To the horror of Fritz
Jacobi, Lessing, to whom he read it in manuscript in 1780, declared
that its conception of the [Greek: hen kai pan] was his own;[145] and
when, in 1785, Jacobi published the poem without Goethe's knowledge, a
controversy arose in which Lessing was charged with atheism and
pantheism, and which, as Goethe records, cost the life of one of the
combatants, Moses Mendelssohn.[146] Be it said that in his old age
Goethe himself came to regard the sentiments of the soliloquy as
_sansculottisch_, and in the time of reaction of the Holy Alliance
forbade the publication of the fragment as likely to be received as an
evangel by the revolutionary youth of Germany.[147]
[Footnote 144: Viktor Hehn pointed out that the drama and the ode are
inspired by different motives, and that it was in forgetfulness that
Goethe associated them.--_Ueber Goethe's Gedichte_, p. 160.
Bielschowsky (_Goethe, Sein Leben und Seine Werke_, i. 510) suggests
that the ode may have been intended as the opening of Act ii.]
[Footnote 145: Sir Frederick Pollock dates "modern Spinozism" from
this incident.--_Spinoza: His Life and Opinions_ (London, 1880), p.
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