes. He showed me [examples] of both kinds [placed] side by side. Having now seen in such a detailed manner so many marvels in painting, I would like nothing more than to be allowed to examine the great Van der Helst of Amsterdam41 at Dresden in the august presence of so many by Raphael, Correggio, Titian and others, and I can assure Your Honour that this would in no way disgrace our nation, though the subjects handled by the Italians might speak to their advantage. Dear friend, I will not trouble Your Honour with any further narrative about the extent to which we have achieved the other goals of our journey, namely, a close look at some of the courts, acquaintance with the most illustrious minds of Germany, and a report on the state of the universities and all the institutions of education [and] human development, so as to get, in some way, some idea of the future generation. In general, I can say that, while all other nations in Europe have already passed through their centuries, Germany is beginning its own, with a splendour which promises much; but the course of its development may be considerably accelerated or retarded by the manifold coincidences to which so diversely assembled a body42 is necessarily subject. Your Honour, please do not regard this as a New Year’s letter, for I believe that at our age we have both outgrown these conventional compliments and we can put them aside like Saint Nicholas’s shoes.43



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I hope that this [letter] will meet Your Honour in perfect health, and I have the honour, after [sending] most humble commendations to Your Honour’s beloved wife, to be and to remain with the sentiments known to Your Honour and dear friend, Your Honour’s most humble and most obedient Hemsterhuis. The Hague, December 31, 1785.

Letters on Plato and the Sublime (Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin)

Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, 2nd Nov[ember] 1786.1 My very dear Diotima, my friend […] I am perfectly incapable of any fixed occupation. Sometimes I gaze at my fire mechanically contemplating the maddest and most childish ideas offered up by my imagination, out of which my wisdom is capable of making a tremendous anthill, rather than a Noah’s Ark where everything is, at least, paired off. Sometimes I take my Plato and my Cicero – remembering that there is wisdom in them – not out of love of their wisdom, which I learnt by heart some time ago, but to diversify my amusements and my playthings. To tell you the result of the first of these occupations would be to place in your head a frightful disorder in which it would soon be harassed like some foreigner or stranger; hence, there remains solely for me to speak to you of the other [occupation], which can [only] be undertaken in the shape of sane criticism, a sacred and modest matron. In leafing through my Plato and his ape,2 I have thought about their style, if this ‘I’ can be [taken as] a substantive that might ever govern the verb to think – something I very much doubt at this moment. Great philosophy needed to be treated very differently in Plato’s time than in our day. The quantity of signs (the primitive [ones], so to speak) from which we draw the exact sciences – that have since been so prodigiously perfected – gives us a precision of expression [the Greeks] did not then have.3 The Greeks had the advantage of using a language wholly admirable for infinitely modifying their mediocre quantity of primitive signs, but this does not help at all with the clarity of serious demonstrations. Even with all the knowledge Plato had of the mechanism of his language and even with his precious gift for word-choice, if he had written his profound philosophy the way most ancient philoso­phers did, the dryness and obscurity of his book would have made it forgotten for centuries. [But] Plato, son of Apollo, born poet in the supreme degree, filled his works with the most sublime poetic ideas. I think that Cicero, his imitator and copyist (as much as he could be), was mistaken in regard to Plato’s stylistic aims, and he thought that this great man had mixed his divine poetry with philosophy only to embellish the material and show off his talent.4 Cicero, who was as great an orator as he was poor as a poet, scattered his works with borrowed poetic scraps, which, therefore, did not properly form one body with the rest. Being much less profound than his master, he is much clearer most of the time, but (you will pardon the expression that the truth extorts from me towards this illustrious Roman) he is drier than the divine Athenian.



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I think that Plato reasoned a bit like this: I ought to give men conviction of the profoundest truths. The only means I possess is demonstration. Demonstration speaks to the intellect alone, and, to the extent that these truths are abstract and profound, this intellect functions at capacity and gets tired. The conviction which results from [such truths] has for its basis solely the retrograde progress of the intellect across truths through which I have already led it: a painful progress which demands time and the continual stimulation of attention. All intimate conviction is an absolutely simple sentiment, and since intellect – whatever speed it has gained through long practice – works by succession, it is evident that conviction, simple sentiment, cannot pertain to the mechanism of the intellect. Therefore, this sentiment pertains to the moral. Thus, in wanting to give men conviction, I must add into the dry language of demonstration, which occupies the intellect alone, another language which pertains continually to the lively and active moral organ, so that it is, at every instant, open and ready to receive that sentiment of conviction each time the intellect has finished its job and ended its laborious regressive progress with which it is never fully satisfied. I do not dare insist that Plato thought just like this, but it must have been something like this, and if ever the Parcae5 oblige me again to undertake philosophy, I will eat myrtle like Matris of Thebes,6 so as to always have some hymn in the text to accompany the monotonous accents of geometry, to continually excite the moral and thereby to facilitate the entrance of convictions. My very dear Diotima, I do not know whether, in the sad condition of my poor head, I have spoken good sense or, rather, given a striking proof of my folly. In the first case I beg you to enrich me with your ideas. In the second, stay silent, my friend, while respecting and lamenting my delirium and hiding it from the malice of mortals. Goodbye my Diotima, may the one God protect you along with your dear children and all who are dear to us in this world. Σωκρατης7

Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis 3rd November 1786.8 […] You speak to me, my dear Socrates, in your last letter, precisely as if it were the evening of the day it arrived.9 You have heard me speak extensively on the question of whether all that Plato wrote just to present truths to the soul of his reader could solely be called ornament, or rather whether both the truths [he presented] and their coverings did not form one inseparable body within his work, so as to present the same relations to the reader. There are authors for whom the truths they want to say and the ornaments through which they want to make [these truths] appear are two things, and there are such men also in their ordinary speeches, but it is very different, in my opinion, when it comes to what is so badly named Plato’s ornaments. And I name them [ornaments] as little as I would name the natural graces of a beautiful woman an ornament, as I would name the precious stones, pearls and fabrics that surround her an ornament. […]

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Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, 10th Nov[ember] 1786.10 My very dear Diotima, my friend […] What I really wanted to say in my penultimate letter on the subject of Plato’s style is that purely intellectual conviction is not absolutely perfect and that it consists only in the infinitely rapid successive contemplation of the path taken from an axiom to the truth it discovers; that for [conviction] to be perfect, the moral organ must be mixed in and the truths which are reached during the demonstration must be fully united solely in that [moral] organ or by its media; that a truth – even a geometric truth and provided that it is a little interesting and rich – affects the moral very sensibly and, for an attentive soul, causes it the same kind of disturbance or stirring as one experiences in completely pure moral affections; that, therefore, during the demonstration of some truth, one must try to hold the moral organ spellbound so as to facilitate that concentration which constitutes absolute perfect certainty; and finally that it does not seem to me impossible to so clothe a purely geometric demonstration such that, at the end of the dry and insipid operations of the intellect, the moral organ is affected in a way that our entire body gets goosebumps. You would be cruel, my Diotima, if you tried to impose on me the task of accommodating all of Euclid to this taste, such that for each demonstration the victorious letters Q.E.D.11 were bathed in tears of tenderness. This would be too demanding, but you agree, I hope, that, in all philosophy, to succeed one must speak as much to sentiment as to reason. Goodbye, my very dear Diotima, my friend, I cannot say more. May the one God protect you along with all who are dear to us in the world. Σωκρατης12

Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis Angelmodde, 13th November 1786.13 Not all of Euclid, my dear Socrates, but some propositions from this book translated into the language of pathos, so as to provide an instructional model in this genre – this would be something for which I would know to be grateful to you, foreseeing the great utility of this new genre, and, whatever those who ridicule it may say, I see nothing absurd in that and I am very interested [in it] for my Amelia,14 who – [possessing] a very tender character – will swallow this like sugar and honey. […] Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis Angelmodde, 20th November 1786.15 […] [Jacobi] is in Berlin and will return, but it does not seem to me that he will ever adopt the Berlin philosophy. And it is in that hope that I wrote in his album16 – since he desired I put something down – a passage from Plato’s Phaedrus which I translated, lacking a French translation; (it concludes as follows).



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He who loves the beautiful with that delirium Alone inherits the name of lover.17

[In this passage]18 belongs everything there is to say about the fourth species of delirium in general, according to which a man – gazing on terrestrial beauty – recalls the genuine beauty of his past life. He endlessly wishes, as if taking flight by his memory, to raise himself up towards [this genuine beauty], and although he does not possess the faculty [to do this], he already directs his gaze towards the heights – like a bird which raises itself into the air; however, since, in the meantime, his desires for these heights make everything on earth seem small, he must reconcile himself to here being named an enthusiast, a man in delirium. My dear Socrates, each time I think of the Phaedrus my blood quickens and I feel an immense richness within myself. […] Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Friday 28th Nov[ember] 1786.19 My very dear Diotima, my friend, […] The passage from the Phaedrus is perfectly rendered and felt. Despite this, I will recite this definition of the Lover to the first infatuated whippersnapper I meet, so as to know from him whether it is good and whether he feels like this; if not – which could well be the case – you will be able to correct your text in accordance with his response, if you feel the need to do so.20 My very dear Diotima, I very much believe you are the Lover of the Phaedrus in all the force of the term, for you have sensed it, and this is what matters in such writings. The Phaedrus is a prodigious work. It is here perhaps that Plato most pulverises the stupid religion of his time. He also had to fear his Holy Office and Sorbonne21 and he did fear them, as he shows in a letter in which he is prudent or cowardly enough to attribute his published heresies to poor Socrates,22 whom he makes say anything he wishes. It is above all in this admirable dialogue that he had most need to speak through his divine poetry to the moral tact which feels and which forgives, rather than through dry dialectic to a pedantic, grumbling and vindictive intellect, which can never do more than understand. As for the poetry of this piece, I confess that it is here fundamentally more daring than elsewhere, but only those few people who sense his system are permitted to judge the correctness of his fine metaphors. In reading the Phaedrus I can, in some way, forgive Dionysius of Halicarnassus for his ridiculous judgement,23 for as great a philologist and critic as he was during his epoch, I guarantee you that he never sensed the sublime of Plato’s poetry, nor that of Homer’s. It seems to me that there are two types of sublime. The first [is] purely intellectual, when the parts of some whole are so happily disposed that the intellect grasps them together in one and the same instant. Or when the intellect is so perfect, agile

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and exercised that it can grasp all of a whole in one instant, whatever the reciprocal disposition of its parts. In respect to these two cases, the former presupposes a perfection in the object, the latter presupposes a perfection in the intellect.24 This species of sublime is determinate and expressible, as we see in painting, sculpture, architecture, and even in rhetoric and poetry, insofar as they offer portraits and distinct, determinate objects. Although purely intellectual, this sublime does [still] act on the moral so much it gives goosebumps. The other type of sublime resides in the intrinsic energy of the soul or the moral. I have named it elsewhere25 a vague effort, an enthusiasm, or perhaps really a divine breath: a real effect of divine omnipresence. But ultimately, whatever name is given to denote something whose nature has been so little known up to now, the objects towards which it tends or which nourish it have nothing in common with any of our organs. Therefore, neither this energy, nor its object and its nourishment is expressible or representable by any of our present signs. If a soul gifted with such energy was rendered active or set in motion by either an intrinsic effort or the presence of a Divinity, it has the faculty of electricising or animating homogeneous souls, such that there results an activity or movement [in these other souls] that is similar or homologous to its own movement. But, in order to bring about this operation on what is homogeneous, this soul necessarily requires figures, signs, gestures, words [and] sounds that have been more or less adapted to this strange operation. Plato is completely full of this latter kind of moral sublime. Let’s now suppose that Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a perfect philologist and critic, but his soul could manage to grasp only the intellectual sublime. When seeing Homer’s impress­ive portrait of an angry Neptune,26 he will tremble and turn pale. But give him your description of the lover, whom only Plato and his like can appreciate, how could you expect our Dionysius not to judge your words and your phrases to be natural excrescences of the ridiculous, of folly and of absurdity? I am charmed, my Diotima, to have found occasion to excuse our poor Dionysius, whom I remember having treated with a little mockery and some humour in one of my preceding [letters].27 But let’s return to the Phaedrus. This is one of Plato’s works which – like Miltiades’ trophies28 – often prevents me from sleeping. In terms of its art, I admire it almost as much as the Symposium.29 In terms of the philosophy it contains, I adopt all of it, except [the doctrine of] the prior state of human souls (understood individually)30 – no vestige of which I have yet discovered within myself. Moreover, it has seemed to me that, whenever Plato attempts to demonstrate Pythagoras’s [theory of] reminiscence, he cheats a little. You can see for yourself. With all of this, I am very far from rejecting the whole system. I will never do so, and even after having proven that the soul’s birth precedes, by one sole instant, [the birth of] the body’s first principles – which go on to be developed on the basis of [the soul] in as much analogy to [the soul] and its nature as its physical properties permit – I will insist that the system of reminiscence – when understood a little more reasonably than, it seems to me, Pythagoras envisaged it – is nothing less than impossible.



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That is, I would not believe Pythagoras if he said to me: I did so-and-so at the siege of Troy where I was a so-and-so animal. However, I would much more easily believe him if he said to me: I have a sensation which tells me that men have previously enjoyed a state more analogous to their nature and in which they found fewer obstacles to their happiness within the physical [realm]. I would believe him since I could teach him where such a sensation comes from. You sense well, my dear Diotima, that, before all of this, I must prove my thesis on the birth of the soul and the body, but you would certainly not want me to undertake [the proof] in this eternal letter. Goodbye my dear Diotima, my friend. I cannot say any more. May the one God bless you and protect you along with all who are dear to us in the world. Σωκρατης

Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis Angelmodde, 4th December 1786.31 Just after sending my last [letter], I received your [letter] no. 92 32 (an hour and a half later). It is with an inexpressible pleasure that I have just reread it a second time. It taught me something which, without knowing it, has often embarrassed me in my judgement, and I do not understand how I did not see before what you [now] explain to me with so much simplicity – that is, that the sublime can be sometimes subjective and sometimes objective.33 But it is true genius to say something which each of us – after having learnt it – is astonished to have failed to discover for themselves. However, this truth is so important to me since it alone explains to me the mystery of those small number of beings who seem to have an exclusive monopoly on that sacred fire which electricises everyone who approaches them, as long as they indeed possess electricisable essences. At the same time, [it also explains] the horrible birth pangs experienced whenever one senses, subjectively, a consuming sublime [feeling] which tightens the chest and burns to spread further, as well as whenever one encounters a subject who is but a little or not at all electricisable, into whose breast one tries with great effort but in vain – driven by a need and failing to find a better [outlet] – to discharge [the feeling]. The sublime Xion,34 the first of happy memory, was able to give you a sensation of this kind – so happy, in fact, as to serve as an example of, as Pope says, what must not be.35 Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Tuesday 12th Dec[ember] 1786.36 My very dear Diotima, I only received your [letter] from 4th Dec[ember]37 on Sunday morning, I don’t know how. It gives me a lively pleasure to see that my sketch of a theory of the two sublimes pleases you, but you have shed new light on it by introducing the terms, objective and subjective, which I will successfully use in what follows.

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[…] What demands all our care are the admirable expressions which you use in your [letter] from 4th [December] as well as in a preceding one38 on the subject of the sublime in general, whether it is objective, subjective, intellectual or moral. I swear to you that, since I have read them and meditated on them, I no longer despair at entering one day, behind you, into the temple of the true Sublime, where we will see, with the clearest proof, the astonishing and divine art which links together the different species of the sublime to makes one, sole totality. I was cruelly interrupted at this point without having shown you the beautiful things which I must now reserve for another day. But I conjure you, my Diotima: let’s both take the sublime as a serious object for our investigations, not in an odd free moment in our day, but with the ardent desire to be the first to treat such an illustrious subject in a worthwhile manner within this geometric perihelion,39 which, even if it does not have the faculty of teaching man to fly outside his sphere, certainly possesses [the faculty] of providing clarification within its sphere. Homer, Plato, etc. sensed it, demonstrated it, but the grammarian-philologers40 have merely rendered it misunderstood, but [nevertheless] the sublime is under­ stood. If you deign to second my wishes in this affair, I beg you to examine Longinus, whom you can read in Boileau’s excellent translation.41 It will show you, if I’m not mistaken, following your Pope, that one must not be Longinus to seek the true sources of the sublime. […] Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis 18th December 1786.42 My dear Socrates! Your [letter] no. 9643 contains a plan to treat the sublime which your [letter] 9744 proves was no presumption on your part, for it contains, at the very least, some of the bolder basic ingredients in this genre – such as the lids of its ears and other similar features – that will one day immortalise some epic poems. When my humble muse, uniquely made to be pedlar to yours, enriches the public on the basis of your well-known works…45 But permit me, since in your preceding [letter] you did not judge me unworthy of sharing in your work on the sublime, to find myself a little disappointed in my high hopes when I see myself reduced to a filler-character46 who responds in commonplaces to your sublime sallies. When you place in my mouth the advice to hold on fast to philosophy and devote yourself to the occupation of sorting the bad [from the good],47 I confess that you should have wisely equipped your lidded ears with [the alternative advice that] a philosophy pinned down by the soul is a forced marriage, it is not by marrying it that it is held fast. That Goddess, who is none other than Venus Uranus herself,48 will tell you, Socrates, that it is [obtained] through indissoluble links of a reciprocal and free love. Only when [philosophy] unites itself to the soul and remains fast, whatever the weather, will this holy union give rise to the feathers on the soul [required] to ascend into its celestial region, and I should add that it also needs to prick up its ears – those ears whose vehicle of action49 is made from too pure a matter for the wicked to be able to access them and be transported to [more] immaterial organs. The operation



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occurs in the following way. All that is gross, impure, absurd, or ugly – however it is so – is carried by its natural vehicle to the exterior or corporeal ear, and remains at the threshold. All that is pure, wise, worthy [and] ultimately beautiful attaches itself to the purer vehicle and alone enters into that ear of the soul, which sprouts feathers from the heat produced by the heavenly fire which is stoked by the love between the soul and the celestial Venus-philosophy. And this [purer vehicle of action] involves no other wind except the light, imperceptible, though impetuous Zephyr,50 which endlessly carries the two lovers from region to region until they reach their happy resting place, the natural homeland of every lover and beloved. From here, I can see the celestial blue altar, but I cannot bear the idea that its flame burning before your love can be extinguished for lack of oil! Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Tuesday 19th/20th Dec[ember] 1786.51 My very dear Diotima, my friend! […] Following your preceding [letters], we agree completely on the reality of the two species of the sublime, but if I were to dare to predict something (which is not wise in investigations, so as to avoid preoccupations and preponderant ideas), I will not be astonished if we will discover that these two species not only derive from the same source, but also commune with each other and unite together in some singular manner. I pray you to reread Longinus – Boileau’s translation52 is as excellent as it’s possible to be – and tell me whether you judge Longinus to be the man made to describe such matters. […] Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin The Hague, Tuesday 26th Dec[ember] 1786.53 My very dear Diotima, my friend, it was only on Saturday that I received your [letter] from the 18th. I admire it and confess to you (if I have any idea of Plato) that I know of no one either ancient or modern who has entered further into the profound theory of the Phaedrus than you. If this incredible work – in addition to part of the Symposium – were susceptible to an essential commentary, it would be from you, my Diotima, that we could rightly expect it. On these precious crumbs there does not even exist an intellectual commentary – that is, one which might facilitate in the reader the means to understand the rhetorical, poetic, etc., beauties that are found there and that are all subordinated to the intellect – whereas the Ancients have produced [commentaries] on the Timaeus,54 etc., that are so long and so bad [that they are], without a doubt, more voluminous than everything Plato himself wrote during the course of his lifetime. Moreover, what a distance [exists] between such a commentary and one that would enable Plato’s sensations to be transported into the reader’s soul! Understanding and feeling differ a little like body and soul.55

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Although you believed that Plato believed and that I believe that, in order to effectuate this transport of sensations in things of this nature, it’s absolutely necessary for there to be an aptitude in the reader’s soul similar to [the aptitude] in Plato’s soul, it has nevertheless occurred to me – and you confirm me in this – that it wouldn’t be impossible, by proceeding to the source of the true sublime, to attain adequate signs that could, in some way, raise the intellect to the heights of sentiment, so to speak, at least enough that the two were in more direct commerce with each other. It is for this reason, my Diotima, that I proposed to you for both of us to undertake a serious investigation of the source and the nature of the sublime. Don’t imagine that I’ve already reached that source. You’d be wrong and [this] would result in you undertaking a labour as crude and painful as it would be useless. We are seeking [together] and we do so for the most part blind – uncertain whether we’ll ever discover our object, at least in a way that manages to satisfy our desires. I admit to you that I don’t yet know very well what path we need to take. When it comes to the definition of the idea attached to the word sublime, we have no need of either you or me, and, if one day we happened to discover [it], we would sense what it is – and that’s enough, without it being necessary to undertake what is perhaps impossible, namely, to understand it. Let’s begin – almost at random – with some psychological prolegomena, but always insist as an axiom and unshakeable foundation that there is no other good and true philosophy than that which is grounded on experience,56 whether it concerns ideas which ultimately come to us from everything external and pertain to the physical category or concerns internal sensations which pertain to the category that we call metaphysical. The former is the category in which the body is located; the latter where the soul is located. It is far more probable that there is in nature a certain link, imperceptible to our eyes, between these two manners of being, despite the prodigious distance between the two that appears to us. I believe this has been proven in Sophylus for all intellects practised within this arena.57 But there are at least two further things, founded uniquely on experience, which prove this occult link to the intellect. 1° That these two categories borrow mutually from each other, as needed, signs which properly belong to each of them, and often with some success.58 For example: the Ancients [who were] very new to the true physics, glimpsed in it [the concept of] an inertia, an attraction, etc., but to transport these vague perceptions into another’s soul, they were obliged to borrow from the other category – in which they were much more practised – signs of horror of the void, of love, etc. On the contrary, we [who are] more physicists than the Ancients borrow from the other category signs of attraction, of inclination, of inertia (we are beginning to become less vague) so as to transport into someone else sensations of love, of friendship, of weakness, etc. 2° I take it to be proven in Man and his Relations that every intimate sensation of the soul, whether from an internal or external source, renders [the soul] passive insofar as it senses,59 and therefore – whether active or reactive – this activity,60 this energy acts on the physical category in proportion to its force, such that there results from it visible, audible, tangible, etc., effects that are relatively determinate. The most determinate [effects] generate the same modifications of the other person’s physical [body] as [the original energy] of which they are the effects [generated



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on the first person’s body], and so, from habit, [these effects] were taken for signs, words and vehicles of both ideas and perceptions. There is still a large number of these physical effects yet to be adopted as signs or words. When a small child hears the word animal, he has a vague and indeterminate perception of the animal as something which moves, which eats, etc., and it is only over time that he will manage to know the infinite perceptions which are subordinate to this first general perception, and which each has its own determinate sign, like eagle, lion, bull, etc. Likewise, for example, a sigh has until now been quite a vague and indeterminate sign for us, and few men (if there are any) distinguish precisely, among the sighs that they see and hear, [a sigh] of sadness from one of despair, from one of love, from one in prayer, from one of hope, from one on exhalation, boredom, [one] of fear, [one] of desire, from [a sigh] which soars upwards to rest in the breast of the Divinity. But this will come with time, just as the child finally learns to develop within the generic sign animal the specific signs of the eagle, the lion and the bull. We see by this, at the very least, 1° that the physical category to which the intellectual and the determinate pertains has some homologous face in common with the metaphysical category to which sentiment and enthusiasm pertain, by means of which they can communicate with each other. And 2° perceiving the progressive movement of man’s perfectibility, it is apparent that, with time, [man] will manage to specify sighing, laughing, crying, etc., and in this way enrich the treasury of his signs to an enormous degree. […] Gallitzin to Hemsterhuis Angelmodde, 4th January 1787.61 Finding myself in Münster for a few hours some days ago, my dear Socrates, I brought Longinus with me, on your orders,62 although I’ve already read it before. At the same time, I by chance brought Lucian63 – whom I’ve also already read – to be read alongside Longinus. And in the brief moments I’ve had since, every time I’ve tried to obey you by opening Longinus, I know not what fate has made me open Lucian, with the result that I have now read closely [here] and there in the latter – but have not [read] a word in the former. And I admit to you that the memory I have [of Longinus] produces in me a repugnance towards him that only a reiterated order on your part will be capable of vanquishing, for I remember that he bored me and taught me little – something which is a little impolite when we know the price [such reading costs] in terms of time when [the result] is poor. Hence, reflect well and see whether it would not be possible for me to address the continuation of your beautiful discourse on the sublime without imposing on me the penitence of reading Longinus. I would love 12 times more to reread Homer, if indeed I must read anything but your [discourse] whose continuation I await with much impatience. […]

On Architecture and Other Arts

The Hague, Tuesday 18th March 1788.1 My very dear Diotima, my friend. […] Do not judge our triumphal arches, I pray you, on the small design I sent you.2 There was only one in this style and that is quite enough, I confess. But tell me, my Diotima, whence comes the fact that, while architecture is without comparison the one out of all the arts which conceals the nature of its beauty most from the philosopher, it is the one out of all of them which is most subject to the intolerance of men? Not only does this question appear to me quite difficult to resolve, it also appears to me interesting enough in many respects to merit the most serious and most troublesome enquiries from a philosophy which attaches very rich and utterly sublime ideas to the word knowing. It is very true that all the liberal arts have, as their basis, the imitation of nature and, for their end, perfection and beauty. Let’s analyse this. Painting and sculpture imitate visible and tangible things and even undertake to embellish them. Music does likewise with everything sonorous. Rhetoric imitates and embellishes that natural movement of the intellect called reasoning. Poetry imitates and embellishes the natural movement of the imagination (in parentheses, my Diotima, this way of seeing these arts fundamentally differs in no respect from those [ways] I have employed elsewhere3). But architecture, a mixed and monstrous art, what does it imitate? And what does it embellish? The art of the architect – although more extended with respect to its object – is really of the same nature as that of the tailor. Both of them imitate, embellish and perfect nature, not because (insofar as it is a foreign object) it affects man alone, but insofar as it serves for the usage or the utility of man, and, up to this point, these two arts purely pertain to the mechanical alone. The art of the tailor imitates and perfects the skin of men and of animals for the utility of individual man. The art of the architect imitates and perfects dens and wood for the utility of men. NB. A building should be considered the skin of many men. Therefore, it is from physics, in the figure of man and of men, that these two arts draw their first elements, on which they must at bottom be judged. When it comes to ornaments, the natural and often slightly disordered wealth of our rich composition obliges these arts to seek them elsewhere and to borrow them – and this makes the beautiful in these arts more precarious and relatively subject to fashions. In the pure fine arts, ornaments derive from their own nature. It would appear to me quite easy to deduce from what I’ve just said – in a quite obscure manner since I have neither the time nor the head for it – the solution to the problem I just proposed to you. However, I confess that there is a truth, whose development seems to me to be far above all my strength – that is, the constant,



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eternal and indestructible beauty of the three orders in architecture.4 This astonishing phenomenon justifies our hopes that one day some great queen of France will bring about a similar stability in the great art of hairdressing and tailoring. Would you well believe, my Diotima, that the beautiful things you just read occupy in my enormous brain a volume as thick as [the volume] on fate for which I give thanks to you?5 […] I have read Stella, Clavigo, Götz von Berlichingen and Iphigenia in Tauris.6 I will speak to you about them in detail another time. With respect to Iphigenia, I do not conceive how Goethe was able to so perfectly capture Euripides’ tone, unless there was a time in his life when he read Greek as his own language. His piece is worth more than Euripides’, and he was saved from [treating] Thoas’s stupidities.7 I wish he had entered into competition with Euripides over an Iphigenia in Aulis. This piece8 is infinitely more beautiful than the other one and, by all accounts, the second [best] tragedy in existence, taking Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex for the first. In Götz, there are scenes of an astonishing skill. Regarding Diderot, never in his life did he make an Iphigenia. He had nothing Greek in either his character or his spirit. When I say that, of all men, he most approaches Menander, more even than Terence, who translated [Menander], did,9 I meant that he was a Menander in France. Moreover, Menander painted men rather than Greeks, and Diderot did the same in France. I place Diderot far above Molière and even above Mr Brueys in collaboration with Palaprat.10 He is an admirable dialogist and I know neither ancient nor modern who had a deeper knowledge of the theory of dramatic poetry. I am going to reread it11 to see if my judgement is still the same. I will let you know, for nothing is more curious than differences in the way the best authors often affect us after a considerable period of time, or from different moral positions. Plato and St Simon12 are perhaps the two authors the least subject to these sorts of vicissitudes. Homer, Sophocles and Theocritus13 also have something of this enduring and lapidary property by which they remain what they are as blocks. Goodbye, my very dear Diotima, let the one God protect us and all who are dear to us in the world. Σωκρατισκος

On Reading Goethe’s Werther

The Hague, 4th Dec[ember] 1789.1 My very dear Diotima, my friend! When I wrote my last [letter] to you, I was not even close to finishing the book of Werther.2 Now I have finished it for the first and the last time in my life. You sense well that this writing must have affected me violently in certain places and even too much sometimes. I would not advise anyone to read it, certainly not those who have faculties of a sensitivity analogous to or conforming to those of Werther, for in similar situations this book will inevitably do all possible evil.3 Moreover, it will do no one any good, for it lacks that rectifying spirit which the soul always seeks and desires after having been so horribly misled. The illustrious author lacks, nearly everywhere, this spirit, which he appears either to be ignorant of or to disdain, or to intentionally neglect in order to make the [book’s] bleakness as dark as one can possibly imagine. It is too English, or even too Diderot. Sheer bleakness shows only an abyss or a distasteful nothing, but, when nuanced, it reveals relatively determinate objects with which we are at rest. On this topic, it is worth reading Diderot’s dissertation adjoined to his Natural Son.4 This dissertation is perhaps the most perfect piece that has ever been written on dramatic poetry. I do not know whether this life of Werther is truly historical or not, but you must admit, my dear Diotima, that it has many passages which are neither from nature nor from what is likely.5 Permit me, my Diotima, [to say] that reading Werther’s letters has led me to reflect on this abrupt and interrupted epistolary style so much in vogue today.6 It is true that, when done well, it can sometimes supply a happy and bold sketch, but never a perfect description. The thinking of man does not work thus and cannot work thus; it is more regular, unless it runs after madness7 but then it ceases to be thought, it is nothing and can produce nothing. I have never been able to understand how the German, the French and above all the Swiss have ended up borrowing this, in my opinion, absurd epistolary style from the English and transported it into their languages, which are much less suited to it than the English language. Sometimes you have used this style in your letters, but never – that I know of – when it was not good for something and when your phrase-fragments could not be linked together with the most perfect ease by the mind of your reader. Note that if these fragments themselves do not naturally fill the gaps that separate them, [the author] becomes obscure and so often gives way, despite himself, to the most absurd equivocations which then rely uniquely on the reader’s mind.8 I believe that whoever first said that a letter is an imitation of a dialogue uttered a great falsehood. Finally, in regard to this book of Werther. I have read lots of works where, after reading them, I said to myself without questioning the above: I would like to have



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composed that. But after reading this [book], I said to myself completely the opposite, although I can sense as well as anyone else how much genius and what kind [of genius] is needed to compose such a work. […]

PART FOUR ETHICS AND POLITICS

Letter on Virtues and Vices

Madam1 Your orders are sacred to me, otherwise I certainly would not have offered up for your indulgence and solely to please you the little writing I had begun on the virtues and the vices and which I have just finished as well as I can. Here it is. The soul is a substance, perhaps of the most composite kind to be found in all of nature, but the entirety of its composition, or rather all that composes it, is closely linked to a single simple principle. Let’s call soul this simple principle, this link, which forms a whole from all its riches. Since it cannot be what is outside it, and since to act, and to enjoy, it has need of more or less intimate relationships with what is outside it, it is necessary that there are media between it and what is outside it, in order to realise, or rather to make it sense, these relationships. As the things which are outside it, both insofar as they are called material and insofar as they are called immaterial, with which it can or must have relationships, appear to be infinite in number and in species, it seems that these media, both possible and real, are also infinite in number and in species. I call all these media, of whatever nature they may be, organs. Of these media, the soul only distinctly knows those which manifest to it its relationships with things which [the soul] currently encounters. For example, if it did not encounter visible things which can reflect light, it would not know what an eye is, [despite] having eyes. If it did not encounter elastic, sonorous bodies, it would not know what an ear is, [despite] having ears. If it did not encounter moral beings who can act and sense, it would not know what a moral organ is, [despite] having a moral organ. If it did not encounter distinct and determinate things, it would not know what the organ of the intellect is, [despite] having the organ of the intellect, and so on to infinity. Therefore, it seems infinitely probable that this soul (I speak of extraordinary souls) is a thing so composite and of such prodigious richness that the saying that God created man in his image somehow loses a little of that ridiculous absurdity that it has when applied to the soul of a brute animal. Let’s2 now enumerate the riches of this soul insofar as we can have any idea of them. As for its velleity,3 it is not an organ but pertains to the essence of the soul. It constitutes all of [the soul’s] activity and manifests it by determining itself into particular and fully formed acts of will. When it is not determined into particular acts of will, it is merely an indeterminate principle of activity which can be determined into particular acts of will by the strongest impulses that come to it from without, that is, from the imagination. As for the imagination, it is the receptacle of all the ideas which come from without, which the intellect combines, or which the velleity initiates. As for the intellect, it resembles velleity a little in that both are and must be indeterminate and absolutely universal in their nature. The intellect possesses, to begin, a vague

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intuition of all the ideas the imagination contains, and then [becomes] the faculty of composing, comparing and decomposing these ideas, and in this latter quality it is called reason. As for the moral organ, it provides the sensation of everything that is moral. And just as the intellect, [which is] also subject to the velleity regarding its direction towards some subject, judges the determinate velleity or the act of will in terms of whether it is in conformity with or contrary to what is possible, so too the moral organ is also subject to the velleity concerning its activity, [and] judges the determinate velleity or act of will in terms of whether it is in conformity with or contrary to what is just. And just as what is contradictory repels the intellect, so too what is unjust repels the moral organ, which is commonly called conscience. As for the organs of vision, hearing, touch, etc. we know quite well what they are, and what they are used for. These are basically all the tools of the soul, insofar as we know them at present, and which are used to manifest its relationships with external things. But before moving on to my proposed enquiry on the source and nature of what is called vice and virtue, I must here make a reflection. I have demonstrated in other small works that the soul is immortal and in­ destructible. It’s clear that the indeterminate velleity that pertains to [the soul’s] nature remains attached to it [after death]. It’s clear that the moral organ which judges and contemplates must remain attached to it. It’s clear that the intellect which compares the determinations of [the soul’s] velleity with the possible and the impossible must remain attached to it. It’s clear that the imagination, which is the receptacle of all sensations and all ideas that the soul can receive, must remain attached to it. Now, I have reason to believe that blood is an extremity, an end, or an envelope of the moral organ, that certain fibres are the extremity, the end, or the envelope of the intellect, that some other [fibres] are [likewise] for the imagination, etc. Yet, all these extremities and ends are destroyed at death; therefore, it is necessary that what constitutes the principal part of each of these organs, or what is essential in these organs, remains. But an eye with its optic nerve, an ear with its auditory nerves, etc., are properly only the extremities, the ends, or the envelopes of what constitutes what is essential to the organs of vision, hearing, etc. Therefore, reasoning by way of a permissible analogy, it seems probable that what constitutes what is essential to these organs remains with the soul after death. To what end? I don’t know. Perhaps only for the possibility of recalling a few sensations which pertain to the visible and sonorous faces [of the universe]. If I4 now consider a soul whose velleity is indeterminate – that is, it does not determine itself into particular acts of will, but lets its particular acts of will be determined by the impulses of its imagination into acts of will so as to manifest its activity: a soul whose intellect is not at all exercised, inasmuch as it compares or composes ideas: a soul whose imagination is so poor that it provides only one or two impulses for the purpose of determining the velleity: finally, a soul whose moral organ is nothing – you will have an animal or a new-born child, and, because of the very few impulses of the imagination on the indeterminate velleity, you will easily understand the nature and force of what is called instinct.



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Suppose a soul whose moral organ is wholly neglected, or whose organ is wholly lacking, of which we find many examples,5 a soul whose intellect is formed, and whose imagination is sparsely filled with ideas – you will get an ordinary man, as they are commonly found. You will easily see that this man whose actions derive from an indeterminate velleity determined into particular acts of will by the impulses of the imagination, which [in turn] is – because of the constitution of the body or the situation of the things outside him – more inclined to some kind of ideas than to any other – this man is really ruled by the constitution of his body or the situation of the things outside him in relation to him,6 and that even supposing his intellect to be very well formed, it will not produce any change in this man’s actions but what makes them more refined and more complex. Yet these actions which necessarily produce some effects, either indifferent, bene­ ficial, or harmful to society, are arranged into classes of virtues and vices, such as generosity–avarice, modesty–vanity, continence–lust, sweetness–cruelty, etc. (I will not note anything here about the inaccuracy of these opposites),7 although these actions are really just necessary effects of the bodily constitution of this kind of men. It is evident from what I have just said that men of this kind are neither virtuous nor vicious, and that they deserve neither praise nor punishment properly [speaking].8 In the case of praise, they certainly do not deserve it, but in the case of punishments, society inflicts them on [these men] to prevent crimes which harm society and could do so from their actions which are improperly called vicious.9 Suppose a soul whose velleity is active and determines itself with ease into particular acts of will: whose moral organ is defective, neglected, or rather subjugated or enthralled by this active and determinate velleity, so much so that this velleity fails to consult the [moral] organ in comparing its determinate acts of will to what is just or unjust: whose intellect is well formed, possessing all its possible agility and swiftness: and, finally, whose imagination is lively, and retains the ideas it receives for a long time – you will have a really vicious man, either one who commits crimes, that is, actions contrary to the established law in a certain society, or one who does not commit them – and this is because he does not have or does not use the sole measure which compares his determinate velleity to what is just and unjust. The more the intellect of this man is perfected, and his imagination rich and well composed, the more vicious and dangerous he will be. It is into this class that one must put cruel men and great villains. Finally, suppose a great and robust soul, whose indeterminate velleity has all its elasticity, and always determines itself into particular acts of will with ease: whose moral organ has all its sensibility and all its perfection: whose intellect is exercised and as perfect as possible, and whose imagination receives and presents to the intellect all ideas in an equally clear and distinct manner. When all these parts are equally perfect, in such a soul is manifest simultaneously supreme virtue and true wisdom. This soul is, after God,10 the most immense and richest being of which we are able to form an idea in our current state, and no comparison is possible between it and [the souls] which make up the first three classes.11 It is true that chance can sometimes, within those classes, give the appearance of a single isolated action which seems to derive from the soul of a Socrates,12

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an Epaminondas, a Timoleon, a Scipio, a Marcus Aurelius,13 but that is only a transitory appearance which does not have virtue as its origin. In the soul of a Socrates, an Epaminondas, etc.,14 every part15 of the soul is equally perfect [and] in complete harmony. All actions which derive from the activity of these beings are uniform, since, when discharging them, the soul makes use of all its tools at once. All its parts identify with each other, so to speak, in such souls by means of continual exercise, and the moment when the velleity determines itself is the same as when the moral organ judges what is just, the intellect what is possible, and when the imagination exhibits its brilliant riches; and this is the reason for that tone of simplicity admired and wondered at in the actions of true heroes.16 In17 speaking to you, Madam, concerning this category, it is not from lack of politeness, but from [fair] judgment [that I do] not make any remarks on your peers. The heroines who belong to this category usually have a more delicate moral organ and have been obliged either by their education or by their nature to put more consideration into the number and nature of the ideas they have admitted into their imagination, and it seems to me that it is in this way that their actions are more imprinted by Minerva’s sweet modesty, whereas Hercules’ vehemence and vigour seem to constitute the tone of heroes. I admit it is true18 that real virtue is not found anywhere except in this last class, but it would be of little comfort to humanity if this class were only composed of the small number of perfect heroes I’ve just spoken about. Fortunately, there are many individuals who are less perfect but who have entered into and adorned [this class]. These are the souls whose parts19 or organs have different degrees of perfection, and who therefore lack that happy harmony, that equilibrium which derives from an equal perfection in all the parts, as well as those souls whose less important organs are defective. If we consider their continual tendency towards virtue, happiness and perfection, their prodigious internal activity with which they fight even the appearance of vice – although their actions appear to have something uneven and rough about them – we cannot justly refuse to place them close to the same rank of those fortunate pre-eminent [heroes]. Moreover, it is to be believed20 that this rough, uninterrupted exercise, which is nevertheless undertaken in the prodigiously energetic presence of a God21 whom such work cannot displease, will carry them into another state, to a degree of vigour and perfection at which other [heroes] only arrive so easily because of a somewhat richer composition or a somewhat more fortunate and elevated nature. In22 the second category, I did not remark on the inaccuracy of these opposites, generosity, avarice, modesty, vanity. However, one more word must be said. Virtue is virtue only when it is voluntary. Vice is vice only when it is voluntary, and vice is the opposite of virtue only because both have a voluntary source. A fault like avarice, vanity, etc., has no voluntary source, therefore its opposite cannot have a voluntary source, and therefore its opposite cannot be a virtue. A fault is really an excess,23 and the opposite of an excess can only be an opposed excess, and thus the opposite of a fault, like avarice, cannot be opposed to a virtue like generosity, but [instead] to another fault or opposed excess, like



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prodigality, just as vanity is not opposed to a virtue like modesty, but to an opposed fault or excess, like baseness. From all that I’ve just told you, it appears24 that, in the first class, there can be no virtues, vices, faults or crimes; that, in the second, there is neither virtue nor vice, that there are only faults, and that there can be crimes; that, in the third,25 there are no virtues, but great vices from which great crimes can derive; and that, in the fourth,26 there are virtues and sometimes defects, but no vices, and crimes [only] by accident. It also follows that, in general,27 supreme virtue consists in the prodigious richness of the soul; in the velleity’s activity of self-determination; in the sensibility28 of the moral organ; in the agility and accuracy of the intellect; in the clarity and richness of the imagination; in the equilibrium or equal or proportionate perfection of these four faculties, and finally in the combined and instantaneous use that the soul is able to make of these things together.29 [Furthermore, it follows] that vices derive from too much power in the velleity30 and from the misuse of the three other faculties which results from it; and finally [it follows] that faults have their source only in the weakness of the velleity, which cannot determine itself and which therefore remains prey to the imagination.31 I admit that, if this theory could solely be used for investigation into the character of a certain individual, it would seem rather useless, owing to the difficulties needed to be overcome in its application; but I firmly believe that it could be used to some extent in education,32 since taking as a basis that the four faculties or principal parts of the soul are the velleity, the moral organ, the intellect and the imagination, one could, it seems to me, study these four parts separately in a child, and know their value and their reciprocal imperfections, and you can then modify these faculties so that, in regard to each other, there results the greatest good and the least harm possible. For example, in a soul in which velleity is weak and does not determine itself, you must not enrich the imagination, for this will direct and determine the indeterminate33 velleity, and you must be as discriminating as possible with the kind of ideas that enter into it, and, at the same time, you must perfect as much as possible the intellect which composes and compares the ideas, so that this imagination, which is soon going to govern the whole, although poor in regard to the quantity of ideas, will be as regulated as it can be made to be.34 I would have included here still other examples if I did not feel at this moment all the ridiculousness of my vanity in daring to speak of education before you. I beg your pardon, Princess: I beseech you, in grace, to continue to correct me and to return to me, at last, all that is necessary to offer you, with dignity, the subservience, the respect and the recognition with which I am in essence, Madam, Your Highness, the most humble and devoted servant Hemsterhuis

The Hague, 4th March 1776

On Fürstenberg’s Character

The evening of Easter, [18th April] 1778.1 […] [Fürstenberg]2 spent the rest of the day at mine and we separated with great regret. If he returns this Summer, I will bring him to your home without fail. He’s made for you: since I’ve come to know Diotima, I’ve not met a man better conditioned to be presented to her. He is such a beautiful genius; he is extremely versed in all branches of mathematics, and this forms the basis of all his other extensive knowledge. His manner of knowing is what I’d call the good: everything he knows composes one body. He was born a metaphysician and psychologist, and his physiognomy also indicates this as well.3 He loves all the arts and, while versed in history and in the poets, he is not an antiquarian; what appears beautiful to him is the Greek, and his tact seems to me as infallible as it is well practised. He has thought a lot and [done so] excellently about the principles of art in general, but he has not studied the various difficulties that need to be conquered which derive from the nature of each art in particular. The progress of his intellect is slow and wise rather than quick and rapid. He has the faculty of seeing objects from a bird’s-eye view, and [to see] all the richness of his imagination as a whole. His great study is experimental psychology, which he applies uniquely to education and to the different ways of forming men. For four or five years, he has been occupied with creating a university in Münster – something I have previously heard spoken of with the highest praise.4 I do not believe that it would be possible to find a more excellent subject for [undertaking] such a task. His great simplicity and his frankness do not admit any doubts that his morality is anything but perfect. If I am not mistaken, this is the genuine picture of a man born (as he said himself) into the most abject part of your country,5 Diotima, but who burns with desire to give the Westphalians mores, taste, knowledge and arts. Here, with your permission, is his cloverleaf:6

Intel[lect] 95 Mora[l organ] harmony 60/60 Velle[ity] 40

Imag[ination] 80/80



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NB. In morality, I am supposing 60 for sensibility but lack a more intimate knowledge; 60 [also] in moral activity.7 In the imagination, there is 80 for clarity, and 80 in richness. Goodbye my very dear Diotima, I will not see you today. […]

On the Moral Organ

21st Oct[ober] 1779.1 My very dear friend […] You say that the preacher of a sublime philosophy is not happy. Those who excavate a mine are not always rich. I’ve said before that whether someone is happy or not is their fault. I believe it; but what is nevertheless true is that happiness costs a little more to some people than to others. And this is no injustice from the Gods, since [happiness] is great solely to the extent that it costs. Another time I will talk with you about happiness, my Diotima. […] I kiss the hand of my very dear Diotima in gestures of fortyfold thanks. I will make use of [this gratitude] well.2 Your mornings, your afternoons and your evenings are busy. When could I contemplate with decency coming to see you, my Diotima? If the moral organ is admitted as a distinct quality, just as sight and hearing are distinct qualities, that is enough, for I do not know its shape, as I do not know the shape of sight or of hearing. If someone were to speak of eyes, it’s true that, up to a certain point, I can follow the modifications that rays of light undergo in entering them, and I can say that the eye communicates with sight, and is an extremity of it.3 If someone speaks to me of ears, it’s true that, up to a certain point, I can follow the modifications that the vibrations of the air undergo in entering them, and I can say that the ear communicates with hearing, and is an extremity of it. When I see the movement of the blood accelerate, the agony of the nerves, the compression of glands which accompany different affections and passions, it’s true that, up to a certain point, I can follow these movements, and I can say that the blood or the nerves communicate with morality and are extremities of it. If one wants to call sight, moral sense, hearing, tact, imagination [and] intellect qualities, instead of organs, I’m content with that, and I confess that the word organ applied to all these qualities is a bit too much in the figurative style, and really this word is appropriate to none of these qualities or faculties, but belongs to the extremities of these faculties insofar as we know something of these extremities. Provided we’re agreed that, by all these qualities, faculties or organs, we receive distinct and essentially different sensations, the communication of these faculties with their extremities or their ends occurs exactly as we have demonstrated at the end of Sophylus in relation to the communication between the soul and the body.4 In regard to the difference between the moral judge and the intellectual judge, I’d merely ask of our philosophers whether they do not sense the difference between judging the possible and the impossible and judging the just and the unjust, and



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whether they do not sense that one pertains to the intellect as the other pertains to morality. Goodbye my very dear Diotima! Dianam tenerae dicite virgines: Intonsum pueri dicite Cynthium, Latonamque Supremo Dilectam penitus Iovi.5

On Current Events in the Dutch Republic

The Hague, Monday 11th December 11, 1780.1 My very dear Diotima, yesterday I received your [letter] with the greatest pleasure. My health is fairly good, but my arm is quite another concern.2 Sometimes it’s good for nothing. You ask me what’s going on here politically.3 I think it’s a joke. If I had completed a small work I’ve often intended to compose – namely, a philosophical history of this Republic, one of the most illustrious and, without exception, the most singular ever to have existed – I would send you this work.4 From it you would learn to calculate precisely what the Republic has to do or to undergo by its nature, in given circumstances. You would find for the present: activity = 0. This inertia may last even longer unless the English see fit to attack the Amsterdammers on the seas wherever they find them by declaring their city an ex-member of the State and by embracing the rest of the Republic as their only sister and their natural ally with all the tenderness of which they find themselves capable. You must know, my Diotima, that, from the moment this Republic was born in the heat of events, it has never been so essentially disunited as it is at this hour. If we said the same thing of Rome or Athens, we would believe ourselves to be on the eve of a civil war, in which one or other party would necessarily succumb. But here things are completely different. Among those people who constitute the real power of this State, and who spend their time losing much less than they win, there are no parties, but the people in charge are all disunited, and this is because they have all reproached each other for their faults.5 None of them has enough credit with the people, nor enough authority or power to gain any status, and therefore this disunity can have no other effect but these petty quarrels, at which the citizen or the people laugh and entertain themselves. It’s obvious that, in order to set such a state in motion in such circumstances, it’s necessary to excite the mass of the people. I once had the honour of knowing the people very closely, having had more than anyone, I think, the opportunities to study them and follow them in their noisy progress – and this was just when I was leaving the school of Aristotle, of Grotius and of Montesquieu.6 To set the mass of the people in motion, one needs either a universal sensation of a present and real evil or a perfectly clear and simple idea of approaching evil. If the English do what I’ve just said, as I believe they will, the sensation will occur and the effect will be conclusive; but with respect to this clear and simple idea of a future evil, one cannot at will give it to a free and currently rich and happy people – and that is infinitely curious. The people are not always ready to receive such an idea, however clear and simple it may be. There are times when the strongest and most persuasive harangues will do nothing, and there are times when a [single] word will suffice to



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let blood flow. In a free, rich and happy people, it must take about two generations for this national and universal sensibility to mature. Maybe one day I will have the happiness to unearth the sufficient reasons for this strange phenomenon. I know that the English or their party have already tried everything to provoke the people of Amsterdam, but I would dare predict to them that their efforts will be wasted and that this requisite disposition will not be present in our people until the very beginning of the next century. [It’s possible] to exhort the sensation of a present evil at any time, as you know. The death of Maria Theresa7 has so far caused no sensation. The people are neither pro-English, nor Austrian, nor French; they will furiously turn against the first one to cause [them] some harm. […]

Reflections on the Republic of the United Provinces, to Princess Gallitzin and Baron F. von Fürstenberg1

Dear wise and illustrious couple, to whom the most sacred friendship binds me, I [here] satisfy your desires by offering my reflections on the nature and history of the Republic of the Seven Provinces for contemplation by your great philosophy. [It is] the most singular and interesting republic to have ever existed, and it alone furnishes a greater number of phenomena useful for knowledge of man in society than all the other states furnish together. I dare to promise two rewards from [these reflections] that are equally exciting for me. First, for me to merit your approval, the only praise to which my heart aspires; secondly, to rectify the judgement that a foreigner – naturally an unjust appreciator of what he does not know – makes on my homeland, by falsely attributing to what is perhaps the wisest and most enlightened nation in the world effects which derive from the necessary vices of its strange political constitution.2 Before getting into the matter, it will be necessary to make some observations on the origin of societies in general, and then on the means by which each people increase their illumination, perfect their language, and acquire a distinctive character as a body. As a result of the simple application of laws derived from man’s nature to circumstances and to events, we will be brought to distinctly see the causes of so many strange paradoxes which have so often astonished the contemplating philosopher. Those who say with Aristotle that things which could not exist separately must be united by nature,3 thereby claim to have found in sexual division the source of the sociable faculty of man. [But they] are contradicted by all animals which do not live in society, whereas they make use of the same [sexual] division to perpetuate their species. Those who derive this faculty from the help required in tender childhood and in foolish old age are refuted by those peoples who left the education of their children to their herds, who took the lives of their creators when age had made [them] useless, and who only knew the name mother attributed to the cow that fed them. It is evident that the true source of man’s sociable faculty must be sought in that moral principle which ennobles him, and which distinguishes him so prodigiously from all [other] beings we know on earth.4 This principle, which clearly shows that man is here only a bird of passage, or rather a being who, by some unknown law, has clung to matter for a short time to exercise his faculties, as he will probably exercise them in other categories [of existence] on totally different forms of matter.5 [It is] by this principle he alternates between suffering or enjoying the evils and the goods of his brother. Finally, this principle carries with it the ability to communicate to his fellow men all his ideas and all his sensations.



