Note 83 — Chapter XVIII · GERMAN FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

12. Alongside of home-made heresy there had come into play a new initiative force in the literature of English deism, which began to be translated after 1740,83 and was widely circulated till, in the last third of the century, it was superseded by the French. The English answers to the deists were frequently translated likewise, and notoriously helped to promote deism84—another proof that it was not their influence that had changed the balance of activity in England. Under a freethinking king, even clergymen began guardedly to accept the deistic methods; and the optimism of Shaftesbury began to overlay the optimism of Leibnitz;85 while a French scientific influence began with La Mettrie,86 Maupertuis, and Robinet. Even the Leibnitzian school, proceeding on the principle of immortal monads, developed a doctrine of the immortality of the souls of animals87—a position not helpful to orthodoxy. There was thus a general stirring of doubt among educated people,88 and we find mention in Goethe’s Autobiography of an old gentleman of Frankfort who avowed, as against the optimists, “Even in God I find defects (Fehler).”89