Note 282 — Chapter XXI · FREETHOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

2. In respect of his formal championship of Christianity Hegel’s method, arbitrary even for him, appealed neither to the orthodox nor, with a few exceptions,282 to his own disciples, some of whom, as Ruge, at length definitely renounced Christianity.283 In 1854 Heine told his French readers that there were in Germany “fanatical monks of atheism” who would willingly burn Voltaire as a besotted deist;284 and Heine himself, in his last years of suffering and of revived poetic religiosity, could see in Hegel’s system only atheism. Bruno Bauer at first opposed Strauss, and afterwards went even further than he, professing Hegelianism all the while.285 Schopenhauer and Hartmann in turn being even less sustaining to orthodoxy, and later orthodox systems failing to impress, there came in due course the cry of “Back to Kant,” where at least orthodoxy had some formal semblance of sanction.