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One single man isolated on earth must be considered as deprived of this principle, which none of the objects surrounding him could make known to him. He is like an animated light placed in the middle of an immense void which, for lack of opaque bodies that could reflect its rays back to him, would forever be ignorant of what constitutes the beauty of its essence. In this state of isolation man is no different from other animals, perhaps only a few degrees wiser. He has everything in common with them, and what should be noted [is that] his right over all that surrounds him is measured solely by his desires and by his power.6 As soon as he finds himself surrounded by his fellow men, he multiplies himself [and] the individual disappears. He is in everyone all that he is in himself,7 and the desire of each of them is necessarily the well-being of all. Such is a happy society, a nation, a new being on the earth, but the nature of this being is not similar to [the nature of] the individuals who compose it and who are endowed with a moral organ. This being is a robust and isolated animal, and its right over everything else that is not itself has no other limits than those of its desires and its power.8 As this society became too numerous for the land it inhabited to be enough [to provide] food or for the welfare of its individuals, it was divided into parts. These parts separated, and, through this dispersal, discovered other seasons and other climates that gave them new modifications, new ideas, and consequently new communicative signs. Yet, each of these parts, or these secondary societies, remained of the same nature and of the same species as the original from which it had sprung. Far removed from all the others, each of them was an isolated animal and enjoyed the same right. Let us see what happened within each of these societies during the centuries it existed separately from the others. The individuals who composed them increased the number of their ideas by composing and comparing them, and consequently [increased] the number of their signs. The continual communication of these ideas gave birth to great common imagination, a great common treasury of ideas, which, owing to man’s rich nature, could easily be installed in each of the bestcomposed minds. In this way, the number of ideas in some individuals far surpassed that number in other individuals, and the value of that ideal – or the quantity of all these ideas, which was proportionate to the whole of society, to the whole general mass of knowledge [produced by] all individuals together – soon surpassed, within one mind alone, the amount of what is physically real that each man can enjoy and that is proportionate to the nature of one particular man [considered] as animal and individual. These are desires beyond the physically possible. This is the source of ambition, of the spirit of conquest, of the devastation of so many empires. This is the source of our ills, but at the same time the sure mark of the greatness of human nature, and of the possibility that there are men on this earth for whom one world and temporality are objects too futile to excite their vast desires. It is evident that the increasing heterogeneity of these individuals ended up producing irregularities that were harmful to society [and] which required the conceiving and forging of civil laws to constrain the strong and to defend the weak.

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When these secondary societies – which had become so different due to time, climates and circumstances9 – once again came together, owing to population and necessity, and so became neighbours, they were still animals of the same species, and they would have been able to live together in this respect, doing each other some good and little harm. But the prodigious heterogeneity of the modification [undergone by] their communicative signs and consequently by their manners and customs meant that they no longer [related] to each other like one animal of a certain colour or size [relates] to another animal of the same species with another colour or size, but [rather] in terms of the relationship between the lion, the tiger, the wolf – heterogeneous animals which flee from each other or destroy each other and have no other natural right than that of the strongest. The legislator, who, until then, had only been occupied with preventing or correcting internal abuses in his society, saw himself obliged in these unforeseen circumstances to create one body out of his nation, a political state, a new being once more – man’s greatest and boldest production on this earth. [This being] is a vigorous animal from the inside out, and, when perfected, is formidable more because of the harmony, the health, the agility, and the elasticity of its inner parts than by arms, teeth, and claws, which fall out, are blunted, or break over time. The critical situation in which these great animals found themselves – disparate in everything, without that moral organ with which [individual] man had been endowed, and having a natural right over everything that they were not – threatened the human race with total destruction. It was soon perceived what these strange beings lacked, and attempts were made to give them at least something of morality. At the head of each of these societies was installed the wisest and most enlightened man of the nation as a monarch or despot, who in some ways made these societies into moral and homogeneous individuals, and, for a time, produced all of the desired effect. But what despots were to succeed them? [Their successors were] men who, far from being able to appear as august representatives of public virtue and of the moral organ, would not even have represented, by their morals, some imposing vice, or, by their talents, some lowly beast of burden. This difficulty gave birth to republics of all kinds, but the more a wise legislator gave strength and vigour to a society, the more he isolated it and made it dis­similar to all the others, and the more, ultimately, he justified the natural right of the strongest. Fortunately, by the nature of the individuals who composed them, all these societies shared the idea and fear of the Divinity, and however absurd the symbols by which [this Divinity] was worshipped, where the fundamental idea was the same, simple, and natural, and could serve as a more or less solid foundation for alliances and treaties. These treaties and alliances had some power and vigour as long as this common idea of a Supreme God remained intact, but it is clear that, as soon as men damage this fundamental and simple idea, as soon as they dare attribute their virtues to the Supreme God – what am I saying? their vices and their whims too – [and as soon as] they attribute to him a predilection for some particular political state over all the others and [as soon as] each political state makes [God] its first citizen, [then] it is evident that this common idea, which in the absence of a



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moral organ still served as a link [between nations], will be destroyed, and that these societies will return to their natural [state] and become isolated animals again, but much more ferocious than before. In a society composed of individuals who are relatively equal insofar as [their] moral organ and friendship forge a single link between them, one still sees – and even sees it frequently – friends who sacrifice themselves for their homeland without any goal but the internal enjoyment of the good we do for what we love. But it is the most absurd idea that it is possible to imagine a political state, a republic, a political substance, sacrificing itself for the well-being of another state or political substance. It would be a wolf sacrificing himself for love of a tiger. If you are finding this description a little too much, you may be right, and I admit that from time to time we have seen strange and sad struggles between what the nature of man demands of him towards his neighbour and what the political animal of which he is a part demands of him as a member of it. But I appeal to those who have seen federal republics close up whether they have not observed that, in general, the spirit of the body [politic] is infinitely stronger than the cries of blood relations, the connections and even love for the common homeland. And this must be so, since a factitious homogeneity, religion by oath and powerful personal interest, together bind man to this body, whereas the moral organ alone binds him to the individual – an organ which the state appropriates for its own utility or its own needs, and which legislation has replaced. Everything I conclude from these observations is: 1° that any body politic, whether it constitutes a political substance by itself or composes such a substance with others, is an isolated animal and must be considered as such; 2° that a state or a political substance is more or less bad to the extent it is made up of more or less of these animals; 3° that the society of men cannot be perfect, unless it is composed of individuals alone, who are connected in no other way than by that golden chain which God himself forged in their essences.10 The enlightenment, sciences, or knowledge of men is constituted by ideas acquired through the senses, [ideas] of the relations existing between these ideas, and finally [ideas] which arise from the comparison or composition of these ideas.11 The number of the first [kind] increases by experience, [the number] of the second [kind] by reflection, [the number] of the last [kind] by genius. The first [kind], or rather experience, is always proportional to time and the number of changes [then] taking place among men. The second [kind], the results of reflection, is always proportional to the number of the first [kind], as well as to [a state of] tranquillity. The genius who produces the last [kind of ideas] develops them in proportion, on the one hand, to the number of all ideas and all sensations, and, on the other hand, to the freedom, leisure and tranquillity enjoyed by this individual. By speaking of genius,12 I am speaking merely of its expression, because genius [itself] – which is that faculty of the intellect by which it grasps the homologous sides of several ideas that exist far apart from each other and are very disparate in appearance, so as to link them together – strictly pertains neither to time, nor to climate, nor to circumstances; it is born very rarely, but indiscriminately everywhere.

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It is the cause of great anomalies in the uniform progress of the human mind, and to accelerate its movement often takes many centuries of experience and reflection. Let us conclude from this that the more a people13 have been compelled by circumstance to travel across sea and land, the more [this people] has been exposed to great dangers of all kinds, the more it has had to fight against the vices of its climate, against the tyranny of its masters, against the ambition and jealousy of its powerful neighbours, against nature – which refuses [this people] even its necessary substance, which disputes even the soil [the people] occupies – ultimately the more a people is free and its individuals find leisure, then the more this people must undoubtedly be enlightened and wise, if wisdom is [indeed] the fruit of experience and reflection, [and so] the more finally this people must laugh slyly at the affected disdain of the stupid foreigner who only sees and envies its riches, without seeing or envying its industry and its enlightenment. I will not speak either of the origin of language, which must appear obscure and inconceivable to those who do not discover in it the immediate effect of ideas and sensations themselves, nor of the reasons by which primitive language received modifications that were so prodigiously different, as seen [in the difference] between the languages of the Cimbri,14 the Teutons,15 the Slavs and the Celts, from which all languages in Europe descend. I will only make a few remarks on the richness of languages and the nature of their perfection. A language is rich owing to the number of signs that clearly express ideas and sensations. This richness is natural or fabricated. [It is] natural owing to the number of roots or primitive words which constitute it. [It is] fabricated owing to the number of signs in a phrase put in different positions in relation to one another, as we see in our Arabic numerals the expression of every possible number by means of the location and repetition of several different signs. It is evident that natural richness must increase according to the same laws by which acquired ideas are enriched, and fabricated [richness] according to those [laws] by which ideas of relation increase. The perfection of a language consists in the energy or in the precision with which it expresses even the lightest and most delicate nuance of an idea and sensation, and it is evident that this perfection, proceeding in step with [the perfection] of the arts and sciences, or of all human knowledge, increases or diminishes along with [this energy or precision]. It follows that the state of a language is the most perfect image of the [state] of the intellectual faculties of the people who speak it, and, from the perfection of these faculties among a people, we can safely deduce [the perfection] of the language it uses. Let us further remark that, since there are properly only two kinds of government or political constitution – one which tends to the well-being of the individual and which is almost entirely republican [and] the other which tends towards the well-being and strength of the body politic or of the state and which is almost entirely monarchical – this must result in two different nuances in the perfection of language. The monarch is able to give individuals as much leisure, rest, and freedom (these being the only way of nourishing the fine arts and sciences, and therefore the sole source of the embellishment of language) as the freest republic, with this



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difference – that in a monarchy the individual senses that he derives his freedom from another, which naturally leads him to flattery and to the apotheosis of his benefactor. A voluntary dependence, all the more binding as it is born from gratitude or greed, gives direction to the progress of [the individual’s] mind; and the language, which [the individual] polishes and modifies, will appear to him perfect to the extent it pleases, flatters and can hide, envelop or illuminate the desired features of an idea. In a republic, the individual senses that his freedom derives solely from his own nature as a man and as a citizen; nothing directs the bold flight of his genius but his own will and the pleasure he tastes in enjoyment of his fellow man;16 and his rich and tense language will be made perfect by means of an energetic, victorious and persuasive clarity. The distinctive character of a people is something almost as easy to sense by those who have the faculty of encompassing a great number of ideas at once,17 as it is difficult and impossible to express by those who lack this great faculty. In regard to one of those primitive nations, isolated and without neighbours, whose laws can be directed solely at internal policy, that is, [at fostering] a tendency towards the just for those individuals less endowed with a moral organ, and so [a nation] where the legislator is not yet obliged to damage this organ for the common good and where patriotism and the warlike virtues are absolutely unknown and absurd faculties, it is evident that the way of living to which [its people] would be compelled by this situation and physical circumstances is enough to depict what would distinguish it from any other distant people. In regard to Sparta or Rome, where education was public or [ensured] perfect homogeneity, the description of the individual would be very close to that of the nation.18 But for peoples19 surrounded on all sides by other peoples, exposed to wars of all kinds, engaged in commerce, obliged to travel continually, whose political constitution is extremely complicated and accepts the foreigner as a citizen, where education is freely chosen [and] the paths which lead to fortune [are] innumerable, and where individuals enjoy the most perfect freedom, it is clear that their national character is the result of the prodigious assembly of all their relationships. As the nations which inhabit Europe, however different their particular relations may be, are all bound by blood, by the more universally spread languages, by a common religion, by commerce, by common interests, it is not surprising that there are no longer as marked and as sharp distinctions between them as are found between the peoples of Europe and Asia. And, if one wants to get a precise idea of the primary differences which do still distinguish them, it is necessary to penetrate into their ancient pasts, it is necessary to see them in their infancy, it is necessary to follow them through barbarous centuries and those dark ages when their intellectual faculties were yet little developed and when they had almost no other relationships except with the places they inhabited and [with] their climates. And it is in this way that those peoples who inhabit islands, or who are scarcely exposed to travellers or to expeditions from abroad, have kept their barbaric simplicity the longest, have kept a determinate, palpable national character the longest. I hope these few observations might prove sufficient to establish a sure rule according to which the relative and reciprocal perfections of peoples could be

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evaluated, without access to any other data than the simple and crude annals of the circumstances in which these peoples have lived, so as to be able to conclude with confidence what these peoples are in terms of morality, the sciences and the arts, and what one might expect of them in imagined situations. Chapter One.20 The history of any people begins properly from the time it acquired for itself the faculty of speaking to posterity or of communicating with it through the exercise of the imitative arts and by writing. All that can be known of centuries before this period can only be based on monuments, traditions, or what authors from more enlightened peoples say of them. In the case of monuments, there are two kinds – one which contains the remains of some extraordinary effects of nature, or [the remains] of the transitory power of the nation; the other [consists of] signs of some event which was judged to be able to either flatter the vanity of contemporaries or interest future centuries. These isolated monuments only vaguely indicate some general facts, but when they are accompanied by constant traditions that accord with them, a wise critic might often develop more circumstantial facts which, through his art, will be able to carry a high degree of likelihood. In the case of traditions that have no remaining monuments which might enlighten and fortify them, they become bastardised and lose their authority to the extent that they move further away from their source, and [even] the boldest and most reckless critic is unable to provide an appropriate solidity for the foundation of the vast edifice of history. In the case of foreign writers, they see these less enlightened and more barbaric people only in terms of the few accidental relationships that they happen to have formed with them, and, therefore, everything they say about them represents only a few isolated facts, which are often badly perceived, and a chain which is continually interrupted. These considerations furnish one of the reasons why I shall quickly pass over the antiquity of the people I am going to examine; the other is that its history does not properly become an extraordinary and interesting object for philosophy until around the time it formed a free state by expelling its tyrant.21

Preliminary Observations on the Constitution of the Republic of United Provinces

Observations on the government of the Provinces, the study of which seems necessary before [studying] the details of the different parts of this government.1 The authors who have written on that part of politics which deals with the government of nations, as well as those who make it the subject of their conversations – in a word, all speculators – agree that they wish [to identify] within the state a power which governs it, whether it resides in the will of one man or in the plurality of voices of a council. Here is one [state] where this power does not exist. [Rather] each of its members is independent,2 and the veto of one determines the effect of a resolution taken by all the others.* [The Dutch Republic] has, nevertheless, visibly survived for over two hundred years.3 We will not attempt to develop the causes of what can be called a very remarkable phenomenon in politics. We will content ourselves with making known this government by detailing all of its parts: but first, we must show how it was formed. The Ancients did not know anything but monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. That is, the government of one, of the many, or of all. But, whichever of these three institutions prevailed, it alone gathered within it all the powers of legislation, of the executive, and of the administration of justice. Some modern peoples have gone further: they have separated these powers.4 It is not the body to which legislation is entrusted that is charged with the execution of what has been ordered; the administration of justice is placed in hands which have no part in the rest of the affairs [of state], and the raising of funds can only be ordered by the people or their representatives. This system, which now exists only among a few nations, once reigned among all [nations] of Europe. The different systems of government have been no more the work of the wise than the languages spoken by men have been [the work] of the grammarians. Men arranged themselves as they could according to their needs, their circumstances, and the extent of their enlightenment; however, [they were] always driven by their particular character which determined them in one direction rather than another. And just as the most polished languages still retain features of the jargons from which they derive, the institutions of the most civilised peoples show traces of the crude manners and customs they have succeeded, and from which they often differ only in their shapes and their greater appropriateness in the details. A little reflection is sufficient to see that it could not have been otherwise. Men can only be taught on [the basis of] the ideas they find in their possession. It is not * This is the general law which, however, allows for some exceptions, depending on the circumstances, that allow a party to overturn it.

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possible to destroy these [ideas], so as to inspire [men] with another system. [Man] is not [like] a wood that is torn down so as to be replanted according to a deliberate design, nor a house that is razed so as to be built according to a new plan; he is [like] a forest where all one can do is take advantage of the features of the land and trees to make it usable for the hunters, he is [like] an ancient house in which one can only make those changes that respect the major walls. Ancient history gives us almost no knowledge of the customs of peoples in that state of barbarism or rather of ignorance from which everyone began. The first pages present us with the Assyrians and the Egyptians in a state of civilisation which presupposes many centuries of formation. We can only surmise from the story of Abraham that paternal authority was the first that men knew, and was therefore the model of governments which nations adopted when they were formed. Thus, we find in those remote times only monarchies, a sovereign, his ministers and subjects. The mythical eras of Greece give only the idea of savage peoples whose excesses were repressed by a few heroes. These useful men are sometimes presented as kings of different regions [cantons], after which their history is enveloped in a cloud which, on clearing, shows merely [separate] cities to which suburbs of differing sizes are subjected. The government of Lacedemona5 was subject to more design than any other: there were two hereditary kings, ephors,6 a senate, but we do not know from where these institutions were derived, [or] what the customs of this small nation were when Lycurgus7 instituted its monastic institutions; we just have to believe that it had been prepared so as to receive them in a way the Athenians had been unable to. I have given you, Solon8 said to them, the best laws of which you are capable – which signifies that their opinions, their morals, their customs would not have allowed them to expand to, to feel, and therefore to admit, another series of ideas. The picture of Rome’s childhood looks different. In the midst of the fables with which it is obscured we clearly see a group of brigands whose diminished sentiment – initially pursuing the herds and houses of their neighbours – became, on a larger scale, a fire which consumed the whole world, [and] was always the same and never wavered. [Rome] could have taken on different names only if it had been given one in its infancy. This nation [has been] too highly vaunted with respect to its morality, which perhaps does not include enough on the art with which it waged war. Finally, its political constitution was very imperfect in everything that had no relation to the need for victory. It has done much harm to mankind; but, as Mr Gibbon remarks,9 it fully compensated for [this harm] by uniting, through conquest, every part of the world, several of which had not previously even known each other by name. All these nations – Assyrian, Egyptian, Median, Greek, Roman – had one thing in common. This is the right of slavery. Half the men were subjected to the other as domestic animals are to their masters. We owe to Tacitus10 knowledge of the barbarians from whom we are descended. I see that all scholars agree they originate from Tartary, except the Russians, who appear to have another origin. Whoever they were, they were all but one and the same people who brought about the disappearance of all the other nations of Europe, less by destroying them than by assimilating them into themselves. It is



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certain that the Franks respected the rank and property of the Romans and the Gauls, and even left them their own laws.11 Each person chose the [law] they wanted to live under. The proofs of this fact are numerous and incontestable, but the law of the dominant people was the most advantageous, [and so] everyone gradually adopted it. The particular character of these nations was the most extensive liberty. They even revived the natural dominion of fathers over their children as soon as they had come of the age to bear arms. No law [was instituted] without the consent of the nation. De minoribus principes consulunt, de majoribus omnes:12 this was the rule of which they never lost sight, whatever efforts several writers have made to persuade [us] that, very early on, it was subject to attack. Peoples who have an indisputable right, a right that they do have not the least suspicion anyone might dare infringe, often neglect to exercise it. One can easily believe that all the Franks were not strict in attending their general assembly. We even see under Charlemagne13 that he dispatched [messengers] to various cities to obtain the consent of their inhabitants. It must have been obtained without much discussion, but ultimately it was found to be necessary to obtain it, and the (capitulary) act14 announced that it had been given. The history of France during this period – [the histories] of the first race of its kings – is less unknown than that of Germany. And since the Franks were Germans, they took from them customs and government, [and so] by speaking of one we can shed light on the other. The king, head of the nation, did not always command it in war. His income consisted in his estates, [and] he also had at his disposal many lands which he bestowed for life and which were named benefices. Those who had received this favour swore a special oath to him and could never foreswear it. The other lands were allods.15 Their owners were masters of their homes and entered military service only when the nation declared war. If it concerned [a quarrel] between different princes of the royal family, they would choose whomever they wanted to attach themselves to, and they also enjoyed [the fruits of] their lands, even though they were within the domain of the prince whom they served. They had slaves just like the Asians, the Greeks, and the Romans did. But they treated them very differently; and, in time, this difference led to a right, hitherto unknown, in the relationship of masters to their servants, of the powerful to the weak. The owner of an allod apportioned justice in his lands, for who was able to place himself between it and the people whose dependence [on him] was such that he had taken from them the right to life and death? But these slaves, at least most of them, did not live within his house. They inhabited his lands, cultivated them, possessed goods which, multiplying, enabled them to form villages and towns. The Germans had always had the custom of arming their slaves. Their successors used them likewise, and so [their] new condition altered [their] name: they are now known in history merely as Serfs. This is the condition of the European nations in the centuries before Charlemagne. [There were] kings and princes who drafted laws and proposed them to the

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assembled nation, who also required their vote to command in wars, [and] who, by the benefices they had at their disposal, were particularly sought out by men of considerable [means], who became their devoted followers. These devoted followers, in addition to the rest of the free men who enjoyed their allods with an authority more unlimited than that of the master of some populated island of America, were subject solely to the laws they made themselves. Concerning one of the kings of France of the first race it has been said that he compelled the payment of a tribute to the Franks; it is evident that this would have succeeded solely with the consent of the assembly. If he had been able to achieve this solely by the movement of his own will, his successors would not have lost the habit. Finally, numerous people [were] utterly dependent on these landowners but received from them a treatment that was very different from what the slaves of the Ancients were subjected to, since they lived in houses, fed themselves and acquired lifelong property, a part of which would, on the master’s request, pass to their children, since this was in the master’s interest. From these customs derives the spirit of freedom which has been preserved throughout Europe: even among nations which are said to be entirely deprived of this great good, no one has forgotten the duration and manner in which [the spirit of freedom] was enjoyed, and its memory is always [held] dear. The form of all these governments was subject to some alteration under Charlemagne’s successors. The quality of fealty or loyalty to the king bestowed great advantages, independently of the income attached to the benefice that gave [them] their title: however meagre the authority of these kings appears to us in comparison with that of their successors, they nevertheless possessed very great [authority], as those who stand at the head of a society always do. There was much to be gained from the favours they could grant [and] from the commissions they could procure, especially since Pepin and Charlemagne had placed back into the hands of the king the mantle that had been assumed by the mayors of the palace.16 Devoted followers were placed at the head of the nation. They had the ability to make their benefices hereditary and thereby gain even more considerable [means]. Other powerful men wanted to share in such a useful quality. They could not ask for benefices from princes whom they no longer served; [instead] they imagined fictional conventions by which they appropriated the lands of [the devoted followers] by some simulated sale and then received them as a hereditary benefice, or rather as a fiefdom, which is the only name now given to this kind of possession.17 This custom gradually became widespread in France. There is only an infinitely small number of lordships whose former holders did not do this. There were more in Germany, but the number is still very small compared with the number of fiefdoms, which is regarded as the common system. It appears that, at the latest, [this practice] began under Charlemagne, and as this prince was master of all Germany, France, and Italy, it is found in all these countries; it occurred during the very same reign from which dates a change that completely distorted the old [mode of] government. Charlemagne had established [a number of] governors, or at least multiplied them under the name of dukes, counts, and marquises, and he had them sent to the provinces to exercise his authority there.



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The weakness of his successors enabled these governors to become independent. They recognised themselves only as vassals of the king, or the emperor, when the empire was separated from France. The vassal called himself the man of his lord; he owed him his service and loyalty. These expressions have since been abused to increase the degree of sovereigns’ authority over their subjects; but to demonstrate that the vassal’s duties did not extend very far, it suffices to glance at the manner in which the princes of Germany still treat the Emperor [of the Holy Roman Empire] today. There is very often no marked difference except in style, although it must be admitted that, when they succumb to war, they are exposed to consequences that a prince outside the empire need not fear: as a result [of war], their affairs end up being completely ruined. These new princes took possession of all sovereign rights. Those of France never emancipated themselves from their overlord by appeal to their courts of justice; in Germany, there was no place for powerful princes. They were like kings of estates and vassals. They were [representatives] of the king or the emperor in whose place they had set themselves. In this period the picture of France, Germany, and Italy (which was annexed to [Germany]) depicts a primary sovereign named the overlord, several other princes named his vassals over whom his authority was very imperfect, and who had no great dominion over the barons and other lords. The latter were related to [the other princes] as [the other princes] were to the sovereign. The people were still serfs, but had increased their wealth and expanded several villages to the point of making towns out of them. There had even begun to be a distinction between serfs. Some of them were less dependent than others, but this difference does not merit consideration in an examination as brief as this one. The same need for brevity obliges me to content myself with pointing out that England, which I have not yet mentioned, had received the French [form of] government shortly after the conquest of William I.18 This was the situation when the crusades set the whole of Europe in motion. It seems to me that those who speak of them see only extravagance and folly. They have made long declamations about them. It is certain that history offers nothing more bizarre, but it is no less [certain] that this great movement merits other observations than those we find most commonly in books. There is especially one such [observation] that no one seems to have even thought of. It is an enquiry into the means by which a million men could be transported from Europe to Asia, without a treaty with the sovereigns [of the lands through] which they passed, without measures being taken, etc. We are told that many of them perished. Of course, but something more still happened – and no one has asked such a question, the solution to which would be very interesting. It was this madness that brought back into Europe the industry and agriculture which had almost been forgotten. The crusaders who returned home had just travelled through rich and populated regions [and] they brought back some arts which soon flourished by means of a change in the government, which also occurred due to these crusades. [This change] is the freedom of the people. In preparation for a journey that was so dear to their hearts, the nobility received money in exchange for letters of emancipation for the towns which depended on them.19

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At first this good deed did not extend to the inhabitants of the countryside. But little by little they have obtained it, and, even so, those who were still deprived of it have seen their lot improve and have a definite hope of seeing it change entirely. Soon there will be no trace of it left in France. Thus, the third estate was born in the assembly of all the nations.20 The general principle of the necessity of a free man’s consent to demand his obedience to the law and to obtain money from him was not even weakened at this time. The towns were free: their representatives [deputés] were invited to the national assemblies. But they did not sit beside their landlords, called nobles, gentlemen, or barons. They formed a separate chamber whose powers were very humble. They could not propose anything except by way of supplication. This is still the style of the English House of Commons. And it is surely the case that the air of humility it adopts does not greatly diminish the strength or the effect of its remonstrances. The political state of governments in Europe changed at this moment. Towns had troops even before they were free. They had more money than the lords and were more powerful than them. In short, towards the end of the fifteenth century and throughout most of the sixteenth century, the most considerable part of each state’s forces dwelt in the power of the towns. The governments of the Empire, of France, of Italy, and of England resembled each other nowhere more than on this point; and everywhere lords made themselves town-citizens to obtain an esteem that added to their personal credit. It was especially in Italy that these steps proved useful, but the relations of this country with [the Dutch Republic] which is the subject of this note are too distant, so I will just quickly say that the towns of the Netherlands were no less strong and renowned than those of Italy. [The Dutch towns] alone possessed the commerce of the north, while the [Italian ones] enjoyed a monopoly on [the commerce] of the south. Their wealth was such that, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, they made war on their sovereign and harried him to the point that he was obliged to implore assistance from the king of France to cut them down, after which he punished only particular individuals. These towns were so numerous that they influenced the rest of the country; the nobility’s forces being nothing in comparison. This was the state of the Netherlands when Philip II21 responded to the alarm and finally encouraged these provinces to take up arms [in response].22 The war led to seven of these provinces becoming a sovereign state, but they were far from expecting this when they began [the war]. They could only reasonably promise to resist the king on a few points to which they did not want to submit; it is difficult to believe that anyone then foresaw how far things could go – at most the Prince of Orange23 and two or three of the other leaders did. Certainly, the rest did not suspect it. This is the moment to recall the observation that it is impossible for men to suddenly take on other forms than those to which they are habituated. The Flemish felt [right] acting with those [habits] they knew. Their lords acted in their name, their towns [were bound] by the deliberation of their councils, [and so] nothing changed, not even the wording of their statutes, which for many years were always



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[proclaimed] in the name of the king; the governor of the province continued to be the leader of the union. Each province was linked to the other ones solely through the bonds of a confederation; towns from the same province shared solely their government and their magistrates’ court of appeals. The countryside was subject to their lords as before, and, just as in the era when these towns were subject to the king they were not dependent on each other, [this was also the case] now after they became sovereign. Their public law consists solely in the obligations they have imposed on themselves by the treaties made among themselves. Thus, while the other states of Europe have changed their constitutions, while Germany is divided into a small number of sovereignties whose prince is despotic, and while its towns have lost all idea of power, while France has become monarchical without any intermediary between the people and the king other than the courts of justice, while England has formed its constitution to be as we [now] see it – the Dutch have remained at the point where they were two hundred years ago and there is no difference between these two eras, except that in the first they were subjects and now they are sovereigns. If Plato or Thomas More24 had proposed a similar plan of government, they would have been advised to go and see their doctor. Mr de Sulli25 and President Jeannin,26 two famous statesmen who played important roles in the revolution which we know was quite favoured by France, did not believe that this government could maintain itself after coming into being. Nevertheless, it endured and was able to do all the great things that adorn the history of the last century, and if it has not offered such brilliant [deeds] for some time, this is due to circumstances foreign to its constitution. Those who attend closely to this nation know that it has not yet lost any of the qualities to which it has owed its existence and its glory. This example seems to me to provide an important lesson to those who want to admit as institutions only those which accord with what they call reason. We cannot refrain from recognising that there are great vices in the constitution of the government of the United Provinces, but it is under this [constitutional] regime and in the midst of action that [these institutions] were formed: they have learnt to avoid their disadvantages [and] to derive advantages from what often seems defective to a foreigner, and its subjects adapted themselves effortlessly amidst this labyrinth whose detours were familiar to them. [The Dutch] would have taken a long time to familiarise themselves with another plan. Their minds had been kept inactive for a long time and so perfidious people might have taken the opportunity to lead them astray. Besides, even supposing that they were immune to both dangers just mentioned,27 who can predict whether this new system could have accommodated itself so well to the character of the people, to the nature of the country, to commerce, etc. This nation became free and master of its actions at a time when civilisation had already made great progress, but [at a time] when our ancestors’ principles of freedom, inspired by the barbarians, had not yet been weakened. [The nation] preserved them, it allied itself with them; it propagates them and implements them. Affairs [of state] are dealt with by many [institutions] in each province and then by the reunited provinces, so that a large number of men have the best opportunity to express their opinion freely.

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The people of the Dutch28 towns seem to play an insufficient part in government. They only elect magistrates, who are typically taken from the same families, so that every town has a kind of aristocracy. However, attention must be paid to the requirement for these magistrates to not displease the people, and a thousand considerations [are required] by them in order to make a law. I will mention but one: the fear that the number of inhabitants will decrease. It is easy for a Dutchman to move from one town to another and, as each forms a separate state, an imprudent magistrate who causes a depopulation of his own town would see his renown diminished through his fault alone. Moreover, this choice of magistrates from the same families is not, as in some other republics, a constitutive law of the state. It is only a custom, and every wealthy family is pretty much sure to attain the magistracy sooner or later. This independence, where towns and provinces are each [autonomous] from one another, contributes greatly to civil liberty. As an example, I will mention only freedom of the press. What use would it be for the mayors of Leiden to forbid the printing of a pamphlet contrary to their political principles? They would soon see it published in Haarlem, Utrecht, or some other place. If action is to be taken, the Council of State and the Admiralty make the necessary preparations as soon as they are ordered to do so by the provinces. These two bodies are as capable of activity as any other ministry. We concede that this constitution could be better, or rather, that there are some which are better; but civil liberty is great here. The state is capable of defending itself, the proof is in the great things it has achieved. If the condition of the Dutch citizen is not the best lot man has received, it is at least one of the best. It will no doubt be a surprise that, in the preceding, there has been no mention of the Stadtholder, whose authority appears to be so extensive. It is because he is merely the first subject of the Republic. The executive power is in his hands, but he must use it in accordance with the intention of the States; if they do not force him to act in this way, this is the fault of [these] individuals and not of the constitution. As for the implications of his rights to appoint the magistrates of the towns, they can be reduced to an influence and not to an authority in the councils, and if he uses [these rights] to mislead them, I repeat that this is the fault of the individuals and not of the constitution. These effects surely merit treatment by a negotiator but not an observer who does not occupy himself with the daily movement of the machine, but with its construction.

On the Political Situation of the Dutch Republic

The Hague, October 27, 1783.1 Sir2 I cannot humbly thank you enough for the news you have been so kind as to give me about the condition of the Princess.3 Nothing could interest me as much and when I receive good news, for several days it acts as an Aegis4 against the burning evils which derive from the bizarre situation of our affairs. If we consider the present state of this Republic5 with a somewhat philosophical eye, free from all party interest and independently of the prodigious influences which its interrelations abroad will seemingly have on its future modification, we will not discover its illness, which is, in fact, mortal. Left alone, it will rectify itself and return to its previous constitution, which will be much improved and corrected, as much as the vicious composition of a federal Republic can be. To the necessary vices of this constitution, it has added inveterate and recent evils that needed the most violent fermentation to be dissipated. The disproportion of the quota was at its height.6 The navy was almost annihilated. Trade was individual and not at all national commerce. No men [had] the [requisite] power, the necessary consequence of a generation and a half of peace in any federative oligarchic republic. [There had arisen] a way of governing affairs by the spirit of intrigue, universally adopted under the administration of the Duke.7 Numerous revolting abuses [were] committed by the majority of its8 creatures. A Prince who is weak and inept beyond all expression, and whose bizarre intelligence serves only to make his strange follies still more salient. These are the evils by which the republican party9 prevailed to reunite its adversaries, under the auspices of French skill and the inconceivable conduct of the English. The old enthusiasm for the House10 had to be eradicated in the spirit of the people. [It was] a difficult operation; its success had to be bought at the price of arming the people. But these armed people will soon feel [their own worth]. They will eject these oligarchs and form a pure democracy. Being rightly and necessarily short-lived within a federal Republic, it11 will bring this stadtholdership back to life out of its ashes – a little better defined, but still the most beautiful role in the world, since, in order to be something [worthwhile], [the stadtholdership] requires great talents and great virtues. The only thing that can be done to treat the patient is to accelerate the symptoms through which he must pass to arrive at convalescence, or else to prevent some of them in order to make [the patient] suffer less. Several means have been tried in vain or will still be tried, perhaps also in vain, but [the Republic] will proceed through a relatively brief [period of] anarchy to a kind of perfect health. It is very necessary that the Republic, examined from the point of view of its outward interrelations, presents such a favourable aspect. Since its birth (which

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was a world-historical event), Europe has been divided into two religions,12 and this generates the idea of an equilibrium. The exorbitant ambition of Louis XIV13 gave birth to another [equilibrium], which has lasted until today – Europe has [now] undergone another modification and will need another equilibrium. A triple alliance between France, England, and the Republic would be natural and could have sufficed, but the first [of these nations] is worn out, the second is dying, and the third is tormented by fevers – [and so] they no longer together provide, it seems, a whole that is cohesive and robust enough to successfully oppose the gathering storm – which may well begin with the Republic, to then engulf Germany and the North. Despite all of this, the stability and future happiness of Europe seem certain to me. The spread of enlightenment and the love of a reasonable liberty that increases even under slavery, of a completely different kind to that of the Ancients, will soon deliver Europe from the two great evils that torment it: first, the absurd size of its armies, which will end up lacking bread; secondly, a certain injustice of the Princes who want to be citizens in that very case in which they are not allowed, namely, in the education of their children. The Prince’s child is [a child] of the State, it is to be brought up for the common happiness. It is thus that Great Princes and happy peoples will love each other reciprocally as lover and mistress. I’m told that the history of Greece and the history of Europe are exactly the same, and what was the end of the former? The parallel doesn’t hold. Outside of Europe there is nothing, but outside of Greece a hundred Greeces were formed. As for news, not a day passes without us taking something from the Prince and making fun of him; he has found a way to brighten up our sad affairs. I beg your pardon, Sir, for this sad and useless talk and I admit that it should not have been on the fourth page [of this letter] that you found the only purpose I had intended, [namely,] to offer you my full gratitude, my admiration, and my respect. Σ.14

Alexis II, or on the Military1

– Ἀράχνια δ`εἰς ὅπλ`Ἀράχναι Λεπτὰ διαστήσαιντο, βοᾶς δ`ἔτι μηδ`ὄνομ` εἴη. Theocritus2

Diocles and Alexis Diocles. My dear Alexis, why do I find you in the same place I left you yesterday, and so early in the morning? But surely, my friend, you haven’t spent all night on this hill?3 Alexis. Diocles, today we’ll make a sacrifice to Love, I swear!4 Sit down. I’ve been here since dawn. Diocles. You look fresher, happier, freer than yesterday. Did you find what you were looking for? Alexis. What I was looking for? That depends on you, my friend. But I’ve spent the most pleasurable day of my life here. The fruits of this fig tree have been all my food. I didn’t return home until two hours after sunset. The moon seemed so beautiful to me that I forgave it for all the evil it has done us. How charming was this solitude! I felt distinctly for the first time that man as he is on earth can take on a disposition that assuredly brings him closer to the Divinity, or to that which makes him sense divine omnipresence with a prodigious energy. Do you believe that we can give ourselves this disposition at will? Diocles. Perhaps we can, but what seems certain to me is that the organ, which, in such a disposition, causes us so much pleasure, matures and is strengthened better in an active life and in the midst of the agitations of what we call good and evil. The more this organ is perfected, the more this disposition you speak of becomes natural, whether it comes to us from the action of divine omnipresence or results just from our efforts. And it seems to me quite probable that the greatest alterations of goods and evils in this life best shorten for us this path which leads to a state where this disposition will be as habitual to us as that which makes us breathe. – But did you obtain the oracle you desired?5 Alexis. – Listen. – I’ve seen war like all our young people who were compelled to start out at it. I undertook my last campaign under Demetrius, an infinitely amiable prince despite his great faults.6 At an attack on the outskirts of Rhodes, I performed some feat in his presence which seemed quite daring and well executed to him, and, since my return to Athens, he has not stopped suggesting that I travel to Asia with the army of his father Antigonus,7 a tougher master than his son, but one from whom there is undoubtedly much to learn. On the other hand, I am urged to go to Egypt to offer my services to Ptolemy,8 whom my friends praise greatly, and – I know not how – has formed a good opinion of me. Although I have resolved to perfect myself in the art of war, I am completely

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at a loss as to which of the two sides I should join, and it is on this that I wanted to consult the Gods. Diocles. And what did you do? Alexis. I’m going to tell you. Yesterday, after your sublime speeches,9 after the pleasures that you felt much better than I could express to you, I returned home, weary with the most delightful fatigue. I went to bed and as soon as sleep had closed my eyelids, I thought I was in Colophon10 at the home of old Demades,11 who is, from father to son, the host of our family. From there – completely satiated with the holy orgies of the previous day – I walked towards Claros12 and, after having drunk water from the sacred fountain, I found myself singularly moved. When I was on the point of entering the temple’s vestibule, the priest of the God came straight to me, and, taking me by the hand, said to me: ‘Generous descendant of Thrasybulus,13 do not go further. This is far enough. The God knows what you desire and, as a token of consolation in distinguishing you from this crowd, please receive as his oracle that he will not abandon you in any of your undertakings, so long as you follow the counsel of the blood that flows in your veins, [the counsel] of wisdom and of friendship. Return to your hill and reflect on what God must think of you by entrusting to you the conduct of your life.’ At these words, he turned and, with some difficulty, edged his way around the innumerable throng that surrounded the sacred place, and at that moment I fell on my knees. I awoke startled, in some agitation and with my heart beating like it never had before. I got out of bed and ran straight to this place, where I [now] see you, my dear, whom the God certainly has in mind when he speaks of wisdom and of friendship. Diocles. This is a very interesting dream and one which obliges you, my friend, to do nothing lightly. Alexis. This is also why I am begging you to help me with your advice and to take heed that Apollo demands it. Diocles. My dear Alexis, I will certainly refuse nothing to God or to friendship. But tell me, are you firmly resolved on becoming a good soldier [militaire]?14 Alexis. Yes certainly, for I have felt inclinations for this profession from my earliest youth. Diocles. I believe you; for it is this part of the hero’s profession which seems to lead most quickly to glory. – But do you consider the military [profession] to be an art or a status in society? Alexis. I don’t quite understand that distinction. Diocles. I’ll tell you. The polemarch or the soldier professes the art of warfare, and, in this sense, the military [profession] is an art distinguished from other arts. But the polemarch or the soldier possesses a status, a position in society, like the archon, the judge, the doctor, the lawyer, and, in this sense, the military [profession] is a status, an order in society to be distinguished from all other orders. Alexis. Now I understand you. Diocles. Do you find the profession of warfare beautiful as an art or as a [social] status? Alexis. In both ways, I think. Diocles. What do you find beautiful about it when considered an art?



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Alexis. But, my dear, just think of the great things that Myronides, Alcibiades, or Iphicrates achieved by its means.15 Diocles. – If you were talking about the art of Praxiteles or Phidias, we would agree.16 Alexis. What do you mean? Diocles. If I asked you why you find the art of sculpture so beautiful, you would say to me: Just think of the beautiful things that Praxiteles and Phidias produced by its means. Alexis. Well, isn’t that answer the same? Diocles. No, it seems to me – because I cannot easily compare these two arts with each other. Alexis. They are indeed very different, but both of them are equally arts. Diocles. Do you want me to compare military art with some other art? Then we will perhaps see more clearly. Alexis. Just as you like. Diocles. Does surgery, for example, strike you as a beautiful and useful art? Alexis. Yes, certainly. Diocles. You ought to say to me as before: Just think, Diocles, how many beautiful recoveries it has brought about. Alexis. Well, I do say this. Diocles. Surgery consists in applying caustics, making incisions, and cutting off limbs from the human body with skill and dexterity, does it not? Alexis. It does. Diocles. Making incisions and cutting off limbs are presumably not goods in themselves? Alexis. No, but they are good by virtue of the recoveries they effect. And do we not praise the excellent Eumelus17 because of his skill in surgery? Diocles. Yes, as long as he applies it to the ill. Alexis. That goes without saying. You’re kidding. Diocles. But this presupposes that he knows the ill person and that he knows what [kind of] operations are needed to heal him. Alexis. Certainly. Diocles. Do not take this the wrong way, my dear Alexis, but suppose that just as Antigonus and Ptolemy at present want to engage the valiant Alexis in their service, I want to hire the skilful Eumelus so that he can dexterously cut off for me the arms and legs of all those who harm me, whether they are ill or not – then please answer me: 1°. Even as a very fine art, is surgery not either useful or harmful according to the application made of it? 2°. What might you think of the excellent Eumelus who possesses a free art that is able to do more harm than good and is engaged in my service so that I make use of him and the application of his art according to my whim? And finally, is such a comparison of military art to the surgeon’s art not more appropriate than [the comparison] to the art of sculpture? Alexis. So, you don’t appear to approve of my intention? Diocles. I don’t know yet, but it seems to me that the God of Claros18 compels us to make up our minds only after having employed all the prudence and all the circumspection of which we are capable, and it is for this that he provides

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his divine protection. So, my dear, before anything else, we must know what the military [profession] is, not only as an art, but as a position in society [too], and then we will choose, if necessary, between Demetrius and Ptolemy.19 What do you think of that? Alexis. I fully agree with you. Diocles. Do you want us to begin by examining what war is? Alexis. Of course, for I [also] think we must begin there. Diocles. Tell me, please, what is the simplest definition you would give of war? Alexis. The simplest? So, I would call war the disposition by which beings of the same species deliberately do as much harm as possible to each other. Diocles. I admit that this definition is clear and simple. But do you believe that this disposition is natural to men or to any animal of the same species? Alexis. If I ask this of history, it will say yes. Diocles. History is a bad guide in this, my dear Alexis: it speaks merely of what it has seen, and it is so young. Alexis. I know very well that if I ask this of philosophy, it will tell me that this disposition is not natural. Diocles. Why? Alexis. Why? Since it would be absurd for the author of any species of beings to have had the goal of forming it and, having had this goal, to place into this species a destructive principle that should destroy it. Diocles. You seem to me as bold in philosophy as you are in war, my dear Alexis. Alexis. Why? Diocles. Since it seems to me that in seeking a truth, one must proceed with a little more caution, and only begin from a well-known principle. Now, the nature of the author of the world is a principle too high above our intelligence to serve as a basis for our reasoning. Moreover, my dear, the author of a species of free beings must necessarily have placed in them the possibility of both peace and war, or rather of both good and evil, because this possibility is essential to their nature. And so, I would conclude that neither war nor evil can be a destructive principle for a species – not because it is incompatible with the nature of its author, whom I do not know – but because it is incompatible with [the nature] of [the species’] own essence. And it follows from this, too, that were we ever to see with our own eyes a species destroying itself, which is not impossible, it would be but an apparent destruction, which would prove perfectly that what is essential in this species pertains to another state that we cannot see. Alexis. So, do you believe that war is natural to man? Diocles. I haven’t thought about it, but do you want us to look together whether it is? Alexis. If you want to. Diocles. Tell me, is war the effect of conforming, contrary, or different acts of will? Alexis. No. It seems to me to have as its cause acts of will that have the same purpose. Those who want something other than someone else do not wage war, but those who want the same thing [do wage war]. Diocles. This is very much how it appears to me. – But let’s look closer. – Solon, Thales, Pythagoras, Socrates all want wisdom, happiness, knowledge. Xerxes,



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Alexander, Antigonus, Ptolemy all want Europe and Asia or as much of it as possible. Although in these two cases the acts of will aim at the same goal, in the first [case] they live in peace [and] love each other, and in the second [case] they wage war, hate each other [and] destroy each other. From where does this difference come? Alexis. This is because, in the case where we wage war against each other, one wants the same determinate thing as the other to the exclusion of the other. Diocles. Here we have already found what we were after, my dear Alexis, for it follows, if I am not mistaken, that, properly, the true cause of war does not lie in those who want, but in the nature of what they want. If what they want was by nature such as to be able to be [possessed] by each of them in particular or all of them in common, there could be no cause of war among men or animals. Thus, the true cause of wars lies outside of man and animal, is accidental, and war is not natural to them. Alexis. But when you see two dogs tearing at each other for a bone that lies between them, isn’t this war just as natural as it is just? Diocles. It is accidentally just, [since] if the bone were of such a nature as to be able to satisfy both of them at the sight of it, they would not bite each other. Both justly want the bone because the bone is necessary to each of them, but it is only by accident that [the first dog] does not want the other to have it, and you thus see once more that war is not natural to them. Alexis. But my dear, if war were not natural to some men at least, how could the Macedonian20 have desired to penetrate into the depths of the Indies to conquer peoples who were of no use to him? Diocles. I think you’re mistaken about this extraordinary man. Ask the Macedonian what he wants. If he deigns to be sincere to you, he will tell you that he provisionally wants this whole world. Tell him without laughing: ‘My dear son of Philip, to do what with it?’ If he wishes to give you an answer a little worthy of his master Aristotle, and maybe sincere at bottom, he will tell you: ‘To make it better.’ You will certainly answer: ‘You know, Alexander, that I [too] form a part of this world, along with what belongs to me and what has some relation to me. Therefore, you elevate your kindness to the point of wanting to make me and [what is] mine better – hence, you have no need to wage war on me, for I declare to you, provided you can do what you say, that I am yours willingly and gratefully. But tell me, I beg you, what will you do to make my state better?’ ‘You shall live under my laws,’ he will say. ‘But why do you believe that your laws will be better for me than mine?’ Do you believe, dear Alexis, that he would exacerbate his ridiculous imprudence to the point of responding: ‘Because I am Alexander, son of Ammon.’21 Now, he is the only one of all those sons of Ammon in whom this strange extravagance could be forgiven in some way, because of the prodigious richness of his faculties, too great perhaps to be able to achieve harmony in the world in which we’ve seen him. But how many of those sons of Ammon, who would not be worth a penny in the slave market, who would stammer at you with the same answers to the same questions without understanding them, will not wage war on you when you give them what they’ve been taught to desire? – My dear Alexis, we shall return to these strange beings, but let’s conclude here that,

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although the possibility of war and evil does enter into the nature of man and animal as free beings, war is not natural to them; and, when it exists, it does so merely accidentally and it derives solely from the temporary disorder to which the great catastrophe has subjected our desires, altering our existence by taking away from us some vehicle of sensation.22 And this is the cause [of the fact] that we are able to very much want and desire, but we now encounter all the objects that should correspond to our desires and to our acts of wills as limited and finite, and [this] cuts off our path to objects more analogous to our nature. Alexis. It seems to me that you are proving to me that war is not natural. Diocles. – Alas! I don’t know. Alexis. You don’t know? Diocles. – Are you acquainted with the philosophy of Euthydemus and Dionyso­ dorus?23 Alexis. You mean those odd characters who proved to Socrates that his mother was a sea-urchin and was not a sea-urchin? Diocles. Yes. I will imitate them, because I want to prove to you that war is natural to man. Alexis. Good Gods, Diocles – you, a sophist! You, imitating such people! Diocles. Why not, if I can obtain something a little better from it than they did? Alexis. – Well, let’s see. Diocles. The wise Alexis hesitates over whether he will wage war for Antigonus against Ptolemy or for the latter against the former. If Alexis had wanted solely to conquer alongside one of them, he would have calculated too precisely to remain in doubt. But, as he hasn’t done so, he wants to wage war for the sake of waging war; that is, according to his definition, he wants to do the most harm possible, in order to do the most harm possible, and I conclude from this that war is natural to him. Alexis. You’re cruel. – But do you reckon glory and science to be nothing? Diocles. As for the science of warfare, we will speak of it later. But in truth I did not think of glory, hence, it did not enter into my considerations. – To consider it, we need to know what it is and what it is worth, and I don’t know this. – I sense, however, that we absolutely must know it, but I am afraid to fix my gaze on such a rich and brilliant object. Alexis. What do you mean, you don’t know what glory is? Diocles. No, I assure you. – At least not for the moment. Its brilliance dazzles me. I am not an eagle. Can you look into the sun and, without ruining your eyes, see whether it is round or square? Alexis. No more than you can, but there are ways. Diocles. There is one way. When I make a very small hole in a thick sheet [of paper] and look through it, I extract the sun from what is extraneous in it – this immense quantity of rays it possesses [that are] too much for me – and then I dare to gaze at it directly. Soon we will see if we can apply a similar method to the contemplation of glory. But you, Alexis, can you tell me nothing of glory, you whom it adores so? Alexis. Would you like me to amuse you with the hymn of a certain Heraphilus, which Strato of Lyndos recited to me the other day?24



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Diocles. I don’t know this Heraphilus; where is he from? Alexis. Neither do I, but I’m sure that he is either from Argos or from the island of Samos which bears many spirits of this temper and where Juno is singularly revered.25 Diocles. Well, let’s hear it. Alexis. I cannot remember every verse in this hymn, but here is the gist of it as far as I can remember. After identifying glory and Juno, the poet addresses the Goddess: ‘It is with good reason that the poets do not only make you the wife of Jupiter but also his sister, so as to depict the intimacy and the perfection of your eternal liaisons. ‘It was for love of you that Jupiter disentangled chaos. It was for love of you that he created the human race, which, impregnated by your rays, produced heroes, demigods, and sages, in whom you are fond of admiring your own self, just as the well-liked Venus smiles at her charming figure in a faithful and pure mirror.26 ‘What mortal, O Goddess, would dare gaze at you in your place at the centre of the infinite, crowned with light, covered with stars, and Iris27 under your feet. ‘Fortunately, there is no deity who frequents humans so often, nor one who shows herself on earth under so many different aspects. Proteus changes his shape less than the great Juno does. ‘Sometimes, when you are accompanied by happy abundance and by blind Plutus,28 you have fun confusing man by raising him to a superb throne, adorned with a false brilliance that in the eyes of a foolish people imitates the external [features] of Divinity. ‘Sometimes [as] Bellona29 – a torch in her hand, mounted on a chariot pulled by the Victories from whose every step shoots forth a laurel – you follow their footsteps to Bacchus the Indian, to Sesostris or to Alexander.30 ‘Sometimes, descending into the arena, you animate the proud athlete who discerns his immortality with a content eye in the streams of his blood smeared around him. ‘Sometimes [as] Minerva,31 her head encircled with her sacred olive [branch] and the Gorgon [painted] on her breast, you lead the wiseman to the summit of Olympus and show him what man is, seen from the abode of the immortals. ‘Sometimes [as] Chloris, wife of Zephyr,32 [bringing] amiable peace by your side [and] blowing pleasure into the heart of gentle youth, you like to leave on smiling hills the mark of some shadow of true happiness. ‘Sometimes, taking possession of Parnassus in the guise of Apollo, my Queen descends into Homer, animates Tyrtaeus, ignites Pindar, or smiles at my wishes.33 ‘When you walk on the earth, Juno, under your true name of glory, virtue precedes you, nations bow down, and vice follows you – vice with the slanting eye and the staggering step, which madly seeks to catch the appearances of virtue in your shadow.

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‘I want to teach blind mortals that, from sunset to dawn and from dawn to sunset, no altar burns incense, no aroma is consumed by sacred flames without their wandering vapours gathering at the feet of my Goddess. ‘The fools they are! They adore you under borrowed names without knowing it. Forgive them, O Juno, O my glory, but always distinguish the pure worship that [those who are] yours render to you in Samos, in Argos, in your beautiful Mycene, and in invincible Sparta.’34 Well, does this hymn please you? Diocles. I’ll say more. I believe it pleases the Goddess, and this was undoubtedly Heraphilus’s aim. But, Alexis, if we wished to know Plato and if someone gave us a sketch of some features of his face from the hand of a skilful master, we would know what Plato looked like in the eyes of the painter, but not who he was. Heraphilus shows us nicely what glory seems to him, but we are seeking what it is. – Tell me, please, if there were only one single man on earth, what could he say to himself about glory? Alexis. Certainly nothing, for there would be none. Diocles. And with a hundred men, would there be any? Alexis. But yes, there could be [glory], I think. Diocles. So, we must seek the glory of this first man, whatever it is, in the ninetynine others? Alexis. That seems obvious. Diocles. That is, in the opinions they have of him. Alexis. Certainly. Diocles. In their good opinion, of course. Alexis. But yes, in the opinion they have of him as stronger, wiser, or more valiant than the others. Diocles. Very good; but is it in their true or their false opinion? Alexis. In what way? Diocles. He might appear wiser to them either without being so or by actually being so. Alexis. That’s true. Diocles. And he could be the wisest without appearing so to them. Alexis. Yes. Diocles. But appearing so – does this depend on him or on the others? Alexis. On the others, since as you say he may not be the wisest and may appear to be so to them. Diocles. I would therefore dare to define his glory as the good opinion, either true or false, that others have of him. Alexis. This is clear. Diocles. But how would we define his enjoyment of his glory, because this is essential to it? Alexis. It is to see and to sense the good opinion that others have of him. Diocles. A true good opinion or a false good opinion? Alexis. A true opinion, that goes without saying. Diocles. This is certain, for to sense the false good opinion of others would be far from a pleasure; it would be a horrible torment.



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Alexis. Why? Diocles. [We would] be the only one for whom we would be small, inept, or mean – not to mention the continual work hiding this humiliating secret. Alexis. That’s true. Diocles. Hence, we could define the only true glory which we can enjoy [as] the true good opinion that others have of us. And certainly, my dear Alexis, it results from this that glory is something very precious: first, by itself, and secondly because it costs no effort to seek it, for, from what we’ve just said, it follows that the only possible way to acquire it is to be what we want to appear – and this makes our calculation as simple as possible, since it concerns only our own unity, which we can perfectly know; while in seeking to appear, our calculation involves all kinds of quantities outside us and we can only ever know by rough approximation. Consequently, we must make ourselves be [worthy of glory]; we must light our torch if we want the surrounding objects to reflect and spread the rays emanating from us. If these objects do not all shimmer and shine, the fault is not ours: our torch burns and that is enough. Those who seek glory have the fate of the fool who, in his desire for Juno, grasped solely a cloud,35 but those who do not seek it will have [the fate] of Endymion, who sleeps in the arms of the beautiful Diana.36 I believe that when it comes to the nature of glory in general, we have nothing more to investigate. – But it’s a pity, my dear Alexis, that this excellent Heraphilus did not judge it appropriate to finish his work, [or] at least to continue it. Alexis. What do you mean? Doesn’t he say enough in your opinion? Diocles. Certainly not. – If he had added another thousand such stanzas, it would not be enough. Alexis. But what then could he have added to it, I ask you? Diocles. I don’t know. – But for example, could he not have added among other stanzas the following: ‘Sometimes, O my glory, you put yourself in the mouth of the illustrious Paphla­gonian,37 who, in front of the great Alexander, [motivated] by pride and by the precision of his breath, shoots a pea onto the sharp point of a distant needle.’ Alexis. – Do you want him to render his Goddess ridiculous? Diocles. Why is that ridiculous? All that Heraphilus, and I after him, have just said is the exact truth, and she does all this and much more besides. Alexis. But do you find glory in such small objects? Diocles. Not me, my dear, but the Paphlagonian does, and this proves sufficiently to us that each individual naturally defines and modifies the kind of glory which he desires according to the talents and the faculties he senses in himself. But all do [nevertheless] desire [glory] more or less – and this is an infinite good for society that must be nourished and never destroyed, one single case excepted. Alexis. Which one? Diocles. It is when someone places their glory in things that can only be harmful. If a man surpassed Medea and Circe38 in the art of mixing poisons and sought his glory there, he would have to be stopped. But what would you do with Promachus, who, when competing with the enormous cup of Hercules the Drinker over his ability to hold his wine, was crowned by the hands of Alexander?39

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Alexis. Let him drink and then expire, I will not stop him. Diocles. From this we see that glory is not to be found in harmful, vicious, or indifferent things and so the only objects in which one could find it are reduced to three kinds: [those that] enlighten men, [those that] do them good, and [those that] defend them from evils. And if the qualities of those who bestow glory determine the value of each species, it follows that the first is the most solid, the second the sweetest, and the third the richest and the brightest. Alexis. Why? Diocles. For he who enlightens men is crowned by the hands of Wisdom, [and he] can only receive applause from enlightened people; he who does good to men enjoys solely the acclamation of those to whom he performs it [and] is crowned by the hands of Love and Gratitude; but he who defends men is celebrated by his friends and by his enemies, and Joy, Fear, Confidence, Admiration, Enthusiasm, and Victory unite to adorn his trophies with garlands, palms, and laurels. There is also a fourth category – that of entertaining men; a vain shadow, too much sought after among us, but the character of those who bestow this glory, which is the people, sufficiently indicates its worth. Alexis. It is unfortunately the last of these kinds that we enjoy the most in our homeland! Diocles. What does it matter to you, my dear? – console yourself. True glory is like the river Asterion, which, as long as it flows through its Nemean forest, bears its waves modestly and noiselessly, but, as soon as it emerges from [the forest], its stormy waves roar: the vast surrounding rocks tremble on their foundations, and their crests turn white with foam.40 But at the end of all this, dear Alexis, don’t you see to what glory has really been reduced? Alexis. To what? Diocles. Solely to the conviction of deserving it, and this conviction is, once more, only the effect of that moral principle, of that great faculty of the soul to be able to place itself in others so as to contemplate itself from many different sides.41 Thus, the only applause that a great man can sense and retain is not that from other men, but that which he naturally gives to himself by placing himself in others who accord and therefore agree with him. I do not fear that you will confound this applause with that which resounds in the hollows of so many small minds and poor souls with ridiculous vanity. But let’s return to the source of the third kind [of glory]: this is what you desire, is it not? Alexis. Let’s leave glory, I pray you. You have given me such a precise idea that I promise you I will not seek it. What I desire is to practise the art of war. Diocles. On what? On men? Alexis. Yes, on my enemies. Diocles. Do you have enemies in Egypt or in Asia? Alexis. There are enemies there, certainly. Diocles. Which of them did you harm? List them for me. You will not go alone. Alexis. I cannot list them for you: they belong to the side [opposed to] the one I am going to choose. Diocles. Fortunate Alexis!



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Alexis. Why [am I] fortunate? Diocles. Because you will certainly render the side you embrace the most powerful, not merely by your valour but also by rendering it the most just. Alexis. In what way? Diocles. Do you want to choose the [side] that pays the highest salary? Alexis. Certainly not, my friend: that is not part of my character, you know that. Diocles. Yes, I do. And since I likewise know that you would not want to defend the unjust against the just, I conclude that the side you will take will be that of justice. Alexis. – To fulfil my purpose, I must take the [side] where the most skilful people are to be found. Diocles. Are these the most just? Alexis. You know very well, my dear Diocles, that in wars between princes justice is found equally on both sides. Diocles. This is something admirable – is injustice [therefore] nowhere? Alexis. – I don’t dare pose you a question. Diocles. What? Alexis. If this doesn’t take us too far from our goal, I would like to ask you whether it is not the same for the just and the unjust as it is for the great and the small, or for the strong and the weak?42 Diocles. I don’t understand you. Alexis. That is, just as the strong is weak relative to a greater strength, and the small is large relative to something smaller, is not the just similarly unjust relative to something more just, and the unjust just relative to something more unjust? Diocles. Now I understand you. But if this fine reasoning were correct, it would also prove to us a little too much, my dear Alexis, for it would follow that justice and injustice, which are opposites by their nature, would be things of the same nature, like the large and the small or the strong and the weak, which do not differ in nature but in quantity. You would have got at [your point] better if you had compared the just and the unjust to white and black, for we cannot modify black so much that it is white, nor white so much that it is black more than [we can modify] the just so much that it becomes unjust, or the unjust so much that it is just. Alexis. I’m wrong, I admit it. – I’m very glad I asked you this question. Diocles. And so am I, because we will see that it is not superfluous [hors d’œuvre] to our investigation. Alexis. I have wondered a hundred times, my dear Diocles, how it came to be that justice and injustice – being the two things that occupy men most, and of which they are most afraid – have been so indistinctly defined, whereas no one argues about the nature of the true and false. Might the just have a source more obscure and remote than the true? Diocles. No. Their source is really the same, but the reason why you’re surprised is that men have felt the need to make for themselves a factitious just to maintain their societies, and they often confuse this with eternal justice, daughter of Jupiter. Alexis. May Jupiter preserve us from them one day making a factitious true!

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Diocles. They have done so only too often, but believe me, my dear, truth and justice are daughters of a race that is too beautiful and too powerful not to have their rights restored one day. Alexis. This is consoling, I confess. – But could you not give me an idea of justice and injustice as simple, as clear, and as distinct as the one you have just given me of glory? Because I imagine that [the moment] when we are able to sufficiently simplify the idea or the sensation of the just and the unjust, [and] when it is able to form part of the first lessons we give children, we will no longer see men become doubtful or dispute with the Sophists over the nature or on the source of a thing which interests us so much. Diocles. Your idea is a very good one. Let’s try. – What does the word just mean? Alexis. What are you getting at? – A just man? – That is precisely what I’m asking you. Diocles. No. – Does the word just designate a substance like the words tree, star, lyre, or is it something else? Alexis. It designates a modification, a way of being of a substance, of a thing. Diocles. Very good. So, I can apply it to the sign of a substance, of a thing? Alexis. Yes. Diocles. So, I can speak of a just calculation, a just ball, a just prince?43 Alexis. Yes, if you like. Diocles. What is a just ball? Alexis. I really can’t tell you. Diocles. Would you call a ball just which, when you left it to itself, rose instead of falling? Alexis. I would call it absurd, impossible, unjust if you will. Diocles. Why? Alexis. Because it would contravene the laws of gravity which pertain to its nature and push it towards the centre of the earth. Diocles. And if an Athenian were to export figs out of Attica, would you call him just or unjust? Alexis. Unjust, since this is prohibited by law.44 Diocles. Therefore, it seems that justice and injustice necessarily presuppose some law. Alexis. This is certain. Diocles. So, to be just or unjust is to be in conformity to or opposed to some law. Alexis. Yes. Diocles. What is a law? Alexis. It is the necessary effect of the nature of things which determines their relations. Diocles. So, without laws there would be no things, nothing could exist; and what gives a nature to things gives them laws by that very same act. Alexis. This is clear. Diocles. So, without justice, there would not even be existence. Alexis. What do you mean? Diocles. If the parts which make up this ball did not act in conformity to their own nature and what results from it, there would be no ball.



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Alexis. I believe so. Diocles. Therefore, in physics, what is unjust is the impossible or absurd. Alexis. It’s not the same in morality! Diocles. – But if a man refused bread to someone who had previously saved his life, would you call him just? Alexis. I would call him the most unjust of men. Diocles. Yet I know no law against ingratitude, except in relation to one’s parents. Alexis. Neither do I. But the case is quite simple. Diocles. According to what we said earlier, however, for it to be unjust, it must be contrary to some law. Alexis. Certainly. Diocles. To what law? Alexis. To that of nature. Diocles. To which one? There are so many. Alexis. According to what we’ve said, we must look for laws in the nature of things. Diocles. Very well. And what are the things we’re talking about here? Alexis. They are active, willing beings. Diocles. Do you know whether a million active, willing beings are soon to destroy themselves or to live in horrible confusion? Alexis. I don’t sense it clearly. Diocles. If it were a question of physics and I asked you in exactly the same way: what are the things we are talking about here, what would you say?45 Alexis. They are solid bodies that move. Diocles. These solid bodies which move in a thousand different directions and which are all rectilinear, since the movement is simple, will collide with each other and impact on each other without cease and without end, and their con­ tinual actions and reactions will place them all into an eternal disorder. Alexis. This is clear. Diocles. Hence, it must be some law or property other than solidity or mobility that establishes some active interrelation between them. – What is this law? Alexis. – Their mutual attraction or gravitation. Diocles. Do you not sense that, just as there must be reciprocal gravitation in solid and mobile essences for [them] to be capable of composition and order, so in active and willing essences there must be a tendency, a mutual gravitation, for [them] to be capable of morality and [things of] the intellect; and likewise in every universe, or in every possible face of the universe, however foreign it may be to our current organs, [there must be] a property similar or analogous to this attraction, an active interrelation between the integral parts which compose it, not only in order to constitute a whole, but even in order for [it] to exist. Alexis. I sense this perfectly. – It is therefore this tendency, this mutual gravitation between men, which constitutes the part of his nature from which we must derive this effect or this law that we seek. Diocles. You understand me perfectly, and this is precisely what I was getting at. – But let’s examine the strength or value of this gravitation. – When two things of some kind have a natural tendency towards each other, what would be the absolute and necessary natural effect of that property on its own?

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Alexis. The most perfect union of these two things.46 Diocles. Is this possible? Alexis. That is a pretty difficult question. Diocles. Not at all. It is certain that, if these things had only this property, or if they had no other property which hindered this absolute effect, their union would be as necessary as their existence. Alexis. I admit it. Diocles. In solid bodies, this union would be perfectly impossible, since what we call a body has figured or determinate extension among its attributes. And every figured or determinate extension excludes by its nature every other determinate extended [thing]. Alexis. I can understand that. But, my dear, if this union is impossible for solid and mobile essences, because they possess a property incompatible with it, it is equally impossible for active, willing beings, since these beings are attached to bodies. Diocles. Do you sense that your conclusion is incorrect? Alexis. No. – Why? Diocles. Because determinate extension is an essential attribute of a solid and mobile body, but to be attached to a body is only an accident of a being that has the faculty of acting and of willing. The attribute of extension cannot be separated from the solid body, but the body is very easily separated from the active soul. Thus, as long as we don’t know of an attribute of the soul incompatible with this union, we cannot even conceive it to be impossible. Alexis. – But isn’t the sentiment of individuality, the sentiment of self, incompatible with it? Diocles. You are gratuitously comparing the soul’s sentiment of individuality to the body’s determinate extension. Alexis. If I did not find comparisons in the physical or in the sensible [world], I could not express myself. Diocles. But take bodies that have no determinate extension. Alexis. Are there any? Diocles. Yes, certainly. A fluid has no determinate figure or extension in the way a cone or a cube [made] of hard and solid matter does. Contained in some vessel, it is of course manifest to us in the appearance of a determinate extension, but this determinate appearance does not pertain to the fluid’s nature in the way the figure of a solid cube depends on the cube’s nature. The modification of its appearance derives from the nature of what surrounds it, from what it is not. Here then is an object that we call physical, [but one] lacking that obstacle to union; and what results from this is [that,] when you bring together two homogeneous drops from a transparent and precious liquor, [each] endowed with a thousand properties and a thousand virtues, these drops will mix together perfectly, with no other change in any of their virtues or their properties than the duplication of their energy. Ask Damon, or Pytheas,47 if he does not sense his affections doubled when he suffers or when he enjoys from the perspective of his friend. This appears to make an impression on you, my kind Alexis, but it’s quite natural that those who are most capable of these sublime sensations are rarely the same as those who reflect on them the most.



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Alexis. – Yes, my friend, this makes an impression on me, and I sense not only the reality and the necessity of this tendency or this attraction, but I blush at not having sensed [before] that perfect union is in the end the necessary consequence of all homogeneity. Diocles. Here we find ourselves, if I’m not mistaken, Alexis, at the true source of that divine justice which the stupid Boeotians adore on the banks of the Cephissus under the name of Themis, believing her born of Heaven and Earth, whereas we see clearly that she is the daughter of Jupiter and Love.48

Sketch of Advice to the Council of State1

The Republic [of the United Provinces of the Low Countries] is made up of seven provinces that were once different in character, habits, customs, trade, and interests, and which for centuries brought each other to ruin in bitter wars. Nevertheless, these contrary elements finally formed a Republic, resulting from a fortuitous coming together of various circumstances, rather than from the brain of a legislator acting intentionally.2 What first in some way occasioned a specific link between these heterogeneous states was a change in religion and the yoke of the most unbearable tyranny. Two main causes coincided in liberation from slavery: 1° The remoteness of the tyrant, even though [he was] very powerful.3 2° The astonishing talents of William I and his two sons, Maurice and Frederic Henry.4 In the first years of this famous war,5 the communal danger did not cease for a single moment and was terrifying. The measures that had to be taken could have no more remote end than the security of the following day. The measures, which in that state of war were sanctioned by experience, imperceptibly obtained the solidity and the full authority of law. The long duration of the war and the prospect of a possible deliverance perhaps led [many] to enrich themselves by means of the war; this stalled the desire for peace, whose essence, moreover, had become unfamiliar by the habit of waging war. [The people] became accustomed to the institutions to which daily danger had given birth. But as soon as they began to taste an unfamiliar peace, and as soon as repose, affluence, and perfect liberty were reunited, they looked with repugnance and envy at the authority which the exigences of war had necessarily bestowed on certain posts, like colleges or committees, and on certain persons. However, they did not notice that the laws, institutions, or customs of the time were the emanation of the circumstances of the day, and that almost all [of them] related exclusively to a state of war and had been more or less established for the purpose of ensuring a republic would still exist in peacetime. The most striking proof of this truth is the almost unprecedented phenomenon of a people who were formidable as long as they were at war and despicable to the point of derision [when] in a state of peace. Petulance – the faithful companion of rest and affluence – led everyone to rediscover privileges that had formerly been bestowed by counts or princes on some individual; but these privileges did not accord at all – or, at least, very little – with the institutions of a free state, which at the time of the great war, owing to communal danger, could be considered as composed of homogeneous parts. Hence, the numerous parts which formed the Republic became day to day more heterogeneous, and consequently less suited to form together into one state which rested on solid foundations, both in peace and in times of war.



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All this proves that this state, which did not find a stable foundation within its own bosom, could not have persisted for two centuries, unless its relationships with the other powers of Europe and the mutual relationships between [these other powers] had not produced such an admirable effect. The consequences can be easily guessed: the foundations of this Republic were disturbed at each revolution of fortune or of the mutual relationships of the other powers, and its incoherent parts collapsed. And this could not have happened if it had formed a whole whose compact parts had been bound together by a legislator. If we wished to discuss the means which can bring about the healing of these ills, we would have to define, before anything else, which parts of the state system should remain intact. When creating a people, the legislator is subject to the sad necessity of navigating two opposed kinds of perfection. One is the absolute and individual freedom of each citizen; the other is the greatest possible strength of the body of the state. The former leads infallibly to absolute anarchy; the latter to absolute monarchy – both [are] equally absurd.6 The legislator’s task is therefore limited to combining as much of these two perfections as the character and present circumstances of his people allow him, so as to be able to seek out their most perfect optimum.7 So long accustomed to enjoying a freedom greater than any other civilised nation on earth, this nation will not let any of its individual freedoms be repealed, even though such repealing would lead to an increase in its individual security and [would lead] to a strong and able body of state. This component must therefore remain inviolable and intact, or else be so modified by its esteemed confederates – each of them being the sole and legal sovereign within its jurisdiction – that they make judgements on the basis of the greatest happiness of their provinces. The Council of State would have stayed silent on this important point if it had not judged it absolutely essential to better understand what the duty imposed by the esteemed confederates demands of them, i.e., an ingenious working out of what it deems appropriate for maintaining the security and strength of the confederation and preventing dissension which would threaten the union’s bond by an evident danger. It is incontestably evident that such a disparate republic, composed of so many independent sovereigns, by its nature lacks an executive power at the moment of sudden and unforeseen danger. It is equally certain that this power cannot be obtained unless it is accorded by all the confederates to a small number [of people], or, much more certainly, [accorded] indivisibly to a single person, whatever his title may be. For the rest, it would be essential 1°. That this person was a native and not a foreigner. 2°. That the one who possessed the greatest amount of property in the country should be appointed; not that wealth would accord him any right, but because each inhabitant could expect the most security from a man who possesses the greatest interest in the prosperity and preservation of the country. 3°. That, [since] the august house of Nassau possesses without doubt more property than any other [family] in the Republic, the above person ought to be elected from this house, under the express condition that he will not take part, neither directly nor indirectly, in any commercial or industrial enterprise.

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And 4° the supposition that anyone else will ever surpass the princes of this house by the extent of their possessions in this country being almost impossible, [the Nassau family] must, by a necessary effect of the nature of things, be assigned the post of captain-general as hereditary within the same house. Moreover, on behalf of all its allies, the Republic has a no less urgent need of another authority whose influence could manoeuvre and end all dissension. And it is a necessity that a native who knows the affairs of the country and attaches the same interest to the prosperity of all the provinces should be invested with this authority. The conclusion which results from the above will be the same – that the stadtholdership should be the inheritance of the august house of Nassau, free from any concern that, by the nature of the thing, the stadtholdership and the captain’s post is to be assigned to the same person.8 For the person who, as stadtholder, is in a position to judge the political and financial interests of each province in particular is also in a position, as captain-general, to judge the threat of imminent dangers and to discover the appropriate means to prevent or defeat them.

On Patriotism

The Hague, Monday 2nd May 1785.1 My very dear Diotima, I have not yet heard from you, which is my sole consolation during the mortal illness of my poor country.2 What is the homeland? That’s my sad daily question. The new-born child initially senses relations with his mother alone, then those [relations] which currently link him to men, to animals, and to the locality he perceives. These sensations, which constitute all the richness of his soul, form in his head a kind of totality – or rather, the only totality of which he can form an idea. Soon he is taught that this totality is a distinctly determinate thing to which the name homeland is given. He is taught the proper name of this country which distinguishes it from other countries, which the child only vaguely conceives and whose existence he believes in as he believes in centaurs or satyrs. Then, this country comes to be personified for him by teaching him of its great deeds, its glory, its happiness, its sufferings and, above all, that it is fundamentally [and] infinitely better than the other [countries], [that it is] always just, always right, always invincible, except in the case of betrayal, of infinitely superior forces, or of other accidents. Naturally, the child loves this beauty: the only beauty with which he has, by divine grace, all his interrelations, and very early on this heroine bestows on [the child] the beautiful ideas of barbarian, stranger, and enemy; just as I, born by particular happiness into the Reformed Church, in which all will certainly be saved, have acquired the idea of the wicked stubbornness of you [and] other heretics, who will all be reproved, damned, burned, unless you one day adopt the pure geometry of St Calvin.3 My dear Diotima, with your consent, I would like to introduce into education – among other things – [the following]: 1° skipping the word homeland in any book that the child must handle, and never pronouncing it in front of him, 2°  never showing children illuminated maps, or [maps] on which boundary lines are found. If it were possible, I would like to teach [the child] geography solely on a map which contained the four parts of the world, in order to make him cosmopolitan, instead of Greek, Roman, or Gaul. But as this is impossible, he should solely see maps of Europe as a whole, so that, at least, he attaches the formidable name of homeland – since it’s necessary – to this large territory. 3° I would like, as you do, to teach [the child] ancient history, then modern and finally that of the nation to which he belongs. If then, taking [all this] into consideration, he finds his nation and its history the most beautiful one of all, if he adores it, if he tries to ensure all nations enjoy the same felicity, insofar as he can, then I’d be happy; but I would be in despair if [the child] were to find through prejudices I’d caused beauty in ugliness, and if he dispensed his incense in honour of a rag. My very dear Diotima, as a Frisian,4 I blush to treat patriotism in this way, [for it is] the cause of so many brilliant actions which make my heart beat faster, of so

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many cultivated virtues of which I sense only the germs. But man, and philosophy applauds [the above treatment] on the ground that this love is fundamentally the most spoiled, blindest, most thoughtless, most hostile child of man to which the modification of artificial society has ever given birth in its foolish entrails.5 Do not take this [letter] as my proposed investigation into patriotism. I leave this to other times. This love, the richest and most energetic ideal to effect and torment the soul and mind of man, demands closer attention and more mature reflection. Besides, when I contemplate this love in true heroes, it seems to me to be purely [love] of justice and the defence of the oppressed weak, and it is from this point of view that I’m quite willing for the child to make it his idol. I prostrate myself before the statues of Miltiades, Themistocles, or Thrasybulus,6 but when I look towards the Great Sirte and see the altars dedicated to the Philaeni,7 I see politics deifying folly for its own interests. […]

Letters on the French Revolution

The Hague, 24th July 1789.1 My very dear Diotima, my friend. […] The events in France are causing a great sensation here.2 It’s said that Necker3 is in Amsterdam, or rather in The Hague. Concerning his secretary, this is true. The coach which lost him in Brussels made its way from Versailles in less than 17 hours – which is nicely done. The news that continually pours in from there is still so confused that to create a narrative out of it would be a little premature. All we know is that the Bastille is burnt, that despotism is destroyed and that honest men triumph. Mr de la Fayette4 is playing a great role there and will figure on the public stage. To judge Mr Necker appears infinitely difficult to me, lacking sufficient data, but it is clear that the nation owes him a statue. What will happen to the royal entourage is uncertain. Good Gods, if it possessed the faculty of being able to sense like a man, what a horrible richness of sensations! […] The Hague, 28th July 1789.5 My very dear Diotima, my friend! […] Here we are solely occupied with France, not so much still for its possible relations to us as for the brilliance and importance of the phenomenon. And in truth, who would have believed that the destruction of the most insolently hierarchical and the most solidly established despotism in all Christendom would take just a few days? To crush a despot or a tyrant isn’t much, but to bring down a machine so vast and so intricately composed, to which belong more than a million people, all intricately linked to each other – a machine which is over a century old, continually increasing its mass and its force – this is astonishing, inasmuch as what derives from the activity of men has the right to astonish us. It certainly appears that the most recent Louises6 and their ministers were in error, as so many other men have been, in believing that – out of all these automata of human creation that we call governments or constitutions – the easiest to implement would be despotism. They would have been right if those truly great men who appear on the surface of the earth were born with wings, horns, tails or other visible monstrosities.7 And, considering its past, it’s scarcely possible that the house of Bourbon could have been supplied with such monsters that frequently. We’ve already received many people who saw the strange spectacle of Louis XVI on foot, face gasping for breath, mixing sweat with tears, his hair in disorder, covered in dust, humiliated before his people, trembling in every feature, not daring to open his mouth to speak, and – to complete his disgrace – having nothing on his

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person, neither in the depth of his soul nor in his appearance that would provoke in the spectator a little respectful pity, at the very least. Sic transit gloria mundi.8 […] The Hague, 4th August 1789.9 My very dear Diotima, my friend. […] There is still no further news from France – at least nothing certain. However, I believe I know that the malcontents of the Netherlands10 have sent a deputation to the French Estates General and there has already been a response. I’m perfectly ignorant of what might result from all of this. The disorder is still too great to produce anything precise. We must have patience. But when I think of the great number of our exiles to be found in France, when I recall the current credit of the lowliest of a Mirabeau (who nevertheless could fall on the arrival of Necker),11 when I weigh the possible relations between our affairs and those of France, it seems to me utterly necessary to produce some different pamphlets to teach and demonstrate to true and worthy French patriots that our so-called patriots are of a class of people that they call aristocrats, that they have been in their pay, and that they owe their existence solely to their own baseness and to the deceptions of the French aristocrats and royalists. […] The Hague, Friday 7th August 1789.12 My very dear Diotima, my friend. […] From France we learn only of disorder. I pity the French, for this generation, I believe, will not see a robustly established constitution, not even perhaps the appearance of any coherence whatsoever. What is certain in their affairs is that the presumptuousness of the house of Bourbon can be taken to be destroyed. Two things already displease me in these events. The first is the profound policy which the King asked of his people or the Estates of the Ministers, which the Estates could not impossibly grant, but which they should never have dismissed with such a precise declaration. The second is to see the reappearance of Cardinal Rohan among honest men.13 The Hague, 14th August 1789.14 My dear Diotima, my friend! […] I pity the French from the bottom of my heart. The catastrophe they have just experienced must, without exception, happen sooner or later by the nature of human things, but it’s unfortunate that it has occurred in such an unforeseen way with so little preparation. At the moment I see order only in the distance and after many eruptions of barbarism. May it be God’s will that their ills have a very powerful impact on the whole of Europe and the whole of Christianity. Have you read the preliminary [discourse] on the Constitution by an Abbé Sieyès?15 It gave me infinite pain to see that the first production of an Assembly,



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which should appear quite august to us, is a piece that totally lacks, in my opinion, elevation, insight, order, clarity and style. It seems to me that Mr Bailly16 would have done something quite different. The Hague, 15th Sept[ember] 1789.17 My dear Diotima, my friend. […] The events in France promise only chaos. Tell me, I beg you, whether in your regions or in their surrounding area there has been movement [of troops].18 I presume too much of your national wisdom to believe it and this is true to the letter. Until now, thank God, we have not been much threatened. The sole and best counsel we can give for the moment to all the powers, without exception, is to each hold their forces in the most rigorous discipline, for, if not, in my opinion, this poor world runs strange risks in respect to its morality and to its enlightenment. It’s true that despotism will perhaps be destroyed for more than a century, but who will invent a wise and necessary subordinance, the germ of which is carried in [man’s] breast? It’s true, my Diotima, that very often these ideas sadden me and afflict me, threatening me with the darkest melancholy. I very often ask myself whether we would not have been wiser and happier by elevating our spirit and limiting our contemplations to the smallest of units and expanding it only to comprehend our household, or, at the very most, our town. In such moments of humility, I nevertheless have the happiness of perceiving, right in the middle of myself, a small Elf, who asks of me, with a smile, how many stars there are from here to the Pleiades?19 I blush, fall quiet, and I seek and find the limits of the physical universe. Goodbye, my very dear Diotima, my friend, let the God who constitutes and modifies these limits bless us and all who are dear to us. The Hague, 27th Oct[ober] 1789.20 My very dear Diotima, my friend! […] The events in France are still so new to me that I have trouble taking my eyes off them. What a phenomenon for our century! This century will certainly gain from it, for an unlearned posterity will believe that it sees something Greek in it, whereas there has until now only been the most modern dullness. Concerning the nation as we knew it, it was as rotten, debased and vicious as it was possible to be, but [to possess] such an administration as it had for half a century, this is without precedent in history. To know how to completely wipe out an army of nearly 300,000 men in so little time is an art it already possessed. We can now judge how such an army would have turned up before a King of Prussia or a Duke of Brabant. The happiest fate that one can predict for France is for it to be divided up by its neighbouring powers, if these powers could come to any agreement. If not, it will not be absurd to see the French hunted down everywhere as the Jews were previously. You see, my Diotima, that I do not have a great opinion of these poor Estates,21 nor of the order that they will put in place. And added to this, [there is] no Prince whose virtues and talents are familiar!

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Goodbye, my very dear Diotima, my friend! Let the one God bless us and all who are dear to us. Pray for the French, for humanity: their horrible misfortunes demand it. The Hague, 30th October 1789.22 My very dear Diotima, my friend. […] The news we hear daily from France is terrible, if [only] a quarter of it is true. I well know that some still work to restore things to their ancient footing, but with what hope of success I don’t know. Perhaps it is in the interest of all the powers to rehabilitate the royalty there for a certain period. But is there any possibility of this? The Hague, 19th January 1790.23 My very dear Diotima, my friend! The current state of France [is] without doubt unhappy for the poor French, but happy perhaps for the rest of Europe in the long term: a cruel civil war is in preparation. […]

APPENDIX

On the Genesis of Alexis II: The Metaphysics of the Military Jacob van Sluis

The text of the dialogue Alexis II, or on the Military – Hemsterhuis called it ‘Alexis II’ for short – remained unpublished for a long time. The first published edition dates from 1924 and was provided by Emile Boulan as an attachment to his book François Hemsterhuis, le Socrate hollandais. Emile Alfred Anatole Boulan (1874–1947) was a lecturer in French at the University of Groningen; he had previously written an article on Hemsterhuis and Montesquieu. In his edition of Alexis II, Boulan allowed himself some modernisations and corrections of the French language: forms such as je sçai, sçavoir and avoit were replaced by modern forms such as je sais, savoir and avait; verb forms in the passé simple were corrected to imparfait where necessary. A second edition of the French text of Alexis II was included by Michael J. Petry in his edition of the Wijsgerige werken, together with a Dutch translation. Petry relied on Boulan’s edition, with some further adjustments and modernisations.1 The original text has survived in only one manuscript, kept in the University Library of Leiden, shelf mark BPL 825. This manuscript was not written by Hemster­huis himself, but is a neatly written copy by Christoph Peter Schultz (1741–1814). Schultz was frequently asked by Hemsterhuis to write out his texts in a clean version, to be handed to friends or prepared for printing. The manuscript was transferred from the Rijksarchief (National Archives) in The Hague to the Leiden library in 1866. It is bound in a simple cardboard binding and comprises twenty-five sheets (fifty pages) in octavo format, of which the title page and forty-two numbered pages are used; the last pages are blanco. A note bound between pages 10 and 11 indicates that the manuscript belonged to François van der Hoop (1727–93). Van der Hoop was charged by Hemsterhuis with the settlement of his legacy, and this makes it likely that our handwritten copy comes directly from Hemsterhuis’s estate. It is unclear how it ended up in the National Archives. Alexis II is mentioned in a catalogue of unpublished texts listed by Princess Gallitzin in a letter dated 10 November 1791, and described by her as ‘Fragment d’un dialogue sur le Militaire’. It is very likely that Gallitzin possessed one or more copies of Alexis II, in various stages of editing, but none of these copies have been found in her documents, currently kept in Münster. Alexis II is presented as a continuation of the earlier dialogue Alexis or the Golden Age. This last dialogue concluded with the intention, expressed by Diocles as teacher (= Hemsterhuis), to make a sacrifice to Love the next day (EE 2.147). Early the next day, according to the beginning of Alexis II, Diocles returns to the same spot and, to his surprise, finds his interlocutor already present, the young Alexis. Alexis says that he got up early after a dream about the sacrifice to be made. Diocles then

262 APPENDIX leads the discussion to Alexis’s intention to enter military service and from there a conversation about war, glory and justice unfolds. The impetus to write Alexis II was probably given by Gallitzin. This is evidenced by the oldest mention of it, in a letter from Hemsterhuis addressed to Franz von Fürstenberg, dated 7 January 1783: I have already thought a little bit about what Diotima wants concerning the military spirit and I praise myself for having understood her idea. I told her something about it in my penultimate [letter], but, whatever the form of this work, which will depend absolutely on her choice, I believe that it is absolutely necessary to begin by researching the origin of war, and what it is; and then show that whatever the nature, the spirit and the utility of the warrior are, that these are absurd and humiliating modifications which he [the warrior] has undergone successively under the rule of politics and vice. It will hardly be possible to finish this play without saying a few words about those stupid excrescent despots who sprout from the remnants of old houses like a vile mushroom on top of a rotten stalk. (B 12.127)

The initiative was therefore taken by Gallitzin probably in the autumn of 1782. Unfortunately, the letters that Hemsterhuis wrote to her during this period have been lost, and no earlier mention is made in the letters that Hemsterhuis received from her. Three days after the letter to Fürstenberg quoted above, we find the first mention of Alexis II in a letter from Hemsterhuis to Gallitzin: he will make adjustments according to her wishes. In the next few weeks, he sends her fragments of the dialogue, cryptically indicated by a measure of length called an ell (French: aune, or aulne). He is soon dissatisfied with the direct connection established with the first Alexis. ‘I’ll wait for your thoughts on the Alexis. What I dislike about the second is the name. I would like to keep the first one on the golden age isolated and virgin.… [T]he title of the second Alexis is starting to make me resent it, and I have so much fun seeing Simon and the real Alexis as wife and husband that I fear committing adultery by associating them with a heterogeneous third party. Yet this adultery will take place if it is Diotima’s good pleasure’ (B 4.4, 4.5). Hemsterhuis will keep the title, but a suggested addition by Gallitzin is rejected. She proposes that Hemsterhuis cite examples of wars from Roman antiquity instead of preserving a Greek setting. After some back-and-forth, Hemsterhuis declines, for he is afraid of running ‘the risk of losing the tone in which I wanted to set the whole dialogue’ (B 4.11). The tone desired by him is that of his interpretation of Greek antiquity. Hemsterhuis writes, For me, I have believed up to now that all the modifications of war, or previously of the military, not only as a state or as an order in society but also as an art, are to be found among the Greeks from Pisistratus to Demetrius, etc. also, and more completely than among the Romans and us. I may be a little heretical on this subject, but, as art, I consider Roman tactics [compared] to great Greek tactics as Newtonian physics is [compared] to the immense philosophy to which it



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owes its entire existence. And please, what did Regulus achieve against a Spartan soldier? What did the fine Roman armies do against Pyrrhus and Hannibal? And if Scipio, Marius, Caesar, and others had not known how to subject their strict national tactics to this great Greek tactic, daughter of genius and the moment, this heavy Roman colossus would not have inconvenienced the earth for so long. Dear Diotima, if these are blasphemies, forgive your Athenian for them.[…] I flatter myself to find in Greece, not only during the Peloponnesian War but until Alexander and the Epigones, all the modifications of the military which you observe so perfectly among the Romans. (B 4.4, 4.10)

In short, in the art of war, the Romans were indebted to the Greeks. Thus, Hemsterhuis phrases a traditional topos in his own words: the Romans are no more than imitators of the Greeks. During the same period, Herder will frame it accordingly: in all that the Greeks were excellent in, the Romans never surpassed them; the Roman Empire and the Latin language were only a bridge to modern times, be it a bad bridge.2 In the spring of 1783, progress on Alexis II was halting. One reason was that Hemsterhuis was simultaneously working on a text concerning ‘political animals [animaux politiques]’, a text that was eventually handed down as ‘Reflections on the Republic of the United Provinces’. Another limiting factor was that Hemsterhuis suffered an old ailment, which in 1780 had forced him to apply for retirement and a pension. Pain in the hands made it difficult for him to write (although this is not reflected in a deterioration of his handwriting in letters). ‘I still suffer cruelly from my sciatica and rheumatic pain that never ends’, he writes to Gallitzin in June 1783. For now, there is no progress. ‘In my first free moments I will finish the Alexis II as best I can’, he writes more than a year later, in August 1784 (B 5.65). Almost two years on, he is still talking about an unborn child: ‘My dear Diotima, you remind me of Alexis II, which I haven’t thought about for a year. I’ll take it back and see if this embryo is worth delivering’ (B 7.31). However, nothing happens and no more is written about it. Not until October 1789, when Gallitzin suggests supplementing the text with a treatise on tact, ‘its prodigious influence on all the other faculties, and its great relation with this principle of perfectibility. […] This tendency is properly the same as what we also call love in general’ (B I.100). Hemsterhuis reacted in his characteristic way, both benevolently and with restraint. He wanted to finish Alexis II in its original plan and then deal with tact in a separate treatise. The subject of the proposed addition is dear to him, but, as is often the case, this answer can be described as a charmingly worded rejection. The last time he mentions Alexis II is in a letter dated 26 January 1790: On re-reading this piece I was amazed most strangely. From the passage in which Diocles accuses Alexis of comparing the individuality of beings with the face and outlines of any physical object onwards, Diocles makes such enormous mistakes that I blushed for him even to the white of my eyes. Fortunately, no harm could be done, for Diocles would necessarily have to give up in the end from an abyss that would have made him see for himself the absurdity of the path he had taken. This is where the Dialogue will become very metaphysical. Alexis has to take a stand. He must in turn accuse Diocles of the ineptitude of his comparison

264 APPENDIX between the love of Damon and Pytheas, and between two drops of clear liquor. He must push it to such an end that ultimately, they both find themselves obliged to undertake the most profound search for what individuality is and they find a perfect demonstration, 1° that individuality is of the essence and of the nature of any being, whatever it may be, and 2°  that the individuality of any being whatsoever could not undergo the slightest alteration whatsoever in whatever category it would be possible to assume. It follows or will follow from this that love or metaphysical attraction is an absolutely eternal approximation and that all absolute union is impossible. You perceive, by the way, my Diotima, that these demonstrations, being absolutely complete, instantly destroy from top to bottom all Spinozism of whatever nature it may be. Subsequently, the dialogue becomes politico-military, and, when it comes to the episodes that should brighten it up and embalm its dryness, I have no worries, relying on that verve with which you will deign to inoculate me along the way. (B 10.104)

It is evident from the correspondence that Hemsterhuis was reluctant to develop this dialogue any further, and he considered the text to be completed despite its imperfections. For years, Gallitzin had insisted in vain for further elaboration and completion. The general feeling is that Alexis II remained unfinished. In so claiming, scholars have also relied on Gallitzin’s characterisation of it as a ‘Fragment d’un dialogue sur le Militaire’ in her list of the writings left by Hemsterhuis. Moenkemeyer, however, has rightly pointed out that the end of Alexis II in its extant form creates a striking parallel to the end of Alexis I: ‘Diocles reveals Love as the source of Justice. This indicates that, although unfinished, the latter dialogue has conveyed its main message.’3 Combined with the reluctance Hemsterhuis expressed in his last letters, it seems to me that he considered the dialogue more or less complete, even though Gallitzin wished for some additions. Gallitzin’s judgement was based on her experience with Hemsterhuis’s inertia and was confirmed by Van der Hoop. He had sent her papers, including a ‘plan’ for this dialogue, which showed in his opinion that the dialogue was ‘not finished’.4 The ‘plan’ or scheme he sent her looked like this:5 Introduction, the oracle Research of war its nature Whether it is natural? What glory is. What justice is. What homeland is. What a prince is. What is war as art. What it is like [as a] state. Application of these things to the aim of Alexis and conclusion that it is unworthy and absurd to serve a foreign prince to earn his bread or seek fortune. The note is handwritten by Hemsterhuis, but unfortunately undated. So, we cannot place it within the afore mentioned timeline. If this scheme had been drawn up



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early in the process, as a plan, then it seems that Hemsterhuis gradually abandoned his original intention during the creative process of writing. There is some similarity with the scheme as proposed by Hemsterhuis in the letter to Fürstenberg already quoted above, but its jibe at ‘those stupid excrescent despots’ is missing both in the plan and in the extant dialogue. Hemsterhuis dealt with politics separately in the ‘Reflections on the Republic of the United Provinces’, on which he likewise worked in the spring of 1783, and which also remained unfinished. In the plan, a few more politically significant points of interest are mentioned (homeland, prince) but we do not find them in the dialogue either. If we read the dialogue in its final form, it turns out that, about halfway through the discussion, the concepts of war, military and glory have already been dealt with and a metaphysical turn occurs, as Hemsterhuis himself noted. From that point onwards, the dialogue concerns justice, as determined by laws both in the physical domain and in the social domain. Laws are decisive, and Hemsterhuis makes Alexis define the very concept of law: ‘[A law] is the necessary effect of the nature of things which determines their relations’. For Hemsterhuis it is a conclusion from a Socratic conversation; Boulan has pointed out that this definition is very similar to the definition which Montesquieu uses as the starting point for his The Spirit of the Laws: ‘Laws, taken in the broadest meaning, are the necessary relations [rapports] deriving from the nature of things’.6 Hemsterhuis is known to have often been influenced by Montesquieu, as in his description of art and the dependence of social laws on external circumstances. The overall conclusion follows that, for Hemsterhuis, there is no absolute justification for war and that military service is indeed ‘unworthy and absurd to serve a foreign prince to earn his bread or seek fortune’, as the undated plan put it. This formulation leaves open the possibility of patriotic service to a national prince – a remarkable position considering that the majority of the Dutch army consisted of foreign mercenaries. Hemsterhuis had already expressed this pacifist position in the epigraph he gave to Alexis II, a citation from the Greek poet Theocritus: ‘May spiders stretch their fine-spun webs over armour; and may the battle cry no longer exist even in name’. Perhaps this finale – so tinged with metaphysics and detached from war and militarism – gave Gallitzin the conviction that the dialogue had remained unfinished. She may have had an ulterior personal interest, which remained undiscussed in 1783 but became pressing in later years. Her son Mitri, born in 1770, was approaching the age for entering Russian military service. His father, Dmitri Gallitzin, was keen: he had served the Russian crown as ambassador to The Hague, was dismissed in 1782, but he stayed on in The Hague. Hemsterhuis often acted as spokesperson and mediator between the two. But Prince Gallitzin saw in the military service a wonderful opportunity to rehabilitate the family and Hemsterhuis passed this message onto Gallitzin (B 8.31). In response, the mother did not react dismissively (‘I want him to take advantage [of it]’), but, in her opinion, Mitri was in no hurry (B IV.135). Behind the scenes, in Münster, Fürstenberg gave negative advice to Gallitzin: Mitri is still too young and ignorant of the arts of war.7 Thus the situation remained as it was8 and the father had to accept this from a distance, for the mother had little interest and the son did not show any initiative. It is important to note that the princess had a compelling influence on the upbringing

266 APPENDIX of her children, especially Mitri, because ‘the little dunce causes me much anguish of soul by his uncontrollable indolence and absurd poltroonery’.9 The children received a harsh and sober upbringing from a mother who herself had departed her earlier luxurious way of life. In the summer of 1792 – two years after Hemsterhuis’s death – the opportunity arose to send Mitri to America for a kind of Grand Tour, with the father’s consent, for up to two years so as to keep open the possibility of Russian military service.10 Accompanied by his mother, Mitri stepped on the boat in Rotterdam and fell straight into the water. In retrospect, Mitri tended to interpret the incident as if his mother had given him a deliberate push, as it were, a second baptism into adulthood.11 It turned out to be a decisive journey, for once in Baltimore Mitri decided to join the Roman Catholic priesthood and, until his death in 1840, he carried out missionary work in the unexplored inner parts of Pennsylvania, with such success that he has been nominated for official canonisation by the Church. He never returned to Europe and remained untouched by the appeal of the Russian army; in fact, he would never see his mother again. Moreover, as Dmitri Gallitzin feared, owing to his refusal to fulfil his Russian duties and by leaving the Russian Orthodox Church, Mitri lost any claim to his paternal inheritance under Russian law. In this context, when Hemsterhuis began Alexis II in 1783, Mitri’s career was still far in the future; yet, that future was not unforeseeable. In the ancien régime, a military career for a young nobleman – as a finishing school or settled vocation – was an obvious option. In many respects, Hemsterhuis respected the traditional views of aristocratic and elitist circles, but, given his bourgeois background, he had less affinity with such an upper-class motivation for a military career.12 In the dialogue Alexis II, or on the Military, Hemsterhuis rejects the idea that a military career is noble – ‘Laissons la gloire, je vous prie’ reads as a sigh of relief: let it go. In his view, the goal should not be the pursuit of personal honour, but a metaphysical philosophy in search of unity. This, however, was a little too vague for Gallitzin, so no wonder she regarded the dialogue as incomplete.

Notes

Series Introduction 1 For more details on Hemsterhuis’s life, works and reception, see the chronology that follows this Series Introduction. We would like to thank the Advisory Board in general and Louis Hoffman in particular for all their help with the translations. 2 A. W. Schlegel, Kritische Schriften und Briefe, ed. E. Lohner (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1964), vol. 3, p. 83; J. G. Herder, Werke, ed. B. Suphan (Berlin: Weidmann, 1877), vol. 3, p. 127; C. M. Wieland, ‘Letter to F. H. Jacobi, 11 October 1785’, in F. H. Jacobi, Briefwechsel, ed. A. Mues et al. (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1981–2018), vol. 4, p. 204; J. G. Hamann, Briefwechsel, ed. A. Henkel (Frankfurt: Insel Verlag, 1955–75), vol. 7, p. 445. 3 For a selection of significant scholarship on Hemsterhuis since 1971, see K. Hammacher, Unmittelbarkeit und Kritik bei Hemsterhuis (Munich: Fink, 1971); M. F. Fresco et al. (eds), Frans Hemsterhuis (1721–1790): Quellen, Philosophie und Rezeption (Munich: LIT Verlag, 1990); H. Krop, ‘A Dutch Spinozismusstreit: The New View of Spinoza at the End of the Eighteenth Century’, Lias 32.1 (2005), pp. 185–211; P. Lacoue-Labarthe and J.-L. Nancy, ‘Le dialogue des genres’, Poétique 21 (1975), pp. 148–75; E. Matassi, Hemsterhuis: Istanza critica e filosofia della storia (Napoli: Guida, 1983); C. Melica (ed.), Hemsterhuis: A European Philosopher Rediscovered (Napoli: Vivarium, 2005); H. Moenkemeyer, François Hemsterhuis (Boston: Twayne, 1975); P. Pelckmans, Hemsterhuis sans rapports (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987); M. J. Petry, ‘Hemsterhuis on Mathematics and Optics’, in J. North and J. Roche (eds), The Light of Nature (Dordrecht: Springer, 1985), pp. 209–34; P. Sonderen, Het sculpturale denken: De esthetica van Frans Hemsterhuis (Leende: Damon, 2000); W. van Bunge, From Bayle to the Batavian Revolution (Leiden: Brill, 2018); J.-L. Vieillard-Baron, Platonisme et interprétation de Platon a l’épochè modern (Paris: Vrin, 1988); and M. Wielema, ‘Frans Hemster­huis: A Philosopher’s View of the History of the Dutch Republic’, Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies 14.1 (1993), pp. 55–63. 4 Specifically: F. Hemsterhuis, Œuvres philosophiques, ed. J. van Sluis (Leiden: Brill, 2015); F. Hemsterhuis, Opere, ed. and trans. C. Melica (Napoli: Vivarium, 2001); F. Hemsterhuis, Wijsgerige werken, ed. M. J. Petry (Leeuwarden: Damon, 2001); F. Hemsterhuis, Œuvres inédits, ed. J. van Sluis (Berltsum: van Sluis [Lulu print on demand], 2021); and F. Hemster­huis, Briefwisseling (Hemsterhuisiana), 16 vols, ed. J. van Sluis (Berltsum: van Sluis [Lulu print on demand], 2010–17). 5 For Jonathan Israel, see, among other texts, ‘Failed Enlightenment’: Spinoza’s Legacy and the Netherlands (1670–1800) (Wassenaar: NIAS, 2007). See also D. Nassar, The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795–1804 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); L. Weatherby, Transplanting the Metaphysical Organ: German Romanticism between Leibniz and Marx (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016). 6 See note 4 above. 7 E. Trunz, Goethe und der Kreis von Münster (Münster: Aschendorff, 1971), p. x. Throughout this edition, wherever the surname Gallitzin is used, it refers to Amalie Gallitzin (whereas her husband is designated by his full name, Dmitri Gallitzin). 8 For details, see note 4 above.

268 NOTES   9 Van Bunge, From Bayle to the Batavian Revolution, p. 180. 10 See his comments at the end of the Letter on Sculpture (EE 1.75), as well as those on Blankenburg’s German edition (B 3:172–3). 11 See, e.g., B 12: 224–5. 12 F. Schlegel, Kritische Ausgabe, ed. E. Behler et al. (Munich: Schöningh, 1958–2002), vol. 1, p. 244.

Atheism According to François Hemsterhuis   1 See C. Melica, ‘Hemsterhuis e l’Europa’, in R. Pozzo and M. Sgarbi (eds), I filosofi e l’Europa (Milan: Mimesis, 2009), pp. 292–8.   2 In order to study the German language, Hemsterhuis purchased, late in life, a French– German dictionary edited by Christian Friedrich Schwan (1734–1815) and published in Mannheim in 1782; see the sales catalogue of his personal and family library printed in J. van Sluis (ed.), Bibliotheca Hemsterhusiana. Het boekenbezit van Tiberius en Frans Hemsterhuis, met genealogie en bibliografie (Budel: Damon, 2001), p. 105.   3 Along with Adelheid Amalie Gallitzin, Hemsterhuis not only met Hamann in Weimar, but also Goethe. On this meeting, see E. Trunz, ‘Hemsterhuis’ Brief über seine Reise 1785’, in E. Trunz and W. Loos (eds), Goethe und der Kreis von Münster. Zeitgenössische Briefe und Aufzeichnungen (Münster: Aschendorff, 1974), pp. 166–75; Goethe himself wrote about his meeting: see J. W. Goethe, Kampagne in Frankreich, in L. Blumenthal and W. Loos (eds), Goethes Werke (Munich: Beck, 1976), vol. 10, pp. 335–48.   4 J. G. Hamann, Briefwechsel (1783–1785), ed. A. Henkel (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1965), vol. 5, p. 142.  5 Cf. M. C. Barbetta, ‘Dalla “Sostanza unica” spinoziana alla “forza organica”: una lettura del Gott di Herder’, Quaderni di Lingue e Letterature 16 (1991), pp. 25–39.  6 See M. Gilli, ‘L’influence de Spinoza dans la formation du matérialisme allemand’, Archives de Philosophie 46.4 (1983), pp. 590–610 (esp. pp. 598–610); Gilli demonstrates how questions of atheism and materialism emerged out of the German debate on Spinoza.   7 See M. J. Petry, ‘Inleiding’, in WW, pp. LIII–LIV.   8 I prefer to use the German term Spinozismusstreit rather than Pantheismustreit, which is not here synonymous. On the ‘pantheism controversy’, see W. Goetschel, ‘Lessing Mendelssohn e Jacobi. La disputa sul panteismo’, in C. Altini (ed.), La fortuna di Spinoza in età moderna e contemporanea (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2020), vol. 1, pp. 223–54.   9 See C. Melica, ‘Il catalogus librorum di Franciscus Hemsterhuis’, in E. Canone (ed.), Biblio­ thecae Selectae. Da Cusano a Leopardi (Firenze: Olschki, 1993), pp. 587–97. 10 See W. van Bunge, From Bayle to the Batavian Revolution: Essays on Philosophy in the EighteenthCentury Dutch Republic (Leiden: Brill, 2019), p. 121. 11 To briefly mention one of the ways in which Jacobi’s image of Hemsterhuis was so influential, it is useful to mention Friedrich Hölderlin. He studied Jacobi’s writings on Spinoza in 1790–1, and this piqued his interest in Hemsterhuis’s philosophical speculations. To learn more, Hölderlin made use of both Blankenburg’s 1782 German translation and Jacobi’s translation of some of Hemsterhuis’s works. He was most fascinated by Alexis and some of the claims made in Alexis informed various versions of Hölderlin’s Hyperion (1792–8), such as the well-known metaphor of the eccentric orbit (exzentrische Bahn), employed to explain the structure of human evolution. This metaphor clearly depends on Alexis’s astronomical hypothesis. Herder’s essay Love and Selfhood also influenced one of the other major themes of Hyperion: love and unification.

NOTES 269

12 For the philological explanation of this manuscript see the introduction to this work in F. Hemsterhuis, Opere, ed. and trans. C. Melica (Napoli: Vivarium, 2001), pp. 683–5. 13 A similar edition (French–Dutch) was published in the same year (2001) with the two different versions of the Letter on Atheism; see WW, pp. 734–55. 14 Initially published posthumously by R. Parigi, ‘Tra metafisica e morale. Gli scritti inediti di Frans Hemsterhuis’, Studi Settecenteschi 7–8 (1985–6), Appendice I, pp. 328–34. 15 See W. van Bunge, Spinoza Past and Present: Essays on Spinoza, Spinozism and Spinoza Scholarship (Leiden: Brill, 2012), which sharply distinguishes between Spinoza’s own thought and Spinoza’s reception (that is, Spinozism) in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 16 Parigi, ‘Tra metafisica e morale’, p. 314; see also R. Parigi, ‘Frans Hemsterhuis nella storiografia del novecento’, Cultura e scuola 24.96 (1985), pp. 113–19. 17 On the criticism of Jacobi for using the term ‘atheism’ rather than ‘fatalism’, see M. M. Olivetti, ‘Da Leibniz a Bayle: alle radici degli “Spinoza Briefe”’, Archivio di Filosofia 1 (1978), pp. 147–99. For an excellent interpretation of Hemsterhuis’s Letter on Fatalism also in reference to the theological context in the Netherlands at the time, see R. Bordoli, ‘Predestination and Fatalism’, in C. Melica (ed.), Hemsterhuis. A European Philosopher Rediscovered (Napoli: Vivarium, 2005), pp. 231–40. 18 See E. Matassi, Hemsterhuis. Istanza critica e filosofia della storia (Napoli: Guida, 1983), pp. 136–7. 19 Parigi, ‘Tra metafisica e morale’, p. 314. 20 Parigi, ‘Tra metafisica e morale’, p. 318. 21 On the ‘atheism’ debate in the Netherlands, see H. Krop, ‘Spinoza and the Low Countries’, in S. Bullivan and M. Ruse (eds), The Cambridge Companion to the History of Atheism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), vol. 1, pp. 223–41. 22 Hemsterhuis made no explicit reference to Leibniz, although his polemic against ‘order’ would seem to be directed against some of Leibniz’s theories from the Essais de théodicée (1710). For Hemsterhuis, God cannot be proved by pre-established harmony. See A. P. Dierick, ‘Pre-Romantic Elements in the Aesthetic and Moral Theories of François Hemsterhuis (1721–1790)’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 26.1 (1997), pp. 247–71. 23 See G. Mori, ‘Pierre Bayle’, in W. van Bunge et al. (eds), The Bloomsbury Companion to Spinoza (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), pp. 85–106. 24 P. Bayle, ‘Spinoza’, in Dictionaire historique et critique (Rotterdam: Leers, 1697), vol. 2, pp. 416–68. J. C. Gottsched (1700–66) promoted Bayle through his German translation of the Historisches und Kritisches Wörterbuch […] (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1741–4). See M.-H. Quéval, ‘L’édition allemande du Dictionnaire historique et critique de Pierre Bayle par J. C. Gottsched’, in W. van Bunge (ed.), Pierre Bayle 1647–1706, Le Philosophe de Rotterdam: Religion, Philosophy and Reception (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 153–74. For Bayle’s reception in the Netherlands, see W. van Bunge, ‘The Presence of Bayle in the Dutch Republic’, in van Bunge (ed.), Pierre Bayle 1647–1706, pp. 197–216. 25 See P. Casini, Diderot ‘philosophe’ (Bari: Laterza, 1962), p. 133. 26 Cf. P. Vernière, Spinoza et la pensée française avant la révolution (Paris: PUF, 1954). 27 See C. T. Wolfe, ‘Determinism/Spinozism in the Radical Enlightenment. The Cases of Anthony Collins and Denis Diderot’, International Review of Eighteenth-Century Studies 1.1 (2007), pp. 37–51. 28 See C. Melica, ‘Longing for Unity. Hemsterhuis and Hegel’, Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain 55–6 (2007), pp. 143–63. 29 F. H. Jacobi, Schriften zum Spinozastreit, in Werke. Gesamtausgabe, ed. K. Hammacher and I. M. Piske (Hamburg: Meiner, 1998), vol. 1(1), p. 153. 30 D. Diderot, Commento alla Lettera sull’uomo di Hemsterhuis, ed. B. Savorelli (Laterza: Bari,

270 NOTES 1971), pp. 93–4, pp. 167–9. See P. Alatri, ‘Un’opera inedita di Diderot’, Studi storici 6.1 (1965), pp. 99–113. 31 Jacobi, Schriften zum Spinozastreit, vol. 1(1), p. 120. See C. Melica, ‘Hemsterhuis nelle Schriften zum Spinozastreit di Jacobi’, Bollettino della Società Filosofica Italiana 170 (2000), pp. 12–26. 32 On Mendelssohn in the Spinozismusstreit, see C. Melica, ‘Freiheit und Notwendigkeit bei Moses Mendelssohn’, in B. Buchhammer (ed.), Freiheit-Gerechtigkeit-Liebe. Freedom– Justice–Love (Wien: Lit, 2019), pp. 307–19. 33 Cf. F. Regner, ‘Lessings Spinozismus’, Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 68.3 (1971), pp. 351–75; A. Altmann, ‘Lessing und Jacobi: das Gespräch über den Spinozismus’, Lessing Yearbook 2 (1971), pp. 70–5. 34 Jacobi, Schriften zum Spinozastreit, vol. 1(1), pp. 55–91. 35 Jacobi’s letter sent to Hemsterhuis in 1784 and published a year later in Über die Lehre des Spinoza with facing text had a wide resonance in German circles; see, for example, the Hamann–Jacobi correspondence in J. G. Hamann, Briefwechsel, vol. 6: 1785–1786, ed. A. Henkel (Wiesbaden: Insel, 1975), pp. 75, 92, 120, 202. 36 For Hemsterhuis, ‘velleity’ as reported in the Aristaeus is ‘the faculty of willpower’ (EE 2.85): ‘We see from this that the active being is necessarily endowed with intellect for altering this vague velleity, or this faculty of willpower, into a determinate act of will’ (EE 2.85); ‘We have seen that velleity, or the faculty of willpower, the faculty of being able to direct activity, naturally acts in every direction’ (EE 2.88). 37 See, e.g., G. W. Leibniz, Die philosophischen Schriften, ed. C. J. Gerhardt (Berlin: Weidmann, 1875), vol. 5, p. 169. 38 Jacobi, Schriften zum Spinozastreit, vol. 1(1), p. 64. 39 The same passage is repeated by Jacobi, Schriften zum Spinozastreit, vol. 1(1), p. 85. The importance of this particular passage from Hemsterhuis for Jacobi is shown by the fact that it is also translated and reproduced in German in the fifth section of the Wider Mendelssohns Beschuldigungen of 1786 (Schriften zum Spinozastreit, vol. 1(1), pp. 322–4). 40 Critical literature has shown that the concept of Glauben in Jacobi and the concept of croire in Hemsterhuis are to be understood differently, since Hemsterhuis seems to refer rather to the Dutch tradition of the Cartesian school, namely ’s Gravesande, cf. K. Hammacher, Unmittelbarkeit und Kritik bei Hemsterhuis (München: Fink, 1971), pp. 30–3; K. Hammacher, ‘Hemsterhuis und Jacobi’, in Frans Hemsterhuis (1721–1790). Quellen, Philosophie und Rezeption, ed. M. F. Fresco, L. Geeraedts and K. Hammacher (Münster: Lit, 1995), pp. 498–9. See further my chapter, C. Melica, ‘Dubitare, credere e sapere. Convinzione e sentimento in Hemsterhuis’, in L. Illetterati and A. Moretto (eds), Frans Hemsterhuis e la cultura filosofica Europea fra Settecento e Ottocento (Trento: Verifiche, 2004), pp. 11–42. 41 Jacobi, Schriften zum Spinozastreit, vol. 1(1), pp. 18, 20–1, 28, 123, 247. 42 On the Jacobian antinomy fatalism–freedom, see Olivetti, ‘Da Leibniz a Bayle’, pp. 158–9, 188. Olivetti also points out other theoretical affinities between Hemsterhuis and Jacobi, especially in Jacobi’s use, in the part of the 1789 Spinozabriefen entitled ‘Über die menschlicher Freiheit’, of some of Hemsterhuis’s theses formulated in Letter on Desires concerning the problematic existence of a mediated being and those expressed in Aristaeus concerning pure love as an organ of knowledge. 43 See Hemsterhuis, Opere, ed. Melica, pp. 693–5. 44 In the 1789 version, Hemsterhuis had changed the text at this point on Jacobi’s precise instructions, as follows: ‘And this gave birth to that equivocal and protean atheism, which, lending itself to anything, causes us to see either a chaos or a God arbitrarily in the very same figure’ (cf. Jacobi, Schriften zum Spinozastreit, vol. 1(1), p. 211). 45 Cf. Jacobi, Schriften zum Spinozastreit, vol. 1(2), pp. 504–8.

NOTES 271

46 For a study of the significance of Spinozism in general in the German Enlightenment, see N. Merker, L’Illuminismo in Germania. L’età di Lessing (Rome: Riuniti, 1989), pp. 255–71; and S. Zac, Spinoza en Allemagne. Mendelssohn, Lessing et Jacobi (Paris: Klincksieck, 1989). On the significance of Jacobi’s critique of Spinozism in particular, see the monographs by K. Hammacher, Die Philosophie Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (München: Fink, 1969) and V. Verra, F. H. Jacobi. Dall’illuminismo all’idealismo (Turin: Edizioni di Filosofia, 1963), pp. 69–155. 47 One of these short works could be Letter on Fatalism, composed in 1776, but, as mentioned before, published only posthumously. 48 See Jacobi, Schriften zum Spinozastreit, vol. 1(2), p. 373. Cf. on this subject Hammacher, Unmittelbarkeit, pp. 29–30, and Hammacher, ‘Hemsterhuis und Jacobi’, p. 498. Hammacher points out that Hemsterhuis’s analysis of Wizenmann’s writing, which also concerns, for example, the relationship between faith and knowledge, is significantly configured with mathematical formulas. The theologian Wizenmann was, among other things, an acquaintance of Gallitzin, the princess had exchanged letters with him and had read his many writings. In 1787 the friendship between Wizenmann and Gallitzin was such that the princess went to Mülheim to assist him on his deathbed; cf. M. Köhler, Amalie von Gallitzin. Ein Leben zwischen Skandal und Legende (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1995), p. 144. 49 On the relationship between Hemsterhuis and materialism, see T. Verbeek, ‘Sensation et matière. Hemsterhuis et le matérialisme’, in Frans Hemsterhuis (1721–1790), pp. 243–62. 50 Diderot expressed himself on this subject in 1759 in two entries for his Encyclopédie, one dedicated to ‘Spinoza’ and the other to the denomination ‘Spinozist’ more generally (vol. 15, pp. 463–74). The French philosopher took up, in part, the affirmation of a ‘multiplicity of parts’ in the universe and, therefore, of ‘several substances’, derived from Pierre Bayle. On Diderot’s reception of Bayle, see Casini, Diderot ‘philosophe’, pp. 133–5. According to some, however, Diderot’s entry on ‘Spinoza’ is not a helpful text for judging his position (see Vernière, Spinoza, pp. 593–7). 51 Hemsterhuis also gave Gallitzin this freedom to work with his texts because of his ­precarious health. He was already sixty-eight years old and the previous year, between 20 June and 6 September 1788, after visiting Jacobi in Pempelfort, he returned to Münster to see Gallitzin, where he fell seriously ill. Gallitzin reported in her diary: ‘Am 20. Juni 1788 wurde Hemsterhuys, welcher mit der Harnverhaltung befallen war, von drei Aerzten für so gut als todt angesehen’; see Mittheilungen aus dem Tagebuch und Briefwechsel der Fürstin Amalia Von Gallitzin. Nebst Fragmenten und einem Anhang (Stuttgart: Liesching, 1868), p. 34. 52 See H. Timm, Gott und die Freiheit. Studien zur Religionsphilosophie der Goethezeit, Bd. I: Die Spinozarenaissance (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1974). Timm shows how this debate marked the beginning of the philosophy of religion in Germany at the time. 53 Gallitzin had planned to translate the Letter on Man into German, expanded by Hemsterhuis’s additions and clarifications, but the project was never realised. Later, when Jacobi edited the German edition of Alexis, or the Golden Age, he also promised to provide ‘a new edition of the Letter on Man and his Relations with additions and clarifications by the Author’ (cf. Vorbericht in Alexis ou de l’âge d’or, ed. F. H. Jacobi (Riga: Hartknoch, 1787), p. ii). 54 On why this Goethean poem appeared Spinozist to Lessing and Jacobi, see Olivetti, ‘Da Leibniz a Bayle’, p. 149, who indicates that Bayle’s Dictionaire is one of the ‘main sources of the Spinoza understanding that presides over Jacobi’s conversation’. 55 This letter is translated into English with accompanying commentary in F. Hemsterhuis, ‘Letters on Prometheus’, trans. D. Whistler, Symphilosophie 4 (2022), pp. 304–6.

272 NOTES 56 See M. F. Fresco, ‘Spinoza in der Sicht von Hemsterhuis’, in Hemsterhuis und seine Stellungnahme zu Spinoza (Delft: Euburon, 2003), pp. 3–32 and especially pp. 7–8, where he deals with the Prometheus monologue. 57 Cf. Hammacher, ‘Hemsterhuis und Spinoza’, pp. 33–43, esp. pp. 36–7. Hammacher argues that Hemsterhuis was probably closer to the Christian Spinozism carried over to the Netherlands by Abraham Johan Cuffeler (1637–84).

Hemsterhuis and Newtonian Philosophy   1 D. Diderot and J. d’Alembert (eds), Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Paris, 1751–80), vol. 11, p. 122.   2 J. Romein and A. Romein, Erflaters van onze beschaving. Nederlandse gestalten uit zes eeuwen, deel III 17e–19e eeuw (Amsterdam: Querido, 1947), pp. 68–97.   3 M. J. Petry, ‘Hemsterhuis on Mathematics and Optics’, in J. D. North and J. J. Roche (eds), The Light of Nature (Dordrecht: Springer, 1985), pp. 209–34.   4 Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, vol. 11, p. 123.   5 J. H. Zedler, Grosses vollständiges Universal Lexicon aller Wissenschaften und Künste (Halle, 1731–51), vol. 24, col. 414.  6 Zedler, Lexicon, col. 414. H. Pemberton combines his Newtonianism with a strong admiration for Bacon in his A View of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy (London, 1728), pp. 5–13.  7 Voltaire, Elémens de la philosophie de Neuton, mis à la portée de tout le monde contenant la métaphysique. La théorie de la lumiere & celle du Monde (Amsterdam, 1738), pp. 12, 11.  8 Voltaire, Elémens de la philosophie de Neuton contenant la métaphysique, la théorie de la lumiere & celle du Monde, novelle édition (London, 1741), pp. 5–73.  9 Voltaire, Elémens (1741 edition), pp. 21–2. 10 S. Koenig, Oratio inauguralis, de optimis Wolfiana et Newtoniana, philosophandi methodis: earumque amico consensu (Franeker, 1749), p. 24. 11 Koenig, Oratio inauguralis, p. 24. 12 J. Brucker, Historia critica philosophiae (Leipzig, 1744), vol. 4(2), p. 639. 13 Brucker, Historia critica philosophiae, vol. 4(2), pp. 653, 654–5. 14 A. Maas, ‘The Man Who Erased Himself. Willem Jacob ’s Gravesande and the Enlightenment’, in E. Jorink and A. Maas (eds), Newton and the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Leiden University Press, 2012), p. 123. 15 H. Boerhaave, Sermo academicus, de comparando certo in physicis (Leiden, 1715), pp. 8, 13. 16 G. Wiesenfeldt, Leerer Raum in Minervas Haus. Experimentelle Naturlehre an der Universität Leiden, 1675–1715 (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen/Berlin etc.: Verlag für Geschichte der Wissenschaft und der Technik, 2002), p. 61. 17 B. de Volder, Oratio qua sese laboribus academicis abdicavit (Leiden, 1705), p. 10. 18 De Volder, Oratio, p. 18. 19 De Volder, Oratio de rationis viribus et usu in scientiis (Leiden, 1698), p. 26. 20 For this phrase, see H. A. Krop, ‘Het moeizame einde van een huwelijk (1687–1781): Filosofen in de rol van echtscheidingsadvocaat’, Gewina 30 (2007), pp. 230–1. 21 J. Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity and the Emancipation of Man 1670–​ 1752 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 216–18. 22 C. de Pater, Petrus van Musschenbroek (1692–1761), een Newtoniaans natuuronderzoeker (Utrecht: Elinkwijk, 1979), pp. 318–24. 23 R. Vermij, ‘Defining the Supernatural: The Dutch Newtonians, the Bible and the Laws of Nature’, in Jorink and Maas (eds), Newton and the Netherlands, p. 187. 24 M. Jacob, ‘Introduction’, in J. E. Force and S. Hutton (eds), Newton and Newtonianism: New Studies (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2004), p. xi.

NOTES 273

25 The most fundamental study of his thought remains G. Gori, La fondazione dell’esperienza in ’s Gravesande (Florence: La nuova Italia editrice, 1972). 26 The title in the contemporaneous English translation by Desanguliers runs Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, Confirmed by Experiments or an Introduction to Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy. 27 De Pater, Petrus van Musschenbroek, p. 26. 28 H. A. Krop. ‘Tussen wetenschap en levensleer. De beoefening van de wijsbegeerte aan de universiteit te Harderwijk’, in J. A. H. Bots et al. (eds), Het Gelders Athene: bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de Gelderse Universiteit in Harderwijk (1648–1811) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000), pp. 145–57. 29 M. J. Petry and M. R. Wielema, ‘Antonius Brugmans (1732–1789): Bruggenbouwer in de filosofie’, and M. R. Wielema, ‘Nicolaus Engelhard (1696–1765): De leibniz-wolffiaanse metafysica te Groningen’, both in H. A. Krop, J. A. van Ruler and A. J. Vanderjagt (eds), Zeer kundige professoren: beoefening van de filosofie in Groningen van 1614 tot 1996 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1997), pp. 135–47, and pp. 149–61. 30 G. J. ’s Gravesande, ‘Monitum ad lectorem’, Physices elementa mathematica (Leiden, 1725), vol. 1, p. v; English version, ‘To the reader’, Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy (London, 1737), vol. 1, p. xi: ‘He only who in Physics reasons from the phaenomena, rejecting all feign’d hypotheses, and pursues this method inviolably to the best of his power, endeavours to follow the steps of Sir Isaac Newton, and very justly declares that he is a Newtonian philosopher; and not he who implicitly follows the opinion of any particular person’. 31 G. J. ’s  Gravesande, Oeuvres philosophiques et mathématiques, ed. J. N. S. Allamand (Amsterdam, 1774), vol. 1, p. lii. 32 ’s Gravesande, Oeuvres philosophiques et mathématiques, vol. 2, p. 356. 33 ’s Gravesande, Oeuvres philosophiques et mathématiques, vol. 2, p. 2. 34 In Book 1, part 1, chapters 2–8. 35 ’s Gravesande, Oeuvres philosophiques et mathématiques, vol. 2, pp. 16–17. 36 ’s Gravesande, Oeuvres philosophiques et mathématiques, vol. 2, p. 334. 37 ’s Gravesande, Oeuvres philosophiques et mathématiques, vol. 2, p. 27. 38 J. N. S. Allamand, ‘Historie de la vie et des ouvrages’, in ’s Gravesande, Oeuvres philosophiques et mathématiques, vol. 1, p. xliii. 39 ’s Gravesande, Oeuvres philosophiques et mathématiques, vol. 2, pp. 332–3. 40 ’s Gravesande, Oeuvres philosophiques et mathématiques, vol. 2, p. 37. 41 G. J. ’s Gravesande, Physices elementa mathematica, sive Introductio ad philosophiam newtonianum (Leiden, 1720), not paginated. 42 ’s Gravesande, Physices elementa mathematica, p. 2. 43 ’s Gravesande, Oeuvres philosophiques et mathématiques, vol. 2, p. 339–41. 44 G. J. ’s Gravesande, J. Wittichius and N. Cruquius, Rapport en memorie wegens haar gedaane inspectie van de Rivier de Merwede en weg. de voorgesl. middelen tot voorkoming van Inundatien. 8 July 1730 (s.l., 1730). 45 His biography is to be found in: S. H. M. Galama, Het wijsgerig onderwijs aan de Hogeschool te Franeker 1585–1811 (Franeker: Wever, 1954), pp. 177–81; M. A. M. van Hoorn, ‘Jan Hendrik van Swinden (1746–1823): Een gemeenebestgezind geleerde’, in J. H. van Swinden, Beschrijving van het Eijsinga-planetarium te Franeker (Franeker: Van Wijnen, 1994), pp. ix–xxv; M. A. M. van Hoorn, ‘De gemeenebestgezindheid van Jan Hendrik van Swinden (1746–1823)’, in E. O. G. Haitsma Mulier et al. (eds), Athenaeum Illustre, elf studies over de Amsterdamse doorluchtige School, 1632–1877 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999), pp. 227–31. Concerning his views on educational politics, see Bert ­Theunissen, ‘Nut en nog eens nut’: Wetenschapsbeelden van Nederlandse natuuronder­zoekers

274 NOTES (1800–1900) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2000), pp. 13–36. Section 4 of this introduction is an abridged form of my paper ‘Newtonianism at the Dutch universities during the Enlightenment’, in Jorink and Maas (eds), Newton and the Netherlands, pp. 227–49. 46 J. H. van Swinden, Dissertatio philosophica inauguralis, de attractione (Leiden, 1766), p. [78]. The theses are: ‘I. Causarum effectuumque series infinita dari non potest’; ‘II. Actiones hominis liberae pendent ab voluntate, voluntas a judicio, judicium ab ideis’; and ‘III. Ideas, seu notiones omnes, sensuum ac reflexionum ope acquirimus’. 47 Catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque de feu Mr. Jean Henri van Swinden (Amsterdam, 1823). It is interesting to note that, in the title of this catalogue and the Avertissement, ‘philosophy’ is unambiguously used in the modern sense, opposing it to ‘sciences exactes’, ‘théologie’, ‘histoire naturelle’, ‘chemie’, ‘belles lettres’ and ‘histoire naturelle’. 48 J. H. van Swinden, Oratio de philosophia Newtoniana (Franeker, 1779), p. 3. 49 Van Swinden, Oratio de philosophia Newtoniana, p. 4. 50 Van Swinden, Oratio de philosophia Newtoniana, p. 9. 51 Van Swinden, Oratio de philosophia Newtoniana, p. 12. 52 Van Swinden, Oratio de philosophia Newtoniana, p. 14. 53 Van Swinden, Oratio de philosophia Newtoniana, p. 43. Van Swinden more or less conflates two sentences of Newton, one taken from Query 28 and another one from a Latin version of Philosophical Transactions 85 (15 July 1672), p. 5014. 54 Van Swinden, Oratio de philosophia Newtoniana, p. 45. 55 Van Swinden, Oratio de philosophia Newtoniana, p. 47. Hence ‘by no means we should either forgo the rational sciences, or pay them hardly any attention. We also do not take pride in the title of empiricists, but “ubivis experimentalis et rationalis philosophiae connubium”’. 56 J. H. van Swinden, Oratio inauguralis, de causis errorum in rebus philosophicis (Franeker, 1767), p. 3. 57 Van Swinden, Oratio inauguralis, p. 4–5. 58 Van Swinden, Oratio inauguralis, p. 6. 59 Van Swinden, Oratio inauguralis, p. 3. 60 Van Swinden, Oratio inauguralis, p. 13. 61 Van Swinden, Oratio inauguralis, p. 12. 62 Van Swinden, Oratio inauguralis, p. 13. 63 Van Swinden, Oratio inauguralis, p. 33. 64 J. H. van Swinden, Cogitationes de variis philosophiae capitibus, quas … praeside Johann. Henr. van Swinden … publico examini submittit G. Coopmans [et al.] (Franeker, 1767–75). 65 Gori, La fondazione dell’esperienza, pp. 134-54. 66 Van Swinden, Cogitationes, p. 1. 67 Van Swinden, Cogitationes, p. 16. 68 Van Swinden, Cogitationes, p. 3. 69 Van Swinden, Cogitationes, p. 25. 70 Van Swinden, Cogitationes, p. 30. 71 Van Swinden, Cogitationes, p. 30. 72 Van Swinden, Cogitationes, p. 189. 73 M. J. Petry, ‘Inleiding’, in M. J. Petry (ed.), Frans Hemsterhuis, waarneming en werkelijkheid (Baarn: Ambo, 1990), p. 26. 74 J. van der Hoeven, ‘Drie brieven van F. Hemsterhuis: Eene mededeling betreffende de beoefening der natuurlijke historie’, Album der natuur 9 (1865), p. 257–65. See also Petry ‘Hemsterhuis on Mathematics and Optics’, p. 215. 75 L. Brummel, Frans Hemsterhuis: Een philosofenleven (Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink & Zoon, 1925), pp. 34–5.

NOTES 275

76 Petry, ‘Hemsterhuis on Mathematics and Optics’, p. 218. 77 Brummel, Frans Hemsterhuis, p. 94. 78 G. de Staël, De l’Allemagne (Paris/Geneva, 1814), p. 151. 79 The same idea is found in B 4.20, where Hemsterhuis compares Newtonian thought with the ‘immense philosophy – of the Greeks – which brought it into existence’.

The Ubiquity of Vases in Hemsterhuis’s Sketches and Drawings 1 A. Goodman, ‘JCGS@20, Visuals@40, Interface@45 & !!Challenges!!’, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 20.4 (2011), pp. 818–29; my emphasis. See also I. Liiv, Data Science Techniques for Cryptocurrency Blockchains (Singapore: Springer, 2011), p. 92: ‘the core question of network visualization is how to draw them so the result is both informative and aesthetically pleasing. A Dutch philosopher, Françis [sic] Hemsterhuis, has considered beauty in such contexts to mean something which gives “the greatest number of ideas in the shortest space of time”.’ 2 M. Powell, ‘Papers’, Yale University Archives, mss 70, https://archives.yale.edu/ repositories/6/resources/10628 (last accessed 14 September 2023); my emphasis. 3 Hemsterhuis’s first books were initially not offered for sale in bookshops but were gifts from the author to friends and colleagues. The bindings were executed by two The Hague bookbinders, Christiaan Micke and Thomas van Os. See OP, pp. 30–3. 4 Hemsterhuis shows up in E. van Eynden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vader­ landsche schilderkunst, sedert de helft der xviii eeuw (Haarlem: Loosjes, 1816–40); in Neues Allgemeines Künstler-Lexicon, ed. G. K. Nagler (München: Fleischmann: 1835–52); in Allgemeines Lexicon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, ed. U. Thieme and U. Becker (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1907–50); and in P. Scheens, Lexicon Nederlandse beeldende kunstenaars 1750–1850 (’s Gravenhage: Scheen, 1981). 5 For artistic research (and all its variants), see, for instance, M. Biggs and H. Karlsson (eds), The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts (London: Routledge, 2012). 6 The so-called Joachim Maas collection, acquired in 2015 by the Royal Library of the Netherlands, in The Hague, includes lost drawings, manuscripts, special bindings, engravings and objects and numerous books from Amalia Gallitzin’s library. See https:// www.kb.nl/onderzoeken-vinden/bijzondere-collecties/frans-hemsterhuis (last accessed May 2023). 7 P. C. Sonderen, Het sculpturale denken. De esthetica van Frans Hemsterhuis (Leende: Damon, 2000), p. 78. In what follows, I have borrowed many observations from this PhD thesis, which was written in Dutch. It has been made available to the public via the University Library of the University of Amsterdam, at https://pure.uva.nl/ws/ files/3031757/12191_Thesis.pdf (last accessed May 2023). 8 In Meyboom’s edition (1846–50), the most widely used edition of Hemsterhuis’s writings, the vignette appears at the beginning of the letter. In the first edition it is situated on the title page. 9 By way of this vignette Hemsterhuis deviates from the traditional symbolisation of sculpture. His friend, the collector Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, for example, personified sculpture traditionally in a vignette by having a putto chiselling a head. See ‘Allegorische compositie met vijf putti [van Ploos]’, in T. Laurentius, J. W. Niemeijer and G. Ploos van Amstel, Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, 1726–1798. Kunstverzamelaar en prentuitgever (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1980), p. 162. 10 It was only in the 1740s that a greater interest in vases, and ceramic ones in particular, began to emerge. Cf. C. B. Stark, Systematik und Geschichte der Archäologie der Kunst (Leipzig:

276 NOTES Engelmann, 1880), pp. 183–4. See also J. J. McCormick, H. Ottomeyer and S. Walker, Vasemania: Neoclassical Form and Ornament in Europe. Selections From the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). 11 As can be seen, for example, in Lairesse’s Groot Schilderboek, book 6, opposite p. 350; cf. C. W. Fock, ‘Willem van Mieris als ontwerper en boetseerder van tuinvazen’, Oud Holland 87 (1973), pp. 27–48, in which she discusses Van Mieris’s design of four man-high, lead-alloy vases, each representing one of the four seasons; see also E. de Jong, Natuur en kunst, Neder­landse tuin- en landschapsarchitectuur 1650–1740 (dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 1993), pp. 185–6; and also S. Eriksen, Early Neo-Classicism in France (London: Faber and Faber, 1974), p. 33, in which he emphasises that making vases was at most a sideline activity for artists until 1750. Vases made of (semi-)precious stone such as agate were also very popular collectors’ items. 12 Hemsterhuis knew at least one antique ceramic vase, namely the so-called Vase of the Stadholder, which came into the possession of Frederick Count De Thoms at the end of the 1730s and was the first monumental amphora in a Dutch collection. Thoms’s collection came into the possession of Stadholder William V in 1751 and thus formed the basis of the antiquities collection with which Hemsterhuis was associated. 13 P. J. Mariette, Recueil des pierres gravées Du Cabinet du Roy (Paris 1750), p. 126, plate cxxvi. Mariette described this stone as a ‘Sculpteur travaillant à un vase’ and interpreted the stone as follows: ‘There have been artists of talent at all times, who in every profession are dedicated to a certain kind of work. This is a Greek sculptor, perhaps one of these famous workers of the city of Corinth or Delos, who excels at making many vases. On the ground, he leans forward and bends as much as he can, to be more involved in his work, and one observes his concern to place the chisel correctly before hitting it, so as to make those flutings which enrich the body of the vase.’ Besides Comte de Caylus and Jean-Jacques Barthélemy, Mariette was one of the greatest art collectors and one of the greatest authorities in the field of classical art in France. With this reference – and the optical displacement – Hemsterhuis shows how his book can be read and with whom he sees himself in conversation. 14 There is also a reference here to Hemsterhuis’s adage that feeling has almost been forgotten in our culture but that its essence still can be excavated. 15 See the copy in University Library, University of Amsterdam: Br. 4* J14. All the plates of the Letter on Sculpture were sold by Rey in an auction. 16 In Hemsterhuis’s Letter on Sculpture itself we find no explanation for the vignettes; this is true of almost all the vignettes in his writings, except for those that appear in Aristaeus. 17 Gem: Plaques of Antique and Other Carved Stones from the Brunswick Collection, in archive Vosmaer, Algemeen Rijksarchief Den Haag, inv. nr. 77. 18 The Dutch edition to which Hemsterhuis might have had access was Cesare Ripa, Iconologia of uytbeeldinghe des verstands (Amsterdam: Dirk Pietersz, 1644). 19 See Sonderen, Het sculpturale denken, pp. 82–3. 20 Cf. George van der Mijn’s ‘De “kunstkamer” van Cornelis Ploos van Amstel in zijn huis op de Binnenkant’ (1760), illustration in Laurentius et al., Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, p. 104, and Jacob Maurer’s ‘Een gezelschap van kunstliefhebbers op bezoek bij Ploos van Amstel’ (1764), in Laurentius et al., Cornelis Ploos van Amstel, p. 106, where, in front of the fireplace, stands a life-size plaster cast of the statue. 21 In the Letter on Sculpture Hemsterhuis advises the sculptor to use garments to make a sculpture decent (EE 1.72–3). The auction catalogue of Hemsterhuis’s estate shows that he possessed a plaster copy of the statue: J. van Sluis (ed.), Bibliotheca Hemsterhusiana. Het boekenbezit van Tiberius en Frans Hemsterhuis, met genealogie en bibliografie (Budel: Damon, 2001), p. 188, no. 12.

NOTES 277

22 See J. R. Hale, ‘Art and Audience: The Medici Venus c. 1750–c.1850’, Italian Studies 80 (1976), pp. 37–58. 23 Quoted from Hale, ‘Art and Audience’, p. 43. See E. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, ed. J. T. Boulton (London: Routledge and Kegan, 1958), p. 117. 24 L. ten Kate, ‘Discours préliminaire sur le beau idéal des peintres, sculpteurs, et poëtes, à l’occasion du livre de Mrs. Richardson’, in J. Richardson, Traité de la peinture, et de la sculpture (Amsterdam: Uytwerf, 1728; reprint Geneva: Minkoff, 1972), vol. 3, pp. xxiii ff. 25 Although Hemsterhuis describes her in the Letter on Sculpture as beauty at rest, in his letters he also interprets her as a prostitute. See Sonderen, Het sculpturale denken, passim. 26 W. Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty. Written with a View of Fixing the Fluctuating Ideas of Taste (London: Reeves, 1753). Available at https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/ search/​365314 (last accessed May 2023). 27 Hale, ‘Art and Audience’, p. 50. 28 The image is available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jean-Baptiste_ Greuze_-_Claude_Watelet_%281765%29.jpg (last accessed May 2023). 29 The painting was described by Diderot in his 1765 Salon in one of the shortest descriptions he ever gave: ‘He’s dull; he’s arrogant, he’s grim. This is the man; turn the canvas over.’ D. Diderot, Salon de 1765, ed. E. M. Bukdahl and A. Lorenceau (Paris: Hermann, 1984), p. 189. 30 M. Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Berkeley: University of California, 1980), passim. 31 Painted between 1772 and 1777 (Buckingham Palace, London); the image is available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Johan_Zoffany_-_Tribuna_of_the_Uffizi_-_Google​ _Art_Project.jpg (last accessed May 2023). 32 See D. J. Meijers, ‘Naar een systematische presentatie’, in E. Bergvelt et al. (eds), Ver­ zamelen. Van rariteitenkabinet tot kunstmuseum (Heerlen: Open Universiteit), p. 232. 33 Cf. the frontispiece in Roger de Piles’s Abrégé de la vie des peintres (1699), depicted in R. de Piles, L’idée du peintre parfait, ed. X. Carrère (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), on which, under the personification of painting, a putto is also depicted busy drawing a head in the midst of books. 34 Cf. W. Busch, Das sentimentalische Bild. Die Krise der Kunst im 18. Jahrhundert und die Geburt der Moderne (München: Beck, 1993), pp. 125–37. Busch discusses the secularisation of the female nude. Around 1800 the classical canon of female figures loses its authority and gives way to a stylisation of the nude that in part constitutes modern art. See also F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 316–17, who point out that in his Le Bain Turc (1865) the ‘superclassicist’ Ingres also shows two women representing the presence and absence of sexuality. 35 Cf. G. Mahieu and R. Docter, Amazones. Op Attische zwart- en roodfigurige vazen uit de zesde en vijfde eeuw v.C. Een bijdrage tot de iconografie (dissertation, University of Gent, 2e licentie wijsbegeerte, 2007–8), p. 110. 36 Plato, Philebus, trans. J. C. B. Gosling (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 51. 37 Cf. W. Busch, ‘Die Akademie zwischen autonomer Zeichnung und Handwerksdesign. Zur Auffassung der Linie und der Zeichen im 18. Jahrhundert’, in H. Beck et al. (eds), Ideal und Wirklichkeit der bildenden Kunst im späten 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Mann, 1984), pp. 189–90, in which he states that this separation only occurred with Asmus Jacob Carstens and Karl Ludwig Fernow in the 1790s. He views their work as the hour of birth of modern art. On abstraction in the art theory of the eighteenth century, see D. Morgan, ‘Concepts of Abstraction in French Art Theory from the Enlightenment to Modernism’,

278 NOTES Journal of the History of Ideas 53.4 (1992), pp. 669 ff., where he examines the relationship between Neoplatonism and the empirical in relation to modern art. The influence of Neoplatonism on nineteenth-century art theory is evident, but the discussion on abstraction was actually based on eighteenth-century empiricism, according to Morgan. Cf. M. A. Cheetham, The Rhetoric of Purity: Essentialist Theory and the Advent of Abstract Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. xii ff. 38 This action was the recapturing from the English in 1782 of an important naval base on Ceylon (Trincomalee), during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, by the French admiral Pierre André de Suffren de Saint-Tropez. The Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC) was delighted. In 1796, the island finally passed into the hands of England. See F. S. Gaastra, De geschiedenis van de VOC (Zutphen: Walburg 1991), p. 61. At the time, the VOC was in bad shape financially. In 1796 the VOC was nationalised. Hemsterhuis’s medal seems to have been its last impressive visual ‘sign’. 39 The second letter shows that one gold and three silver copies were minted, and that Hemsterhuis would have two or three more made in copper for himself. He also mentions here that Reinier Vinkeles made an engraving of it. In 1785 his friend, the coin and gem collector Van Damme, also received a copy: ‘See here the Medal of Suffren. I have wanted to depict the Dutch East India Company through this head. I hope that Your Honour will find it even better than the print thereafter made by Mr Vinckeles’ (B 12.145). There is also a bronze copy in the Maas collection (Royal Library, The Hague). 40 On Schepp and Hemsterhuis, see A. Staring, ‘De medailleur J. H. Schepp en Frans Hemsterhuis’, Oud-Holland 64 (1949), pp. 82–104. 41 In the Maas collection (Royal Library, The Hague). 42 The Latin texts read respectively: ‘societas. indicana. orientalis. foed. belg.’ and ‘inclyto. viro. d. suffren. regis. galliae. archi thalasso. fortissimo. ob. colonias. defensas. et. servatas. mdcclxxxiv.’ 43 On Hemsterhuis’s medal art and a description and interpretation of this medal, see M. Scharloo, ‘Neo-classicisme in de penningkunst. Drie creatieve geesten’, in F. Grijzenhout and C. van Tuyll van Serooskerken (eds), Edele eenvoud. Neo-classicisme in Nederland, 1765–1800 (Zwolle: Waanders, 1989), pp. 99–105, who also points out the similarity with a Roman aureus. On the iconography of the elephant, see among others, R. Rosenblum, Transformations in Late-Eighteenth-Century Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 133 ff. 44 When we compare Hemsterhuis’s design with earlier VOC medals like those by Regnier Arondeaux and Martin Holzhey, the simplicity and clarity of the style of the face is immediately apparent. See Gaastra, Geschiedenis, pp. 54, 62. 45 As illustrated, for example, in J. Shearman, Mannerism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967, 1987 reprint), p. 68, fig. 2, also available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Michelangelo_-_Ideal_head_of_a_woman,_1895,0915.493.jpg (last accessed May 2023). 46 Cf. also B 8.29, in which he reflects on two flower bulbs: ‘I shall be proud to have transplanted into your territories a new race which Nature seems to have created only in a moment of luxury to give us a sample of what she knows how to do in beauty’. 47 The fact that nineteenth-century anthropologists eventually adopted Camper’s visualisation of the facial angle as the best empirical evidence of their opinion that there are essential differences between races was an unexpected outcome. See M. C. Meijer, Race and Aesthetics in the Anthropolog y of Petrus Camper (1722–1789) (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999). Meijer provides an extensive treatment of Camper’s theory and its racist implications.

NOTES 279

See also S. J. Gould, ‘Petrus Camper’s Angle. The Grandfather of Scientific Racism Has Gotten a Bum Rap’, Natural History 96.7 (1987), pp. 12–18. 48 P. Camper, Verhandeling over het natuurlijk verschil der wezenstrekken in menschen van onderscheiden landaart en ouderdom; over het schoon in antyke beelden en gesneedene steenen. Gevolgd door een voorstel van eene nieuwe manier om hoofden van allerleye menschen met zekerheid te tekenen (Utrecht: Wild en Altheer, 1811), p. 90. 49 See A. M. Luyendijk-Elshout, ‘Petrus Camper als antropoloog’, in J. Schuller tot Peursum-Meijer and W.R.H. Koops (eds), Petrus Camper (1722–1789). Onderzoeker van nature (Groningen: Universiteitsmuseum, 1989), p. 67. On the significance of Camper’s research, see E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psycholog y of Pictorial Representation (Oxford: Phaidon, 1983), pp. 144–8. 50 Boerhaave’s portrait is applied as a low relief to the side of the pedestal. See Sonderen, Het sculpturale denken, passim. 51 F. Scholten, ‘Frans Hemsterhuis’s Memorial for Herman Boerhaave: A Monument of Wisdom and Simplicity’, Simiolus. Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 35.3/4 (2011), pp. 199–217. 52 Hemsterhuis’s role as a gravestone and vase designer did not conclude with the Boerhaave monument. He received another commission (for instance) to design J. G. Hamann’s tomb, who died in 1788 while staying in Gallitzin’s house. The austere design takes the form of a wreathed vase that was placed on two cube-shaped blocks of stone. The current monument is an 1851 restoration of the severely neglected original. It can be seen in Münster, Nordrhein-Westfalen, at the Überwasser-Friedhof cemetery, ­Wilhelmstrasse 21. 53 The image is available at https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/orbis:3294639 – image 2, recto (last accessed May 2023). 54 Rosenblum, Transformations in Late-Eighteenth Century Art, p. 179, note 120. 55 Sonderen, Het sculpturale denken, pp. 130 ff., 152. 56 A. M. Wilson, Diderot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 696: ‘Contemporary observers often spoke of Diderot’s conversation as being a pantomime’. 57 P. C. Sonderen, ‘Beauty and Desire. Frans Hemsterhuis’ Aesthetic Experiments’, British Journal of the History of Philosophy 4.2 (1996), pp. 330–2. 58 The announcement is made in the context of a possible gravestone design for Anna Maria Boreel, wife of his deceased friend François Fagel. Hemsterhuis writes about the urn: ‘If one were to make some reflections on the figures or proportions of the urn or its pedestal, which are not in the ordinary taste, it would take too long to give the required justification here. I intend to present it in a small work concerning the arts which I propose to publish.’ Familie-archief Fagel, inv. nos. 2647, 4923, 4828 and 170 (Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague); see IN, p. 181. 59 In B 7.50 Hemsterhuis describes the contents of a shipment intended for Gallitzin. It contained a black vase ‘which I got from Mylord Berburry [William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough] himself, on the opening of his factory. I was to pay him in vase designs according to my theory, but as I was still languishing in the deep night of ignorance in regard to vase-feet I made nothing of it.’ 60 J. J. Björnstähls reize door Europa en het Oosten (Utrecht: Van den Brink, 1778–84), vol. 5, p. 340; see Scholten, ‘Frans Hemsterhuis’s Memorial’, p. 210, n. 55.

280 NOTES Hemsterhuis as a European and Trans-Atlantic Political Theorist  1 M. J. Petry ‘Inleiding’, in F. Hemsterhuis, Waarneming en werkelijkheid (Baarn: Ambo, 1990), p. 38.   2 On this reception history, see, e.g., F. Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781–1801 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 364, 420, 430; H. B. Nisbet, Gottfried Ephraim Lessing: His Life, Works and Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 637; R. Otto, Studien zur Spinozarezeption in Deutschland (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1994), p. 240.   3 See further Petry ‘Inleiding’, pp. 47–8; J. van Sluis in OP, pp. 11–15; M. Wielema, ‘Frans Hemsterhuis: A Philosopher’s View of the History of the Dutch Republic’, Canadian Journal of Netherlands Studies 14.1 (1993), pp. 109–17.   4 G. May (ed.), François Hemsterhuis, Lettre sur l’homme et ses rapports avec le commentaire inédit de Diderot (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), pp. 436–8.  5 May, François Hemsterhuis, pp. 400–1.   6 See F. H. Jacobi, Schriften zum Spinozastreit, ed. K. Hammacher and I. Piske (Hamburg: Meiner / Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1998), vol. 1(1), pp. 36–7; M. Heinz, ‘Genuss, Liebe und Erkentneiss: zur frühen Hemsterhuis-Rezeption Herders’, in M. F. Fresco, L. Geeraedts and K. Hammacher (eds), Frans Hemsterhuis (1721–1790). Quellen, Philosophie und Rezeption (Münster: Lit, 1995), pp. 433–44; J. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution and Human Rights, 1750–1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 694–5.   7 G. E. Lessing, Gesammelte Werke, (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1956) vol. 8, pp. 631–2.   8 See E. Grucker, François Hemsterhuis: Sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris: Durand, 1866), pp. 252–3; H. Krop, Spinoza: Een paradoxale icoon van Nederland (Amsterdam: Prometheus Bert Bakker, 2014), p. 26.   9 See Petry, ‘Inleiding’, pp. 21–2, 39; G. Di Giovanni, ‘Jacobi and his Spiritual Landscape’, in G. Di Giovanni (ed.), Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: The Main Philosophical Writings (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1994), p. 47. 10 Krop, Spinoz, pp. 270–4. 11 Wielema, ‘Frans Hemsterhuis’, p. 60. 12 See Wielema, ‘Frans Hemsterhuis’, p. 58. 13 See Wielema, ‘Frans Hemsterhuis’, p. 59. 14 May, François Hemsterhuis, pp. 390–1; A. Strugnell, Diderot’s Politics: A Study of the Evolution of Diderot’s Political Thought after the Encyclopédie (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), pp. 190–1. 15 May, François Hemsterhuis, pp. 349, 352–5, 432–3; L. Crocker, ‘Diderot as Political Philosopher’, Revue Internationale de la Philosophie 38 (1984), p. 130. 16 A. Cherni, Diderot: l’Ordre et le devenir (Geneva: Droz, 2002), p. 478; G. Goggi, De l’Encyclopédie à l’éloquence républicaine: Étude sur Diderot et autour de Diderot (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2013), p. 241. 17 Van Sluis in OP, pp. 8, 33. 18 E. van Meerkerk, De gebroeders van Hogendorp. Botsende idealen in de kraamkamer van het Koninkrijk (Amsterdam: Atlas Contact, 2013), pp. 80–1. 19 J. W. Schulte Nordholt, The Dutch Republic and American Independence (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), pp. 259–61; J. Israel, The Expanding Blaze: How the American Revolution Ignited the World, 1775–1848 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 236. 20 Also quoted in Van Meerkerk, De gebroeders van Hogendorp, p. 101. 21 See Wielema, ‘Frans Hemsterhuis’, p. 59.

NOTES 281

22 May, François Hemsterhuis, p. 45. 23 May, François Hemsterhuis, p. 513; A. M. Wilson, Diderot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 716; R. Desné, ‘Frans Hemsterhuis, dit François’, in R. Mortier and R. Trousson (eds) Dictionnaire de Diderot (Paris: Champio, 1999), p. 222; M. Hobson, Diderot and Rousseau: Networks of Enlightenment (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011), p. 206. 24 Israel, The Expanding Blaze, pp. 51–2, 70–89, 132–4.

Letter on Fatalism 1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 15–21 / B 1.8. See also WW, pp. 638–51 and LSD, pp. 59–66. This is one of the first short treatises that Hemsterhuis addressed to Gallitzin, written on either 27 or 28 January 1776 (depending on whether one takes the date from the end of this letter or from the ‘Supplement to the Letter on Fatalism’, p. 122 above). It was written at the same time as the two were beginning to work on their critiques of materialism that would inform Sophylus. The Letter on Fatalism shows, more than any other of Hemsterhuis’s extant writing, his familiarity with some of the details of Spinoza’s Ethics; it also places him within a tradition of Dutch thinkers from Jarig Jelles (d. 1683) onwards who have discerned surprising affinities between Spinozism and Calvinism. Fresco also conjectures that Cicero’s De fato might be a key source (LSD, p. 59). Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin met each other in person many times a week during 1776 and so the references to Gallitzin’s own comments are seemingly from oral conversations. Melica’s Introduction above provides many of the details surrounding the content, intent and publication history of this text, including its discovery by R. Parigi. 2 This paragraph reconstructs, roughly, Spinoza’s Ethics IP14 (‘Whatever exists, exists in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God’) through to IP21 (‘Everything which follows from the absolute nature of some attribute of God had to exist always and infinitely’). 3 Hemsterhuis is referring to the eighteenth-century orthodox Calvinism in particular, for which the doctrine of predestination had become one of a sort of predetermination, that is, fatalism. As noted by Petry (WW, p. 837), the wording of this paragraph draws close to the sixteenth-century Confession of Faith by Guido de Brès (a student of Calvin), which influenced the Synod of Dort’s attack on Arminianism. The Letter on Fatalism is unusual for the extent to which Hemsterhuis engages with controversies in Christian theology and, furthermore, suggests some sympathy for the kind of Remonstrant critique of orthodox Calvinism that Hemsterhuis would have encountered in his friend, Cornelius Nozeman (1720–86), who had engaged in a bitter ‘Socratic War’ with the orthodox Calvinist Petrus Hofstede during 1768–9. Hemsterhuis’s own family had Arminian roots and his elder brother was baptised in an Arminian congregation. For more precise details on the Calvinist context and the Remonstrant echoes to this letter, see WW, pp. 836–9 and R. Bordoli, ‘Predestination and Fatalism’, in C. Melica (ed.), Hemsterhuis: A European Philosopher Rediscovered (Naples: Vivarium, 2005), pp. 231–40. 4 That is, from the perspective of the fatalist. 5 The reference is to EE 1.98–9. On the terms ‘velleity’ and ‘will’, see the Series Introduction above (p. xi). ‘Velleity’ is Hemsterhuis’s idiosyncratic term for the indeterminate willpower that adheres to the essence of each individual human. 6 Hemsterhuis makes the same comment in the Letter on Man and his Relations, EE 1.120–1. 7 Voltaire’s La Pucelle d’Orleans, from 1755, a controversial satire of the life of Jeanne d’Arc.

282 NOTES   8 ‘Passion’ is here intended in its archaic meaning (cognate with ‘passive’), as that which a thing suffers or undergoes. This is, of course, a loose interpretation of Newton’s Third Law of motion (‘for every action there is always opposed an equal reaction’).  9 That is, the fatalists’ reasoning to the conclusion that cause and effect coexist and Hemster­huis’s reasoning to the conclusion that they do not. 10 Wilhelm Jacob ’s Gravesande (1688–1742), Hemsterhuis’s early teacher, had provided a canonical discussion of causation in Introductio ad philosophiam, metaphysicam et logicam continens (1736), ch. VIII, §76–101. 11 This example resembles the famous billiard balls from David Hume’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 12 Hemsterhuis presumably means not so much sexual attraction as such than the sublimated notion of attraction he attributes to all homogeneous beings and theorises in the Letter on Desires. See also Trop’s Introduction in EE 1.45–6. 13 This letter was written prior to Hemsterhuis’s invention of the personae ‘Socrates’ and ‘Diotima’ in their correspondence, which occurred in early September 1776 (see B 1.42, 1.144). 14 This appendix was attached to the original letter. 15 The ‘I’ denotes the interrupting fatalist who is now speaking. 16 This precise demonstration is not obviously present in Hemsterhuis’s published works prior to 1776. 17 On this translation of ‘suite d’événements’, see note 8 to the Supplement to the Letter on Fatalism below. 18 According to Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, e.g., 354c–d, 382a–383a. 19 Hemsterhuis is alluding, of course, to, on the one hand, Spinoza’s denial of a specific faculty of willpower in the human (and so his denial of a notion of human freedom defined as the proper use of such willpower) and, on the other hand, his insistence on time as a property of the imagination. What Hemsterhuis seems to overlook, though, is that Spinoza – just like the late Hemsterhuis – has a more robust conception of ‘duration’ (as opposed to time) as a real property of existing things.

On Prayer 1 The translation follows the text established in B 4.82. This letter picks up and develops some of the more cryptic comments Hemsterhuis gives on prayer at the end of the Letter on Man (see EE 1.114–15, 135). For the immediate context, see the next note. 2 Dmitri Gallitzin, Gallitzin’s only son, then aged twelve. In responding to a no-longerextant letter from Gallitzin, Hemsterhuis had written on 10 October, ‘You speak to me of an irreligion or an insouciance which might be born from a weakness of Mitri’s; in our treatise on religion we could search out the value and the nature of this ill, and whether it could be capable of some remedies’ (B 4.72). Gallitzin responded on 7 November with a long, frank confession of her anxieties, as well as her general vision of the ­Christianity–philosophy relation, which begin as follows: ‘I will not be done unless I undertake to tell you everything that occupies me despite myself [for] the time has come to say something and decide something in relation to the religion of my children, and knowing my in­voluntary feelings on the subject of Christianity you can judge how I am torn between the impossibility of telling [the children] and explaining to them what I do not understand and the consequences that could follow for a weak and sensual soul like that of Mitri. Above all absolute irreligion […]’ (B II.172). It is to these comments that Hemsterhuis is rather elliptically responding.

NOTES 283

 3 See Letter on Man and his Relations, EE 1.114–15.   4 It is Hemsterhuis’s treatment of this question which is partly what makes the discussion in the Letter on Man so complicated – see above note.   5 The reduction of all religion to each individual’s relation to God is a methodological constant in Hemsterhuis’s work. He calls it a basic ‘axiom’ on p. 96 above.   6 Presumably Hemsterhuis is referring to intercessory prayers.   7 The extant letter breaks off at this point.

Letters on the History of Philosophy up to Spinoza   1 The translation follows the text established in B II.177. ‘Angelmodde’ was Gallitzin’s estate on the outskirts of Münster. This exchange of letters immediately follows the previous extract on prayer and provides a helpful sense of Hemsterhuis’s idea of Spinoza’s place in the history of philosophy prior to any deeper involvement in the German Spinozism controversy.   2 That is, crudely put, the doctrine that apparent causation in the world is merely the effect of each substance affecting itself in a manner that has been harmoniously arranged by God.   3 The translation follows the text established in B 4.86. See also LSD, pp. 288–90.  4 Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715); George Berkeley (1685–1753); Christian Wolff (1679–1754).   5 The French reads, ‘je trotte directement vers les petites maisons’ – an obscure idiom that no one has yet satisfactorily explained. It could be based on the Dutch idiom ‘heilige huisjes omverschoppen’, roughly translated as ‘to kill sacred cows’; but we follow Fresco’s suggestion (in LSD, p. 288) that it refers to a ‘lunatic asylum’. See further p. 202 above.   6 Compare Hemsterhuis’s description of Gothic art in the Letter on Sculpture, EE 1.70.   7 This is a constant complaint in Hemsterhuis’s writing (as well as within the moderate Enlightenment more generally) – see, e.g., Letter on Atheism, p. 102 above.   8 A substance derived from luminescent ‘Bologna stone’, which glows at night if it has been exposed to sunlight during the day.  9 Compare Hemsterhuis’s account of Descartes and (implicitly) Spinoza in the Letter on Atheism below, particularly the ‘1789-variant’ of the letter, which equally speaks of Descartes’s ‘laughter’ at those duped by his philosophy (pp. 120–1 above). 10 Central to this passage as a whole is the series of distinctions Hemsterhuis here draws between Spinozist ‘geometrical jargon’, Newtonian ‘raw geometry’ and a more universal ‘geometrical spirit’ whose potential is still to be realised within philosophy as a whole. 11 Pelops, son of Tantalus, was murdered and dismembered by this father, who attempted to feed the body to the gods. After Tantalus’s punishment, Zeus reassembled and resuscitated Pelops (with the exception of one shoulder that needed to be manufactured from ivory). 12 Franz von Fürstenberg. 13 The Greek for ‘Socrates’.

On Two Kinds of Theology 1 The translation follows the text established in B 5.92. Following her earlier confession of anxieties concerning the religious instruction of her children (extracted in note 2 above

284 NOTES

2 3

4

5 6 7

to ‘On Prayer’), Gallitzin carried on reflecting on her and her children’s relationship to Christianity – and this was a path that would lead her back to the Catholic communion in August 1786. Hemsterhuis’s response shows how he carefully positioned himself in relation to this trajectory. In her letter from 30 November, Gallitzin had concluded in passing: ‘Goodbye, I am in the midst of studying theology up to my ears’ (B II.240). The faculty of tact is one of the guiding threads of Hemsterhuis’s philosophical output and comes to the fore in the 1780s (with Hemsterhuis often promising Gallitzin ‘a treatise on tact’), after having first been thematised most substantially in Alexis (EE 2.142–3). This description of tact as ‘a rapid operation of all our faculties’ which might have been produced by natural mechanism or supernatural inspiration closely recalls the discussion in Alexis (see previous note). Contrast Hemsterhuis’s claim in Aristaeus, ‘The conviction of sentiment is of equal value to that of the intellect’ (EE 2.83). Letter on Man and his Relations, EE 1.113–15. Gallitzin’s response to this letter on 10 December is succinct and definitive: ‘My dear Socrates, the theology of the first kind will, I hope, occupy me my whole life. What I spoke of in one of my letters is what you call the historical’ (B II.243).

Letters on Knowing, Believing and Doubting 1 The translation follows the text established in B 7.56. This series of letters forms Hemsterhuis’s earliest and most extensive (if often indirect) response to the German Spinozism controversy, as well as serving as an opportunity for a full exposition of his late epistemology (it could have easily sat in Part Two of this volume). Along with the ‘Letters on Plato and the Sublime’, we have translated Gallitzin’s letters alongside Hemsterhuis’s as evidence of the genuinely collaborative project in which they were engaged during the 1780s. This exchange also occurs very shortly before Gallitzin’s formal re-entry back into Catholic communion on 28 August and so Hemsterhuis’s resistance to theological renderings of the term ‘believing’ should be understood in this context as well. 2 On 23 June, Gallitzin had sent Hemsterhuis two works both published in spring 1786: F. H. Jacobi’s Wider Mendelssohns Beschuldigungen, betreffend die Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza [Against Mendelssohn’s Charges concerning the Letters on Spinoza’s Doctrine] and Thomas Wizenmann’s Die Resultate der Jacobischen und Mendelssohnschen Philosophie: kritisch untersucht von einem Freywilligen [The Results of the Jacobian and Mendelssohnian Philosophy, critically investigated by an Impartial Judge]. Thomas Wizenmann (1759–87) was a close friend of Jacobi and had, in fact, been staying at Jacobi’s estate in Pempelfort during 1785. Although Hemsterhuis is unaware that Wizenmann is the author at the time of this exchange, he later finds out and mourns Wizenmann’s early death (B 8.20). Both of the above books are attempts to give Jacobi the final and victorious word in his polemic with Moses Mendelssohn (i.e., in the ongoing Spinozism controversy), in the wake of Mendelssohn’s death in January 1786. By this time, Hemsterhuis was very familiar with Jacobi personally and philosophically (he had carefully read the 1785 Spinoza-Letters – see p. 113 above) and so the book which had the most impact and forms the main subject matter for the following exchange is Wizenmann’s. At stake in the exchange is Jacobi’s and Wizenmann’s defence of the claim that Glaube is the foundation of all truths and the various implications of that claim depending on the translation of Glaube as belief (croyance) or faith (foi). Ironically, considering Hemsterhuis’s attitude here, Jacobi had relied heavily on Hemsterhuis’s Aristaeus to defend this claim. In particular, the exchange between

NOTES 285

Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin boils down to two issues: (1) the relation between belief and faith, that is, whether belief is a purely intellectual operation inferior to knowledge (Hemsterhuis’s original position) or whether it also designates a higher ‘sacred principle’ connected to faith (Gallitzin’s position); (2) the epistemic value of what is handed down through tradition, in terms of both historical narrative generally and Christian truth in particular. On this latter point, Gallitzin’s Catholic interpretation of the Jacobian position as valorising tradition as a source of revelation is to be contrasted with both Hemsterhuis’s Deism and Jacobi’s and Wizenmann’s Protestantism (articulated, in part, via Hemsterhuis’s published works).   3 Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86). This is presumably an ill-natured reference to Mendels­ sohn’s death in January 1786, prior to the publication of Jacobi’s and Wizenmann’s books.   4 Wizenmann’s book was published anonymously (although Gallitzin knew the author’s identity). Hemsterhuis had met J. G. Herder (1744–1803) in Weimar as part of his (and Gallitzin’s) trip through Germany in autumn 1785 and he had begun reading Herder’s Ideas that year as well (B 6.101–2).   5 John Craig (1663–1731), who was in fact Scottish, attempted, in his 1699 Theologiae Christianae principia mathematica, to apply probability theory to the question of the truth of the Gospels.   6 A reference to a passage in Alexis (EE 2.138–9) on the possibility of believing what is only indirectly given to the senses via a shadow.   7 The translation follows the text established in B III.117.   8 This interest should be understood within the framework of the reading course on historical theology Gallitzin had undertaken over the previous couple of years – see ‘On Two Kinds of Theology’, pp. 81–2 above.   9 The translation follows the text established in B 7.60. See also WW, pp. 372–6. 10 By ‘media’, Hemsterhuis intends what he more typically calls ‘organs’ – not just the physiological organs of sight, touch and so on, but the physical ‘vehicles of action’, like light, which transmit information to the subject. 11 In the sense of a historical narrative. 12 A reference once more to the passage on shadows in Alexis, EE 2.138–9. 13 Hemsterhuis seems to be collapsing into one not only Protestant interpretations of religi­ ous revelation as the personal infusion of truths, but also a kind of Platonic inspiration. 14 The purely intellectualist conception of faith and belief outlined here is precisely what will be interrogated by Gallitzin in what follows. 15 See ‘On Prayer’, p. 76 above. 16 That is, in these disciplines, inductive reasoning attains a degree of certainty comparable to direct sensation. 17 On Hemsterhuis’s idea of future, unactualised organs, see, for example, Diotima’s speech in Simon (EE 2.113–14). 18 An offence against the dignity of a state or monarch. 19 The form of scepticism associated with Pyrrho of Elis (c. 360–c. 270 bc) and Sextus Empiricus (mid-second century ce). 20 In accordance with early modern usage (through Locke and the Royal Society) and particularly ’s Gravesande’s work, Hemsterhuis is using ‘moral’ here in contrast to ‘mathematical’, in order to designate a form of sentimental certainty (rather than anything particularly ethical). See Aristaeus, EE 2.83. 21 That is, Jacobi’s Against Mendelssohn’s Charges and Wizenmann’s Results. 22 Gallitzin’s daughter, Marianne Gallitzin. 23 Euclid, Elements, Bk 1, Proposition 13: ‘If a straight line stands on a straight line, then it makes either two right angles or angles whose sum equals two right angles.’

286 NOTES 24 The translation follows the text established in B III.121. 25 See p. 83 above. (Hemsterhuis had, in fact, listed four points.) 26 Herodotus (c. 484 – c. 425 bc), Greek historian. 27 In this exact vein, Hemsterhuis wrote in the Letter on Man and his Relations of the moral organ as having ‘until now has no proper name and [being] commonly referred to as heart, sentiment, conscience’ (EE 1.105). 28 As opposed to man in the golden age, as described in Hemsterhuis’s Alexis (EE 2.135–6). Gallitzin is here referring to the dialogue’s identification of the advent of the moon with corruption and a Fall. 29 The metaphor of the ‘sack’ is also used by Hemsterhuis in the Prelude to the Letter on Atheism, pp. 97 below. 30 In a widely told story, Alexander the Great believed so much in the probity of his doctor, Philip of Acarnania, that he drank the medicine Philip had prepared despite receiving reports that Philip had been bribed to poison him. 31 See pp. 84–6 above. 32 The translation follows the text established in B 7.62. 33 See p. 87 above. 34 Hemsterhuis had already introduced this concept of tact in an earlier letter (see p. 81 above) and spoken of it likewise as a ‘rapid’ movement. 35 Jacobi and Wizenmann. 36 See Aristaeus, EE 2.92. 37 The ‘sacred principle’ that Hemsterhuis describes here approximates to his discussion of enthusiasm in Alexis, EE 2.142–3. 38 Hemsterhuis uses the French verbs ‘convaincre’ and ‘persuader’ and the corresponding nouns, ‘conviction’ and ‘persuasion’ (as in the English). 39 Presumably Euripides, Trojan Women, lines 885–8: ’You that support the earth and have your seat upon it, whoever you may be, so hard for human conjecture to find out, Zeus, whether you are the necessity of nature or the mind of mortal men, I address you in prayer! For proceeding on a silent path you direct all mortal affairs toward justice!’ (trans. D. Kovacs [London: Loeb, 1999], pp. 100–1). 40 Presumably in the post-Greek, pre-modern era that Hemsterhuis often associates with the ‘monstrous’ mixture of politics and religion; see, e.g., EE 1.106, and p. 105 above. 41 A reference to Gallitzin’s letter, p. 87 above. 42 See p. 88 above. 43 The translation follows the text established in B III.123. 44 Wizenmann’s Results. 45 The translation follows the text established in B 7.63. 46 That is, Gallitzin’s letter from 1 August. Hemsterhuis writes this before receiving Gallitzin’s letter from 7 August, and from this point onwards the exchange loses its linear character and becomes more fragmented. 47 The translation follows the text established in B 7.64. See LSD, pp. 406–9. 48 In what follows, Hemsterhuis connects different forms of the verb ‘appear’ back to his epistemological schema set out in the letter from 8 August. 49 Allusion to a well-known proverb taken from Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes, line 592: ου γὰρ δοκεῖνἄριστος αλλ᾿εἶναι, ‘not the appearance … but the reality’ (trans. A. H. Sommerstein [London: Loeb, 2008], pp. 212–13). This line became proverbial among ancient Greek authors and is reused by Plutarch, among others. See LSD, p. 409. It is recalled in Alexis II, pp. 242–3 above. 50 See p. 84 above. 51 The translation follows the text established in B III.124. It is a response to Hemsterhuis’s letter from 8 August.

NOTES 287

52 The word is illegible in the manuscript. 53 The editors of Gallitzin’s letters reconstruct what is a barely legible scrawl squashed against the margin of the page on an interpolated line as ‘+ 00 = 0’. From an examination of the original manuscript and in accordance with Hemsterhuis’s response below, we have amended the text. Hemsterhuis’s later response even suggests that ‘+∞ = a’ may have been what Gallitzin intended. 54 As will soon become clear, Gallitzin here picks up a categorisation found in Wizenmann’s text. 55 The second of Hemsterhuis’s categories from his letter of 8 August: ‘believing in a fact = x = a / x’ (p. 90 above). 56 The translation follows the text established in B III.125. 57 This is Gallitzin’s reaction to Hemsterhuis’s cryptic remark at the end of his letter of 10/11 August. 58 See Gallitzin’s comments in a previous letter – p. 84 above. 59 Much of the remainder of the exchange will focus on the different semantic extensities of the French ‘croire’ and the German ‘glauben’ and this difference will explain, to some extent, the rival positions of Hemsterhuis, on the one hand, who sharply distinguishes between ‘belief ’ and ‘faith’ in accordance with French, and the Germanophone Gallitzin, on the other, who does not. 60 The translation follows the text established in B 7.65. 61 This and what follows consist in a series of clarifications of Hemsterhuis’s epistemological schema sketched in his letter from 8 August, p. 90 above. 62 The translation follows the text established in B 7.66. 63 That is, Gallitzin’s letter from 13 August. 64 Wizenmann (although Hemsterhuis is unaware of the author’s identity). 65 A civil war in ancient Greece, 431–404 bc. 66 As mentioned above, one of the contexts to this strong claim is Gallitzin’s own re-entry into the Catholic communion ten days later. 67 See note 18 above. 68 The translation follows the text established in B 7.67. 69 A reference to the concluding remark of Gallitzin’s letter from 13 August, p. 92 above. 70 That is, his publications. 71 Wizenmann. 72 This is a qualification common in Hemsterhuis’s letters to Gallitzin; see, e.g., pp. 79–80 above. 73 This recalls the line from Letter on Man and his Relations: ‘No man is an atheist’ (EE 1.118). 74 The Roman emperor Caligula planned to make his favourite horse, Incitatus, consul. 75 That is, for Hemsterhuis, atheists can be understood only as individuals in a bestial state of nature who have not activated their properly human moral organ by which they become self-conscious, social and relate to God. 76 For the Letter on Man reference, see note 73 above. It is not so clear what precisely Hemsterhuis is referring to in Aristaeus and Alexis.

Prelude to the Letter on Atheism 1 The translation follows the text established in B 8.48. See LSD pp. 446–7. 2 In a postscript to her letter of 11 June, Gallitzin had asked, ‘Tell me, I pray you, what would be your philosophical definition of atheism?’ (B IV.146). She had been requested to do so by Jacobi (see note 1 to Letter on Atheism below).

288 NOTES 3 ‘Nisus’ signifies a tendency or energy proper to matter itself. It is a common term in Diderot’s late writings, notably in the 1770 Philosophical Principles of Matter and Movement and the entry on Hobbes in the Encyclopédie. 4 A reference to the translation of Alexis Jacobi had just sent to Gallitzin for correction. In her letter of 11 June, Gallitzin speaks of herself ‘completely occupied with correcting the translation of Alexis’ (B IV.146). See further note 47 to ‘Further Reflections on Spinoza and the Spinozism Controversy’ below.

Letter on Atheism from Diocles to Diotima 1 The Letter on Atheism was first composed on Gallitzin’s behest (see Prelude to the Letter on Atheism above), passing on a request from Jacobi ‘that you and others might think about how the concept of atheism could be philosophically and precisely determined … [in particular] you could move Hemsterhuis to likewise think about the philosophical determination of the concept of atheism’ (5 June 1787; in S. Sudhof (ed.), Der Kreis von Münster. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen Fürstenbergs, der Fürstin Gallitzin und ihrer Freunde [Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1962], vol. I, p. 361). The request led to Hemsterhuis’s most explicit and public intervention into the Spinozism controversy, even if it is one that does not mention Spinoza once. The first version of the letter was, according to Hemsterhuis, begun on 4 September 1787, written in a hurry and then sent to Gallitzin on 7 September. Full details of the context, content and publication history of Hemsterhuis’s response are to be found in Melica’s introduction above. Jacobi and Gallitzin were dissatisfied with this 1787 version of the Letter on Atheism and asked Hemsterhuis to improve it (see p. 118 above). He then revised the letter in January 1789 and returned it to Gallitzin on 3 February 1789. After further back-and-forth with Gallitzin and additional revisions (see pp. 118–21 above), Jacobi published the Letter on Atheism in the second (1789) edition of his Spinoza-Letters. In order to facilitate com­parison between the different versions, we print two of them facing each other on alternate pages in what follows. For the 1787 version, we follow the text established in IN, pp. 145–9 and for the later version, we follow the text established in OP, pp. 662–85. Bold text in the later version indicates Hemsterhuis’s changes and additions. The OP version is the final manuscript sent to Jacobi, which was canonised in Jansen’s 1792 edition of Hemsterhuis’s works and which subsequently influenced Hemsterhuis’s later readers. However, there are multiple intermediate variations in print, including the various 1789 versions Hemsterhuis submitted to Gallitzin and then revised (see IN, pp. 150–64, WW, pp. 744–55 and LSD, pp. 486–97) and Jacobi’s final transcription of the letter published in his Spinoza-Letters. We indicate any major instances of variation between them in the notes below. 2 A reference to James MacPherson’s 1762 Fingal: An Ancient Epic Poem, which imagined such an idyllic Gaelic past. 3 There is little agreement among commentators over which Demosthenes Hemsterhuis is here referring to: the Athenian politician and orator (384–322 bc) or the Athenian general during the Peloponnesian War (d. 413 bc). At any rate, one should conclude with Fresco that ‘this allusion is not particularly precise’ (LSD, p. 470). 4 Hence, monotheism is both chronologically and logically prior to polytheism in Hemsterhuis’s account. 5 According to Socrates’ Delphic motto, ‘Know thyself ’. 6 The French term Hemsterhuis uses is ‘les fibrillaires’, i.e., those who subscribe to the fibre as the basic building block of organic life – from Albrecht Haller to Charles Bonnet to Denis Diderot.

NOTES 289

  7 It is of course this type of atheism against which much of Hemsterhuis’s own output is directed and much of the language at this point in the letter recalls Hemsterhuis’s polemics in the Letter on Man and Aristaeus, for example.  8 Even though this second version of the Letter on Atheism was sent to Gallitzin on 3 February 1789, Hemsterhuis retains the original date of composition.   9 The Lares (and the related Penates) were Roman tutelary deities – household or guardian gods represented by small statues. Although of reputed Eastern origin, it is unclear why Hemsterhuis attributes them particularly to the Persians and Etruscans. 10 One of the main theses suggested in Alexis, EE 2.138. 11 The phrase ‘of the sun’ is missing from many of the 1789 variants. 12 Cf. Letter on Man and his Relations, EE 1.110–11. 13 A recurring theme in Hemsterhuis’s writings – see particularly Letter on Man and his Relations, EE 1.104. 14 All other 1789 variants follow the 1787 text here: ‘… this God became an object that purely his imagination and intellect could treat’. 15 In accordance with the ancient atomism of Leucippus or Democritus. 16 All other 1789 variants read ‘… some principle of intrinsic movement pertaining to its nature – a very occult quality! But they saw with their own eyes, so to speak, the principle…’. 17 Other 1789 variants shift this sentence to the end of the paragraph. 18 No other 1789 variant includes ‘of nature’ here. 19 The 1789 variants suggest a number of different options for this word, including most prominently ‘infinity’. 20 Other 1789 variants read ‘… politics which proceeds ever forward and never misses a step [and] which modifies…’. 21 Other 1789 variants add ‘generally’ here. 22 This is the only 1789 version of the letter to include this final clause on ‘order’. 23 The French is ‘esprit’, so ‘spirit’ is an equally plausible translation. 24 This and the following sentence constitute Hemsterhuis’s reference to Spinoza’s philosophy – a very indirect and implicit way to engage with Jacobi’s insistence that Spinozism is synonymous with atheism. 25 Other 1789 variants read ‘But for the ardent and fiery imagination, still untamed and unchecked, there is nothing obscure or impossible. The same effort which could compose a universe out of matter could make a God from it. This was not atheism, but a theism [that is] very difficult to understand.’ On this passage (which provoked objections from Gallitzin), see p. 119 above. 26 Other 1789 variants substitute ‘absent’ for ‘forgotten’. 27 This whole sentence is lacking in the version Jacobi published in his 1789 edition of the Spinoza-Letters. 28 Other 1789 variants read ‘…if our magnificent imaginations manage to guess the mechanisms…’. 29 Most other 1789 variants read ‘…Descartes, who apparently laughed in secret at the grotesque philosophy he had been obliged to form so as to achieve his goal…’. On this passage (which provoked objections from Gallitzin), see pp. 119–21 above. 30 The French term is ‘esprit’ (see also note 23 above). 31 Some 1789 variants add the following to the end of this paragraph: ‘and finally that, when one wants to speak fully of the real richness of the universe which is not only composed of essences which have direct relations to us and our organs, but very probably many others still, one must be aware of all the possible relations [that hold] between known and unknown real essences.’

290 NOTES 32 In 1789 (as opposed to 1787), Hemsterhuis signs himself with his publication persona ‘Diocles’, rather than using his private persona for correspondence with Gallitzin, ‘Socrates’. This suggests that he had begun to assume a wide circulation for this text.

Further Reflections on Spinoza and the Spinozism Controversy   1 Unlike every other text in this volume, the following consists of neither a single letter nor a discrete exchange of letters, but a selection of scattered extracts from a roughly six-year period in which Hemsterhuis engages with Spinoza’s legacy and particularly the fermenting Spinozism controversy in Germany provoked by Jacobi’s and Mendelssohn’s polemics. Considering how reticent Hemsterhuis is about employing the terms ‘Spinoza’ and ‘Spinozism’ elsewhere in his oeuvre, these extracts furnish the material for charting Hemsterhuis’s relationships with Spinoza, Jacobi and others, as well as providing more detail on the genesis of the above Letter on Atheism. See also, as a coda to this section, the letters from 1786 translated in F. Hemsterhuis, ‘Letters on Prometheus’, trans. D. Whistler, Symphilosophie 4 (2022), pp. 297–306.   2 The translation follows the text established in B 4.112–13. Although Jacobi had long been excited by Hemsterhuis’s work and tried to arrange a meeting with him as early as 1769, it was only in February 1781 that they finally met – and the enthusiasm Hemsterhuis felt at this new friendship is palpable.   3 See p. 112 above.   4 The translation follows the text established in B 12.191–2. This is one of Hemsterhuis’s first letters to Jacobi – a letter of introduction for Adrian Camper (see next note). It soon backfired when the young Camper proved unable to live up to Hemsterhuis’s introduction.   5 Adrian Gilles Camper (1759–1820), a gifted scientist in his own right who went on to become a curator at the University of Franeker. Petrus Camper (1722–89), the leading anatomist and physiologist, who had been one of Hemsterhuis’s closest friends since the early 1740s and, as Hemsterhuis here alludes, had organised royalist opposition to the radical patriots during the early stages of the Patriot Uprising, which had begun in 1781.  6 Abraham Cuffeler (c. 1637–94), the Dutch Spinozist. Hemsterhuis is referring to his Specimen artis ratiocinandinaturalis & artificialis ad pantosophiae principia manuducens, published in Hamberg in 1684. See further Hemsterhuis’s later description of Cuffeler’s work in B 6.14.   7 That is, after the advent of Newtonianism: Newton’s Principia was first published in 1687, ten years after Spinoza’s death.   8 The significance of this reference to Spinoza is primarily in what it provoked: Jacobi used it as an opportunity to write Hemsterhuis a long letter in return on 7 August 1784 (see p. 112 above) devoted to Spinoza’s metaphysics and taking the form of an imagined dialogue between a Spinoza who had just read Aristaeus and a fictional Hemsterhuis defending that work. This letter was reproduced in the 1785 Spinoza-Letters as the ‘Letter to Hemsterhuis’ and forms the doctrinal core of that work. See F. H. Jacobi, The Main Philosophical Writings and the Novel Allwill, ed. and trans. G. di Giovanni (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994), pp. 204–15.   9 The translation follows the text established in B 5.52. 10 Jacobi had been playing a large role in Hemsterhuis’s and Gallitzin’s correspondence of the time, because of his angry reaction to Hemsterhuis’s recommendation of Adrian Camper (see p. 110 above). The young Camper had turned out to be an unwelcome

NOTES 291

guest. The precise remark that Hemsterhuis here attributes to Gallitzin is no longer extant, but Jacobi had been suffering from severe bouts of depression around this time. 11 That is, the ongoing Patriot Uprising. 12 To Jacobi’s estate, Pempelfort, on the outskirts of Düsseldorf. 13 For a more detailed description of this ‘geometric education’, see ‘On Geometric Edu­ cation and Aesthetic Judgement’, pp. 167–9 above. 14 Hugo Grotius (1583–1643), Dutch political theorist. 15 Francis Bacon (1561–1626), British philosopher. 16 Hemsterhuis’s knowledge of Locke is somewhat of a mystery, since he later boasts of having read the Essay on Human Understanding for the first time as late as February 1787 (B 8.18). 17 The translation follows the text established in B 5.63. See LSD, pp. 323–4. 18 This was the letter of 7 August sent by Jacobi. See note 8 above. 19 Christoph Peter Schultz (c. 1740–1814), Hemsterhuis’s professional copyist. 20 Jacobi’s letter is framed as a dialogue between Spinoza and a fictional Hemsterhuis on Aristaeus. Jacobi’s conclusion is ambivalent: Spinoza might win the rational argument, but Hemsterhuis’s position remains the most compelling. As Fresco notes (LSD, p. 324), it is at this moment in his correspondence that, under Jacobi’s influence, Hemsterhuis switches from the orthography ‘Spinosa’ to ‘Spinoza’. 21 The translation follows the text established in B 6.13. 22 A significant portion of Hemsterhuis’s and Jacobi’s direct (and indirect) communication during the mid-1780s involved the procurement of this portrait of Spinoza which Hemsterhuis was able to attain for Jacobi. 23 This failure to reply properly to Jacobi’s letter on Spinoza will become a running theme of the correspondence. 24 That is, before Newton’s Principia. 25 The translation follows the text established in B 6.69. 26 The book is of course Jacobi’s Spinoza-Letters (Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses Mendelssohn), published in 1785. 27 On Hemsterhuis’s familiarity with Locke, see note 16 above. 28 That is, the ‘Letter to Hemsterhuis’ from Jacobi’s Spinoza-Letters. 29 The French is vague at this point, mentioning the need to talk about ‘le tour à prendre’, without specifying whether these are plans for a further trip to Germany or a more metaphorical ‘turn’. 30 Much of the early Spinozism controversy centred on Jacobi’s conduct in making widely known Lessing’s unpublicised opinions after his death (and so without his consent) in an unverifiable transcript of their private conversations at Lessing’s estate of Wolfenbüttel in 1780. 31 The translation follows the text established in B 7.2. See also LSD, pp. 367–8. 32 This passage suggests that Hemsterhuis had previously studied Spinoza’s Ethics closely, but no information is given elsewhere about any earlier readings. See Melica’s introduction (p. 4 above) for details of Hemsterhuis’s personal copy of the Opera posthuma. The fact that Hemsterhuis now takes the Ethics back up is presumably due to Jacobi’s letter to him and his increasing interest in the German Spinozism controversy. 33 By which Hemsterhuis means the Dutch Calvinists, in particular. 34 Polemical use of the term ‘imposter’ (as part of the long-running ‘three imposters’ thesis in early modernity) was made by Spinozists and anti-Spinozists alike. The classic formulation of Spinoza as ‘the greatest imposter of them all’ was made by Christian Kortholt, an early German critic of Spinoza, in his 1680 version of the formulation, De tribus impostoribus. Generally, it was a strategy used to contest the idea that Spinoza may

292 NOTES have been an example of a ‘virtuous atheist’. Notably, Hemsterhuis rejects this esoteric interpretation of Spinoza, whereas he frequently seriously entertains a relatively esoteric interpretation of Descartes (see, e.g., note 29 to Letter on Atheism above). 35 The translation follows the text established in B 7.29, pp. 85–6. 36 On 30 March (B III.90), Gallitzin had updated Hemsterhuis on recent developments in the Spinoza controversy, including Mendelssohn’s An die Freunde Lessing’s: Ein Anhang zu Herrn Jacobi’s Briefwechsel über die Lehre des Spinoza, which had just appeared, and Jacobi’s response (Wider Mendelssohns Beschuldigungen betreffend die Briefe über die Lehre des Spinoza), which was just then going to press and was going to play a crucial role in their epistemo­logical discussions over the summer (see the ‘Letters on Knowing, Believing and Doubting’ above). On 7 April, Gallitzin adds, ‘Jacobi has been charged with sending you everything which concerns the essentials of his literary quarrel and we will speak of it when you’ve read it all’ (B III.92). On 4 July, Hemsterhuis will tell Gallitzin that he had received and read Jacobi’s Wider Mendelssohns Beschuldigungen (alongside rereading the Spinoza-Letters), concluding ‘that our dear Jacobi is not guilty in any respect and that he has done only what any man would have or could have in his place’ and that ‘it seems like a little bit of prudishness or vanity in the Lady-confidante [Elise Reimarus] was the cause of all this commotion, for the matter does not appear to me as important as she seems to have believed’ (B 7.53; translated in Hemsterhuis, ‘Letters on Prometheus’, pp. 304–5). 37 See p. 111 above. 38 Gallitzin had alluded to Jacobi’s worries that Hemsterhuis may have been flirting with Spinozism on 7 April (B III.92), but – following this letter – she is quick to reassure Hemsterhuis on 14 April: ‘Jacobi no longer believes you to be a Spinozist, either in general or in part. He sees in [your works] only sentiments and assertions that conform to his, even if [they do so] without belonging to his sect at all’ (B III.93). What is at stake here is presumably Lessing’s identification of crypto-Spinozism in Aristaeus’s treatment of space as an attribute of God (EE 2.92–4). 39 The translation follows the text established in B 7.68, pp. 191–3. See also LSD, pp. 412–14. The following forms an appendix on a separate sheet enclosed within another letter to Gallitzin, so as to ensure its privacy. Fresco persuasively reads this letter as a grudging acceptance of Gallitzin’s earlier re-entry into the Catholic Church (in August 1786) – along the lines of the following reasoning: just as Hemsterhuis had previously accepted de Smeth’s Spinozist prejudice and did not admire or respect him any less personally, even though he disagreed with him, so too he has come to terms with Gallitzin’s and Fürstenberg’s Catholic prejudice (LSD, p. 412). 40 Franz von Fürstenberg. As Fresco points out, Hemsterhuis’s tone here is so careful as to be ambiguous: it seems to be making a point that is about both an individual person and humanity in general at the same time (LSD, p. 412). 41 Compare this account and the below with the treatment of prejudice in Alexis, EE 2.129–31. 42 Theodorus de Smeth (1710–72), Amsterdam banker and member of Hemsterhuis’s first philosophical circle – see EE 1.148 (note 2) for more details. This passage provides one of the only extant insights into Hemsterhuis’s intentions when writing his early publications. 43 This suggests that the ‘General remark’ appended to the Letter on Desires (EE 1.86–7) was an attempt on Hemsterhuis’s part to counteract De Smeth’s Spinozist reading. 44 As Van Sluis notes in his introduction to volume 1 of this series (EE 1.26), Hemsterhuis is presumably misremembering: De Smeth died on 17 November 1772 and the Letter on Man was published in early summer 1772. 45 See EE 1.115.

NOTES 293

46 The translation follows the text established in B 8.47. See also LSD, pp. 443–5. Hemsterhuis will begin writing the Letter on Atheism a few days after this letter. 47 Jacobi had passed his German translation of Alexis to Gallitzin for correction (see p. 97 above), prior to publication later that year. She writes, ‘[Jacobi’s] translation of your dialogue arrived yesterday; I am going to read it, compare it, examine it myself and give you my report. From what I’ve read it seems to me admirably well done, such that I would not have believed it a translation, if I hadn’t known’ (B IV.145). At this stage in Hemsterhuis’s reflections on the Spinoza controversy, the fate of Alexis ends up being tied to Jacobi’s own philosophical and polemical project. 48 Lucian of Samosata (c. 125–180 ce), Greek satirist and Hemsterhuis’s self-confessed favourite author. He says, for example, ‘He has been my favourite author for 40 years. He is infinitely enlightened. He is a greater dialogist than Plato. He is a finer satirist than Horace and Boileau and Pope, etc. His is a mind which is implicated in everything. He possesses nearly all styles to the greatest perfection, and in this he approaches Plato the most’ (B 9.36). Lucian’s influence is present throughout the published and unpublished work – for instance, the reported fight between the philosophers Callicles and Chrysothemis in Alexis (EE 2.130–1) echoes the one between Euthydemus and Hermotimus’s teacher in Lucian’s Hermotimus or Concerning the Sects (in How to Write History and Other Works, trans. K. Kilburn [London: Loeb, 1959], pp. 281–3). More generally, Hemsterhuis finds affinity with Lucian’s rejection of -isms (‘the best and safest plan for everyone at the beginning is to make his own way through every system’ [How to Write History, p. 349]) and his recommendation of a detached and aesthetic approach to writing history. Hemsterhuis could well affirm Lucian’s sentiment that ‘before everything else’ the historian should ‘let his mind be free, let him fear no one and expect nothing’ (How to Write History, p. 53). 49 Jacobi’s David Hume über den Glauben, oder Idealismus und Realismus, published in 1787. 50 Jacobi’s 1785 Spinoza-Letters and his 1786 Wider Mendelssohns Beschuldigungen. 51 The translation follows the text established in B 8.60. 52 J. G. Herder, Gott – einige Gespräche über Spinoza’s System nebst Shaftesbury’s Naturhymnus [God – Some Conversations], published in Gotha in 1787. 53 Franz von Fürstenberg. 54 Hemsterhuis, along with Gallitzin and Fürstenberg, had visited Herder in Weimar in Autumn 1785. 55 The translation follows the text established in B 8.63. 56 See note 52 above. 57 See note 54 above. 58 The translation follows the text established in B 12.150. 59 Hemsterhuis here focuses on Jacobi’s role in creating an audience for his works in Germany, particularly by distributing them to major intellectual figures of the time such as Lessing and Goethe. 60 Hemsterhuis had made these kinds of remarks on the impossibility of translation at the conclusion to the Letter on Sculpture (EE 1.75) and certainly reacted badly to Blanken­ burg’s earlier attempt to translate his works. Nevertheless, Hemsterhuis had himself undertaken translation projects, including Plato’s Symposium. 61 A reference to the conclusion of the Patriot Uprising during the mid-1780s. 62 Hemsterhuis once more admits failing to respond properly to Jacobi’s long letter from 7 August 1784 on Spinoza. 63 The translation follows the text established in B 9.72. pp. 154–5. See also LSD, pp. 479–81. The letter consists of Hemsterhuis’s agreement to correct the 1787 version of the Letter on Atheism according to Jacobi’s concerns.

294 NOTES 64 Jacobi had sent Gallitzin a letter on 8 December requesting revisions to the Letter on Atheism. Gallitzin forwarded it on with her letter of 18 December (B IV.215). 65 Fresco reads the manuscript here as ‘s’enroler’ (rather than ‘s’envoler’), i.e., ‘to enlist [others to his cause]’. 66 Again, Hemsterhuis laments not having responded to Jacobi’s letter from August 1784. 67 The source of this reference to Achilles is untraced. 68 This is a repetition of Hemsterhuis’s claim in Sophylus: ‘There are only two philosophies in the world in which truths occur and in which the mind is not corrupted: the Socratic and the Newtonian’ (EE 2.47). 69 As Hemsterhuis goes on to note, it is to this letter that he is appending his Letter on Optics, pp. 155–61 above. 70 The translation follows the text established in B 10.20. See also LSD, pp. 498–504. This letter consists of Hemsterhuis’s responses to Gallitzin’s comments on a preliminary 1789 revision of the Letter on Atheism (the variants of which are recorded in the endnotes to the Letter on Atheism above). 71 This letter is printed in B III.173. Gallitzin acknowledges receipt of ‘your MSS on Atheism’, praises it as ‘admirable’ and then goes on to list ‘a couple of small doubts’, which, as Hemsterhuis notes, revolve around his presentation of Spinozism and his presentation of Descartes. 72 That is, the preliminary 1789 revision of his Letter on Atheism. 73 The passage from the previous draft of the Letter on Atheism in question reads: ‘But for the ardent and fiery imagination, still untamed and unchecked, there is nothing obscure or impossible. The same effort which could compose a universe out of matter could make a God from it. This was not atheism, but a theism [that is] very difficult to understand’ (see note 25 to the Letter on Atheism above). 74 That is, only by understanding Pythagoras’s homeland can you understand his philosophy. 75 In her letter from 3 March, Gallitzin had linked Hemsterhuis’s attribution of a cryptic theism to Spinoza in the Letter on Atheism with Herder’s recent reinterpretation of Spinozism as a dynamic theism in God – Some Conversations. Gallitzin continues that Herder’s Spinozism ultimately degenerates into ‘a pure atheism’ – ‘But you couldn’t, it seems to me, want to attribute such an artificial disfiguration, transformation of Spinozism to Spinoza’s own system?’ (B III.173). 76 Hemsterhuis, of course, stands in a long eighteenth-century tradition of refusing to name Spinoza when refuting him. 77 See p. 114 above and accompanying note. 78 See note 73 above. 79 Abraham Cuffeler (see note 6 above) would be one such example. See LSD, p. 501. 80 On this point, see generally H. Krop, Spinoza. Een paradoxale icoon van Nederland (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2014), pp. 129–43. 81 Lucretius (c. 99 – c. 55 bc) and Epicurus (d. 270 bc): both assert the indifference of the gods to the world and to human affairs. 82 Lucretius, De rerum natura, book II, lines 646–51: ‘For the very nature of divinity must necessarily enjoy immortal life in the deepest peace, far removed and separated from our affairs; for without any pain, without danger, itself mighty by its own resources, needing us not at all, it is neither propitiated with services nor touched by wrath.’ (translated by W. H. D. Rouse and revised by Martin Ferguson Smith [London: Loeb, 1992], pp. 146–7). 83 This paragraph is written in the margin of the above quotation. 84 Diagoras of Melos (fifth century bc), proverbially associated with atheism in antiquity. The plagiarism anecdote Hemsterhuis tells was transmitted via the entry on Diagoras in the Byzantine Suda.

NOTES 295

85 As becomes clear, Hemsterhuis seems to have had some personal relationship with La Mettrie (1709–51), who stayed in Leiden from May 1747 to January 1748. They both matriculated as students at Leiden University, Hemsterhuis in June and La Mettrie in July 1747. 86 Both Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin had met with Diderot extensively during his journeys through the Dutch Republic in 1773–4 and he is a constant object of fascination in their correspondence. See On Diderot’s Style, pp. 179–81 above. 87 That is, the Letter on Atheism. 88 ‘Pag. 12’ refers to the pagination of the original manuscript of the Letter on Atheism – see note 29 to the Letter on Atheism above. 89 The reference is to Descartes’s letters to Elisabeth, Princess Palatine of Bohemia (1618– 80), written between 1643 and his death in 1650.

Supplement to the Letter on Fatalism 1 The translation follows the text established in B 9.33. See also LSD, pp. 475–8. 2 See pp. 71–5 above. On the dating of the Letter on Fatalism, see note 1 to Letter on Fatalism above. 3 Hemsterhuis had brought up the Letter on Fatalism in a letter dating from 21 April (B 9.72), in which he writes, ‘You remind me of the old Letter on Fatalism. I possess a copy of it. I am going to reread it as soon as possible with care, for I remember that, when rereading it 5 or 6 years ago, I encountered in it for the first time a passage which displeased me, by a sophistic air, by an obscurity which requires clearer expressions or by a real sophism. The great importance of the subject matter and its abstraction, which is not for every mind, joined to the great truths elsewhere found in this letter, demand that you and I both examine it, from their own perspective with the greatest care. I am going to put on Aristarchus’s inexorable demeanour, and you will know as soon as I have the results.’ Hemsterhuis then wrote to Gallitzin in his next letter, on 25 April (B 9.73): ‘I have read the Letter on Fatalism with much attention. It is honestly quite abstract and it is clear that it must not be read to people who understand nothing of Necker’s book [Jacques Necker, De l’importance des opinions religieuses, 1788]. I did not find any shadow of sophism there, but I confess that there are passages which would require more clarity and more detail for minds which are not [at least] mediocrely accustomed to high metaphysics. Moreover, towards the end, the paragraph which begins, “For those who take the trouble, etc.” and which ends with “the profound and unfortunate Spinoza”, must be turned upside down, although everything in it is true; and I even imagine that we could in this passage draw from what precedes it a robust demonstration of the real and necessary existence of willing agents [velleités] or subordinate acts of will [volontés]. I will try to give this letter all the clarity of which it seems capable to me.’ The mention of Aristarchus (in the above and in the present letter) seems to allude to a general attitude of critical attention to style that both Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin associate with (presumably) Aristarchus of Samothrace (c. 215–c. 143 bc), the famous philological critic of Homer’s poetry. 4 See previous note. 5 See further B 8.13 for Hemsterhuis’s remarks on this method of ‘taking this idea and pushing it as far as it can go and even to the absurd and the extravagant’, where he describes it ‘as the true key to opening the path that leads to what is original … and sometimes even the truly sublime’. 6 See pp. 72–3 above.

296 NOTES 7 That is, Hemsterhuis when he thinks in this manner. The coexistence of cause and effect is the major point at issue in the original Letter on Fatalism – see p. 73 above.   8 We have translated ‘suite d’evénéments’ as ‘concatenation of events’ to distinguish it from the phrase ‘succession of events’ (‘succession des evénéments’), which Hemsterhuis also uses here and in the original Letter on Fatalism (see p. 75 above). By ‘suite’, Hemsterhuis is designating the property of one event following on from another and, since English lacks the term ‘followingness’, we have opted for this technical substitute, although the fact that it is far more technical than Hemsterhuis’s own French should be borne in mind in what follows.   9 See p. 75 above. 10 These conceptual distinctions are developed by Hemsterhuis in his mathematical work ‘On the Incommensurable’, pp. 139–41 above. 11 That is, by way of organs – see note 10 to ‘Letters on Believing, Knowing and Doubting’. 12 Franz von Fürstenberg. 13 Hemsterhuis never fulfilled this ambition.

On the Reality of Appearances 1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 29–32. See also WW, pp. 130–6 (we have relied significantly on the notes in WW for many of the texts in this part of the volume). Its date of composition is unknown, but it clearly bears relation to the preparatory work Hemsterhuis was doing for Sophylus during the early stages of his friendship with Gallitzin, in 1776 and 1777. The attack on idealism that motivates the second half of the treatise is presumably directed against the immaterialism of George Berkeley (1685–1753), but René Descartes (1596–1650) seems to be a target too, since Hemsterhuis will end up espousing an anti-Cartesian model of perception according to which no sense impression is ever entirely erroneous. As Petry points out (WW, p. 764), Hemsterhuis owned heavily annotated copies of both Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy and Berkeley’s Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. 2 This passage is echoed in Sophylus, EE 2.48. 3 Hemsterhuis presumably intends ‘CB’ here, since ‘A’ has turned into ‘C’. 4 This passage recalls Molyneux’s problem, i.e., William Molyneux’s question to John Locke: suppose a person born blind learns to distinguish a cube and a ball by touch; when she suddenly regains her sight, will this allow her to distinguish these objects by sight? This problem would have been well known to Hemsterhuis, since it was explicitly addressed in Berkeley’s Treatise (Bk 1, §43), in ’s Gravesande’s Introductio ad philosophiam, metaphysicam et logicam continens (1736, §508) and in Camper’s Dissertatio optica du visu (1746, Bk 2, §1). 5 Hemsterhuis here uses the mathematical notation for analogy: ‘Bx’ is to ‘x’ as ‘By’ is to ‘y’ and as ‘Bz’ is to ‘z’. The next few paragraphs construct Hemsterhuis’s realism on such analogical reasoning. 6 This paragraph and surrounding paragraphs follow the argumentation of Sophylus (EE 2.51), in which Sophylus tries (incorrectly, according to Hemsterhuis’s representative, Euthyphro) to argue from the analogy of appearance and being to the identity of appearance and being. It is worth noting, in contrast, Descartes’s position in the Principles: perceptions ‘normally tell us about how external bodies may harm or help this mind– body combination; they don’t often show us what external bodies are like in themselves, and when they do it’s only by accident. If we bear this in mind we’ll find it easy to set aside prejudices acquired from the senses, and use the intellect alone, carefully attending to the ideas implanted in it by nature’ (Bk 2, §3; trans. J. Bennett).

NOTES 297

  7 The French is ambiguous here: ‘this thing’ is also a possible translation, although the end of the paragraph suggests Hemsterhuis is referring to essences.  8 This position is perhaps more radically anti-Cartesian than anything developed in Hemster­huis’s published works, and indeed seems in tension with the models for perception developed in the Letter on Sculpture (EE 1.62) and the Letter on Optics (pp. 158–60 above). Sense impressions can never be entirely incorrect, just limited, and while the judging intellect might supplement these impressions, its role is never to correct them.   9 Hemsterhuis usually refers to the Parisian materialists with this kind of phrase, but on this occasion the reference is presumably (although very vaguely) to someone like George Berkeley. 10 A claim that recurs in Hemsterhuis’s published work, e.g., Sophylus (EE 2.48). 11 This is the key principle established in the Letter on Fatalism, p. 73 above.

On the Relations of Matter and Soul 1 The translation follows the text established in B 1.135. See also LSD, pp. 114–17. This letter serves as a development of the conclusions Hemsterhuis reaches in the final part of Sophylus concerning ‘how what we call the immaterial acts on matter’ (EE 2.61). Here, Hemsterhuis makes use of the same examples, but is further interested in the ways material bodies affect non-material faculties of the mind (or soul) as well. 2 The Treatise on the Immaterial and its Continuation were manuscripts Hemsterhuis wrote for Gallitzin as preparation for Sophylus. They are incorporated verbatim into both the ‘Clarifications to the Letter on Man’ (EE 1.130–3) and Sophylus itself (EE 2.57–60), so we have not reproduced them in this volume. The present letter was stored in Gallitzin’s papers attached to these two treatises. 3 The same example is used in Sophylus (EE 2.59). 4 The same example is used in Sophylus (EE 2.54). 5 This language of shedding the coverings that separate the material and the immaterial is employed at the end of both Aristaeus and Simon (EE 2.98, 2.121). 6 Pierre-Gédéon Dentan (1750–80), Genevan governor of Gallitzin’s children and disciple of Bonnet, dubbed ‘Lysis’ and the third member of Hemsterhuis’s and Gallitzin’s intimate circle (before his return to Geneva).

Fragment on Physics 1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 41–4 / B 1.8. See also WW, pp. 214–18. The letter is not dated, but was discovered in a box of archive materials labelled 1773–7 – see Hemsterhuis, Opere, ed. and trans. C. Melica (Napoli: Vivarium, 2001), p. 171; Petry dates it to c. 1777 (WW, p. 773). 2 While Hemsterhuis uses the French ‘tôtals’ here, his conception of physical bodies draws very close to his use of ‘unit’ or ‘unity’ to articulate a whole in his mathematical treatises – see p. 135 above. 3 This is an argument against materialism that Hemsterhuis deploys more fully in the Letter on Man, EE 1.94–5. It is a common argument in the tradition used extensively by ’s Gravesande (e.g., in Introductio ad philosophiam) and with roots in Plato’s Timaeus. 4 This is once again a common move against materialism in the eighteenth century and is particularly common in ’s Gravesande’s work.

298 NOTES 5 Following Newton, Principia, III, Rule 3 – or, as Newton puts it in his letter to Bentley of 17 January 1692: ‘You sometimes speak of gravity as essential and inherent to matter: pray do not ascribe that notion to me, for the cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know’. 6 The mathematical notation for the analogy ‘PA’ is to ‘PB’ as 1 is to 2. 7 This claim has its origins in Johannes Kepler’s work, but was popularised in the eighteenth century in optics by Pierre Bouguer (1698–1758).

On Divisibility to Infinity 1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 53–7. See also WW, pp. 196–203. It is unclear when the text was written. Petry thinks it was written in 1776 (WW, p. 770), but it could easily have been 1778–9. All that is clear is that Hemsterhuis is referring to it by September 1779 (B 2.37). The treatise was sent to J. W. Goethe in 1807, after both Hemsterhuis’s and Gallitzin’s deaths and it remained in his possession. Hemsterhuis’s expertise in mathematics had numerous origins – from his father’s mathematical studies to his own early training as a military engineer. As Petry emphasises (WW p. 770), he possessed a number of editions of Euclid’s Elements and commentaries on them, and what follows is in constant dialogue with Euclid. However, Hemsterhuis was not unaware of contemporary developments in mathematics to which this treatise is also responding, for example concerning the status of differential calculus – or what Bernard Nieuwentijt called ‘analysis of the infinite’ (in his 1695 book of that name). See A. Moretto, ‘Hemsterhuis on Divisibility and Incommensurability’, in C. Melica (ed.), Hemsterhuis: A European Philosopher Rediscovered (Naples: Vivarium, 2005), pp. 67–83. 2 Hemsterhuis uses the French ‘unité’ throughout to designate ‘unit’, and the strong connotation in the French of a unity or whole should not be lost in what follows: a unity is something which is one and therefore – as unity – cannot be understood in terms of any parts. He is also drawing on Euclid’s definition of ‘unit’ as ‘that by virtue of which each of the things that exist is called one’ (Bk VII, Def. 1). 3 Following Euclid’s Elements (Bk 7, Def. 2): ‘A number is a multitude composed of units’. 4 While much of Hemsterhuis’s analysis recalls Newton’s claims in the Principia that duration is indivisible, this suite of distinctions between time and duration, on the one hand, and extension and space, on the other, also recalls Spinoza’s similar distinctions (e.g., Ethics, II D5). Noticeably, these distinctions are not particularly discernible in Hemsterhuis’s early works, which employ ‘time’ and ‘duration’ seemingly indifferently (e.g., EE 1.67). 5 At stake here and in the following treatise is Hemsterhuis’s ambivalent attitude to ­Aristotle’s prohibition on metabasis eis allo genos, i.e., the direct transposition of concepts from one science to another. This attitude is particularly pertinent considering Hemster­ huis’s own methodological tendency to use terms drawn from physics in ethics, etc. (discussed programmatically in ‘Letters on Plato and the Sublime’, pp. 197–9 above). However, it is likely that he had most in mind naïve applications of mathematical method to theological and philosophical problems as found in, e.g., John Craig’s work (see note 5 to ‘Letters on Knowing, Believing and Doubting’ above). 6 Hemsterhuis’s emphasis on units as ‘unities’ seems to disqualify any notion of irrational numbers, e.g., π, as ‘numbers’. 7 Generally, a cissoid is a curve formed out of two existing curves, but Hemsterhuis could well be thinking of a specific instance, ‘the cissoid of Diocles’, which generates an asymptote. This figure interested Newton and had been transmitted into Western

NOTES 299

modernity via Eutocius’s commentary on Archimedes. However, Hemsterhuis’s direct source is John Wallis (1616–1703) and particularly his short treatises on the cissoid from 1659.   8 This is because, of course, any such line from CD to the centre would have to intersect AB and all lines intersecting AB have already been constructed.   9 Euclid’s definition in the Elements (Bk I, Def. 1) reads, ‘A point is that which has no part’. 10 On the contrary, in the Elements Euclid had defined a straight line as ‘a line which lies evenly with the points on itself ’ (Bk I, Def. 4).

On the Incommensurable   1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 58–61. See also WW, pp. 204–11. The date of composition is unknown, but in August 1779 Gallitzin gave it to Caspar Zumkley (1732–94), Professor of Mathematics in Münster, asking for comment (B IV.74, IV.76). It is clear that this treatise was intended as a direct continuation of On Divisibility to Infinity and takes up many of the same concerns, particularly the advantages and disadvantages of the metabatic use of concepts (see On Divisibility to Infinity, note 5 above).   2 That is, according to On Divisibility to Infinity.   3 Following Euclid’s Elements (Bk 10, Def. 1): ‘Those magnitudes are said to be commensurable which are measured by the same measure, and those incommensurables which cannot have any common measure’.   4 Following Hemsterhuis’s definition of the line in terms of a distance between two places in the previous treatise. He will set out these definitions once again in a few sentences’ time.   5 Hemsterhuis is drawing loosely on Euclid’s Elements (Bk 10, Def. 2): ‘Straight lines are commensurable in square when the squares on them are measured by the same area, and incommensurable in square when the squares on them cannot possibly have any area as a common measure’.   6 As becomes clear, Hemsterhuis is opposing the properties of two-dimensional length to those of three-dimensional volume, which Euclid, for example, treats in two very separate parts of the Elements (divided by the opening to Bk 11).   7 Plato is another key source for Hemsterhuis’s claims on mathematics here. See, e.g., Theaetetus (147d): ‘Squares containing three square feet and five square feet are not commensurable in length with the unit of the foot’.   8 According to Aristotle’s scattered remarks on Pythagoras, e.g., Metaphysics 986a.   9 That is, these figures correspond to the lengths of the three sides of the triangle. 10 Once again, it is worth emphasising that Hemsterhuis is excluding irrational numbers as ‘numbers’ with basal units.

On Loss of Imagination 1 The translation follows the text established in B 3.33. This letter is a particularly clear example of Hemsterhuis’s experimental psychology, i.e., his use of introspective insight for speculative ends. The correspondence with Gallitzin is full of both parties performing these kinds of experiments on themselves to further their metaphysical psychology. 2 It is not clear what prompts Hemsterhuis’s line of thought here, since few of Gallitzin’s letters from this period have survived.

300 NOTES 3 It would be equally possible to translate the French as ‘I have had some extremely curious experiences’. 4 By ‘vehicle’, Hemsterhuis is referring to mediating phenomena like rays of light which communicate an external essence to the sense organs.

An Analogy between the Formation of the Body and of the Soul 1 The translation follows the text established in B 5.12. This letter is illuminating for two reasons. First, it testifies to Hemsterhuis’s abiding interest in the life sciences and embryology in particular. The study of organic life had been one of the young Hemsterhuis’s passions during the 1740s and, despite its relative absence from the correspondence and its compressed treatment in the published work, it still formed a key topic of conversation with Gallitzin around 1780. Secondly, this letter presents good examples of Hemsterhuis’s sense of humour and the extent to which he philosophises in his correspondence by way of irony, folly and the ridiculous. He was never shy of pursuing an idea that sounded prima facie stupid, like ‘the placenta of the soul’, to the bitter end to see if anything intellectually worthwhile could be wrung from it. 2 This letter was written during a period when both Hemsterhuis in The Hague and Gallitzin in Münster were suffering from bouts of illness and melancholia. 3 Hemsterhuis’s claim here also bears on his rejection of metempsychosis in correspondence; see pp. 194–5 above. 4 See Letter on Man, EE 1.100–3, and Aristaeus, EE 2.81, as well as, e.g., B 2.44 for a suggestion that embryology was a key early topic of conversation between Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin. 5 See EE 2.55. 6 In this letter (as well as in the Letter on Optics), we translate ‘cervelet’ technically as ‘cerebellum’ to bring out the distinction Hemsterhuis draws with ‘cerveau’ (brain). Elsewhere, Hemsterhuis seems less precise with this vocabulary and we have translated accordingly. 7 Reference to a well-known story told by Apuleius in his Metamorphoses. The god Amor fell in love with a mortal king’s daughter, Psyche, and was able to marry her after Zeus made her immortal through drinking from a cup filled with ambrosia.

Letter on the Rotation of the Planets 1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 129–36 / B 5.23 annexe. See also WW, pp. 232–45. This is one of three surviving texts by Hemsterhuis devoted to astronomy. The others are a fragment, On Astronomy (IN, pp. 41–52; WW, pp. 220–31), and a letter, On the Motion of the Sun and its Planets (IN, pp. 137–40 / B 5.30; WW, pp. 246–53). We have chosen to include the following as representative of Hemsterhuis’s wider interest in the science of astronomy because of its explicit discussion of Alexis and its hypothesis concerning the origin of the moon. The question of the necessity of rotational motion dealt with in this letter was a live issue in late eighteenth-century astronomy, motivated in part by Newton’s unsatisfactory explanation of it in Part III of the Principia. It is likely that Hemsterhuis had the Astronomie of J. J. Lalande (whom he had met in 1774) particularly in mind. 2 Hemsterhuis is referring primarily to the Astronomia nova of Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) and Newton’s discussion of Kepler in Part I of the Principia.

NOTES 301

  3 Christoph Scheiner (c. 1573–1650), German astronomer; Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), Italian astronomer and physicist. They composed treatises on the observation of sunspots within a year of each other (1612 in Scheiner’s case and 1613 in Galileo’s).   4 Presumably a reference to Hemsterhuis’s own design and production of telescopes and the observatory that he had constructed in The Hague.   5 Francesco Bianchini (1662–1729), Italian astronomer, who published his demonstration on the length of Venus’s day in Hesperi et phosphori nova phaenomena in 1728; and Giovanni Dominico Cassini (1625–1712), Italian–French mathematician and astronomer, whose observations appeared in Disceptatio apologetica de maculis Jovis et Martis in 1667.   6 Christiaan Huygens (1629–95), Johann Bernouilli (1744–1807), Jean-Jacques d’Ortous de Mairan (1668–1771), all writers of mathematical treatises that touched on planetary motion. See note 9 below.   7 See note 9 below.   8 Johann Bernouilli was Swiss.   9 At stake in this debate is an opposition between Cartesian speculation and Newtonian agnosticism. Descartes had asserted in his Principles that the entirety of celestial matter – ‘the heavens’ – in which the planets are located ‘turns continuously like a vortex with the sun at its centre’ and that this single account explains ‘all the planetary movements that we observe’, including ‘how the earth rotates about its own centre, and the moon revolves around the earth’ (III.30; trans. J. Bennett). This was taken by Newton in the Principia (Bk II) as a paradigmatic example of rationalist speculation that runs in advance of observation and for this reason Newton was more agnostic on the mechanism of rotational motion. This led to a debate throughout the eighteenth century between those who wanted to counter-argue for the necessity of rotational motion from a postNewtonian position (like Huygens, Bernouilli and Mairan), including by appeal to post-Cartesian vortexes, and those who followed Newtonian agnosticism. In the latter group, Hemster­huis cites David Gregory (1659–1708), Scottish mathematician and astronomer, ’s Gravesande (1688–1742) and Lalande. On this debate, see WW, p. 778. 10 Hypsicles’s tale is to be found in EE 2.134–7 and the commentary in EE 2.149–51. 11 On the language of ‘placenta’, see the previous letter, p. 143 above. 12 That is, below the sheet of paper on which the figure is drawn. 13 The question of the rotational motion of artillery fire had been a live one in the 1740s when Hemsterhuis had been studying to become a military engineer and may well explain his interest in the whole problem. The question of whether bullets rotate was subject to debate in the New Principles of Gunnery of Benjamin Robins (1707–51), for example. See WW, p. 777. 14 A conclusion Newton reaches in Principia, Bk III, §18–19. 15 Hemsterhuis uses very similar language to describe the moon in Alexis (EE 2.137). 16 Perihelion is the Keplerian term for the point of an elliptical orbit when the planet passes closest to the star. It is used extensively by Hemsterhuis elsewhere as a metaphor for historical movement. 17 Alexis Claude Clairaut (1713–65), French astronomer and author of Theory of the Moon (1765); Leonhard Euler (1707–83), Swiss mathematician and author of Theory of the Moon (1752); Tobias Mayer (1723–62), Moravian–German astronomer and author of a treatise using Newtonian principles to theorise the moon (1767); Jean-Baptiste Le Rond d’Alembert (1717–83), French philosopher, co-editor of the Encyclopédie and author of Investi­gations into the System of the World (1754). 18 Hipparchus of Nicaea (c. 190–c. 120 bc), Greek astronomer who discovered the earth’s axial precession. 19 Gallitzin’s children, Marianne and Dmitri.

302 NOTES 20 This is a reference to the well dug by Gilles Hobus in 1740 and abandoned in 1748; Jan Wagenaar, Amsterdam, in zijne opkomst, aanwas, geschiedenissen […] zesde stuk (Amsterdam, 1764), p. 304. See WW, p. 779. 21 The Parisian materialists whom Hemsterhuis associates with a Lucretian affirmation of blind necessity – see p. 97 above. 22 Franz von Fürstenberg.

On Final Causes 1 The translation follows the text established in B 8.64. See also LSD, pp. 461–3. Considering that the stated, if indirect, aim of this letter is to demonstrate the existence of Providence and so its closeness to the Letter on Fatalism, it could easily have sat in Part One of this volume. Fresco (LSD, p. 461) also points out that this letter was written only a few weeks before Hemsterhuis first composed the Letter on Atheism. What distinguishes this text, however, is its recourse to animal reproduction as a means of making metaphysical conclusions. 2 The letter from Gallitzin is in fact dated 6 August. 3 A reference to the final upheavals of the Patriot Uprising: in 1787 Prussian troops had invaded the Dutch Republic to aid the Orangists. 4 In her letter from 6 August, Gallitzin had written, ‘On this occasion I must say to you, my dear Socrates, that it was with a tear in my eye that I reread, some days ago, different fragments and dialogues in your hand: the second Alexis very advanced; the political animal advanced as well; a beginning of a dialogue on the philosophy which promises the sublime; another on the laws which might merge with the political animal…. I have found many other ambitions when rereading this year’s letters from you and to name, among these hundred subjects of which you always say you will speak another time more fundamentally, only a few of them that are dearest to me, remember that you promised me to treat in a subsequent letter (N.B. two months ago) final causes, the notion of atheism, the reason why there must be two sexes … to form a third being’ (B IV.158). The reference to Hemsterhuis’s promise to write to her on final causes stems from his letter of 19 June of that year (B 8.49), in which he had noted, in passing, ‘I will soon treat for you what a final cause is – a cause which could only reside in the breast of the Creator’. 5 See previous note – this is a reference to Hemsterhuis’s incomplete treatise on political animals, presumably the ‘Reflections on the Republic of the United Provinces’, pp. 218–24 above. 6 For Alexis II, see pp. 235–49 above and Van Sluis’s accompanying appendix (pp. 261–6 above). 7 This necessary physical distinction between what is cause and what is effect is the key principle established in the Letter on Fatalism, p. 73 above. 8 This distinction marks Hemsterhuis’s turn in the letter from the paradigm of physics to that of organic reproduction.

Prelude to the Letter on Optics 1 The translation follows the text established in B 9.60. This letter marks the beginning of a nostalgic exchange with Gallitzin on Hemsterhuis’s lifelong passion for optics, provoked by the visit of the Italian scientist Marsilio Landriani (1746–1815) to The Hague, and which will culminate in the Letter on Optics a month later. Elsewhere, Hemsterhuis writes that ‘I worked more than 50 years on optics both theoretical and practical’ (B 8.83) and

NOTES 303

2 3 4

5

6 7 8

that ‘if I have at any time loved a science to distraction, it was above all my dear optics’ (B 12.91). Landriani (see previous note) had been visiting The Hague and was about to continue his journey to Münster. Landriani had been a friend of Fromond (see note 5 below). Franz von Fürstenberg. By this period, Hemsterhuis had long been involved in a pioneering collaboration with the English telescope manufacturer Peter Dollond (1731–1820) and the Amsterdam instrument-maker Jan van Deijl (1715–1801) in constructing the first ever achromatic binocular telescopes. Telescopes like these were owned by eminent people such as the Dutch Stadtholder and the Duke of Gotha and circulated among William Herschel’s acquaintances in London. Throughout the theoretical discussions of optics in this letter and the next, it needs to be borne in mind that Hemsterhuis was actually making such binoculars himself and using them with success. As Claudia Melica’s research has demonstrated, Hemsterhuis misremembers the name. He actually means Giovanni Francesco Fromond (1739–85), an Italian priest and scientist who constructed optical instruments. Years earlier, Hemsterhuis had told Gallitzin how Fromond (who visited The Hague in 1771) had taken away his early unpublished work on insect vision, including ‘all the sketches I had made during my anatomy of the heads of insects’ (B 4.55) and a treatise on ‘the organs of insects and the nature of their ideas and their way of thinking’ (B 8.83). Fromond had, Hemsterhuis relates, ‘a furious wish to continue my work’ (B 4.55), but this wish was not realised since Hemsterhuis’s work was destroyed in the fire in which Fromond perished in 1785. See C. Melica, ‘Frans Hemsterhuis’s Optics and his Relationship with Italian Scientists’, in M. Fresco, L. Geeraedts and K. Hammacher (eds), Frans Hemsterhuis (1721–1790). Quellen, Philosophie und Rezeption (Münster: Lit, 1995), pp. 299–320 (on Fromond, pp. 304–8; on Landriani, pp. 308–15). See previous note. Hemsterhuis’s justification for this claim follows in the Letter on Optics. Bacchylides (c. 518 – c. 451 bc), a Greek lyric poet. The specific reference has not been located.

Letter on Optics 1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 167–74. The treatise was sent as an appendix of a letter to Gallitzin dated 23 December 1788 (B 9.72). See also WW, pp. 256–66. The formal properties of this appendix and the signature (see note 11 below) suggest that Hemsterhuis considered this a publishable summary of his views on the science of optics and its need for reform. At the very least it stands as his last, complete and significant work. The manuscript was presented to J. W. Goethe after Hemsterhuis’s death, during his visit to Münster in 1792, and at a time when Goethe himself had returned seriously to his study of colour, vision and the critique of Newtonian optics. 2 As Petry specifies (WW, p. 783), the references are to volume 1 of the Opuscula posthuma of Christiaan Huygens (1629–95) and Bk 1, §7 of Newton’s Opticks, respectively. 3 Hemsterhuis had experience with massive telescopes and, during the 1770s, had been particularly interested in purchasing and improving a huge telescope built by the Franeker instrument-maker Jan van der Bildt, ‘with a scheduled magnification between 1000 and 1500 times’. See H. J. Zuidervaart, ‘The Long Forgotten Relation between an English Binocular and a Dutch Philosopher: Frans Hemsterhuis (1721–1790) as Herschel’s Precursor and Designer of Dollond’s Achromatic Binocular Telescope’, ­ Beiträge zur Astronomiegeschichte 14 (2019), p. 144.

304 NOTES   4 This passage marks the transition announced at the beginning of the letter to the new paths that can be taken to bring vision to perfection and to a psychological perspective. Those who have not been sufficiently open to this new perspective presumably include writers of optical treatises from Newton to Nicolaas Hartsoeker (1656–1725) and Robert Smith (1689–1768), as well as perhaps Petrus Camper in his Dissertatio optica de visu of 1746.   5 Much of the second half of the letter will take up this contrast between the ideal entities of mathematics and the ‘imperfect’ entities that the practitioner of optics actually needs to deal with. It is, in part, a call for the demathematicisation of optical practice.   6 This sentiment has overtones of the theoretical regression back to the state of nature in Rousseau’s second discourse, but also – and perhaps more pertinently – Francis Bacon’s ‘great Instauration’, which seeks to restore the prelapsarian ‘precious tone of innocence’ through scientific advancement, especially as mediated through Hooke’s Micrographia, one of the early Hemsterhuis’s favourite books, which explicitly applies Bacon’s framework of ‘Instauration’ to the enhancement of optical instruments. Hooke’s Micrographia is obviously one influence on Hemsterhuis’s early research into insect vision of which he will speak below.   7 The French is binocle, literally pince-nez; however, Hemsterhuis probably means binoculars (French jumelles) or, even more precisely, a binocular telescope. Two dual-telescopes are also mentioned in the 1791 auction catalogue after his death: J. van Sluis (ed.), ­Bibliotheca Hemsterhusiana. Het boekenbezit van Tiberius en Frans Hemsterhuis, met genealogie en bibliografie (Budel: Damon / Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy, 2001), p. 180 (originally p. 148).   8 The model for the psychology of vision described here bears many similarities to that outlined at the beginning of the Letter on Sculpture (EE 1.62), although the emphasis on the correcting function of the soul is quite different from the model of sense experience proposed in ‘On the Reality of Appearances’, pp. 127–9 above.   9 The incident had been told to Hemsterhuis by his friend Petrus Camper. Posthumously published in: P. Camper, De oculorum fabrica et morbis (Amsterdam: Van Rossen, 1913), pp. 198–9. 10 On the context and history of Hemsterhuis’s interest in insect vision, see ‘Prelude to the Letter on Optics’, pp. 153–4 above, and accompanying notes. 11 Hemsterhuis’s use of the pseudonym Diocles, rather than Socrates, to sign this letter is remarkable. He uses Diocles in his published dialogues to designate the character closest to his own views and he also uses it in other correspondences (most notably, that with Anna Meerman); however, he always signs himself Socrates in letters to Gallitzin. The one exception is the Letter on Atheism which, in the second 1789 version is signed Diocles. The suggestion is thus that, just like the Letter on Atheism, Hemsterhuis expected the Letter on Optics to be one day published in some form and that ‘Diocles’ functioned as his public pseudonym.

Letters on Geometric Style 1 The translation follows the text established in B 1.3. See also LSD, pp. 50–1. This is one of the earliest exchanges between Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin – from the very beginning of their friendship and before many of the conventions of their correspondence had been established. What follows is a debate over the style or method of philosophy; it stands in an interesting tension with the dialogues Hemsterhuis was to go on to write a couple of years later. It also touches on questions of Hemsterhuis’s own style in the

NOTES 305

correspondence itself (and its penchant to over-ironise itself), as well as the place of the Sophists in the history of philosophy.   2 As becomes clear later in the exchange, the book is an unspecified work by Charles Bonnet (1720–93), the Genevan philosopher and natural scientist. While the title is not mentioned, it is likely, given the subject of Hemsterhuis’s and Gallitzin’s early exchanges, to be one of his psychological works, e.g., the 1754 Essai de psychologie or the 1760 Essai analytique sur les facultés de l’âme.   3 Hemsterhuis had long been connected to Bonnet’s work through their common friend, J. N. S. Allamand, as well as Wilem Bentinck’s Sorgvielt salon; Fresco even speaks of early ‘controversies between Hemsterhuis and Bonnet’ (LSD, p. 12). Bonnet also possessed a unique manuscript copy of Hemsterhuis’s much earlier Letter on Desires, copied by an unknown hand (OP, p. 38). That Gallitzin and Hemsterhuis were returning to Bonnet in 1775 is likely owing to their friendship with the Genevan Bonnetist Pierre-Gédéon Dentan, as the end of the letter makes clear.   4 On Lucretius, see note 81 to ‘Further Reflections on Spinoza’.   5 Like many eighteenth-century philosophers, Hemsterhuis here appropriates the architectural language of foundations and edifices popularised by Cartesianism to wage a polemic against Descartes.   6 That is, Bonnet.   7 This was the phrase used earlier in the letter to refer to modern proponents of narrativephilosophy.   8 Pierre-Gédéon Dentan – see note 6 to ‘On the Relations of Matter and Soul’ above.   9 The translation follows the text established in B IV.1. See also LSD, pp. 52–3. 10 The subject matter of Hemsterhuis’s previous letter above. 11 Hippias of Elis (late fifth century bc), Greek Sophist. Hemsterhuis’s identification of a group of poet-philosophers running through antiquity and modernity in his previous letter entailed the placement of Descartes and Bonnet alongside the Sophists. It is this positioning of the Sophists that Gallitzin is contesting. 12 Both Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin had become acquainted with Denis Diderot two years before this letter, when he had been hosted by Dmitri Gallitzin in The Hague on his way to Russia (as well as in 1774, on his way back). For more details, see ‘Letters on Diderot’s Style’ and accompanying notes. 13 Bonnet had described himself in publications as reasoning analogically from known or observed natural facts to unknown metaphysical truths and is keen to acknowledge the conjectural nature of his project. For example, ‘I have not said I have found, but rather it seems to me, I conjecture, one can infer from it. A more decisive tone would have been little suitable to the nature of my subject’ (La palingénésie philosophique, ed. Christiane Frémont [Paris: Fayard, 2002], p. 51). 14 The translation follows the text established in B 1.4. See also LSD, pp. 54–6. 15 An eclectic list of pre-Socratic philosophers, historians, legislators and playwrights, including Epicharmus of Kos (c. 550 – c. 460 bc). 16 That is, how Plato presents these philosophers in his Gorgias, Protagoras, Theaetetus, etc. 17 The ‘divine philosopher’ is of course Socrates, but it is not clear which Sophist Hemsterhuis here refers to. 18 The use of the term ‘novel’ to criticise Descartes’s philosophy originates from Voltaire’s Lettres sur les Anglais (1733): ‘His philosophy was nothing more than an ingenious and, at the very most, probable novel’ (Œuvres complètes [Paris: Garnier, 1878], vol. 22, p. 131). 19 This esoteric interpretation of Descartes closely anticipates many of the textual variations to Hemsterhuis’s 1789 version of the Letter on Atheism. See note 29 above to the Letter on Atheism.

306 NOTES 20 Bonnet was an immaterialist often taken for a materialist (by Rousseau, etc.) to the extent he was forced to insist in his published works, ‘No, I am not a materialist.’ (La palingénésie, p. 50).

On Geometric Education and Aesthetic Judgement  1 The translation follows the text established in B 2.47. These extracts are from the beginning and the end of one of Hemsterhuis’s longest letters to Gallitzin, written over several days. It showcases both the range of topics he broached, but also their interconnection – as he is interested in a kind of geometric ‘tact’ both across intellectual domains and specifically in the appreciation of art.   2 The man is Prince Dmitri Gallitzin, Gallitzin’s estranged husband. After their marital separation in 1775, Hemsterhuis would often act as a mediator and occasional peacebroker between them, especially concerning financial matters and, as in this case, the education of their two children.   3 Hemsterhuis was formally trained in mathematics as part of his military engineering background and was writing mathematical treatises at this time – see ‘On the Incommensurable’ (pp. 139–41 above).   4 Franz von Fürstenberg (1729–1810) was ‘prime minister’ of the Bishopric of Münster from 1762 onwards, entrusted with its temporal and spiritual affairs by the PrinceBishop. He became Gallitzin’s confidant, after encouraging her move to Münster, which had taken place a month before this letter was written.   5 That is, Dmitri Gallitzin.   6 By ‘analogy’, Hemsterhuis means a process of sensing the analogic relations (rapports) that hold between all ideas of things and of forming ideas of relation as intermediaries between these ideas.   7 On the virtue of speed in moving between ideas, see the Letter on Sculpture (EE 1.63–4) and the Letter on Man (EE 1.122).   8 See previous note.   9 This image of the passions pulling us down from the skies – as well as the invocation of ‘reins’ in the previous paragraph – allude in passing to the myth of the charioteer in Plato’s Phaedrus (246a–253a). 10 That is, Socrates, whose father was the Athenian sculptor Sophroniscus. 11 Nicolaas Struyk (1686–1769), Dutch mathematician, astronomer, insect-collector and illustrator. 12 Presumably a reference to Struyk’s 1740 Inleiding to the algemeene geographie, benevens eenige sterrekundige en andere verhandelingen [Introduction to Universal Geography, as well as some Astronomical and Other Treatises]. 13 The name is intentionally omitted. 14 Johann Campill (1744–1810), lector from the Franciscan Marienfelt cloister in Münster, where Gallitzin had recently moved. On Hemsterhuis’s aesthetic experiments and Campill’s reaction, see Peter Sonderen’s introduction to volume 1 of this series (EE 1.12–13). 15 An anticipation of Hemsterhuis’s burgeoning interest in the category of the golden age as deployed in Simon and Alexis. 16 Hemsterhuis here returns to his aesthetic experiment from the Letter on Sculpture (EE 1.63–4) and refines its conclusions through an iterative process of experimentation. 17 This reflects (in a fairly limited way) Hemsterhuis’s own definition of art in the Letter on Sculpture: ‘The primary goal of all the arts is to imitate nature; the second [is] to enrich

NOTES 307

nature by producing effects that it does not produce easily, or that it cannot produce’ (EE 1.60). 18 To recap the argument of the Letter on Sculpture: in order to develop a theory of beauty, Hemsterhuis questions test-subjects about which of two vases, A or B (reproduced at EE 1.62, as well as p. 40 above), is experienced as more beautiful and why. The preference of the test-subjects determines Hemsterhuis’s results. 19 That is, vase B. 20 A reference to the overarching argument that structures the first half of the Letter on Sculpture (EE 1.61–3). It concludes, ‘Does it not follow, Sir, in a rather geometrical manner, that the soul judges as the most beautiful what it can form an idea of in the smallest space of time?’ 21 By ‘baroque’, Hemsterhuis does not here designate a time period (this was a nineteenthcentury innovation in art history), but an ornamental style. 22 See Letter on Sculpture (EE 1.70): ‘For what concerns the Goths … it may be said that they considered a whole merely as an assemblage of parts, that, as far as possible, they added ornaments to each part and that they imagined that by doing so they had adorned the whole’. 23 After experiencing disappointment at the reception of Sophylus, Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin planned a collaborative ‘catechism’ to counter materialism by instructing children into the basics of an anti-materialist philosophy and belief in God. 24 On Hemsterhuis’s expertise on the anatomy of the eye, see Part Two above. 25 ‘Little Socrates’.

Letters on Hesiod and the Golden Age   1 The translation follows the text established in B 3.86. See also LSD, pp. 251–4, WW, pp. 382–7. Along with the ‘Letter on the Rotation of the Planets’ (see pp. 145–50 above), these letters provide helpful background information on Alexis (as well as the brief mention of a golden age in Simon), particularly the importance of Hemsterhuis’s reading of Hesiod to its conception. Interestingly, some ideas from Alexis are entirely lacking here, e.g., the role of the moon, suggesting they were relatively late additions.   2 Zeno of Citium (c. 334 – c. 262 bc), founder of Stoicism.   3 That is, the virtue of ataraxia central to much Stoic ethics.   4 Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–180 ce), Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher.  5 Hesiod, Work and Days, ll. 111–16, in particular.   6 The following paragraph corresponds to Alexis, EE 2.124–6. Unlike the final sentences of this paragraph, however, Alexis does ultimately conclude that animals in fact possess a version of the principle of perfectibility, but one that is less intense.   7 This is quite a different account – at least in presentation – from the advent of the moon which causes the loss of the golden age in Alexis (see EE 2.136).   8 The idea of a loss of sense organs in human history is the ultimate conclusion to Alexis’s account of the golden age (see EE 2.138).   9 A further age invoked allusively at the end of Alexis too (see EE 2.146). 10 Gallitzin was suffering from a long-term illness at this time. 11 Fürstenberg. 12 ‘Socrates’. 13 The translation follows the text established in B 3.87. See also WW, pp. 386–9. 14 On 29 November, Gallitzin had written, ‘My dear Socrates, your letter contains very good things, but all that you could say in this regard that is truer and more beautiful is in

308 NOTES your Aristaeus, which contains everything relatively probable that can be said about the future life, insofar as we have the data to judge it. And I do not believe that we need to go further in this (particularly when it comes to the state of humanity in future worlds). We sense that we become happier, the more we perfect and purify ourselves…. As for your golden age, I congratulate you on already seeing it develop. It is a pleasure that I can still only hope for; meanwhile, I try to engender it in myself as much as possible by multiplying, as far I can, occupations that are useful to me and to others. This kind of activity is the surest medicine against affliction’ (B I.190). 15 See Gallitzin’s qualification ‘insofar as we have the data’, in the previous note. 16 This is another theme addressed in Alexis – there, Diocles asks, ‘In geometry, is there truth sensed by the great masters before being proven? Are there in rhetoric, in poetry, truths, beauties, sublime features felt and expressed even before they have been discussed or examined in detail by the intellect?’ (EE 2.140). 17 This is, in many ways, a manifesto for Hemsterhuis’s and Gallitzin’s collaborative practice in their exchange of letters as a whole. 18 In Alexis, Hemsterhuis will dramatise this claim by showing the semi-mythic manner in which Pythagoras came to introduce into the West scientific truths concerning the movement of the earth – see EE 2.134. 19 The Problems (or Problemata) of Aristotle or pseudo-Aristotle. 20 That is, the sense organ and the science most developed in modernity.

On the Best Shape to Give to the Feet of Vases 1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 123–5 (the sole time this recently discovered text has been published). This was a treatise appended to a letter to Gallitzin (and presumably written for her) during 1783, when much of their correspondence revolved around a theory of vases. On 14 November, Hemsterhuis had noted to Gallitzin, ‘To complete our important theory and to see a much vaster field than we had previously suspected, it remains for us to know the size of, for example, a foot in relation to its vase, or rather, to know whether this proportion is determined by the nature of things’ (B 4.81). This ‘vast field’ had been further alluded to in a previous letter on the significance of a theory of vases, in which Hemsterhuis wrote ironically, ‘It seems to me that you do not yet believe that in the theory of vases resides the sacred germ of all psychology, all philosophy, all virtue and all salvation’ (B 4.67). This treatise exemplifies Hemsterhuis’s geometric approach to problems of artistic practice and is discussed in Sonderen’s Introduction above (pp. 51–6). In what follows, the French ‘la forme’ is translated as ‘shape’. 2 This change from cremation to burial as the norm in Roman funerary rites is usually dated to the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, that is, the second century ce. 3 That is, the more elongated the vase, the more flattened the foot, and vice versa. 4 This drawing is lost.

Further Reflections on the Best Shape to Give to the Feet of Vases 1 The translation follows the text established in B 4.83. 2 The correspondence of 1783 had been filled with copies and sketches of vases, but Hemsterhuis could equally be referring back to the lost drawing that concludes the above treatise or even the vases from the Letter on Sculpture of 1769 (EE 1.62).

NOTES 309

  3 Presumably Hemsterhuis means ‘like Argos’, that is, Argos Panoptes, the all-seeing giant with multiple eyes, mythological symbol of vigilance.  4 Fürstenberg.

On Plato’s Style in the Phaedrus and the Symposium (and Racine’s Phaedra)   1 The translation follows the text established in B 4.97. As well as being a good example of the eclectic range of artistic interests expressed in Hemsterhuis’s letters, this is a prelude to many of the themes around ‘the Platonic sublime’ to which Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin will return in more detail in 1786 (see pp. 190–9 above).   2 On 18 December, Gallitzin had written, ‘My Socrates, I am returning from a festival that has left me in Bacchic transports. Oh, the wicked man who has so long hidden such a treasure from me. The only one of Plato’s dialogues I did not know was just translated into German, the Phaedrus. I was all goosebumps when reading it. Of everything Socrates says in the Symposium and in all the other dialogues taken together, this is the quintessence. He has very passably translated [it but] for a few passages, of which I pray you some other time to send me a translation, because there is something false in what I read’ (B II.182). The reference to the first German translation of the Phaedrus is to the version by J. F. Kleuker (1749–1827), an early member of the Münster Circle (and so acquaintance of Gallitzin): it had appeared in 1783, a few months before this letter, in Kleuker’s edition of Plato’s works.   3 That is, in comparison with Plato’s dialogues.   4 Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin had advance access to the manuscript of a work published a few months later, in 1784, the Nyctologues de Platon, a loose French translation of seven of Plato’s dialogues by Maximilian Henri de Saint-Simon (1720–99). Saint-Simon was a French writer who saw himself as somewhat of a disciple of Hemsterhuis and was well known personally to both Hemsterhuis and Gallitzin – and occasionally the butt of their jokes.   5 The provenance of this phrase is unknown.   6 Hemsterhuis’s reference to the moon draws on his model for the fall of humanity from the golden age set out in Alexis, EE 2.136–7.  7 See EE 1.123–5 and accompanying notes. Broadly summarised, ‘perihelion’ is a term from Keplerian astronomy used to refer to the point of the orbit closest to the sun and is employed by Hemsterhuis to designate a cultural highpoint and, in particular, to resolve the ongoing, eighteenth-century ‘quarrel of the ancients and the moderns’ through appeal to two equal but distinct perfections – the Socratic perihelion of perfected sentiment and the Newtonian perihelion of perfected geometric reasoning.   8 See note 6 above.   9 Either Pauline Alziari de Roquefort (1747–1830; stage name Mademoiselle Saint-Val aînée) – or her sister, Blanche Alziari de Roquefort (1752–1836; stage name ­Mademoiselle Saint-Val cadette). 10 The 1677 tragedy by Jean Racine (1639–99), based on Euripides’s Hippolytus and Seneca’s Phaedra. 11 The French is ambiguous here: ‘it’ could just as easily read ‘her’. 12 La Henriade, a 1723 epic poem by Voltaire.

310 NOTES Letters on Diderot’s Style 1 The translation follows the text established in B 5.96. See also LSD, pp. 325–7. Prior to his marital separation from Amalie Gallitzin, Dmitri Gallitzin had used his contacts in materialist circles (and his appointment as a Russian ambassador) to arrange for Denis Diderot’s visit to Russia in 1773/4. Both on his way to Russia and on his way back, Diderot spent some time hosted by the Gallitzins in The Hague and, as is clear from the letter below, Hemsterhuis was a frequent visitor. Diderot wrote an extensive commentary on Hemsterhuis’s Letter on Man while in Russia and presented it on his return (see van Sluis’s introduction to Volume 1 of this series, EE 1.32–4). This is one of the reasons Diderot is a constant reference point in Hemsterhuis’s and Gallitzin’s correspondence and that, despite their aversion to his materialism, they could keep referring to him as ‘our dear Diderot’. 2 The ‘Prince’ referred to here is Dmitri Gallitzin (Amalie Gallitzin’s estranged husband). D’Alembert’s Dream had been written by Diderot in 1769, but Diderot destroyed all his copies after d’Alembert’s complaints. However, Friedrich Grimm preserved a copy and published it anonymously in the Correspondance littéraire in 1782. It came to be attributed to Diderot only when a further manuscript was discovered in 1830. Hemsterhuis (and Gallitzin) were therefore one of the few eighteenth-century readers of the text. Moreover, the version Hemsterhuis describes below does not seem to correspond exactly to the version published in the Correspondance littéraire (it lacks the opening dialogue), since Hemsterhuis refers to it as a ‘manuscript’ and since he attributes it without question to Diderot. It is likely, therefore, that Dmitri Gallitzin procured a distinctive version of the text. On this question, see further Jean de Booy ‘Quelques renseignements inédits sur un manuscrit du Rêve de D’Alembert’, Neophilologus 40 (1956), pp. 81–93. 3 The opening section, ‘Continuation of a Conversation between d’Alembert and Diderot’, seems to be missing from the manuscript Hemsterhuis is reading – see the previous note. 4 This is a good example of the way in which Hemsterhuis undertakes art criticism as a kind of faculty psychology. 5 Gallitzin makes a similar point in the ‘Letters on Geometric Style’, p. 164 above. 6 Diderot is thus comparable to Spinoza in his lack of tact – see ‘Further Reflections on Spinoza and the Spinoza Controversy’, pp. 114 above. 7 The ‘Sequel to the Conversation’ between Bordeu and Mlle de l’Espinasse, which begins (and is oriented by) Espinasse’s question, ‘What do you think about the possibility of successful mating between members of different species?’ (Rameau’s Nephew and Other Works, trans. J. Barzun and R. H. Bowen [Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001], p. 167). 8 Towards the end of the dialogue, Bordeu affirms, ‘We do not know what copulations might be totally unfruitful … [and] we don’t know what sort of species we might expect to produce as the result of varied and sustained experimentation. We don’t know whether the fauns were real or legendary.’ And to Espinasse’s question as to the point of such experiments, Bordeu responds, ‘The reason is that the mixture would give us a vigorous, intelligent, tireless and swift-footed race of animals of which we could make excellent domestic servants’. To which Espinasse replies: ‘Bravo, Doctor! I can see in my mind’s eye already a picture of five or six great, insolent satyrs riding out behind the carriage of one of our duchesses, and the notion pleases my fancy enormously’ (Rameau’s Nephew and Other Works, pp. 173–4). 9 As part of his marginal commentary to Hemsterhuis’s Letter on Man written in 1773/4, Diderot appended a short note among the blank pages at the end of the book which Hemsterhuis here reproduces almost verbatim (unsurprisingly, since Diderot’s notes were in his possession). See Denis Diderot and François Hemsterhuis, Lettre sur l’homme et ses

NOTES 311

rapports avec le commentaire inédit de Diderot, ed. Georges May (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), p. 513. 10 On Lucian, see note 48 to ‘Further Reflections on Spinoza’ above. 11 The translation follows the text established in B 6.37. See also LSD, pp.360–3. A period of five months has elapsed between the time when Hemsterhuis was loaned Diderot’s manuscript in The Hague and when Gallitzin gained access to it in Münster. Hence, on 5 May, Gallitzin had written to Hemsterhuis, ‘I have read the horrors of Diderot. If d’Alembert does not return from beyond the Styx to efface the role he plays there, this would assuredly prove either that the journey is very difficult or that he has a sufficiently good opinion of the readers to scarcely worry’ (B III.33). 12 See note 2 above. 13 Gallitzin had added in her letter of 5 May that ‘this [piece] is well dialogued’ (B III.33). 14 Menander (c. 342 – c. 290 bc), Greek comic dramatist. 15 That is, when Diderot was staying in The Hague for periods during 1773/4 (see note 1 above). 16 This is a response to a comment by Gallitzin – see note 11 above.

Catechism for a Young Painter 1 The translation follows the text established in B 5.98. This is another example of the close connection between pedagogy, geometric reasoning and artistic practice in Hemster­huis’s thinking. On 20 December, Gallitzin had written, ‘Procure me, if possible, a couple of simple outlines of some beautiful head that will be clear when reproduced on a large scale for my children to have a go at drawing afterwards. They solely possess models of a small or very mediocre size, and I am of the opinion that the habit of drawing very large curves from very large features is infinitely better for their training’ (B II.244). 2 Phidias’s statue of Zeus (= Jupiter) at the sanctuary of Olympia was forty-one feet tall and his statue of Athena Parthenos, intended for the Parthenon, was around thirty-seven feet tall. 3 A chord was a popular concept in early modern geometry, designating a line between two points on the circumference of a circle. The diameter is thus a special type of chord. 4 See Hemsterhuis’s description of the genius in the Letter on Man (EE 1.91–2). 5 A series of Dutch and Italian painters: Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613–70); Raphael (1483–1520); Guido Reni (1575–1642); Annibale Carracci (1560–1609). 6 That is, seventeenth-century Dutch painters, including the above-mentioned van der Helst (see previous note). 7 Petrus Camper (1722–89), Hemsterhuis’s lifelong friend and celebrated anatomist and physiologist; Dirk van der Aa (1731–1809), Dutch painter.

On the Artworks of Central Germany 1 The translation follows the text established in B 12.147. This is one of the rare texts that survive in which Hemsterhuis writes in his native Dutch (to a Dutch correspondent), and so we have also consulted the French translation in WW, pp. 564–70 (with the helpful accompanying notes), as well as the German translation in Erich Trunz (ed.), Goethe und der Kreis von Münster. Zeitgenössische Briefe und Aufzeichnungen (Münster:

312 NOTES Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1974), pp. 168–75. The letter is dated (at the bottom) 31 December 1785 and is addressed to Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (1726–98), a Dutch painter, art teacher and collector, who had a collection of over 5,000 drawings. The letter has received a number of titles in its various publications, including, most strikingly, in WW, ‘Critical Observations on the Beautiful’. The text of the letter itself is a narrative of Hemsterhuis’s visit to a series of art galleries (particularly those in Dresden) during his trip through central Germany with Gallitzin and Fürstenberg from August to November 1785 (a trip that also included stays in Weimar and Gotha, to which Hemsterhuis briefly alludes later in the letter).   2 A German town, north of Kassel.   3 That is, Gallitzin.   4 During Hemsterhuis’s earlier visit to Münster, from February to spring 1781, thus more than four years ago.   5 The Fridericianummuseum established by Landgrave Frederik II in 1769. The artworks were catalogued in 1783 by Simon Causid in his Verzeichnis der Hochfürstlich-Heßischen Gemälde-Sammlung in Cassel (to which we have referred in the following notes).   6 The Düsseldorf Royal gallery, established in 1709 by Johann Wilhelm II von der Pfalz, was the first dedicated institution of its kind in Europe. As Hemsterhuis mentions above, he had visited this gallery in 1781.   7 The Kassel gallery possessed a large selection of artworks by the Dutch painters Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678), David Teniers the Younger (1610–90) and David Teniers the Third (1638–85). It also possessed numerous paintings by Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) and it is not obvious exactly which two Hemsterhuis is here referring to by size, although it likely includes the large Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph (1656). The large painting by Paulus Potter (1625–54) is likely to be A Farmer with his Herd, from 1648.  8 Claude Lorrain (1600–82), French painter. The 1783 catalogue refers to a Lorrain painting entitled Der Morgen (Verzeichnis, p. 3), which seems to correspond in description to the 1663 Landscape with Tobias and the Angel (Evening) that now hangs in the Hermitage in St Petersburg.   9 Adam Pijnacker (1620–73), Dutch painter. 10 Jacob van Ruysdael (c. 1629–82), Dutch painter; the Dresden gallery possessed many of his landscapes. 11 Titian Vecellio (c. 1488–1576), Italian painter; possibly a reference to the c. 1550 Portrait of a General. Carlo Dolci (1616–86), Italian painter – the painting is of Mary’s head covered in a blue veil (Verzeichnis, p. 40) and no longer sits in the collection. The Death of Germanicus is a French painting from the late 1670s by Gérard de Lairesse (1640–1711). 12 Adam Friedrich Oeser (1715–79), German painter and sculptor, friend of J. J. Winckelmann and drawing teacher of J. W. Goethe. 13 Frederick Augustus II the Strong (1670–1733), Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. The five Prince-electors (Kurfürst) formed the electoral college to elect the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and included the Elector of Saxony. Hemsterhuis’s reference does not seem to be to Augustus II’s successors (of which there had been only three by 1785), nor is it to some five brotherly Kurprinz (heirs to the electorship), since Augustus II fathered only one legitimate son. 14 During the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), Prussian forces, led by Frederick the Great (1712–86), King of Prussia, occupied Dresden and destroyed much, but Frederick could not bring himself to completely ruin the collections there (see below). 15 See previous note. 16 The Japanese Palace.

NOTES 313

17 On Raphael, see note 5 to ‘Catechism to a Young Painter’ above; Antonio Allegri, called ‘Correggio’ (1488–1534); on Titian, see note 11 above; Annibale Carracci (1560–1609). 18 Guido Reni (1575–1642), Italian painter, whose 1642 Assumption of Mary now hangs in Munich. 19 Carlo Cignani (1628–1719), Italian painter. It is not clear which painting from D ­ üsseldorf Hemsterhuis is here referring to, perhaps a copy of his Assumption of Mary fresco in the Cathedral of Forli in Italy. 20 The Massacre of the Innocents by Daniele Crespi (1598–1630) and formerly attributed to Annibale Carracci, which now hangs in Munich. 21 Susanna and the Elders (1603) by Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri) (1581–1641), which now hangs in Munich. 22 The Canigiani Holy Family (1505/6) by Raphael, which now hangs in Munich. 23 A 1506/7 drawing by Raphael that shows a Madonna and Child with the infant St John the Baptist, owned by Cornelis Ploos van Amstel and now located in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. 24 The Sistine Madonna (1512/13) by Raphael. 25 The San Sebastiano Madonna (1524) by Correggio. 26 The Holy Night (or: Nativity) (1530) by Correggio. 27 Madonna and Child with Saint George (c. 1530) by Correggio. 28 The Reclining Magdalene or Magdalene Reading by Correggio (now destroyed). 29 It is not clear to which painting Hemsterhuis is here referring; see Peter C. Sonderen, Het sculpturale denken: De esthetica van Frans Hemsterhuis (Leende: Damon, 2000), p. 208, as well as the conjectures in WW, p. 823. 30 The Genius of Fame (1588–9) by Annibale Carracci (Hemsterhuis uses the looser ‘glorie’). 31 Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (c. 1680) by Carlo Cignani. 32 Dutch painters: Philips Wouwerman (1619–68); on Potter, see note 7 above; Nicolas Berchem (1620–83); on Ruysdael, see note 10 above. 33 Adriaen van der Werff (1659–1722), Dutch painter. 34 French painters: Nicolas Poussin (1593–1665); Nicolas de Largillière (1656–1746); Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743). 35 Pompeo Batoni (1708–87), Italian painter; Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–79), German painter. Mengs’s Ascension altarpiece stands in the Hofkirche in Dresden; the depiction of the sleeping prophet that was located there may well have been destroyed. Batoni’s St Mary Magdelene or Magdelene Reading in a Grotto (c. 1742) is now destroyed; his Rape of Ganymede is a fresco in the palace of Wörlitz (outside of Dessau, a city north of Leipzig). 36 François Fagel, see Van Sluis’s Introduction to Volume 1 of this series (EE 1.28, 35). 37 Gottfried Winkler (1700–71), collector of Italian art in particular. 38 Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Gotha, whom Hemsterhuis had first met in The Hague earlier in the year and for whom he had designed a binocular telescope. 39 Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (1751–1829), German painter, who in 1783 had painted his first historical piece, Conradin of Swabia and Friedrich of Austria Informed of their Death Sentence during a Game of Chess. 40 Friedrich Rehberg (1758–1835), German painter and student of Mengs. 41 Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613–70), Dutch painter. According to Sonderen (Het ­sculpturale denken, pp. 211–12), Hemsterhuis is thinking particularly of van der Helst’s Banquet of the Amsterdam Civic Guard in Celebration of the Peace of Münster (1648). 42 That is, the ‘body’ of Germany is divided into the various princedoms and bishoprics of the Holy Roman Empire.

314 NOTES 43 According to Dutch tradition, on the evening of 4 December, children put their shoes by the chimney and find gifts in them the next morning. The gifts supposedly came from Sinterklaas, alias Sint Nicolaas.

Letters on Plato and the Sublime   1 The translation follows the text established in B 7.85. See also LSD, pp. 423–5. As with the Letters of Knowing, Believing and Doubting, this is the second substantial extract in which we have chosen to include Gallitzin’s letters, in order to show the collaborative nature of her and Hemsterhuis’s philosophical process. This exchange does not so much have one topic as three (Hemsterhuis’s initial reconstruction of Plato’s authorial intentions, Gallitzin’s enthusiasm over the account of madness in the Phaedrus and Hemsterhuis’s reaction to this by means of the category of the sublime), but all three of them circle around the same centre-point – communicating non-discursive truths in the manner of Plato. That is, these letters attempt to outline forms of writing suitable for engendering the kind of ‘sentimental conviction’ that Hemsterhuis had first defined in Aristaeus (EE 2.92).   2 That is, Cicero. Hemsterhuis is forever disparaging about Cicero as a philosopher. As he puts it elsewhere, Cicero ‘loves philosophy with a fury, without having philosophical genius’ (B 4.4).   3 This relationship between national identity and the distributions of primitive signs in a language is explored in more detail in ‘Reflections on the Republic of the United Provinces’ (pp. 222–3 above).   4 It is not immediately clear what passage in Cicero Hemsterhuis is drawing on here; but cf. Cicero, Orator, Bk 3, 10:12.   5 The Roman name for the Fates.   6 Matris of Thebes (third century bc), a Greek rhetorician, about whom Athanaeus writes, ‘Matris of Thebes ate nothing except a few myrtle-berries as long as he lived, and also kept away from wine and everything else except water’ (The Learned Banqueters, trans. S. Douglas Olson [London: Loeb, 2007], p. 251).  7 ‘Socrates’.   8 The translation follows the text established in B III.143.   9 Presumably Hemsterhuis had misdated the letter translated above and it was written a day or two earlier. 10 The translation follows the text established in B 7.87. See also LSD, pp. 426–8. 11 ‘Quod erat demonstrandum’ (‘which was to be demonstrated’), the tag with which many of Euclid’s proofs conclude in the Elements. 12 ‘Socrates’. 13 The translation follows the text established in B III.145. 14 Amalia von Schmettau (1781–1856), the daughter of Gallitzin’s brother Friedrich, for whom she cared. 15 The translation follows the text established in B III.147. 16 Presumably Jacobi’s visitors’ album at his estate in Pempelfort. 17 Plato, Phaedrus, 249e – more literally translated as ‘he who loves the beautiful, partaking in this madness, is called a lover’ (trans. H. N. Fowler [London: Loeb, 1914], p. 483). Gallitzin’s epiphanic encounter with the Phaedrus two years earlier had been a decisive event in her intellectual trajectory (see note 2 to ‘On Plato’s Style in the Phaedrus and the Symposium’), and she will go on (in this and her following letters) to present an interpretation of Plato’s account of the fourth kind of madness in the Phaedrus according to a

NOTES 315

Christian immaterialism, in which love takes the form of a spiritual purification from gross matter. 18 What follows is a loose translation of Phaedrus 249d on ‘the fourth kind of madness, which causes [man] to be regarded as mad, who, when he sees the beauty on earth, remembering the true beauty, feels his wings growing and longs to stretch them for an upward flight, but cannot do so, and, like a bird, gazes upward and neglects the things below’. See also the preceding passage (249c–d), on which Gallitzin is drawing as well: ‘A human being must understand a general conception formed by collecting into a unity by means of reason the many perceptions of the senses; and this is a recollection of those things which our soul once beheld, when it journeyed with God and, lifting its vision above the things which we now say exist, rose up into real being. And therefore it is just that the mind of the philosopher only has wings, for he is always, so far as he is able, in communion through memory with those things the communion with which causes God to be divine. Now a man who employs such memories rightly is always being initiated into perfect mysteries and he alone becomes truly perfect; but since he separates himself from human interests and turns his attention toward the divine, he is rebuked by the vulgar, who consider him mad and do not know that he is inspired.’ 19 The translation follows the text established in B 7.92. See LSD, pp. 429–34. 20 A Hemsterhuisian joke! 21 That is, the Inquisition and the Theological Faculty of the University of Paris (the Sorbonne) through which the Catholic Church regulated publication during the sixteenth century (in particular), resulting in its famous indexes of prohibited books. The Sorbonne’s authority over philosophical freedom is most famously invoked in Descartes’s ‘Dedicatory Letter to the Sorbonne’ which prefaces his Meditations. 22 A reference to the famous passage from Plato’s second letter (314c): ‘I myself have never yet written anything on these subjects, and no treatise by Plato exists or will exist, but those which now bear his name belong to a Socrates become fair and young’ (trans. R. G. Bury [London: Loeb, 1929], p. 417). 23 Dionysius of Halicarnassus (c. 60 – 7 bc), Greek historian and rhetorician. A theme running through Dionysius’s work is the distinction between Plato’s ‘plain style’, which he commends, and his ‘lofty, unusual style of expression’ associated above all with the Phaedrus, which he condemns. See, for example, Dionysius’s comment that ‘when, as often, [Plato] launches unrestrainedly into impressive and decorated language, he does himself far less than full justice: for this style is less pleasing than the other, since it lacks its purity of dialect and transparency of texture. It darkens what is clear and reduces it almost to obscurity. It conveys its meaning in a long-drawn-out way when concision and brevity are called for. It abandons itself to tasteless circumlocutions and an empty show of verbal exuberance and, in defiance of correct usage and standard vocabulary, seeks artificial, exotic and archaic forms of expression. It is in figurative speech that it founders decisively: it abounds in appositions, is inopportune in its metonymies and harsh and inaccurate in its metaphors. It also admits allegories whose frequency and length are governed by no considerations of measure or occasion, and revels inappropriately and in a juvenile manner in the conceits of artificial expression, and especially in the Gorgianic figures, which can arouse the utmost displeasure’ (Critical Essays, vol. 1, trans. Stephen Usher [London: Loeb, 1974], p. 257). Dionysius goes on to apply these claims to a close reading of the opening of Phaedrus in particular (pp. 259–65). Elsewhere, Dionysius writes explicitly of the opening of the Phaedrus: ‘Nowhere in this passage do I find fault with the writer’s treatment of subject-matter: only his partiality for figurative and inflated expression, in which respect he fails to maintain moderation’ (Critical Essays, vol. 2, trans. Stephen Usher [London: Loeb, 1985], p. 369).

316 NOTES 24 This species of the sublime remains close to Hemsterhuis’s definition of the beautiful in the Letter on Sculpture, which involves the subject’s ‘ability to promptly link together the parts of the whole in each art’ (EE 1.64). 25 See Alexis, EE 2.142: ‘we make a vague effort which does not have a determinate goal, an effort whose nature is absolutely unknown even to us and which we call enthusiasm… and then we see the true, the beautiful and the sublime without labour and without effort… But when… we see the true, the beautiful and the sublime, and even the future, without the least operation on our part, do you not believe that a Divinity intervenes and that it is not wrong to call this an inspiration?’ 26 Presumably Poseidon’s anger at Odysseus’s blinding of Polyphemus in Book 9 of the Odyssey. 27 Hemsterhuis is probably thinking of a brief satirical dialogue between Plato and Dionysius of Halicarnassus which he penned for Gallitzin on 6 October 1784 (B 5.78). 28 Miltiades (c. 550–489 bc), Athenian tyrant and general at the Battle of Marathon. According to Plutarch’s Life of Themistocles (3.4), the young Athenian general T ­ hemistocles (c. 524–459 bc) became obsessed with Miltiades’ success and his envy at Miltiades’ victory kept him awake at night. 29 Hemsterhuis makes this case in more detail in ‘On Plato’s Style in the Phaedrus and the Symposium’, pp. 177–8 above. 30 The rest of this letter is devoted to Hemsterhuis’s critique of the doctrine of metempsychosis, which begins to be alluded to in the passages from the Phaedrus paraphrased by Gallitzin above but then becomes more explicit in subsequent pages of Plato’s dialogue, culminating in a theory of rebirth set out in 248c–249a. As is traditional (in Cicero, for instance), Plato’s metempsychosis is interpreted as a remnant of Pythagoreanism in his philosophy. 31 The translation follows the text established in B III.150. 32 That is, Hemsterhuis’s letter from 28 November: Gallitzin numbers them cumulatively over each year. 33 In his letter from 28 November, Hemsterhuis had distinguished between the subjective and objective as subcategories of the intellectual sublime (pp. 193–4 above), but Gallitzin uses the same categories to distinguish the intellectual sublime from the energetic sublime. It is not clear the extent to which this is a misunderstanding or intentional on Gallitzin’s part. 34 Prince George Charles of Hesse-Darmstadt (1754–1830), a captain in the Dutch army and a close friend of Hemsterhuis, received the nickname Xion (Greek: Χιων) in the correspondence. 35 Alexander Pope (1688–1744); presumably a vague reference to the end of Epistle IV of An Essay on Man, which counsels a renunciation of ‘bliss unknown’ in this life, in the name of the pleasures of virtuous conduct and faith. 36 The translation follows the text established in B 7.96. 37 Hemsterhuis mistakenly writes ‘Nov[ember]’. 38 Neither Gallitzin’s surviving letter from 30 November 1786 nor the one from 22 November make any explicit reference to the subjective and objective sublime. 39 A reference back to the Letter on Man, EE 1.123–4. 40 Like Dionysius of Halicarnassus. 41 Nicolas Boileau’s translation of Longinus, Traité du Sublime ou du merveilleux dans le discours, appeared in 1674 and was a key event in the evolution, as well as ultimately dissolution, of neoclassicism. 42 The translation follows the text established in B III.154. 43 That is, Hemsterhuis’s letter from 12 December.

NOTES 317

44 Hemsterhuis’s letter from 15 December (B 7.97) forms an ironic and exalted meditation on the disruption caused to philosophical thought by the wind. 45 The sentence is unfinished in the manuscript. 46 The French is ‘personnage de remplissage’, i.e., someone just there as padding. 47 This sentence and what follows is a play on a paragraph from Hemsterhuis’s letter from 15 December (in addition to Gallitzin’s own previous commentary on the lover’s purifying ascent from the Phaedrus). The paragraph reads, ‘My dear Diotima, when I find myself in such a situation, very sad and sinister ideas come to me, namely, whether nature has wanted us for philosophy! For, I often say to myself, in some crude moment of wisdom, if it had wanted this, it would have given us lids for our ears as it has done for our eyes. I don’t know if this is well said, but at least it makes clear that there enters into us much more evil by way of our ears than our eyes. Your wisdom will say to me once more that a good philosophy must collect all of this and sort it. I don’t know by what fatality you are always right, but it is pointless to argue’ (B 7.97). 48 On Venus Urania, see Simon, EE 2.115 and accompanying note. The figure of Venus Urania will come to be closely associated with Gallitzin, since it was to form the subject matter of Goethe’s conversations with her in 1792. 49 ‘Vehicle of action’ is a term Hemsterhuis uses in his published work (see EE 1.132) to signify the medium by which sensations are communicated to a subject (e.g., vibrations in the air for sound). 50 A light wind. Gallitzin is here returning to Hemsterhuis’s complaints about the wind in his previous letter. 51 The translation follows the text established in B 7.98. 52 See note 41 above. 53 The translation follows the text established in B 7.100. 54 For example, most famously, Proclus’s Commentary on the Timaeus. 55 This is a comparison that will provide the basis for the second half of the letter. 56 Cf. Sophylus, EE 2.45. 57 This is the last argument undertaken in Sophylus, which concludes, ‘Therefore, by its unknown qualities, modifications, or manners of being that it has in common with the body, the soul acts on the body, such that the body manifests its known qualities, modifications or manners of being – and vice versa’ (EE 2.60). 58 Hemsterhuis makes much of this phenomenon in his history of the human sciences at the conclusion to the Letter on Man (EE 1.123–4). See also ‘On the Incommensurable’ (pp. 139–41 above) and accompanying notes. 59 See, e.g., Letter on Man, EE 1.110: ‘We are passive in every sensation we have of the different faces of the universe; we are passive in sensations of impenetrability and heat, of rhythm and sound, of contour and colour, of desire and duty’. 60 That is, the activity of the physical vehicle of sensation on the passive body and mind. 61 The translation follows the text established in B IV.119. 62 See p. 197 above. 63 See note 48 above to ‘Further Reflections on Spinoza’.

On Architecture and Other Arts 1 The translation follows the text established in B 9.22. 2 Hemsterhuis had mentioned triumphal arches in his letter from 11 March (B 9.20). Gallitzin’s letters from this period are not extant.

318 NOTES   3 That is, despite the seemingly distinct criteria he uses to classify the arts in the Letter on Sculpture – see EE 1.67.   4 That is, the Ionic, Doric and Corinthian orders of Greek architecture.   5 Since Gallitzin’s letters from this period have not survived, it is not clear to which volume, loaned to him by Gallitzin, Hemsterhuis is referring.   6 All plays by J. W. Goethe: Stella from 1776, Clavigo from 1774, Götz von Berlichingen from 1773, Iphigenia in Tauris (which appeared in multiple versions) between 1779 and 1786. The last is a reworking of Euripides’ original Iphigenia in Tauris.  7 Thoas, King of the Taurians, dominates the latter scenes of Euripides’ play, during which Iphigenia tricks him by escaping with Orestes and Pylades. He angrily realises his mistake but is finally mollified by Athena.   8 Presumably Hemsterhuis is now referring to Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis.   9 Concerning Menander (see note 14 above to ‘Letters on Diderot’s Style’), on 7 March Hemsterhuis had written to Gallitzin, ‘I’ve just read from one end to the other Götz von Berlichingen, which fills me with admiration and astonishment…. When it comes to pure dramatology, one can compare Goethe to Diderot, who I believe is the first of everyone since Menander in this regard’ (B 9.19). At least four of the six plays by Terence (195 – 159 bc) are close adaptations of lost originals by Menander. 10 Molière (1622–73), French comic playwright; David Augustin de Brueys (1641–1723) and Jean de Palaprat (1650–1721) co-authored a series of comic plays for the ComédieFrançaise and Théâtre-Français in Paris at the turn of the eighteenth century. 11 Without access to Gallitzin’s earlier letter, it is difficult to know precisely what Hemster­ huis is referring to here. Perhaps it is Diderot’s play The Natural Son, to which he appended a treatise on dramaturgy which Hemsterhuis prized highly (see ‘On Reading Goethe’s Werther’). 12 Henri Maximilian de Saint-Simon: see note 4 above to ‘On Plato’s Style in the Phaedrus and the Symposium’. Presumably Hemsterhuis means that, while Plato should consistently be prized highly from these various perspectives, Saint-Simon’s works are to be valued consistently low. 13 Theocritus (c. 300 – 260 bc), Greek poet.

On Reading Goethe’s Werther 1 The translation follows the text established in B 10.93. After his journey through central Germany in 1785 and particularly his conversations with Goethe, Herder and Wieland in Weimar, Hemsterhuis became increasingly interested in contemporary German letters and embarked on a reading programme of German literature. This letter follows from the previous one in recording his initial reactions to Goethe’s works – in this case, Goethe’s 1774 epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. 2 In his letter from 1 December (B 10.92), Hemsterhuis makes a number of comments on Goethe that begin, ‘I’ve read for the first time Goethe’s Das Leiden des jungen Werthers. I am so often struck by his great knowledge of man and the human heart.’ 3 Such ‘Wertherfieber’ (Werther-fever) had swept through German-speaking lands in the late 1770s, leading to one or two instances of copycat suicide. 4 A 1757 play by Denis Diderot, published with the appendix ‘Entretiens sur le fils naturel’, a theoretical treatise on dramaturgy. 5 Following Aristotle’s Poetics, I.ix, on the criterion of ‘the probable’ in literary criticism.

NOTES 319

  6 The epistolary novel had come from England by way of Samuel Richardson’s vastly popular Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747–8), before being adopted by, among others, Rousseau, for example for his 1761 Julie or, The New Heloise.   7 Hemsterhuis’s idiom is once again the obscure ‘habiter les petits maisons’ – see note 5 above to ‘Letters on the History of Philosophy up to Spinoza’.   8 Hemsterhuis here refers to the category of ‘epigrammatic obscurity’ he had previously developed in the ‘Letters on Diderot’s Style’, pp. 180–1 above.

Letter on Virtues and Vices   1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 22–8 / B 1.19. See also WW, pp. 572–85, and LSD, pp. 70–8. This letter was one of the first Hemsterhuis sent Gallitzin, in March 1776, and is one of the fullest statements of his faculty psychology. He subsequently made use of the letter in composing Diotima’s speech (as reported by Socrates) in Simon (written from 1779 onwards): while the first half is translated into the allusive language of the Prometheus myth, the second half of the letter is repeated almost verbatim by Diotima, EE 2.116–19 (we note any significant changes in the notes below). Comparing the two versions is therefore extremely helpful for understanding the changes in Hemsterhuis’s philosophy during this period when his collaboration with Gallitzin was at its most intense. Most of the changes are due to the ancient setting of the later dialogue, a more rigorous use of the term ‘faculty’ and alterations in Hemsterhuis’s views on moral psychology, i.e., his turn from considering the moral organ as purely passive to acknowledging an active, judging part to it.   2 The following three paragraphs (until ‘commonly called conscience.’) are reproduced relatively closely in Simon (EE 2.116), although the paragraph on the moral organ is altered substantially in line with Hemsterhuis’s evolving moral psychology.   3 On the term ‘velleity’ (and its contrast with ‘act of will’), see the Series Introduction, p. xi above.   4 This is the beginning of the passage reproduced almost verbatim in Simon, with exceptions noted.   5 This clause is rewritten in Simon.   6 The phrase ‘… or the situation of the things outside of him in relation to him’ is omitted from Simon.   7 The format of the list is different in Simon and the comment in parenthesis is omitted.   8 ‘Properly [speaking]’ is omitted from Simon   9 This final sentence is rewritten in Simon. Simon also includes an additional psychological type here that is missing from the present letter (EE 2.117). 10 The reference to the monotheistic God is omitted from the Athenian setting of Simon. 11 ‘Four classes’ in Simon, owing to the addition of a further psychological type (EE 2.118). 12 Socrates’ name is omitted from Simon owing to the fictional setting (EE 2.118). 13 Epaminondas (c. 418–362 bc), a Theban statesman; Timoleon (c. 411–337 bc), a Greek statesman and general; Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–180 ce), Roman emperor and philosopher. Along with Socrates, all these names are omitted from Simon owing to its fictional setting; three other names are given instead: Palamedes, Gelon and Aristides (EE 2.118). 14 As in the previous note, the examples are changed in Simon. 15 ‘Part’ is replaced by ‘faculty’ in Simon. 16 Simon substitutes ‘great man’ for ‘heroes’ (plural). 17 This paragraph is omitted from Simon.

320 NOTES 18 ‘I admit it is true’ is replaced with ‘Although it is true’ in Simon. 19 ‘Parts’ is replaced by ‘faculties’ in Simon. 20 This reads, ‘It is evident’, in Simon. 21 In Simon this is changed to ‘immortal Gods’ to reflect its antique setting. 22 The following three paragraphs are omitted from Simon. 23 This paragraph is seemingly in conversation with the Aristotelian doctrine of the mean. 24 In Simon, this reads ‘it is evident that’. 25 The numbering is different in Simon, owing to the additional psychological type described. 26 This is changed to ‘in the fifth’ in Simon. 27 ‘In general’ is omitted from Simon. 28 Hemsterhuis adds, ‘and activity’ in Simon to reflect his revised moral psychology. 29 In Simon, this sentence ends, ‘… make of its veillety’s determination’. 30 Simon adds ‘or in moral sensibility’ at this point. 31 Simon adds ‘and to moral sensibility’ at this point. 32 The opening to this sentence is not reproduced in Simon. The rest of the paragraph is then inserted a few paragraphs later in the dialogue. 33 ‘Indeterminate’ is omitted from Simon. 34 ‘Made to be’ is omitted from Simon, and the passage reproduced in Simon ends here.

On Fürstenberg’s Character 1 The translation follows the text established in B 1.225. See also LSD, pp. 147–9. On Franz von Fürstenberg, see note 4 to ‘On Geometric Education and Aesthetic Judgement’ above. This letter is exemplary of the faculty analysis that played a prominent role in Hemsterhuis’s and Gallitzin’s philosophical collaborations; indeed, their correspondence is full of quantifications of the condition of acquaintances’ faculties as a means of testing out their metaphysico-moral project. 2 From 1770 onwards, Fürstenberg had been appointed curator of Münster’s educational institutions, and it was in this capacity that he had become interested in Hemsterhuis’s work and visited him in The Hague during a diplomatic trip to the Dutch Republic. What Hemsterhuis did not know when writing this letter is that his comments on Gallitzin’s and Fürstenberg’s compatibility would prove prophetic: Gallitzin would move to Münster in 1779 and form a close friendship with Fürstenberg which both supplemented and, to some extent, supplanted her relationship with Hemsterhuis. 3 As Fresco points out (LSD, p. 148), this is a surprising observation considering Hemsterhuis’s scepticism over the relation between character and physiognomy which dominates Simon in particular. 4 On 16 April 1780, Fürstenberg officially founded the new University of Münster. 5 Fürstenberg was born in Arnsberg, Westphalia (south of Münster); Gallitzin was born in Berlin. 6 The diagrammatic use of the four-leaf clover to represent their faculty psychology is common in Hemsterhuis’s and Gallitzin’s correspondence. The figure found in the original letter is reproduced here and we have supplemented it with a translated reproduction of the textual elements to the right. 7 On this distinction between moral sensibility and moral activity, see Aristaeus, EE 2.82.

NOTES 321

On the Moral Organ 1 The translation follows the text established in B 2.55. See also LSD, pp. 203–8. This letter provides some further clarifications on Hemsterhuis’s doctrine of the moral organ, particularly in light of the various criticisms it had been subjected to by Diderot, for example. Key here is Hemsterhuis’s admission – following Diderot’s comments – that ‘organ’ might be a bit too figurative to properly name this quality. Fresco (LSD p. 203) conjectures that this letter was a foundational document in the genesis of Simon. 2 The year 1779 marked the passionate high point in Hemsterhuis’s and Gallitzin’s friendship, as testified by the exuberance of this language. 3 On the language of ‘extremity’ and ‘end’ in relation to the organs, see ‘Letter on Virtues and Vices’, pp. 208–9 above. 4 A reference to the final part of Sophylus, EE 2.58–61. 5 This quotation is taken from Horace’s Odes, Bk 1.21: ‘Sing, young girls, of Diana; sing, boys, of long-haired Cynthius, and of Latona [Apollo] so dearly loved by highest Jove’ (trans. N. Rudd [London: Loeb, 2004], pp. 64–5). Hemsterhuis sometimes called Gallitzin’s children Apollo and Diana.

On Current Events in the Dutch Republic 1 The translation follows the text established in B 3.89. See also WW, pp. 412–14. During the early 1780s, Hemsterhuis underwent a ‘political turn’, marking in many ways a third phase in his philosophy, one in which the critique of political institutions took centre-stage. This is an early expression of his growing interest in political philosophy articulated at a crisis during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War – see note 3 below. 2 Hemsterhuis had long suffered from incapacitating pain in one of his arms, and this was the reason that he had retired as a clerk in December 1780 (although his handwriting remained unchanged until his death). 3 This situation was the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–4), during which the British blockaded all Dutch ports and captured many of the Dutch colonial possessions outside Europe. It was provoked by Dutch trade with the United States (with which Britain was also at war) – and particularly the eagerness with which Amsterdam traders collaborated with the United States and the French. It is for this reason that Hemsterhuis focuses on a possible British ostracism of Amsterdam in what follows. 4 This is most likely a reference to his ‘Reflections on the Republic of the United Provinces’ (see pp. 218–24 above.) 5 This comment presages the increasing friction between Orangist and Patriot parties in the Dutch Republic; see Israel’s Introduction to the present volume (pp. 63–4 above) for more contextual detail. 6 That is, the political philosophy that Hemsterhuis perceives to be shared by Aristotle’s Politics, the works of Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) and The Spirit of Laws by Montesquieu (1689–1755). 7 Empress Maria Theresa ruled the Habsburg dominions from 1740 until her death on 29 November 1780.

322 NOTES Reflections on the Republic of the United Provinces 1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 62–71. See also WW, pp. 454–71. The text as handed down is neither dated nor completed. In the correspondence with Gallitzin there are some references to the writing of this text, which indicate a long period of gestation, starting in 1780, when he writes, ‘If I had completed a small work I’ve often intended to compose – namely, a philosophical history of this Republic, one of the most illustrious and, without exception, the most singular ever to have existed – I would send you this work’ (p. 216 above). Hemsterhuis seems to have completed a large portion of the fragment by early 1783, writing, for example, in March 1783, ‘In terms of the beauty, richness or polish of a language, I tried in the Reflections on the Republic to provide a glimpse of the possibility of a theory by which one could judge the relative richness, etc., of a language without understanding one single word of it, but knowing well the history of the people who speak it’ (B 4.21). A month later, in April 1783, he further writes, ‘After Alexis II, I will return straightaway to the Reflections on this Republic, which in less than two centuries provided almost all the modifications of which civilised human society is capable. If the immense Aristotle had seen this Republic, his Politica, although infinitely above all that has been written since, would still have been better’ (B 4.33; see also B 5.46). This comment not only suggests the extent to which Aristotle’s shadow looms over the text (to the extent that Hemsterhuis often dubs the Reflections his ‘treatise on political animals’ [‘On Final Causes’, p. 151 above] and that it can be read as his reckoning with ‘the school of Aristotle, Grotius and Montesquieu’ to which he belonged in his youth [p. 216 above]), it also shows that it was likely to have been mostly written in 1781/2. In June 1787 Hemsterhuis even expressed hopes of completing the treatise (B 8.44), which in the end came to nothing. What is clear is that this text was intended for private circulation among Gallitzin, Fürstenberg and their acquaintances with influence on Münster’s political affairs to improve their familiarity with the workings, the needs and the dangers of the Dutch Republic. 2 This remark is exemplary both of the ambivalence Hemsterhuis feels towards the Dutch Republic, a source of continual tension in his writings, and of his strategy in his political philosophy to approach general truths through this one case study, and vice versa. His discourse is often doubled to simultaneously refer to fundamental philosophical axioms and the particular history of the Dutch Republic. 3 See Aristotle, Politics, 1252a: ‘The first coupling together of persons to which necessity gives rise is that between those who are unable to exist without one another’ (trans. H. Rackham [London: Loeb, 1932], p. 5). 4 See Letter on Man, EE 1.104–8. 5 See Letter on Atheism, p. 108 above. 6 This point is developed further in the history of natural right given at the beginning of Alexis, EE 2.125–6. 7 This is a reference to the operation of sympathy, i.e., seeing the world from another’s perspective, that forms the heart of Hemsterhuis’s mature ethics and is elaborated most fully in Aristaeus (EE 2.82–3). 8 Hemsterhuis’s point is that, by analogy, nations also exist in a state of nature, but, unlike individual humans, they never really emerge from it – and therefore much of the rest of the fragmentary treatise is an attempt to think through the fate of a ‘body’ that cannot be properly socialised. 9 The influence of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Law (1748) on Hemsterhuis comes to the surface in this passage.

NOTES 323

10 The image of the golden chain forged by God has its origins in Homer’s Iliad, Bk 8, line 18: ‘Make fast from heaven a chain of gold, and lay hold of it, all you gods and all you goddesses’ (trans. A. T. Murray [London: Loeb, 1924], p. 351). 11 Compare the two kinds of idea – primitive ideas and ideas of relation – enumerated at the end of the Letter on Man, EE 1.122. 12 See the discussion of genius in the Letter on Man (EE 1.91) as well as the related passages on inspiration in Alexis (EE 2.141–2). 13 That is, the Dutch. 14 Cimbrian is a Germanic language spoken in several variants in north-eastern Italy. 15 Another Germanic tribe. 16 That is, in sympathetically enjoying the good that befalls them. 17 The fundamental structure of optimal epistemic practice for Hemsterhuis derives from the Letter on Sculpture, where it informs the definition of beauty (EE 1.65 onwards). 18 In regard to Sparta, Aristotle had written in the Politics (1337a), ‘Matters of public interest ought to be under public supervision; at the same time we ought not to think that any of the citizens belongs to himself, but that all belong to the state, for each is a part of the state, and it is natural for the superintendence of the several parts to have regard to the superintendence of the whole. And one might praise the Spartans in respect of this, for they pay the greatest attention to the training of their children, and conduct it on a public system’ (trans. H. Rackham [London: Loeb, 1932], pp 635–7). 19 That is, the Dutch. 20 The subheading ‘Chapter One’ is missing in some versions of this text. It is, in any case, an indication that the Reflections remained unfinished. 21 That is, in 1581 with the signing of the Act of Abjuration and the expulsion of Philip II of Spain.

Preliminary Observations on the Constitution of the Republic of the United Provinces 1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 82–98. It is not clear when and under what circumstances this text was written. (We have placed it immediately after ‘Reflections’ above to emphasise their close relationship.) It was perhaps written on behalf of the Council of State and intended for outsiders. Hence, it is not clear to what extent it expresses Hemsterhuis’s personal views. There is also no reference to the turbulent years prior to the Orange Restoration in 1787, suggesting a slightly sanitised perspective of Dutch history. Nevertheless, this text is remarkable for its genealogical ambition (it begins in prehistory), its focus on the relation between political and economic structures (especially between political behaviours and land ownership) and its marginalisation of the role of the Stadtholder in Dutch politics (cf. ‘Sketch of Advice to the Council of State’, pp. 251–2 above). 2 That is, the seven provinces which together formed a republic with a loose federative structure, in which decisions often required unanimity. 3 That is, from 1581 (when the Act of Abjuration was signed, the declaration of independence of the Dutch Republic from allegiance to the Spanish king). 4 Hemsterhuis is presumably thinking of the United States and, as Jonathan Israel points out in his Introduction to the present volume (pp. 69–70 above), that country is a key reference point for all of Hemsterhuis’s political philosophy and particularly his rejection of the planned, artificial creation of constitutions.

324 NOTES  5 Sparta.   6 Literally, ‘overseer’, the elected leaders of Sparta who shared power with its king.   7 Lycurgus (b. c. 820 bc), the quasi-legendary founder of the constitution of Sparta.   8 Solon of Athens (c. 640 – c. 560 bc), a statesman who reformed the Athenian constitution. The quote Hemsterhuis attributes to Solon was widely cited – for example, in Plutarch’s Life of Solon: ‘When [Solon] was afterwards asked if he had enacted the best laws for the Athenians, he replied, “The best they would receive”’ (Parallel Lives, trans. B. Perrin [London: Loeb, 1914], p. 442).   9 Edward Gibbon (1737–94), author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (6 vols, 1776–88). Hemsterhuis does not seem to have possessed his own copy – see J. van Sluis (ed.), Bibliotheca hemsterhusiana (Budel: Damon / Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy, 2001). For Hemsterhuis’s particular reference in this passage, see, for example, Chapter 2 of The Decline and Fall, ‘Of the Union and Internal Prosperity of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines’. 10 Publius Cornelius Tacitus (56 – c. 120 ce), who, in Germania (which Hemsterhuis cites below), describes the features of the Germanic tribes on the fringes of the Roman Empire. 11 This passage marks a transition to the history of the political and economic structures of the Holy Roman Empire, which constitutes the major part of this treatise. 12 Tacitus, Germania, ch. 11: ‘On small matters, the chiefs consult; on larger questions the community [i.e., everyone]’ (trans. M. Hutton and E. H. Warmington [London: Loeb, 1970], p. 147). 13 Charlemagne (747–814), King of the Franks and the first Holy Roman Emperor. 14 Capitularies were sets of administrative legislation decreed by Charlemagne and his successors and distributed to functionaries in the Frankish Empire for implementation. 15 An allod (or allodial land) is typically defined in medieval law (as well as, for example, in Grotius) as an estate over which the landowner has full ownership rights and sovereignty. They are distinguished from fiefs (or fiefdoms), the ownership of which was shared with the feudal lord who still possessed some rights over it. 16 Pepin the Short (c. 714–68), King of the Franks and father of Charlemagne; on Charlemagne, see note 13 above. The ‘mayor of the palace’ was the name for something like a ceremonial prime minister in the Merovingian dynasty – a role whose power diminished during the Carolingian dynasty. 17 On the relation between fiefdoms and allods, see note 15 above. 18 William the Conqueror (c. 1028–87), the first Norman king of England, whose reign began in 1066. 19 Presumably a reference to the emergence of free imperial cities, like Basel and Strasbourg, in the thirteenth century, emancipated in exchange for providing financial help to struggling princes. 20 The clergy formed the first estate, the nobility the second and the citizenry the third. 21 King Philip II of Spain, Lord of the Provinces of the Netherlands from 1555 until the Act of Abjuration in 1581. 22 This was the start of the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648). That war was, in its earlier years, the Dutch Revolt, that is, the Dutch war of independence from imperial Spain. 23 William I (‘The Silent’, 1533–84), Count of Nassau and Prince of Orange from 1544. He was the principal leader of the Dutch Revolt. 24 Thomas More (1478–1535), author of Utopia. 25 Maximilien de Béthune, Duc de Sully (1559–1641), statesman and counsellor to King Henri IV of France. 26 Pierre Jeannin, Baron de Montjeu (1542–1623), French statesman.

NOTES 325

27 That is, the length of time needed for familiarity with the new system and the risk of being led astray. 28 Literally ‘Hollande’, i.e., the western part of the Netherlands. It is not clear how geographically specific Hemsterhuis intends to be here.

On the Political Situation of the Dutch Republic  1 The translation follows the text established in B 12.132. This more formal letter to Fürstenberg provides a fuller elaboration of Hemsterhuis’s political views towards the end of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (see previous letter), at which time its disastrous implications for the Dutch Republic were becoming clear. One of the functions of Hemsterhuis’s letters to Münster during the 1780s was to pass on his insider knowledge of the political situation of the Dutch Republic to an interested foreign power. This meant many of his political letters were highly sensitive and were therefore written in code. This letter provides a good example of this coding and the material in italics in what follows was written out in numerical figures based on a key known only to Hemsterhuis, Gallitzin and her intimate friends.   2 The letter is addressed to Franz von Fürstenberg.   3 Gallitzin had been seriously ill at this time.   4 A Greek term for shield.   5 See note 1 above.  6 The ‘quota’ were the taxes imposed on the individual provinces within the federal structure of the Republic.   7 Duke Louis Ernst of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1718–88): from 1759 to 1766 guardian of Stadtholder William V (who was then a minor).   8 The French is ambiguous and this could easily read ‘his’ in reference to the Duke above.   9 That is, the anti-Orangist party that would come to prominence in the Patriot Uprising that was then beginning to break out. 10 That is, the House of Orange and the stadtholdership. 11 It is unclear what ‘it’ here refers to. From the context, it seems to mean something like the interregnum after the overthrow of the Stadtholder. 12 Protestantism and Catholicism. 13 Louis XIV, King of France from 1643 to 1715. 14 Σ = Socrates. That Hemsterhuis signed the letter with his private pseudonym for Gallitzin shows that Fürstenberg was acquainted with this pseudonym and that Hemster­huis was aware that Fürstenberg was a tacit recipient of his letters to her.

Alexis II, or on the Military 1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 99–121. See also WW, pp. 336–66. On the details of its convoluted composition history and Hemsterhuis’s intentions with this fragment, see van Sluis’s Appendix above, pp. 261–6. Formally, the dialogue is meant as a strict sequel to Alexis, or on the Golden Age, taking place the following day in the same location with the same characters. Thematically, however, the text picks up a line of thought begun in the Letter on Desires and developed in Aristaeus on moral attraction, justice and the ‘physics’ of social existence. On the translation of the title, see note 14 below.

326 NOTES   2 ‘May spiders stretch their fine-spun webs over armour; and may the battle cry no longer exist even in name.’ Theocritus, Idylls, XVI, lines 96–7; trans. Neil Hopkinson (London: Loeb, 2015), pp. 238–9.   3 The dialogue begins the morning after the dialogue Alexis, or on the Golden Age ends with Diocles returning to the same hill outside Athens to meet Alexis, whom he had left there at dusk the previous evening (EE 2.147).   4 The last words of Alexis, or on the Golden Age are ‘we owe a sacrifice to Love tomorrow!’ (EE 2.147).   5 The concluding conversation in Alexis or the Golden Age concerns Alexis’s intention to consult an oracle and Diocles’s suggestion that, with such an intention, he will be inspired by gods where he is, without having to find an oracle elsewhere (EE 2.146).  6 Demetrius I (337–283 bc), a Macedonian general who besieged Rhodes (as told in ­Plutarch’s Life of Demetrius).  7 Antigonus I Monophthalmus (382–301 bc), a Macedonian Greek general under Alexander the Great and later king, who, after Alexander’s death, in the Third and Fourth Diadochi Wars (314–11 bc, 308–1 bc), fought against Ptolemy I (c. 367–282 bc), another Macedonian general under Alexander and founder of the Ptolemaic Empire in Egypt.   8 See previous note.   9 That is, his speeches in Alexis, or on the Golden Age. 10 A Greek city on the coast of Ionia, now Turkey. 11 Demades (c. 380–319 bc), a Greek politician and orator. 12 Claros, twelve kilometres south of Colophon, contained a famous oracle of Apollo, as told in Pausanias, Description of Greece, VII.iii. 13 Thrasybulus (c. 440–388 bc), an Athenian general and democratic politician. 14 The French noun ‘le militaire’ which appears in the title has a broader range of meanings than the English ‘military’. As Hemsterhuis uses it, it means less the armed forces of a nation than what someone in the armed forces (whether soldier or sailor) does and occasionally, as in this instance, the soldier or sailor themselves. The context (particularly the next paragraph) makes very clear that Alexis is a soldier, hence the translation of this use of ‘militaire’ as ‘soldier’. Thus, it should be noted that the title could be translated as Alexis II, or on Soldiering or even Alexis II, or on the Military Class. 15 Myronides (fl. 457 bc), Alcibiades (c. 450–404 bc) and Iphicrates (c. 415–353 bc), Athenian generals and statesmen. 16 Praxiteles (fourth century bc) and Phidias (c. 480–430 bc), both Athenian sculptors. 17 This figure has no obvious historical reference. 18 That is, Apollo. 19 See note 7 above. 20 Alexander the Great (356–323 bc), King of Macedon and son of Philip II (382–336 bc). 21 When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, he consulted a famous Egyptian oracle and was pronounced son of the Egyptian god Ammon (i.e., Zeus). See Aristaeus, EE 2.96–7, and accompanying note. 22 This is the conclusion to the narrative of the golden age in Alexis, or on the Golden Age – see, in particular, EE 2.138. 23 Euthydemus and his brother Dionysodorus (mid- to late fifth century bc), two Sophists interrogated by Socrates in Plato’s dialogue Euthydemus. On the sea-urchin argument, see Euthydemus, 298a–e. 24 Heraphilus is an imaginary poet, whom Hemsterhuis introduces here. The name means ‘beloved by Hera’ (i.e., Juno), the wife of Jupiter/Zeus and the goddess of marriage and family. Strato of Lyndos has no obvious historical reference. 25 Two places with prominent sanctuaries dedicated to Hera/Juno.

NOTES 327

This image is taken from Ovid, Metamorphoses, I.76–88. That is, a rainbow personified as a goddess. The Roman god of wealth. The Roman goddess of war. Bacchus (Dionysius), the god of wine and ecstasy, is said to have come across wine during travels through India (as told in Euripides’s Bacchae, for example). Sesostris (a mythical Egyptian king described by Herodotus) who supposedly conquered much of Africa and Asia and Alexander the Great, who actually did the same. 31 Roman goddess identified with Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom. 32 According to Ovid’s Fasti (V.195ff), the nymph Chloris was loved by Zephyr, the god of the west wind. 33 Homer (c. eighth century bc), Tyrtaeus (seventh century bc) and Pindar (c. 518 – c. 438 bc), all Greek poets. 34 A series of places with sanctuaries devoted to Hera/Juno. See note 25 above. 35 According to Hyginus’s Fabulae, Ixion forced himself on Hera, only for Zeus to deceive him with a cloud shaped in her image. 36 Endymion was a beautiful shepherd and personification of sleep and timeless beauty. The Roman goddess Diana fell in love with him – a story told in, for example, Pausanias’s Description of Greece. 37 Paphlagonia was a region on the Black Sea in modern-day Turkey. It might be an allusive reference to the cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (c. 400–c. 325 bc), who, according to legend, mocked Alexander the Great. 38 Two mythological figures who employed poison to deceive and punish men. 39 Promachus (d. 324 bc), a Macedonian soldier in Alexander the Great’s army who won first prize in a drinking contest and died three days later, as told in Plutarch’s Life of Alexander (ch. LXX). 40 The Asterion is a river in the Peloponnese, as well as the name of a river god. 41 An idea developed in Aristaeus (EE 2.81–2). 42 This question recalls many of the sophistic provocations in Plato’s dialogues, such as Thrasymachus’s challenge in the Republic. 43 Noticeable here is the broader semantic extensity of the French ‘just’, which overlaps with much of the meaning of the English ‘correct’. 44 It was Solon (Athenian statesman, c. 630 – 560 bc) who first passed a longstanding law banning the export of figs. 45 The following passage reflects explicitly on the key Hemsterhuisian method of using terms from Newtonian physics to explain moral and social phenomena – a method, he notes in the Letter on Man (EE 1.123–4), that is central to modern subjects, who necessarily make sense of the moral by way of the physical. This method had most fully been deployed in the Letter on Desires (EE 1.87) and Aristaeus (EE 2.83–4) and it is these discussions Hemsterhuis further develops in what follows. 46 A central thesis of the Letter on Desires (EE 1.80). 47 The mythological story of Pythias (or Pytheas) and Damon (not the character in Hemsterhuis’s own Simon) was a central one for the Greeks in its illustration of friendship through mutual self-sacrifice. 48 Cephissus, a river in Boeotia, whose inhabitants, the Boeotians, often opposed the Athenians on the battlefield. Themis was the Greek goddess of justice and divine order and, according to most Greek sources derived from Hesiod, was born to Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky) as one of the twelve Titans. This is not the only genealogy found in Greek sources (others state that Helios or Oceanus and Tethys are Themis’s parents), but Hemsterhuis’s own genealogy is seemingly factitious. 26 27 28 29 30

328 NOTES Sketch of Advice to the Council of State 1 The translation follows the text established in IN, pp. 141–4. See also WW, pp. 472–9. The Council of State was an advisory body at the service of the federal government. It had limited executive tasks regarding military politics and taxation in the southern part of the country, the so-called Generality Lands. Hemsterhuis was a clerk in the service of the Council of State from 1755 until his retirement in 1780, and even after his retirement he continued to fulfil advisory duties for it. In terms of content, this piece is a plea for the stadholderate and was probably written ex officio, in that it seems to reflect the view of the Council of State and not necessarily Hemsterhuis’s personal perspective, which is far more critical of recent examples of Stadtholder power. Although it is not clear when the piece was written, it resonates with Hemsterhuis’s political concerns of the mid-1780s and we know that Hemsterhuis was advising the Council of State around 1784 (see, e.g., B 5.83), so we have very provisionally placed this treatise at this point within the present section. 2 The seven provinces were each independent and together they formed a federal Republic. The federal government, including the States General and the Council of State, had limited power. The consensus of the individual provinces was ultimately decisive. 3 That is, King Philip II of Spain – see Preliminary Observations, p. 230 above. 4 William I (‘the Silent’, 1533–84), Count of Nassau and Prince of Orange – see Preliminary Observations, p. 230 above. His sons referred to here were Maurice (1567–1625) and Frederic Henry (1584–1647). 5 The Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648) – see Preliminary Observations, pp. 230–1 above. 6 As mentioned in note 1 above, it is not clear whether this is an official position or whether Hemsterhuis himself considers these options ‘equally’ absurd. 7 ‘Optimum’ is a term that goes back to Hemsterhuis’s Letter on Sculpture, where it is defined as the maximum quantity of ideas in the minimum of time (EE 1.65). 8 These claims seem to almost border on irony and it is worth bearing in mind that, elsewhere in private and often coded correspondence, Hemsterhuis is very critical of the abilities of the current Stadholder (William V) (e.g., B 4.38).

On Patriotism 1 The translation follows the text established in B 6.35. See also WW, pp. 400–3. This letter is a good example of Hemsterhuis’s more mature political reflection and the ambivalences that structure it. 2 This letter is written within the midst of the Patriot Uprising. This context to Hemsterhuis’s political reflections is described in Israel’s Introduction to the present volume, pp. 63–4 above. 3 Hemsterhuis is ironically referring to John Calvin (1509–64) as a saint (Gallitzin had been baptised a Catholic). 4 While Hemsterhuis was born in Franeker in Friesland, he admits in 1786 to have not visited the province in more than thirty-five years (B 7.35); hence, there is some conscious irony here. 5 Much of Hemsterhuis’s political philosophy, developed in his correspondence of the 1780s, is premised on an opposition between an artificial sociality that treats humanity as a block regulated by legislation and a natural sociability born from the individual’s moral organ and its relations.

NOTES 329

 6 Miltiades, Themistocles and Thrasybulus were three Athens statesmen and generals from the fifth to the sixth century bc.   7 The Gulf of Sidra (or Sirte) is a part of the Mediterranean Sea off the northern coast of Libya. Two Carthaginian brothers, called the Philaeni, were buried there alive, and this spot went on to house two pillars called the altars of the Philaeni, which were later considered to be the African border between the Western and Eastern Roman Empires.

Letters on the French Revolution   1 The translation follows the text established in B 10.57. See also WW, p. 446. Hemsterhuis’s response to the French Revolution over the course of the year before his death mirrored many of his contemporaries in its mix of awe, curiosity and apprehension. These extracts not only show the extent to which those in Münster relied on him for up-to-date political news, but also the metamorphoses that his reaction to the Revolution underwent in a relatively short period.   2 The letter is written ten days after the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789.   3 Jacques Necker (1732–1804), Genevan banker and French minister of finance under Louis XIV. His dismissal in July 1789 had been one reason behind the unrest in Paris. At the time Hemsterhuis was writing this letter, Necker was in Basel and was to return triumphant to Versailles on 29 July.   4 Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, marquis de La Fayette (1757–1834), member of the French Estates-General (later: National Assembly) and commander of the Paris National Guard after the Bastille’s fall.   5 The translation follows the text established in B 10.58. See also WW, pp. 447–9.   6 That is, Kings of France from the house of Bourbon: Louis XIV (1643–1715); Louis XV (1715–74); Louis XVI (1774–92).   7 The point is that the House of Bourbon would have succeeded only if it could have easily identified ‘truly great men’ through distinguishing external features.   8 The idiom, with origins from the fifteenth century, is loosely translated as: Thus passes the glory of the world.   9 The translation follows the text established in B 10.60. See also WW, p. 448. 10 The Dutch ‘Patriots’ responsible for the Patriot Uprising that had been stamped out by the use of Prussian troops in late 1787. Many of these Patriots had emigrated to northern France as exiles. 11 Honoré Gabriel Riquette, comte de Mirabeau (1749–91), one of the first leaders of the French Revolution. 12 The translation follows the text established in B 10.61. See also WW, p. 448. 13 Cardinal Louis de Rohan (1734–1803), archbishop of Strasbourg and elected to the National Assembly in 1789. 14 The translation follows the text established in B 10.63. See also WW, p. 450. 15 Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836), member of the National Assembly, who published the influential pamphlets What Is the Third Estate? in January 1789 and Preliminary to the Constitution in July 1789. 16 Jean Sylvain Bailly (1736–93), French astronomer and revolutionary politician. 17 The translation follows the text established in B 10.72. 18 Foreign military intervention was not to be formally agreed upon until the Declaration of Pillnitz in 1791. 19 A star cluster.

330 NOTES 20 21 22 23

The translation follows the text established in B 10.83. See also WW, p. 450. That is, the representatives at the National Assembly. The translation follows the text established in B 10.84. See also WW, pp. 450–2. The translation follows the text established in B 10.103. See also WW p. 452.

Appendix. On the Genesis of Alexis II   1 E. Boulan, François Hemsterhuis, le Socrate hollandaise, suivi de Alexis ou du militaire (dialogue inédit) (Groningue: Noordhoff / Paris: Arnette, 1924), pp. 111–36; WW, pp. 336-–66.   2 J. G. Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784–91), III.14.6.   3 H. Moenkemeyer, François Hemsterhuis (Boston: Twayne, 1975), p. 95.   4 Bound in the manuscript (Leiden, University Library, BPL 825) between pages 10 and 11.   5 Münster, Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen, Bucholtz-Nachlass 1158, nr. 76 recto; also in BPL 825.  6 Boulan, François Hemsterhuis, p. 109; Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. A. M. Cohler, B. C. Miller and H. S. Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Bk I, ch. 1.   7 Fürstenberg in a letter to Gallitzin, dated 24 April 1787, printed in S. Sudhof, Der Kreis von Münster. Briefe und Aufzeichnungen Fürstenbergs, der Fürstin Gallitzin und ihrer Freunde (Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1962), vol. 1, pp. 345–7.  8 M. Köhler, Amalie von Gallitzin. Ein Leben zwischen Skandal und Legende, 2nd edition (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1995), pp. 148–55.   9 Undated, cited by P. H. Lemcke, Life and Works of Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1941), p. 35. 10 Lemcke, Life and Works, pp. 52–4. 11 Lemcke, Life and Works, p. 37–9; Köhler, Amalie von Gallitzin, pp. 189–96. 12 This is despite the fact that Hemsterhuis had received training as a military engineer in the 1740s, but apparently he had left that far behind him by then.

Index

Aa, D. van der, 45, 185, 311 Achilles, 118, 294 Adams, J., 65–6 Adams, J. Q., 66 Adonis, 147 Aeschylus, 286 Alatri, P., 270 Alcibiades, 237, 326 Alembert, J. L. d’, ix, xiii, xvi, 17, 28, 149, 179, 181, 272, 301, 310–11 Alexander the Great, 87, 239, 241, 243, 263, 286, 326–7 Alexis, or on the Golden Age, ix–x, xii, xvi– xviii, 12, 15, 83, 85, 96–7, 116–17, 146, 150, 177, 261–2, 264, 268, 271, 284–9, 292–3, 300–1, 306–9, 316, 322–3, 325–6 Alexis II or on the Military, vi, xvi, 151, 235–49, 261–6, 286, 302, 322, 325–6, 330 Algarotti, F., 38 Allamand, J. N. S., xiii, 20, 22, 273, 305 Altmann, A., 270 Ammon, 239, 326 Amor, 38, 300 see also Love Andromeda, 45 Antigonus, 235, 237, 239–40, 326 Apollo, 38, 190, 236, 241, 321, 326 Apuleius, 300 Arc, J. d’, 281 Archimedes, 17, 79, 299 Aristaeus, or on the Divinity, ix–x, xvi, 6–9, 12–13, 34, 58, 65, 96, 270, 276, 284–7, 289–92, 297, 300, 308, 314, 320, 322, 325–7 Aristarchus, 122, 295 Aristides, 319 Aristotle, 28, 78–9, 105, 111, 113, 163–4, 172, 216, 218, 239, 298–9, 308, 318, 321–3 Arondeaux, R., 278

Artemis, 42–3 Athanaeus, 314 Athena, 311, 318, 327 Augustus, see Frederick August II Aylva, van (family), xiv Bacchus (Dionysius), 39, 241, 327 Bacchylides, 154, 303 Bacon, F., 111, 272, 291, 304 Bailly, J. S., 257, 329 Barbara, Saint, 187 Barbetta, M. C., 268 Bardili, C. G., xviii Barthélemy, J. J., 276 Batoni, P., 187–8, 313 Bayle, P., 8, 269, 271 Beiser, F. C., 280 Bella, S. della, 40 Bellona, 241 Bentinck, W., 305 Bentley, R., 298 Berchem, N., 187, 313 Berkeley, G., 78, 283, 296–7 Bernouilli, J., 145, 301 Bessborough, see Ponsonby Bianchini, F., 145, 301 Bildt, J. van der, 303 Björnstähl, J. J., 51, 279 Blankenburg, C. F. von, xvi, 268, 293 Boerhaave, H., xiv, 18, 29–30, 48, 272, 279 Boileau, N., 196–7, 293, 316 Bonnet, C., xi, xiv, 164–6, 288, 297, 305–6 Booy, J. de, 310 Bordeu, 179, 310 Bordoli, R., 269, 281 Boreel, A. M., 279 Bouchardon, E., 40–1 Bouguer, P., 298 Boulan, E., 261, 265, 330 Bourbon, house of, 255–6, 329 see also Louis XIV, XV, XVI

332 INDEX Boyle, R., 24 Brès, G. de, 281 Brucker, J., 18, 272 Brugmans, A., 27 Brummel, L., 27, 274–5 Brunswick-Lüneburg, L. E., 36, 276, 325 Bruys / Brueys, D. A. de, 201, 318 Buffon, G. L. Leclerc, 66, 180 Bunge, W. van, x, xii, 267–9 Burke, E., 38, 62, 277 Busch, W., 277 Caesar, G. Julius, 263 Caligula, 96, 287 Callicles, 293 Calvin, J., 253, 281, 328 Camper, A. G., 110, 290 Camper, P., ix, xiii–xiv, xvii, 27, 46–7, 110, 185, 278–9, 290, 296, 304, 311 Campill, J., 168–9, 306 Carrachi / Carracci, A., 183, 187, 311, 313 Carstens, A. J., 277 Casini, P., 269, 271 Cassini, D., 145, 301 Causid, S. 312 Caylus, A. C. P. de, xiv, 276 Charlemagne, 227–8, 324 Châtelet, E. du, 17–18 Cheetham, M. A., 278 Cherni, A., 280 Chloris, 241, 327 Chrysothemis the Epicurean, 293 Cicero, M. T., 190, 281, 314, 316 Cignani, C., 187–8, 313 Circe, 243 Clairaut, A. C., 149, 301 Clarke, S., 17 Coleridge, S. T., xix Collot, A. M., xv Condillac, E. B. de, xiii Conradin of Swabia, 188 Correggio, A., 187–8, 313 Coulomb, C. A. de., 23 Cozens, A., 48 Craig, J., 83, 285, 298 Croce, B., ix Crocker, L., 280 Cuffeler, A. J., 110, 272, 290, 294 Cynthius, 321

Dalberg, J. F. H. von, xvii Dalberg, K. T. von, xviii Damme, P. van, xiv, 278 Damon, 248, 264, 327 Daphne, see Mollerus, A. C. Deijl, J. van, 303 Deleuze, G., 31 Demades, 236, 326 Demetrius of Phalerum, 235, 238, 262, 326 Democritus, 120, 289 Demosthenes, 98–9, 288 Dentan, P. G. (‘Lysis’), 131, 164, 297, 305 Desanguliers, J. T., 273 Descartes, R., 17, 24–5, 28, 79, 105, 107, 119–21, 163–4, 166, 283, 289, 292, 294–6, 301, 305, 315 Devil, 167 Diagoras of Melos, 120, 294 Diana, 215, 243, 321, 327 Diderot, D., vi, ix, xi, xiii–xv, xvii, 8–11, 14, 49–51, 57–8, 62, 66, 97, 120, 164, 179–81, 201–2, 269, 271–2, 277, 279, 288, 295, 305, 310–11, 318–19, 321 Dierick, A. P., 269 Diocles, v, xvi, 98, 109, 160, 235–49, 261, 263–4, 288, 290, 298, 304, 308, 326 Diogenes of Sinope, 181, 327 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 193–4, 315–16 Dionysodorus, 240, 326 Diotima, v, ix, xv, 10, 14, 51, 54, 58, 76, 78–86, 88–99, 108–16, 118–23, 130–1, 142–6, 148–55, 160, 167–72, 175–7, 179–82, 185–6, 190–8, 200–2, 212–16, 253, 255–8, 262–4, 282, 285, 288, 317, 319 see also Gallitzin (‘Diotima’), A. A. Divinity, xi, 7, 9, 13, 19, 58, 76, 81, 86, 93, 96, 98, 101–3, 114–15, 119–20, 151, 194, 199, 220, 235, 241, 294, 316 see also God, Supreme Being Docter, R., 277 Dolci, C., 186, 312 Dollond, J., xiv, 303 Domenichino, 187, 313 Elisabeth, princess Palatine of Bohemia, 295 Endymion, 243, 327 Epaminondas, 210, 319 Epicharmus, 165, 305

INDEX 333

Epicurus, 119–20, 294 Eriksen, S., 276 Ernst II, Duke of Saxen-Gotha, xvii, 188, 303, 313 Eros, see Amor, Love Espinasse, de l’, 179, 310 Euclid, 28, 42, 86, 113–14, 137, 163, 192, 285, 298–9, 314 Euler, L., 149, 301 Eumelus, 237 Euripides, 89, 165, 177–8, 201, 286, 309, 318, 327 Euthydemus, 240, 293, 326 Euthyphro, 296 Eutocius, 299 Eynden, E. van, 275 Fagel, F., xv, 188, 279, 313 Fagel (family), xiv Falconet, E. M., xv Fernow, K. L., 277 Feyth, H., xiii Flaxmann, J., 48 Fock, C. W., 276 Forster, G., xviii Franklin, B., 65–6 Frederick August II (‘The Strong’) of Saxony, 186, 312 Frederick Henry of Orange-Nassau (stadtholder), 60, 250, 328 Frederick of Baden, 188 Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, 62, 120, 187, 312 Frederik II, landgrave, 312 Fresco, M. F., vii, x, 267, 272, 281, 283, 288, 291–2, 294, 302, 305, 320–1 Fried, M., 38, 277 Fromond, G. F., xv, 303 Fürstenberg, F. von, vi, xiv, xvi–xvii, 48, 167, 186, 212, 218, 262, 265, 283, 292–3, 296, 302–3, 306–7, 309, 312, 320, 322, 325, 330 as ‘Great Friend’, 80, 121, 123, 150, 171, 176 as ‘Great Man’, 114, 116, 153 Gaastra, F. S., 278 Gaia, 327 Galatea, 45 Galileo, G., 17, 24, 29, 145, 301

Gallitzin, A. A., v–vi, ix–x, xiii–xviii, 4, 10, 12–15, 27, 41, 44–6, 48–9, 51, 58, 64–5, 78, 83–4, 87–8, 90–4, 110–14, 116, 118, 163–5, 190–3, 195–7, 199, 218, 261–8, 271, 275, 279, 281–312, 314–22, 325, 328, 330 see also Diotima Gallitzin, D. (jr, ‘Mitri’), 76, 91, 149, 265–6, 282, 301 Gallitzin, D. (sr, ‘Prince’), xiv–xv, xviii, 58, 179–80, 265–7, 305–6, 310 Gallitzin, M. (‘Mimi’), 86, 91, 149, 285, 301 Garve, C., xv Gelon, 319 Germanicus, 186, 312 Gibbon, E., 226, 324 Gilli, M., 268 Giovanni, G. di, 280 God, x, 5, 7–10, 13, 17–24, 37, 39, 57–8, 71–2, 74–8, 80–2, 85, 89–90, 92–7, 99–101, 104–5, 107–9, 111, 113–14, 119–21, 123, 129, 150–1, 166, 171, 176, 191–2, 195, 201, 207, 209–10, 220–1, 236–7, 256–8, 269–70, 281, 283, 287, 289, 292, 294, 300, 307, 315, 319, 323, 326–7 see also Divinity, Supreme Being Goddess, 36, 38, 42, 196, 241–3, 323, 326–7 Gods (plural), 100–3, 120, 153, 214, 236, 240, 255, 283, 289, 294, 320, 323, 326 Goethe, J. W., vi, ix, xvii–xviii, 3–4, 12, 15, 201–3, 268, 293, 298, 303, 312, 317–18 Goetschel, W., 268 Goggi, G., 280 Gombrich, E. H., 279 Goodman, A., 275 Gorgias, 165 Gorgon, 241 Gori, G., 273–4 Gould, S. J., 279 Grafton, 51 Gravesande, W. J. ‘s, see ’s Gravesande, W. J. Gregory, D., 145, 301 Greuze, J. B., 38, 277 Grimm, F., 310 Grotius, H., 111, 216, 291, 321–2, 324 Grucker, E., 280 Guido, see Reni, G.

334 INDEX Hadrian, 308 Hale, J. R., 277 Haller, A. von, 288 Hamann, J. G., ix, xv, xvii, 3, 267–8, 270, 279 Hamilton, W., xix, 33 Hammacher, K., x, 267, 270–2 Hannibal, 263 Hardenberg, F. von, see Novalis Hartsoeker, N., 304 Haskell, F., 277 Hegel, G. W. F., ix, xviii, 269 Heidanus, A., 18 Heinz, M., 280 Helios, 327 Helst, B. van der, 183, 188, 311, 313 Helvétius, C. A., xv Hemert, P. van, 23 Hemsterhuis, T., ix, xiii–xiv Hennert, J. F., 22 Henri IV of France, 324 Hera (Juno), 326–7 Heraphilus, 240–3, 326 Hercules the Drinker, 243 Hercules, 39, 210 Herder, J. G., ix, xv–xvi, xviii, 3–4, 7, 9, 12, 83–4, 116, 119, 263, 267–8, 280, 285, 293–4, 318, 330 Herodotus, 87, 286, 327 Herrmann, C. G., xviii Herschel, W., xvi, 303 Hesiod, vi, 170–1, 307, 327 Hesse-Darmstadt, G. C. (‘Xion’), 316 Hipparchus, 149, 301 Hippias of Elis, 164, 305 Hippocrates, 48 Hippolyta, 39 Hobbes, T., 21, 288 Hoeven, J. van der, 274 Hoffman, L. 267 Hogarth, W., 38, 277 Hogendorp, G. K. van, 64–6 Holbach, P. H. T. d’, 14 Hölderlin, F., ix, xviii, 57, 268 Holzhey, M., 278 Homer, 36, 71, 177, 181, 193–4, 196, 199, 201, 241, 295, 323, 327 Hooke, R., 304 Hoop, F. van der, 261, 264 Hoorn, M. A. M. van, 273

Horace, Q., Flaccus, 293, 321 Hume, D., 282 Huygens, Chr., 19, 28, 105, 145, 156, 301, 303 Hyginus, 327 Hypsicles, 146, 149, 301 Iphicrates, 237, 326 Israel, J. I., v, x, 19, 57, 267, 272, 280–1, 321, 323, 328 Ixion, 327 Jacob, M., 272 Jacobi, F. H., ix, xii, xiv–xix, 3–4, 7, 9–10, 12–15, 48, 58–9, 83, 109–14, 116–17, 119, 121, 192, 267–71, 280, 284–94, 314 Jansen, H. J., xviii, 288 Jean Paul (J. P. F. Richter), ix, xviii Jeannin, P., de Montjeu, 231, 324 Jefferson, T., 66 Johann Wilhelm II von der Pfalz, 312 Jong, E. de, 276 Jordaen, J., 186, 312 Joseph, 187 Julius Caesar, see Caesar, G. J. Juno, 241–3, 326–7 Jupiter, 79, 145, 168, 183, 241, 245, 249, 311, 326 see also Zeus Kant, I., ix, xvi, xviii, 23, 32, 39 Kate, L. ten, 38, 277 Kepler, J., 28, 105, 145, 298, 300 Kinker, J., 23 Kleuker, J. F., 309 Koenig, S., 18, 27, 272 Köhler, M., 271, 330 Kortholt, C., 291 Krop, H. A., v, x, 16, 267, 269, 272–3, 280, 294 Kuffler, see Cuffeler, A. J. La Fayette, M. J. G. de Motier, de, 255, 329 La Mettrie, J. O. de, xiii, 14, 66, 120, 295 La Roche, S. de, xv Lacoue-Labarthe, P., x, 267 Lairesse, G. de, 186, 276, 312 Lalande, J. J., 145, 150, 300–1 Landriani, M., 153, 302–3

INDEX 335

Laocoön, xiv Largillière, N. de, 187, 313 Laurentius, T., 275–6 Leibniz, G. W. von, 13, 17–19, 21, 25, 78, 144, 166, 269–70 Lemcke, P. H., 330 Lessing, G. E., ix, xiv, xvi, xix, 4, 7, 9, 12, 15, 57–9, 113–14, 119, 271, 280, 291–3 Letter on an Antique Gemstone, ix, xiv Letter on Desires, ix–x, xiv, xvi, 7, 9, 115, 270, 282, 292, 305, 325, 327 Letter on Man and his Relations, ix–xi, xv–xvi, 6, 9–12, 15, 49, 58, 65–6, 71, 76, 82, 96, 115, 177, 179, 198, 271, 281–4, 286–7, 289, 292, 297, 300, 306, 310–11, 316–17, 322–3, 327 Letter on Sculpture, ix–x, xiv–xv, 7, 29, 31–5, 37, 39–42, 45, 48, 54, 115, 169, 268, 276–7, 283, 293, 297, 304, 306–8, 316, 318, 323, 328 Leucippus, 289 Locke, J., 25–6, 111, 113, 285, 291, 296 Lom, J. H. van, 20 Longinus, C., 196–7, 199, 316 Lorrain, C., 186, 312 Louis Napoleon, 23 Louis XIV of France, 60, 234, 255, 325, 329 Louis XV of France, 255, 329 Louis XVI of France, 255–6, 329 Love, 38, 144, 235, 244, 249, 261, 264, 326 see also Amor Lucian of Samosata, 50, 116, 180, 199, 293, 311 Lucretius, T., Carus, 119, 163, 294, 305 Luyendijk-Elshout, A. M., 279 Lycurgus, 226, 324 Lysis, see Dentan Maas, A., 272 Maas, J., 42, 275, 278 MacPherson, J., 288 Madonna, 38, 186–7, 313 Magdalene, 187 Mahieu, G., 277 Mairan, J. J. d’Ortous de, 145, 301 Malebranche, N., 78, 283 Marcus Aurelius, 170, 210, 307, 319 Maria Theresa, 217, 321

Mariette, P. J., 33, 276 Mariotte, E., 24 Marius, C., 263 Matassi, E., x, 5, 267, 269 Matris of Thebes, 191, 314 Maurer, J., 276 Maurice of Orange-Nassau (stadtholder), 60, 250, 328 May, G., 280–1 Mayer, T., 149, 301 McCormick, J. J., 276 Medea, 243 Meerkerk, E. van, 280 Meerman, A. C., see Mollerus, A. C. Meijer, M. C., 278 Meijers, D. J., 277 Melica, C., v, x, 3, 267–70, 281, 288, 291, 303 Menander, 180, 201, 311, 318 Mendelssohn, M., ix, 4, 7, 9, 12, 83, 92, 270, 284–5, 290, 292 Mengs, A. R., 187–8, 313 Merck, J. H., xv Merker, N., 271 Meyboom, L. S. P., xix, 275 Michelangelo, 44, 183, 278 Micke, C., 275 Mijn, G. van der, 276 Miltiades, 194, 254, 316, 329 Minerva, 176, 183, 210, 241 Mirabeau, H. G. Riquette de, 256, 329 Moenkemeyer, H., x, 264, 267, 330 Molière, 201, 318 Mollerus (‘Daphne’, married Perrenot, Meerman), A.C., xvi, 304 Molyneux, W., 296 Montesquieu, C. L. de Secondat de, 216, 261, 265, 321–2, 330 More, T., 61, 231, 324 Moretto, A., 298 Morgan, D., 277–8 Mori, G., 269 Musschenbroek, J. van, 22 Musschenbroek, P. van, xiii, 19–20, 22, 27 Myronides, 237, 326 Nancy, J. L., x, 267 Nassar, D., x, 267 Nassau, house of, 64, 251–2 Necker, J., 255–6, 295, 329

336 INDEX Neeb, J., xix Neptune (Poseidon), 167, 194, 316 Newton, I., 16–19, 21, 24, 26–8, 79, 105, 107, 111, 113, 118, 145, 156, 163–4, 273–4, 282, 290–1, 298, 300–1, 303–4 Nicholaus, Saint, 188, 314 Niemeijer, J. W., 275 Nieuhoff, B., xv Nieuwentyt, B., 19, 298 Nisbet, B., 280 Noah, 190 Novalis (F. von Hardenberg), ix, xviii, 57 Nozeman, C., 27, 281 Oceanus, 327 Ockham, W., 21 Odysseus, 316 Oeser, A. F., 186, 312 Oldenbarnevelt, J. van. 60 Olivetti, M., 269–71 Oosterdijk Schacht, J., 20 Orestes, 318 Orpheus, 105 Os, T van, 275 Otto, R., 280 Ottomeyer, H., 276 Ovid, P., Naso, 327 Paine, T., 66 Palamedes, 319 Palaprat, J. de, 201, 318 Parcae, 191 Parigi, R., 5–6, 269, 281 Parmenides, 165 Pascal, B., 144 Paul, J., see Jean Paul Paulus, G., 4 Pausanias, 326–7 Pelckmans, P., x, 267 Pelops, 79, 283 Pemberton, H., 17, 272 Penny, N., 277 Pepin (‘the Short’), 228, 324 Perrenot, A. C., see Mollerus, A. C. Petry, M. J., x, 16, 26, 28, 261, 267–8, 272–5, 280–1, 296–8, 303 Phidias, 183, 237, 311, 326 Philaeni, brothers, 254, 329 Philip II of Macedon, 239, 326

Philip II of Spain, 60, 230, 323–4, 328 Philip of Arcanania, 286 Philosophical Description of the Character of the Late Mr. F. Fagel, xv Pijnacker, A., 186, 312 Piles, R. de, 277 Pindar, 241, 327 Pisistratus, 262 Plato, vi, ix, xv, xviii, 42, 49, 59, 61, 78–79, 103–4, 111, 165, 168, 177, 180–1, 190–4, 196–8, 201, 231, 242, 277, 284, 293, 297, 299, 305–6, 309, 314–16, 318, 326–7 Ploos van Amstel, C., 275–6, 312–13 Ploos van Amstel, G., 275 Plutarch, 282, 286, 316, 324, 326–7 Plutus, 241 Polyphemus, 316 Pope, A., xi, 195, 293, 316 Poseidon, see Neptune Posonby, W., 2nd Earl of Bessborough, 51, 279 Potiphar, 187 Potter, P., 186–7, 312–13 Poussin, N., 187, 313 Powell, M., 29, 275 Praxiteles, 237, 326 Proclus, 317 Promachus, 243, 327 Prometheus, 15, 271–2, 290, 292, 319 Protagoras, 165 Proteus, 241 Pseudo-Aristotle, 308 Psyche, 144, 300 Ptolemy I of Egypt, 235, 237–40, 326 Pylades, 318 Pyrrho of Elis, 285 Pyrrhus, 263 Pythagoras, 119, 140, 170, 172, 194–5, 238, 294, 299, 308 Pytheas / Pythias, 248, 264, 327 Quéval, M. H., 269 Racine, J., vi, 177–8, 309 Raphael, 183, 187–8, 311, 313 Raynal, G. T. de, xv Regner, F., 270 Rehberg, F., 188, 313 Reid, T., xi

INDEX 337

Reimarus, E., 292 Rembrandt van Rijn, 186–7, 312 Reni, G., 187, 311, 313 Rey, M. M. de, 276 Richardson, J., 277 Richardson, S., 319 Richter, J. P. F., see Jean Paul Rigaud, H., 187, 313 Ripa, C., 36–7, 276 Robins, B., 301 Rohan, L. de, 256, 329 Romein, A., 16, 28, 272 Romein, J., 16, 28, 272 Rosenblum, R., 48, 278–9 Rousseau, J. J., xiv–xvi, 304, 306, 319 Ruysdael, J. van, 186–7, 312–13 Saint Val (de Roquefort), 177–8, 309 Saint-Simon, M. H. de, 201, 309, 318 Saly, J., 40 Scharloo, M., 278 Scheens, P., 275 Scheffner, J. G., 3 Scheiner, C., 145, 301 Schelling, F. W. J., ix, xviii Schepp, J. H., 43, 278 Schlegel, A. W., ix, xviii, 48, 57, 267 Schlegel, F., ix, xviii, 268 Schleiermacher, F. D. E., ix, xviii Schmettau, A. A., see Diotima, Gallitzin, A. A. Schmettau, A. von (jr.), 192, 314 Schmettau, F. von, 314 Scholten, F., 48, 279 Schulte Nordholt, J. W., 280 Schultz, C. P., 112, 261, 291 Schwan, C. F., 268 Scipio, 210, 263 Seneca, L. A., 177–8, 309 Sesostris, 241, 327 Sextus Empiricus, 285 ’s Gravesande, W. J., ix, xiii, 16–23, 26, 28, 72, 145, 270, 273, 282, 285, 296–7, 301 Shearman, J. 278 Sieyès, E. J., 60, 256, 329 Simon, or on the Faculties of the Soul, ix–xi, xvi–xvii, 262, 285, 297, 306–7, 317, 319–21, 327 Sixtus II, pope, 187

Sluis, J. van, v–vi, ix–x, 261, 267, 280, 292, 302, 310, 313, 325 Smeth, T. de, ix, xiv, 292 Smith, R., 304 Socrates (historical), ix, 28, 42, 78–9, 89, 102–5, 111, 118, 163–4, 168, 170, 180–1, 193, 196, 209–10, 238, 240, 288, 305–6, 309, 315, 319, 326 Socrates (Hemsterhuis), ix, xv, 78, 84, 87–8, 90–2, 131, 191–3, 196, 199, 282–4, 290, 302, 304, 307, 309, 314, 325 Solon, 165, 226, 238, 324, 327 Sonderen, P., v, x, 29, 267, 275–7, 279, 306, 308, 313 Sophocles, 201 Sophroniscus, 168, 306 Sophylus, or on Philosophy, ix–x, xv, xviii, 12, 28, 58, 143, 198, 214, 281, 294, 296–7, 307, 317, 321 Spinoza, B., v, ix, xvii, 3–8, 10, 12–16, 18–19, 21, 23, 25, 58–9, 62, 65, 71–2, 75, 78–9, 110, 112–14, 116–17, 119, 268–9, 271, 281–3, 288–95, 298, 310 Staël, G. de, xix, 27–8, 275 Staring, A., 278 Stark, C. B., 275 Stella, J., 40 Stolberg, F. L. zu, xviii Strato of Lindus, 240, 326 Strugnell, A., 280 Struyck / Struyk, N., 168, 306 Suffren, P. A. de, 278 Sulli / Sully, M. de Béthune, 231, 324 Supreme Being, etc., 24, 71, 77, 81, 102–3, 144, 150, 209, 220 see also Divinity, God Swinden, J. H. van, 16, 22–26, 28, 273–4 Tacitus, C., 50, 180, 226, 324 Tantalus, 283 Teniers, D., 186, 312 Terence, 201, 318 Thales of Milete, 238 Themis 249, 327 Themistocles, 254, 316, 329 Theocritus, 201, 235, 265, 318, 326 Theunissen, B., 273 Thoas, 201, 318 Thoms, F. de, 276 Thrasybulus, 236, 254, 326, 329

338 INDEX Thrasymachus, 327 Thucydides, 50, 180 Timm, H., 271 Timoleon, 210, 319 Tischbein, J. H. W., 188, 313 Titian Vecellio, 36, 38, 186–8, 312–13 Tolstoy, L., ix Toricelli, E., 24 Trajan, 308 Trembley, A., xiii Trop, G., 282 Trunz, E., 267–8, 311 Tyrtaeus, 241, 327 Uranus, 327 Venus, 36–39, 45, 187, 196–7, 241, 317 Verbeek, T., 271 Vermij, R., 19, 272 Vernière, P., 269, 271 Verra, V., 271 Verwer, A., 19 Vieillard-Baron, J. L., x, 267 Vinkeles, R., 278 Virgil, P. Maro, 72 Volder, B. de, 18–19, 272 Voltaire, 17, 66, 72, 180, 272, 281, 305, 309 Walker, S., 276 Wallis, J., 299 Washington, G., 64 Watelet, C. H., 38, 277 Weatherby, L., x, 267 Wedgwood, J., xvii, 33, 40 Werff, A. van der, 187, 313

Weyer, S. vande, xix Whistler, D., v, ix, 271, 290 Wieland, C. M, ix, xv, 267, 318 Wielema, M., x, 267, 273, 280 Wiesenfeldt, G., 272 Wilde, C. de, xiii Wilde, J. de, xiii Wilhelmina of Prussia, 62 William I of England (‘the Conqueror’), 229, 324 William I of Orange (‘William the Silent’, stadtholder), 60, 230, 250, 324, 328 William IV of Orange (stadtholder), xiii William V of Orange (stadtholder), xiv, xvii, 43, 45, 276, 325, 328 Willigen, A. van der, 275 Wilson, A, M., 279, 281 Winckelmann, J. J., xiv, 312 Wizenmann, T., 14, 84, 271, 284–7 Wolfe, C. T., 269 Wolff, C., 4, 23, 78, 283 Wouwerman, P., 187, 313 Xenophon, 165 Xerxes, 238 Zac, S., 271 Zampieri, D., 187, 313 Zedler, J. H., 17, 272 Zeno of Citium, 170, 307 Zephyr, 197, 241, 327 Zeus, 283, 286, 300, 311, 326–7 see also Jupiter Zoffany, J., 38, 277 Zuidervaart, H. J., 303 Zumkley, C., 299

‘The van Sluis and Whistler edition of The Philosophical Correspondence and Unpublished Writings of François Hemsterhuis has been a revelation to anyone working in late modern, German romantic and/or ancient philosophy. This third volume of unpublished essays and correspondence is a treasure trove, featuring numerous texts addressing his interpretation of Spinoza, his understanding of the “Pantheism controversy” between Jacobi and Mendelssohn, including the ‘Letter on Atheism’ first published by Jacobi, as well as additional essays highlighting his views in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics. Hemsterhuis’s wide-ranging correspondence sheds light on every aspect of his thinking, as well as upon Hemsterhuis the person. van Sluis and Whistler have done us all a great favor in providing this material in English in a definitive scholarly edition.’ Andrew J. Mitchell, Emory University

This final volume in The Edinburgh Edition of the Complete Philosophical Works of François Hemsterhuis includes the Letter on Atheism, the Letter on Fatalism and the Letter on Optics—all penned as part of his remarkable correspondence with Amalie Gallitzin—as well as the unpublished dialogue, Alexis II. Also included is Hemsterhuis’ philosophical responses to Plato, Spinoza and Diderot, to contemporary political events in the Dutch Republic and to the French Revolution. JACOB VAN SLUIS is a former subject librarian at the University Library of Groningen. DANIEL WHISTLER is Professor of Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London. Cover image: La Mystérieuse, vase design by François Hemsterhuis Photo: © Royal Library, The Hague Cover design: riverdesignbooks.com

edinburghuniversitypress.com

ISBN 978-1-3995-2517-6

Edited and Translated by Jacob van Sluis and Daniel Whistler

The first ever English translation of François Hemsterhuis’ philosophically ambitious and illuminating fragments, notes and correspondence, making accessible to Anglophone readers some of the most significant texts, for a genuine understanding of his philosophy.

The Philosophical Correspondence and Unpublished Writings of françoiS Hemsterhuis

A complete edition with full scholarly apparatus and commentaries tracing Hemsterhuis’s remarkable influence on the French Enlightenment, German Idealism and German Romanticism.

Th e P hilos ophical Corres p on den ce an d Un publis h e d Writings of

françoiS Hemsterhuis

Edited and Translated by Jacob van Sluis and Daniel Whistler